A method of communicating a message from a sender to a recipient in possession of a unique identifier by use of which the recipient can perform a transaction at a transaction terminal includes: receiving the message from the sender, the message including a reference to the unique identifier; storing the message in a computer memory; detecting performance by the recipient of a transaction at the transaction terminal; and transmitting the message from the computer memory in which it is stored to the transaction terminal for display to the recipient incidental to the transaction performed, the message being independent of the transaction performed. Apparatus for communicating a message from a sender to a recipient in possession of a unique identifier by use of which the recipient can perform a transaction at a transaction terminal comprises: a first communication network; a second communication network including a transaction terminal; a computer memory; one or more processors collectively executing a sequence of instructions defining functions of receiving the message over the first communication network; storing the message in the memory; detecting performance by the recipient of a transaction at the transaction terminal; and transmitting the message over the second communication network. The recipient may be selected from a target list of recipients identified with a sponsor, wherein the message includes a reference to the target list.

The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for communicating messages from a sender to a recipient. More particularly, the invention relates to methods and apparatus for communicating with a recipient having access to a transaction terminal, such as a point of sale (POS) terminal or automatic teller machine (ATM) terminal.
Modern technological communication methods and apparatus employ many different types of networks. For example, telephone users, including cellular telephone users, communicate over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). A calling party need only know the phone number of the called party in order to establish a connection. If direct communication cannot be established, for example when a called party is not present at the location of the telephone at which they have been called, or when a called party is using a cell phone, but is out of range, voicemail takes over. The calling party can leave a message for the called party to pick up when convenient. But, even when using a cell phone, the called party is only alerted to the presence of a message when in range. Moreover, in order for the called party to receive the message, they must initiate an access of their voicemail system. This is inconvenient or impossible in some locales.
Another type of network used for communication is the world-wide Internet network of computers. The Internet is enabling technology for, among other things, email and instant messaging (IMing). With email, if a sender knows the email address of a recipient, a message can be sent that is stored in the recipient's email inbox until it becomes convenient for the recipient to retrieve and read. IMing works a bit more like a phone call, in that a two-way link can be established by the sending party, by simply sending an initial message to the address of the recipient. Some IM systems allow for a sort of stored and forwarded message, like voicemail, for absent recipients, while others do not. In a conventional IM system each sender and recipient communicates through a specialized server.
Some common features of all of the systems described above include that the systems utilize a publicly accessible network, and significantly, that the sender and recipient each have access to an addressable communications device.
Another type of ubiquitously available communication system is the transaction processing network. Each credit or debit card clearing company, such as Master Card International and Visa International, has constructed and established such a network through which various types of financial transactions pass. These networks are tailored for the private, secure, transmission of financial transaction data, and are not otherwise publicly accessible. POS terminals and ATM terminals communicate financial transaction data privately and securely from the user to the user's financial institution, card issuer, etc. However, such networks do not carry private messages or provide users with addressable communications devices.

Communication through a financial services network


Optical apparatus comprising a pump guiding fiber comprising a fiber cladding, a fiber core and an attachment section, the attachment section comprising a straight core section and a tapered core section, and a receiving fiber comprising an inner clad to which the attachment section is attached.

High power fiber lasers have become increasingly popular due to their high efficiency, simplicity and reliability. In addition, they may be easily ruggedized, due to their simple arrangement.
High power applications generally use a double clad fiber. This fiber comprises a core, usually doped with a lasing material such as rare earth ions or other, an inner cladding encircling the doped core, through which the pump power flows and is gradually absorbed in the doped core, and an outer cladding the inner cladding and forming a dielectric wave guide for the pump signal. The optical characteristics of the inner cladding closely match high power diode lasers, commonly used for solid-state laser pumping. Therefore, highly efficient pumping may be achieved by utilizing double clad fibers as a gain material.
One of the problems in double clad fibers, used for high power fiber laser applications, is the end pumping approach for injecting optical pump power. End pumping provides at most only two input ends for each fiber in the laser system, through which all the injected power enters the fiber. This physical limit constrains the number and type of pump sources that may be used to inject the optical power. In addition, when the double clad fiber is used as a power amplifier, end pumping prohibits simple injection of the signal to be amplified, and renders the coupling optics cumbersome and expensive.
Modern high power pumping techniques for commercial fiber lasers and amplifiers are usually based on end pumping by diode lasers. The common fibers used for fiber lasers applications are Yb3+ doped silica with tunable output between 980 nm-1200 nm (pumped by either 915 nm or 980 nm diodes), Er3+ doped silica for 1550 nm eye-safe and communication applications (pumped by either 980 nm or 1480 nm diodes), and Yb3+:Er3+ silica fibers used also for 1550 nm applications, but in the high power range, where the wide spread erbium doped fibers are not applicable. Other fiber lasers used mostly for 2 μm remote sensing and medical applications are Tm3+ doped and Ho3+:Tm3+ doped silica fibers.
The most commonly used fiber for marking, drilling and other industrial applications is the Yb3+ fiber, characterized by high efficiency and robustness. In addition, reliable and efficient pump diodes are available for this ion excitation, while its wide absorption band (25 nm) enables using pump diodes that do not need special cooling. The fiber's high efficiency and high surface-to-volume ratio enables cooling by air rather than cumbersome liquid cooling in solid-state lasers.
One of the main limitations today in using high power fiber lasers and amplifiers is, however, the pump coupling technique. Reference is now made to FIG. 1, which illustrates a prior art end coupling in a high power fiber amplifier. A high power diode 10 may pump optical power to a rare-earth doped double clad fiber 18 (e.g., Yb3+ doped fiber), through coupling optics 12 and an end-fiber coupling section 14. A seeder 16, such as a 1.064 μm diode, may inject low power signals to coupling section 14. Coupling section 14 may be coated for anti-reflection at the pump wavelength and may have high reflection at the signal wavelength. The double clad fiber 18 may be connected to output coupling optics 20.
However, the end pumping technique may limit coupling efficiency, lower the fiber laser system robustness, due to the complex optics alignment and tight tolerances required, and also increase the system cost, due to the expensive optics used. The problem becomes even more severe when high power fiber amplification is required. The complex alignment and tight tolerances, along with the high power flux at the fiber input end, render this configuration complex, inefficient, expensive and very sensitive to environmental changes.
Solutions have been proposed to these problems in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,673 to Samartsev et al. describes a coupling between a multi-mode optical fiber pigtail and a double-clad optical fiber, that is, a fiber that includes an inner (single-mode or multi-mode) core with a diameter of few microns, a first cladding (multi-mode), and a second cladding. Samartsev et al. attempt to transfer multi-mode light source power to an optical fiber along a non-coaxial direction.
The coupling in Samartsev et al. comprises a tapered circular pump-guiding multi-mode fiber between the double clad fiber's inner cladding and the pump source. The pump-guiding fiber is tapered and then fused to the double clad fiber's inner clad, where the fusion region contains substantially the whole tapered region of the pump-guiding fiber, and nothing else. However, the divergence angle of the pump-guiding fiber, αs, and that of the multi mode inner cladding part of the double clad fiber, αf, has to satisfy the following relation:αf=k·αs
wherein k is a constant greater than 1.
There is an interest in using pump guiding fibers satisfying k<=1, since these pump guiding fibers can deliver more power than pump guiding fibers satisfying the k>1 condition, as in Samartsev et. al. Pump guiding fibers satisfying k<=1 have a higher numerical aperture than pump guiding fibers with k>1, and therefore, low brightness pump diode light with higher power can be efficiently coupled to these fibers, whereas with pump guiding fibers satisfying k>1, as in Samartsev et. al, the coupling efficiency is low.
Another disadvantage of Samartsev et al. is that when using fibers with k<=1, (that is, the divergence angles of the pump guiding fiber is higher or equal to that of the inner cladding of the double clad fiber) where the fusion region is only the tapered region of the pump-guiding fiber, than the pump coupling efficiency between the pump guiding fiber and the inner cladding of the double clad fiber is low and renders the Samartsev et al. method inefficient.

Optical apparatus including pump guiding fiber and receiving fiber


A method and a switching router for simple scheduling of realtime data telegrams with calculable load-insensitive cycle times. A transmission cycle (4) is subdivided into three phases. In a first phase (1), only realtime data telegrams are sent; in a second phase (2), realtime and non-realtime data telegrams are sent; and in a third phase (3), the transmission of long non-realtime data telegrams is suppressed. Short filler telegrams can be sent during the phase (3). This ensures that data transmission of the realtime data telegrams will proceed smoothly. Transmission in certain phases is regulated by the priorities assigned to the data telegrams.

This invention relates to a method and a switching router for simple scheduling of realtime data telegrams in calculable, load-insensitive cycle times.
Ethernets are being used increasingly today in the automation environment. An automation system requires a calculable response time. It must be certain that data can be transmitted within a defined period of time. Cycle time is one component of the response time in data transmission. When using an Ethernet, there is no primary calculability of the response time and/or cycle time. This is due to the fact that the basic regulating mechanism thereof functions according to a so-called "best effort" principle, which usually ensures good response times but is load dependent. In other words, at times of high communication traffic and/or when the volume of data to be transmitted is high, the response time can no longer be guaranteed.
There are various methods of bypassing this weakness in principle. As a rule, these methods tend to use special network components or the operation of standard Ethernet nodes is prohibited. However, this significantly limits the applicability and acceptance of this technique.
German patent application 100 58 524.8 discloses a method for transmission of data over switchable data networks, in particular an Ethernet in the field of industrial installations, in which realtime-critical and non-realtime-critical data are transmitted. According to the reference, the data are transmitted in a transmission cycle with an adjustable period, where each transmission cycle is subdivided into a first range for transmission of realtime-critical data for the realtime control and a second range for transmission of non-realtime-critical data. The German application discussed in this paragraph is incorporated into the present application by reference.

Scheduling of realtime communication in switched networks


A technique for unobtrusively monitoring a person reading a magazine to determine what page of the magazine is being read. It is necessary to monitor both the magazine as well as the reader's eyes for this purpose. However, test results can be skewed if the reader is placed in an environment to which he is not accustomed. In order to permit the person a great deal of choice as to where to sit and in what sitting position so as to simulate a "natural" environment rather than a test environment, one or more cameras are positioned in the room. In addition at least one mirror is mounted on a wall. The camera may have a direct view of either the reader's eyes or the magazine. Whichever one of these is not directly visible to the camera can be picked up by way of a reflection from the mirror. Various adjustments to the camera are provided so that the reader can be kept in view regardless of where in the room he decides to sit and read.

This invention is directed to a technique for monitoring individuals reading a magazine and, more particularly, to determining which pages of an open magazine are examined by the reader and which are quickly skipped over.
It is important for publishers and advertisers to know which pages in a magazine are looked at attentively by a reader (used below interchangeably with "person" and "individual"). The word "magazine" is used herein to refer to any publication which when opened and placed flat on a surface presents a left page and a right page to the reader. It is well known that in the course of perusing a magazine, the attention of a reader will be attracted to certain pages and not at all to others. If an accurate and reliable method were available for determining whether the reader lingers on a given page, this information would be representative of the attraction to the reader of the contents of that particular page. Thus, for example, if an article appears on a given page, a measurement could be made by analyzing the extent to which a person's attention is drawn to that particular page. If such measurements indicate that the page does not draw the preferred degree of attention, then the caption of the article, for example, could be changed so that it becomes a stronger magnet for pulling the reader' s attention to the article. Likewise, if an advertisement were to be placed on a given page, this test could be utilized to measure whether the advertisement is merely noticed and then quickly skipped over, or whether it succeeds in having the reader pay it the desired degree of attention. Such a technique is an important measurement tool for determining whether whatever is printed or displayed in the magazine functions to provide the level of exposure to the readership of the magazine that one expects by going to the expense of printing it.
The primary technique currently available to determine the level of attention devoted by a reader to a particular article or advertisement involves the interview method. A reader is selected as a test subject and asked to read a particular magazine. After the magazine is read, the person is then asked a number of questions about what was just read. However, this method is heavily dependent on recall, honesty and objectivity. It, therefore, may not accurately reflect what the reader actually experienced.
Another disadvantage of this type of technique currently in use is the unnatural, abnormal environment into which the person is placed while taking the test. The environment varies from that which the person is normally accustomed to while reading a magazine. As a result, the person may be nervous or distracted. Consequently, the test results may not be an accurate measurement of that person's reactions to the magazine under normal conditions.
Another technique for obtaining this information utilizes eye movement monitoring equipment. As described in the article "Methods & Designs, Survey of Eye Movement Recording Methods" by Laurence R. Young and David Sheena in Behavior Research Methods & Instrumentation 1975, Vol. 7(5), pages 397-427 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,075,657 issued Feb. 21, 1978, eye movement monitoring techniques bounce an infrared beam off the eye and detect the position of the reflected beam. Eye position is determined from the reflected beam position. Head position must be stabilized so that beam movement is due only to eye movement and not head movement. The eye position as indicated by the reflected beam is superimposed on an image of a magazine page. The page image can be obtained from a video camera aimed at the view displayed to the test subject.
Such equipment has several disadvantages. Firstly, equipment constraints are such that the head is pointing forward rather than downward in order to readily accommodate the infrared light source and the reflected beam detector. Therefore, a magazine would have to be placed vertically in front of a person. However, because this is not practical, slides are used to display the magazine pages. This requires extra slide equipment. Secondly, large size publications cannot be tested because of the limited angular range of eye rotation which eye movement monitoring equipment can measure (27"). Thirdly, persons wearing bifocals and contact lenses disperse the infrared beam. Fourthly, due to the unnatural head rigidity and head position required which is very different from that normally used for reading, a person may not read the text for as long a time as would be the case in the "real world". Fifth, eye movement monitoring equipment is relatively heavy and bulky and is, thus, not portable. Sixth, such equipment is visible to the person and can be obtrusive and distracting. Seventh, with the equipment being visible, the person must be told that a test is being performed which, consequently, may modify the reading habits and reactions to the magazine contents. All of these factors, singly or in combination, can detract from the accuracy of the test and are, therefore, preferably to be eliminated.
One other approach available for obtaining this information is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,661,847 issued Apr. 28, 1987 to the present inventor. It discloses a housing placed above a reading surface such as a desk top. The housing contains a lens aimable at the eyes of a test subject sitting at the desk, lenses aimed down at both sides of an open magazine, a mirror arrangement, and an optical image superimposition device for combining the eye and page images. This arrangement provides a significant improvement over the other techniques. However, because the housing is fixed in position above a reading surface on which the magazine is laid, the test subject is constrained in terms of having to sit at the desk. This reading position may be unnatural and uncomfortable to a particular test subject. Moreover, the level of discomfort can only increase the more time that must be spent in that position. Consequently, this approach does not adequately simulate conditions to which the individual would be subjected when reading a magazine under conditions considered normal. Because the testing conditions create an artificial situation, the test subject may produce commensurately inaccurate test results.

Technique for monitoring magazine readers while permitting a greater choice for the reader of possible reading positions


A rotor core for a rotary electric machine, includes: a shaft hole into which a shaft rotating about a rotation axis is inserted and fixed; an inner ring portion provided with the shaft hole therein and having an outer edge in a circular shape coaxial with the rotation axis; an outer ring portion coaxial with the rotation axis and disposed radially outward of the inner ring portion; a connection ring portion coaxial with the rotation axis and disposed between the inner and outer ring portions; inner ribs interconnecting the inner and connection ring portions and extending in a crossing direction to the rotation axis; and outer ribs interconnecting the connection and outer ring portions and extending in the crossing direction. The inner and outer ribs are disposed respectively in different phases in a peripheral direction of the connection ring portion.

A rotary electric machine includes a rotor in which a rotor core is formed by lamination or the like, a shaft which integrally rotates with the rotor, and a stator which generates a magnetic field to rotate the rotor by interaction with a magnetic field of the rotor. The rotor and the shaft of such a rotary electric machine are fixed and connected to each other by tightly fitting the shaft into a shaft hole formed in the rotor core by press-fitting or shrink-fitting. When the rotary electric machine is energized and the number of revolutions of the rotor increases, deformation such as radially outward expansion of the rotor core occurs by a centrifugal force. Therefore, there is a need to prevent deformation of the rotor core.
A rotor of a rotary electric machine is described in JP 2014-158331A (Reference 1). A rotor core of the rotor includes a through-hole having a substantially circular ring shape and axially formed from the inner circumferential side of a magnet insertion hole into which a permanent magnet is inserted, an inner circumferential side rotor core (corresponding to an inner ring portion herein) on the inner circumferential side of the through-hole, an outer circumferential side rotor core (corresponding to an outer ring portion herein) on the outer circumferential side of the through-hole, and a shaft hole formed in a central portion of the rotor core so that a rotor shaft is press-fitted into the shaft hole. A circular ring portion having a substantially circular ring shape (corresponding to a connection ring portion herein) is formed radially inward of the through-hole, and the inner circumferential side rotor core and the circular ring portion are connected to each other by a plurality of inner circumferential side ribs arranged at a predetermined distance in the peripheral direction. The outer circumferential side rotor core and the circular ring portion are connected to each other by a plurality of outer circumferential side ribs arranged at a predetermined distance in the peripheral direction. The inner circumferential side ribs and the outer circumferential side ribs are formed so as to be inclined radially outward in the peripheral direction. By setting the rigidity of each of the inner circumferential side ribs and the outer circumferential side ribs so as to obtain desired characteristics, press-fitting stress generated inside the rotor core when the shaft is press-fitted into the shaft hole, centrifugal stress generated inside the rotor core by a centrifugal force during rotor rotation, or the expansion of each of the outer circumferential side rotor core and the inner circumferential side rotor core caused by the press-fitting stress or the centrifugal stress may be controlled to fall within a predetermined condition. For example, since the outer circumferential side rotor core is located circumferentially outside the inner circumferential side rotor core at the time of rotation, a greater centrifugal force acts thereon compared to that in the inner circumferential side rotor core. Therefore, by setting the rigidity of the outer circumferential side ribs connected to the outer circumferential side rotor core to be greater than the rigidity of the inner circumferential side ribs, the inner circumferential side ribs may be easily deformed, so that displacement due to the centrifugal stress generated in the outer circumferential side rotor core at the time of rotation is absorbed by the deformation of the inner circumferential side ribs. Thus, deformation of the inner circumferential side rotor core is prevented.
In the rotor of the rotary electric machine described in Reference 1, the stress generated in the rotor core is relieved by adjusting the rigidity of each of the inner circumferential side ribs and the outer circumferential side ribs which are inclined radially outward in the peripheral direction. Thus, in order to secure the magnitude of relievable displacement, it is necessary to secure the lengths of the inner circumferential side ribs and the outer circumferential side ribs in the radial direction beyond a predetermined length. For this reason, a rotor core having a small thickness in the radial direction (a small difference between the inner and outer diameters thereof) may not be adapted. Further, the number of punching holes or the punching area for forming the inner circumferential side ribs and the outer circumferential side ribs is increased, which causes practical problems, for example, a difficulty in processing by an inexpensive processing method such as punching or an increase in price. For this reason, in the related art described in Reference 1, deformation of the rotor core may not be appropriately prevented.
Thus, a need exists for a rotor core for a rotary electric machine which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.


An internal induction coil is used to heat the rotor of an ECM. This provides a localized heating and dilation of the bore of the rotor prior to the heating of the outer surface of the rotor. The crankshaft is located in the heated bore and acts as a heat sink. As a result, the outer surface of the rotor is not heated such as might cause the loss of magnetic properties.

As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,876,492, an electronically commutated motor, ECM, includes a permanent magnet rotor assembly. The rotor assembly has a low reluctance core formed as an annular cylindrical ferromagnetic member generally referred to as backiron. The backiron is surrounded by a number of thin flat angular ferromagnetic elements or laminations secured to the outer peripheral surface of the backiron so as to establish constant magnetic polar regions with north-south polarizations. The thin ferromagnetic elements are made of permanent magnetic material such as Alnico and are secured, as by adhesive bonding, to the backiron. The thin ferromagnetic elements are alternately polarized to provide constant magnetic polar regions.
Where a rotor is to be directly attached to a crankshaft, or the like, it is common practice to heat the rotor and place it on the crankshaft so as to be shrunk fit thereon upon the cooling of the rotor. Ferromagnetic materials, however, are subject to the loss of their magnetic properties when heated to their Currie temperature. As a result, it is conventional to secure the rotors of ECM's by slot and key or other suitable means other than shrink fitting. Where one member is attached to another by shrink fitting, it is conventional to heat one of the members by an external induction coil or to place it in a convection oven to cause its thermal expansion. The heated member is placed on the other member and allowed to cool to a shrink fit. In such a method, the heated member is heated as a unit since the interior bore must be thermally expanded.

Method for attaching rotors to crankshafts


Identifying effects of geometric variations of physical parts may include measuring one or more surfaces of a physical part in three-dimensions, analyzing measurements of the physical part to determine a geometric variation from a baseline model, modifying an existing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) mesh for the baseline model based on the geometric variation using a mesh metamorphosis algorithm to create a target mesh for the physical part, and analyzing the target mesh using a CFD analysis to determine an effect (e.g., an effect on unsteadiness) in a system caused by the geometric variation.

Unsteadiness effects of physical parts is an area of ongoing concern, such as unsteady aerodynamics in turbomachines where the forced response vibration that can arise from unsteadiness may result in significant increases in product development costs. Unsteady forcing can also give rise to decreased component lives resulting in both increased maintenance and sustainment costs. Designers may attempt to reduce resonant stresses in turbomachinery through structural changes that are meant to move critical modes out of engine operating ranges, where such structural changes can include changes in airfoil shape, thickness, and count. However, these practices can result in suboptimal designs that have degraded performance, increased weight, and life-cycle cost growth. Accordingly, damping technologies may be utilized to reduce the magnitude of resonant stresses, and there have also been attempts to mitigate the severity of unsteady forcing itself through aerodynamic design. However, any attempt to reduce unsteady forcing through aerodynamic design may itself be predicated on the notion that unsteadiness is predictable to an acceptable level of accuracy, but this can be a difficult proposition given complicated flowfields consistent with turbine aerodynamics.
By way of example, the unsteady flowfield in a single-stage, high-work, high-pressure turbine that is paired with a contra-rotating low-pressure turbine may be dominated by shock interactions. Initial testing with such a turbine may indicate that the overall physics of shock interaction with a downstream vane is well predicted, and this can give credence to efforts to reduce the unsteadiness via three-dimensional unsteady optimization. However, there may be significant discrepancies between predicted levels of unsteadiness (e.g., on the blade suction side due to shock reflections from the downstream vane) and those measured in experiments.
Discrepancies between predicted levels of unsteadiness and those measured in experiments may arise from uncertainties in physical part geometry modeled in a predictive system. Accordingly, there remains a need for improved techniques to identify the effects of physical parts caused by geometric variations (e.g., between an actual physical part and a blueprint model), and to use this information to improve the design or manufacturing of the physical part and/or a system utilizing the physical part.

United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Air Force


A diaphragm device is provided and includes: a diaphragm mechanism having a diaphragm vane and a diaphragm frame receiving the diaphragm vane; a diaphragm-mechanism cover fixed to a lens barrel to which the diaphragm mechanism is attached, the diaphragm-mechanism cover clamping the diaphragm mechanism with a receiving surface of the lens barrel. The diaphragm mechanism and the diaphragm-mechanism cover are inserted in the lens barrel through a side surface of the lens barrel, and a part of the diaphragm mechanism and a part of the diaphragm-mechanism cover protruding outward relative to the side surface of the lens barrel. The diaphragm device further includes a supporting member in a portion of the diaphragm mechanism protruding outward relative to the side surface of the lens barrel, the supporting member supporting the diaphragm mechanism in a direction of the diaphragm mechanism detachable from the lens barrel.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a diaphragm device.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, monitor cameras (monitor CCTV cameras) are broadly used, for example, at financial-institution branches or locations and retail stores. The monitor camera is equipped with a lens unit (lens barrel) similarly to the usual camera. In the lens unit, a diaphragm device is arranged to regulate the amount of incident light. The diaphragm device is structured with precision components, including diaphragm vanes, a lever for moving the vanes, a driver device for electrically operating the lever (see, for example, JP-A-2003-233102).
However, in the event that vibration or an impact is applied to the diaphragm device, a component, e.g. the vane or the driver device, falls off the diaphragm device. Where such vibration or an impact is significant, the diaphragm device itself is possibly detached from the lens device.
Particularly, in a certain case, the monitor camera in its nature is possibly to be broken by a person who is not desired to be taken an image of by the monitor camera. For this reason, there is a need to improve the resistance to an impact force as compared to the usual camera.
In case the monitor camera is damaged at its diaphragm device, imaging is no longer available properly because of the impossibility to regulate the amount of light. In this case, the monitor camera is not allowed to exhibit its monitor function.


A piezoelectric element includes a ceramic substrate, a piezoelectric portion made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition containing a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition having an average particle diameter of 1-10 xcexcm with a maximum particle diameter being not more than 5 times as large as the average particle diameter including the chemical formula discussed below as a main component and the piezoelectric and the piezoelectric ceramic composition includes 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO. An electrode is electrically connected to the piezoelectric portion, and the piezoelectric portion is solidly attached to the ceramic substrate directly or via the electrode. The piezoelectric ceramic composition is represented by the following general formula: Pbx(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3, wherein 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05; 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, b and c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425, 0.025), (0.550, 0.325, 0.125), (0.375, 0.325, 0.300), (0.100, 0.425, 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) and (0.375, 0.425, 0.200) in the coordinates with coordinate axes of the a, b and c, and axe2x88x92b+c=1.00.

The present invention relates to a piezoelectric element. More particularly, the present invention relates to a piezoelectric portion which has very high piezoelectric properties, and which has a high rate of increase of displacement as an actuator in the case of applying a large electric field and a high decomposability as a sensor in the case that a great force is applied.
In recent years, piezoelectric elements have been used in ink jet printer heads, speakers, microphones, etc.
As the piezoelectric elements, there are generally known those comprising a ceramic substrate, a piezoelectric portion made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition, formed on the substrate, and electrodes electrically connected to the piezoelectric portion. As to the piezoelectric ceramic composition constituting the piezoelectric portion, various improved compositions have been disclosed.
For example, a Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3xe2x80x94PbTiO3xe2x80x94PbZrO3 ternary system solid solution composition and a piezoelectric ceramic composition wherein part of Pb in the above composition is replaced by Sr, La, etc., were disclosed [Japanese Patent Publication S44-17103, Japanese Patent Publication S45-8145]. With regard to a piezoelectric portion itself which are the most important factor determining the piezoelectric element properties of the piezoelectric element, a piezoelectric element having excellent piezoelectric properties (e.g. piezoelectric d constant is expected.
When a piezoelectric element is produced actually by superposing a piezoelectric material made of the above piezoelectric ceramic composition on a ceramic substrate and then subjecting the piezoelectric material to heat treatment, the obtained piezoelectric portion has a low density, and therefore, there have been pointed out such a problem that the piezoelectric element has a low flexural displacement or, when a voltage is applied thereto, it causes dielectric breakdown at the low density area. In particular, this problem is remarkable in the case of a piezoelectric element having a structure that a negative electrode and a positive electrode are disposed between piezoelectric portions alternatively, and its improvement has been strongly demanded.
In addition, sufficient piezoelectric properties cannot always be obtained with a piezoelectric portion made of the aforementioned piezoelectric ceramic composition, and there have been such a problem that when a voltage is raised to increase a flexural displacement, an increase of the flexural displacement obtained is very small relative to an increase of voltage on a side of a high electric field of 4 kV/mm or more.
Hence, there has been proposed a piezoelectric element produced by previously heat-treating a piezoelectric material made of the above piezoelectric ceramic composition to produce a piezoelectric portion, and then attaching this piezoelectric portion onto a ceramic substrate (Japanese Patent Application H11-29357).
In this piezoelectric element, attention was paid to a fact that use of a ceramic substrate impairs the densification of a piezoelectric portion. Thus, the piezoelectric element was accordingly improved in piezoelectric properties by means of obtaining a dense piezoelectric portion where a piezoelectric material made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition was previously heartbeat.
In this piezoelectric element, however, it is necessary to use an inorganic or organic adhesive at the time of attaching the piezoelectric onto the ceramic substrate. Therefore, there have been such problems that the adhesive impairs the vibration transmitability between the ceramic substrate and the piezoelectric or the adhesive components infiltrate into the piezoelectric or the ceramic substrate, deteriorating their properties.
In addition, in this piezoelectric element, no consideration is given to a piezoelectric ceramic composition itself constituting a piezoelectric portion. Therefore, there has been a problem that sufficient piezoelectric properties cannot always be obtained like the aforementioned piezoelectric element, and further, an increase of the flexural displacement obtained is very small relative to an increase of voltage in a region of a high electric field.
The present invention has been completed in view of the aforementioned problems and aims at providing a piezoelectric element which has very high piezoelectric properties, which is excellent in vibration transmittability between a substrate and a piezoelectric portion, and where linearity of a flexural displacement to voltage is ensured till a high electric region, and a method for production thereof.
Incidentally, in a piezoelectric element of the present invention, the aforementioned effect is great in a structure of laminating piezoelectric portions and electrodes alternatively to give a plurality of layers. The piezoelectric element can be suitably used for an actuator, a sensor, etc.
The present inventor made a study in order to solve the aforementioned problems. As a result, the present inventor found out that when there is used, as a piezoelectric material, a piezoelectric ceramic composition composed mainly of a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition of particular formulation and containing NiO in a particular proportion, the densified piezoelectric portion can be obtained even when a piezoelectric material is superposed on a substrate and then heat-treated, whereby the aforementioned problems can be solved. The present invention has been completed based on the above finding.
That is, according to the present invention, there is provided a piezoelectric element including a ceramic substrate, and piezoelectric portion made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition containing a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition having an average particle diameter of 1-10 xcexcm with a maximum particle diameter being 5 times as large as the average particle diameter or less and being represented by the chemical formula discussed below as a main component. The piezoelectric portion contains 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO2.
An electrode is electrically connected to said the piezoelectric portion, and the piezoelectric portion is solidly attached to the ceramic substrate directly or via the electrode.
The piezoelectric ceramic compositions represented by the following general formula: Pb3(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3.
In the above general chemical formula the following are satisfied: 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05; 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, b and c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425, 0.025), (0.550, 0.325, 0.125), (0375, 0.325, 0.300), (0.100, 0.425, 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) arid (0.375, 0.425, 0.200) in the coordinates with coordinate axes of said a, b and c, and axe2x88x92b+c=1.00.
According to the present invention, there is further provided a piezoelectric element including a ceramic substrate, and a plurality of piezoelectric portions made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition containing a PbMg1/3Nb3/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition represented by the chemical formula discussed below as a main component. The plurality of piezoelectric portions 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO, and include a plurality of electrodes thereon.
The plurality of piezoelectric portions are laminated with interposing negative electrodes and positive electrodes of the plurality of electrodes alternately in each gap between the piezoelectric portions provided in stories and a lowermost piezoelectric portion is solidly attached to the ceramic substrate directly or via said electrode.
The piezoelectric ceramic composition is represented by the following general formula: Pbx(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3.
In the above general chemical formula the following are satisfied 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05; 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, b and c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425. 0.025), (0.550, 0.325, 0.125), (0.375. 0.325, 0.300), (0.100, 0.425, 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) and (0.375, 0.425, 0.200), in the coordinates with coordinate axes of said a, b and c, and a+b+c=1.00.
Incidentally, in a piezoelectric element of this lamination structure, it is preferable that a ternary system solid solution composition has an average particle diameter of 1-10 xcexcm with the maximum particle diameter being 5 times as large as the average particle diameter or less.
According to the present invention, there is still further provided a piezoelectric element including a ceramic substrate, and a piezoelectric portion made of a piezoelectric ceramic composition containing a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition represented by the chemical formula discussed below as a main component. The plurality of piezoelectric portions contain 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO, and said piezoelectric ceramic composition contains particles having NiO as a main component on the surface and/or in the interior thereof.
An electrode is electrically connected to the piezoelectric portion, and said piezoelectric portion is solidly attached to the ceramic substrate directly or via the electrode.
The piezoelectric ceramic composition is represented by the following general formula: Pbx(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3.
In the above general chemical formula the following are satisfied: 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05: 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, b and c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425, 0.025), (0.550. 0.325, 0.125), (0375, 0.325, 0.300), (0.100, 0.425. 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) and (0.375, 0.425, 0.200), in the coordinates with coordinate axes of said a, b and c, and a+b+c=1.00.
Also, in a piezoelectric element where the NiO particles are present, it is preferable that a ternary system solid solution composition has an average particle diameter of 1-10 xcexcm with the maximum particle diameter being 5 times as large as the average particle diameter or less. In addition, a particle having NiO as the main component may include only NiO or NiO with MgO solid solution.
In any of piezoelectric elements of the present invention, it is preferable that Ni is dispersed in the piezoelectric ceramic composition in such a concentration gradient that the concentration of Ni becomes higher from the interface between the piezoelectric portion and the substrate towards the thickness direction of the piezoelectric portion.
Pb in the piezoelectric ceramic composition may be replaced by at least one kind of element selected from the group consisting of Sr, Ca and Ba, by 2 to 10 mole %. Pb in the piezoelectric ceramic composition may also be replaced by La by 0.2 to 1.0 mole %.
It is preferable that the substrate has a thickness of 3 xcexcm to 1 mm, that the piezoelectric portion has a thickness of 1 to 300 xcexcm, that the ratio of the thickness of the substrate to the thickness of the piezoelectric portion (the thickness of the substrate/the thickness of the piezoelectric portion) is 0.1 to 30, and that a cross-section of the substrate in the thickness direction has a W-like shape having three inflection points.
According to the present invention, there is provided a method for producing a piezoelectric element including the steps of superposing a piezoelectric material containing a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition represented by the chemical formula discussed below as a main component the piezoelectric material contains 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO on a ceramic substrate or on an electrode formed on the ceramic substrate, and subjecting the superposed piezoelectric material to a thermal treatment in an atmosphere whew 0.03-0.5 mg/cm3 (NiO conversion amount per unit volume of a space in a container) of atmosphere-controlling material having the same composition as the piezoelectric material is coexisted.
The piezoelectric material composition is represented by the following general formula: Pbx(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3.
In the above general chemical formula the following are satisfied: 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05; 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, band c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425, 0.025), (0.550, 0.325, 0.125), (0.375, 0.325, 0.300), (0.100, 0.425, 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) and (0.375, 0.425, 0.200), in the coordinates with coordinate axes of said a, b and c, and a+b+c 1.00.
A method for producing a piezoelectric element includes the steps of; superposing a piezoelectric material containing a PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3xe2x80x94PbZrO3xe2x80x94PbTiO3 ternary system solid solution composition represented by the following chemical formula discussed below as a main component, the piezoelectric material contains 0.05 to 10.0 mass % of NiO on a ceramic substrate or on an electrode formed on the ceramic substrate, and subjecting the superposed piezoelectric material to a thermal treatment in an atmosphere; wherein 0.03-0.5 mg/cm3 (NiO conversion amount per unit volume of a space in a container) of a atmosphere-controlling material having the same composition as the piezoelectric material is coexisted as a container for housing said electrode on which the piezoelectric material is superposed and a setter for mounting the piezoelectric material thereon.
The piezoelectric material composition is represented by the following general formula: PbM(Mgy/3Nb2/3)aTibZrcO3.
In the above general chemical formula the following are satisfied; 0.95xe2x89xa6xxe2x89xa61.05; 0.8xe2x89xa6yxe2x89xa61.0; a, b and c are decimals falling in a range surrounded by (a,b,c)=(0.550, 0.425, 0.025), (0.550, 0.325, 0.125), (0.375, 0.325, 0300), (0.100. 0.425, 0.475), (0.100, 0.475, 0.425) and (0.375, 0.425, 0.200), in the coordinates with coordinate axes of said a, b and c, and a+b+c=1.00.
The piezoelectric element according to the present invention can be used for condensers or various sensors, as a dense and small dielectric element or pyroelectric element.

Piezoelectric element and process for production thereof


A cutting device has a body, a driving device, a moving base, a head and a cutting rod. The driving device is mounted on the body to actuate the moving base to move relative to the body. The head extends from the body and has a central hole defined through the head. A notch and an exhaust hole are defined in the bottom of the head and communicate with the central hole. The cutting rod is moveably received in the central hole in the head and is attached to the moving base. The cutting rod has a cutting recess defined around the cutting rod. Accordingly, the metal waste generated during the cutting process is kept from flying about and injuring the user, so the safety of using the cutting device is improved. In addition, the cut metal sheet can be kept from shake or vibration.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cutting device, and more particularly to a sheet cutting device that can improve the safety of using the cutting device.
2. Description of Related Art
A conventional cutting device substantially comprises a knife and a driving device. The knife has multiple teeth formed on the periphery or one side of the knife. The driving device drives the knife to rotate or move in reciprocation so that the knife will provide a cutting effect to an object such as a metal sheet.
However, the area of contact between the sheet and the knife of the conventional cutting device is exposed waste metal generated during the cutting process will fly about and may injure the user. Thus, the user must always wear safety gear such as a safety coat, mask and so on for protection from the flying waste. However, in practice it is found that such gear is uncomfortable, as well as it being impossible to completely protect every part of an operator""s body. Thus, the use of the conventional cutting device is not safe and is inconvenient.
In addition, the contact area between the sheet and the knife of the conventional is not supported, whereby shake or vibration easily occurs during the cutting process, leading to rough edges on the cut edge of the metal sheet. It is clear that the cutting quality of the conventional cutting device is poor.
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention tends to provide a cutting device to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.
The main objective of the invention is to provide a cutting device for a sheet material with improved safety in using the cutting device and elimination of excessive shake or vibration of the sheet. The cutting device has a body, a driving device, a moving base, a head and a cutting rod. The driving device is mounted on the body to actuate the base to move in reciprocation relative to the body. The head extends from the body and has a central hole defined through the head and corresponding to the moving base. A notch is defined in the bottom of the head and communicates with the central hole, and the notch extends to two opposite sides of the head so as to form a neck on a top of the head. An exhaust hole is defined in the bottom of the head and communicates with the central hole. The cutting rod is moveably received in the central hole in the head and is attached to the moving base. The cutting rod has a cutting recess defined around the cutting rod at a position corresponding to the notch in the head and selectively corresponding to the exhaust hole in the head while the cutting rod is actuated to move with the moving base by the driving device. The cutting recess has a cutting edge defined in the inner surface at one end far from the moving base. Accordingly, the metal waste generated during the cutting process will be stored in the head and will be exhausted from the exhaust hole in the head. This can keep the metal waste from flying about and injuring the user, so the safety of using the cutting device is improved.


This invention relates to a means and a method for translating source text into a target text where the context information is taken into consideration. A source text unit is defined around a translation unit which is to be translated. This source text unit is mapped onto a bilingual sublanguage space where the bilingual sublanguage space comprises a source sublanguage space and mappings to the target language. The translation is adapted to the source text unit, thereby considering contextual information.

Consider a text in a source language that needs to be translated into a target language. Current statistical MT systems operate on a sentence-by-sentence or line-by-line basis, with each source-language sentence or line being translated without consideration of the other sentences or lines in the surrounding text. Thus, if we extract a single sentence or line from the source text and put it into the MT system, that sentence will be translated in the same way as it would be if the whole source text were put into the system.
However, the meaning of a word sequence, and thus the way in which it may be correctly translated, typically depends on the context provided by surrounding text. Consider two hypothetical English paragraphs. The first paragraph begins: "After the auditor's report was released, doubt was cast on the institution's financial stability. Mr. Jones maintained that the bank was solid." The second paragraph begins: "After the flood, the townspeople asked the hydraulic engineer about future problems with the river bank. Mr. Jones maintained that the bank was solid." Since most languages do not share with English the convention that "bank" can mean both a financial institution and the slope leading to a body of water, nor the convention that "solid" can refer both to financial integrity and physical firmness, a good human translator would typically translate the sentence "Mr. Jones maintained that the bank was solid" into quite different target-language sentences, depending which paragraph it was in. By contrast, a conventional statistical MT system would translate this sentence in the same way in both cases. This is shown in the top part of FIG. 1, where each source sentence or translation unit is passed individually through the "global translation model" mapping source S onto target T. For the conventional system, information outside translation unit i does not affect the translation of translation unit i into the target language.
Each human language is made up of "sublanguages" or "discourse domains" within each of which words and phrases tend to have a single, unambiguous meaning. We can think of these sublanguages as regions located in a multidimensional sublanguage space. Of course, this space is continuous, and regions have fuzzy boundaries. That is, sublanguages overlap and blend into each other, forming a multidimensional continuum; they should not be thought of as discrete bubbles with clearly defined boundaries.
Most sublanguages will have equivalents in other human languages. Given a parallel text corpus consisting of documents belonging to a given sublanguage expressed in both a source and a target language, one can use well-understood techniques from the field of statistical machine translation to train a model for translating new documents written in the source language and belonging to that sublanguage to the target language. For instance, one might use a corpus of financial news stories in which each story is expressed in both English and French to train a system for translating financial news from English to French. Similarly, a corpus of parallel English and French articles about geography could be used to train a system for translating English texts about geography into French. The former system would tend to translate the English word "bank" into "banque" (the financial institution) while the latter would tend to translate it into "rive" (the geographical feature). Of course, the problem is that although today's techniques show how to create a specialized MT system for translating documents within a certain domain or sublanguage, many—perhaps most—applications of MT require a system that can produce satisfactory translations of documents that come from a varying, unpredictable mix of domains. Today's techniques are unable to create such a system.
A defender of current statistical machine translation systems might say that these systems can already be adapted to a new domain, by virtue of the fact that they tend to work well for the type of document they have been trained on. For instance, one may have trained such a system on a group of news stories about events of general interest. Then, a client requests a customized version of the system that will produce good translations for specialized articles about finance. One then "adapts" the system to this domain by retraining it on a bilingual, parallel corpus of specialized articles about finance. For instance, a system trained on financial articles will know only the financial meaning of the English word "bank", and thus accurately translate this word when new sentences from financial articles are given to it.
However, training a current statistical machine translation system is a slow off-line process, requiring hundreds or thousands times more computations than the process of translation itself. Currently, retraining a state-of-the-art system for a new domain may take several days. One might try to anticipate future needs by training a current system on a mix of types of documents, but that will not yield good results: it just increases the amount of ambiguity. For instance, a current system trained on a mixed set of documents might translate "bank" half the time with the financial sense and half the time with the geographical sense irrespective of the type of document it is given to translate, thus yielding poor overall performance. Thus, the defender of current statistical machine translation system would be wrong—these systems cannot be adapted quickly.
There is some background prior art concerned with statistical machine translation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,832 by Brown et al. discusses a means of translating text from a source language into a target language. The system assigns probabilities and scores to various target language translations and makes available the translations with the highest score and probabilities.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,026 by Tillmann et al describes translating a source text into a target text through mapping of source words on target words using both translation model and language model.
And the published application US 2004/0030551 by Marcu et al. discloses the use of phrase based joint probability model where the model learns phrase to phrase alignments from word to word alignments generated by a machine translation system.
None of this prior art teaches the construction of a bilingual sublanguage space for adaptive statistical machine translation, nor the use of extra-sentential context in the source text for adaptive statistical machine translation.
A group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has been exploring a form of adaptation of a statistical MT system in which information from the source sentence currently being translated is used to adapt the target language model, but neglects to take the context into consideration. This is done by feeding one or more initial translation hypotheses for the source sentence into an information retrieval system, which then locates documents in the target language that are used to retrain the language model. The source sentence is then retranslated, using the new language model. For this CMU approach, see "Language Model Adaptation for Statistical Machine Translation with Structured Query Models" by B. Zhao, M. Eck, and S. Vogel (in COLING 2004, Geneva, Switzerland).
It will be seen that neither the construction of bilingual sublanguage space nor the use of extra-sentential information is involved in this CMU approach. Furthermore, the CMU approach is extremely inefficient in computational terms. For each new source sentence, one or more initial translations must be carried out, a large set of documents queried, the language model rebuilt, and the translation carried out again with the new language model.
Another attempt to achieve adaptation of a statistical machine translation system was presented by A. Lagarda and A. Juan at the 7-8 Nov. 2002 meeting of the "Transtype 2" European project in Valencia, Spain. Using a "bag of words" representation for sentences, these researchers clustered a set of training sentences to create a sentence mixture model. This model was used to help decode new sentences. The experimental results showed no improvement over the original system. The system decoded sentences individually, without considering their context in the source text.

Statistical machine translation adapted to context


A wireless sensor device includes a transmission signal generation unit that generates a frequency-spread high frequency transmission signal such that a transmission frequency is continuously increased and decreased with a predetermined period, a transmitter antenna that radiates the high frequency transmission signal, a receiver antenna that receives a reflected wave from an object having received the high frequency transmission signal, and outputs a frequency-spread high frequency reception signal, a mixer circuit that receives a part of the high frequency transmission signal as a first frequency-spread high frequency signal, receives the high frequency reception signal as a second frequency-spread high frequency signal, and outputs a DC beat signal by operating as a phase detector when frequencies of the first and second signals coincide with each other, and a DC component extraction circuit that extracts the DC beat signal from an output signal of the mixer circuit.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a wireless sensor device for detecting the motion of an object or a distance to the object by using a radio wave.
2. Related Art
A motion sensor or a distance detection sensor (hereinafter, referred to as a sensor device) is known for detecting the motion of an object or a distance to the object, which radiates a radio wave by supplying an antenna with a high frequency signal output from an oscillation circuit, receives a reflected wave from the object to convert the reflected wave into an electrical reception signal, and analyzes the reception signal (for example, refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-182109). The sensor device uses the principle (Doppler effect) that if a radio wave hits an object, the frequency of a reflected wave is slightly deviated from the frequency of the radiated wave, thereby measuring the motion or speed of the object from the size of the deviation (Doppler shift). Furthermore, since a radio wave is transmitted at the velocity of light through the air, the sensor device can measure the distance to the object from the delay amount (phase variation) of the reflected wave.
FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating the principle (one example) of a Doppler radar. An RF generator 1 outputs a transmission signal including a continuous wave of a predetermined frequency, and a transceiver antenna 2 receives the transmission signal to radiate a radio wave. The transceiver antenna 2 receives a reflected wave from an object. A mixer 3 receives a part of the transmission signal and the reception signal to mix them. At this time, when the object is moving, the frequency of the reception signal is shifted from the frequency of the transmission signal by the Doppler phenomenon. The mixer 3 detects the difference between the frequency of the transmission signal and the frequency of the reception signal as an intermediate frequency (IF). That is, if the object is moving, since the frequency of the reflected wave changes, the mixer 3 outputs an IF signal corresponding to the Doppler shift. If the object is in a stationary state, since the frequency of the reflected wave does not change, the mixer 3 outputs only a DC signal. The IF signal and the DC signal are extracted from the output signal of the mixer 3 through a low-pass filter (LPF) 4, and are analyzed by a signal processing circuit 5, so that it is possible to determine the presence or absence of the motion of the object. Furthermore, a pulse Doppler radar or a digital modulation Doppler radar measures a delay time of a radio wave, which has reciprocated between an object and the pulse Doppler radar or the digital modulation Doppler radar, from a transmission time of a transmission signal and a reception time of a reflected wave, thereby detecting a distance to the object from the delay time.
The wireless sensor device mainly employs an object in a short distance (e.g., a distance smaller than several tens of m) as an object to be measured. However, the use of a part of a frequency band allocated to other wireless communication systems may be assumed. At the present time, a wireless communication system having a relatively narrow service area includes a wireless LAN, a WiMAX and the like.


A method for the bio-production of threonine including genetically modified yeasts and a method in which they are used to produce threonine, as compared to the parent yeasts.

Threonine, or L-threonine, is an essential amino acid that is widely used as an additive to animal fodder and food, and as fluids and synthetic materials for medical and pharmaceutical use.
Together with Serine, Asparagine, and Glutamine, Threonine is one of the uncharged polar amino acids and is essential in the metabolism of numerous living organisms, including non-human and human mammals.
Most plants, fungi and bacteria can synthesize threonine from carbohydrates sources. However, animals, including humans, depend on externally provided threonine sources.
Threonine can be found in high concentrations in the heart, the skeletal muscles and the central nervous system and is important in the formation of many proteins, collagen, elastrin and tooth enamel. Threonine helps to maintain a proper protein balance in the body and also helps preventing the build up of fat in the liver. Threonine is also highly interesting in that it supports digestive function by protecting the digestive tract, as it is needed to produce the mucus veering it. Threonine thus helps preventing indigestion and ulcers.
It has also been demonstrated that threonine supports the immune system as it is used to produce antibodies in the thymus.
Moreover, as threonine is used by the body to produce other amino acids, i.e. serine and glycine, a sufficient absorption of threonine is highly important to also generate these two essential amino acids. In particular, serine and glycine are important for the production of collagen in the organism. It is well known that collagen is of high importance in all non-human and human mammals' organisms.
Chemically produced threonine can be used for most applications. However, against the background of decreasing fossil resources and the stronger environmental constraints (e.g. hazardous intermediates and waste), alternative and more sustainable processes based on natural resources are gaining more and more interest. Further, there is a general search for cost-saving sources of threonine for a plurality of industrial applications.
Threonine may be produced by non-synthetic processes by enzymatic conversion or fermentation starting from precursor compounds, such as for example sugar (such as glucose), aspartate or homoserine. However, because the precursors are often chemically synthesized or have to be produced in a first step by fermentation, there is no real industrial or financial advantage over the processes of chemical synthesis. Illustrative embodiments of processes for producing and purifying threonine by fermentation methods are for example disclosed in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,375,173 and 4,996,147.
Production of threonine by fermentation from natural sources may solve many of the above-mentioned problems. There are numerous bacteria and yeasts which are able to overproduce amino acids under adequate conditions. However, because of the very complex regulation of the L-threonine syntheses, only a few strains are able to produce economically relevant amounts of threonine. Thus, the main drawback of producing threonine by a fermentation process is the very complex biosynthesis of threonine with manifold feedback inhibition (Chassagnol et al. (2001); Biochem. J. (356) 433-444).
In all cases, candidate threonine producer organisms have to undergo numerous rounds of mutation and selection before being retained as relevant producers. Illustrative embodiments of candidate threonine-producing microorganisms selected after spontaneous mutation or chemically-induced mutagenesis are disclosed in the US patent application no. US 20090093030 as well as in the U.S. Pat. No. 8,852,898.
The production of essential amino acids such as threonine through the biosynthetic pathways of bacteria and yeasts requires an important amount of reducing power in the form of NADPH. However, the main pathway for the metabolisation of glucose in these microorganisms, and in particular in yeasts, is glycolysis followed by fermentation which only produces NADH. Maintaining an appropriate NADPH/NADH balance within the microorganism, albeit complex, is therefore essential to optimize bio-production of threonine while obtaining a viable recombinant microorganism.
The major known bacterial amino acid producer is C. glutanicum, a gram-positive, facultative anaerobic, non-pathogenic soil bacterium. C. glutanicum is used for the large-scale industrial production of the flavor enhancer L-glutamate as well as of the food additive L-lysine. Various attempts have been performed for producing threonine by fermentation of C. glutanicum as illustrated in Palmieri et al. Arch Microbiol (1996) 165: 48.
According to other improvement strategies, an increase in threonine production by fermentation has been explored through genetic engineering of candidate microorganisms, mainly the bacterial organism E. coli. Illustrating embodiments are disclosed in the in Kwang Ho Lee et al. (Mol Syst Biol. 2007; 3: 149).
There is still a need in the art for further threonine production methods.


This invention relates generally to olefin metathesis catalyst compounds, to the preparation of such compounds, compositions comprising such compounds, methods of using such compounds, articles of manufacture comprising such compounds, and the use of such compounds in the metathesis of olefins and olefin compounds. The invention has utility in the fields of catalysts, organic synthesis, polymer chemistry, and industrial and fine chemicals industry.

The technology of ruthenium metathesis catalysts has enabled the development of several research platforms including CM (cross metathesis), RCM (ring closing metathesis), ROMP (ring opening metathesis polymerization). The incorporation of NHC (N-Heterocyclic Carbene) ligands has played an essential role in the development of Ruthenium metathesis catalysts. In the past most of the attention was focused on the efficacy of ruthenium catalysts with low catalyst loading and fast/steady substrate conversion.
However, there is a need of latent olefin metathesis catalysts, which when mixed with monomers would not polymerize instantaneously, allowing for longer handling of the catalyst-monomer mixtures or even storage of the formulation for longer periods. Furthermore, commercially available catalysts suffer from considerable degradation during metathesis reactions. Latent catalysts, which generally exhibit higher thermal stabilities, could yield a catalyst with longer shelf life.
Herrmann et al. first reported Ruthenium metathesis catalysts with two NHC ligands, also referred to as bis-NHC catalysts (Weskamp, T.; Schattenmann, W. C.; Spiegler, M.; Herrmann, W. A. Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. 1998, 37, 2490).
During RCM reactions, these metathesis catalysts showed slow initiation at 40° C., compared to 1st generation Grubbs' catalysts. Grubbs et al. reported bis-NHC catalysts with aryl substituents on the nitrogen atoms of the imidazolinylidene or the imidazolylidene rings (Trnka, T. M.; Morgan, J. P.; Sanford, M. S.; Wilhelm, T. E.; Scholl, M.; Choi, T. L.; Ding, S. D.; Day, M. W.; Grubbs, R. H. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2003, 125, 2546). It was noticed that these bis-NHC compounds require high thermal energy initiation, compared to the 1st and 2nd generation Grubbs' catalysts. However, there is still a need for latent catalyst metathesis catalysts and synthetic routes to make them.


The invention features methods, devices, and kits for predicting the responsiveness of a cancer patient (e.g., a breast cancer patient, such as a grade 1, 2, or 3 breast cancer patient) to anthracycline treatment by determining the expression levels of four chromosomal instability (CIN) genes including HDGF, KIAA0286, RFC4, and MSH6, collectively referred to as CIN4. Patients that have a low CIN4 score benefit from anthracycline treatment compared patients with a high CIN4 score.

Meta-analyses performed by the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group (EBCTTCG) demonstrate a significant increase in disease free and overall survival through the addition of anthracyclines to polychemotherapy (EBCTTCG, Lancet 365:1687-717, 2005). However, these meta-analyses also show that despite the success of modern chemotherapy approaches, 20-30% of women diagnosed with early stage disease relapse and progress to metastatic breast cancer (MBC), for which therapeutic options are limited and palliative, while around 60-70% of women are treated effectively by non-anthracycline containing therapies. It is therefore essential to select the subset of patients who would receive the optimal overall benefit from anthracycline therapy and to identify molecular pathways driving resistance. Various markers that may predict anthracycline benefit have been explored (HER2, TOP2A, CEP17 and TIMP1) with limited success (Pritchard et al., New England J. Med. 354:2103-2111, 2006; Bartlett et al., Cancer Res. 69:364S, 2009; DiLeo et al., Cancer Res. 69:99S, 2009; Bartlett et al., Lancet Oncol. 11:266-274, 2010; Pritchard et al., Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 131:541-551, 2012). To date, CEP17 (duplication of the peri-centromeric α-satellite region of chromosome 17) is the only marker that has shown unifying results across a number of clinical trials (Bartlett et al., Cancer Res. 69:364S, 2009; Pritchard et al., Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 131:541-551, 2012; Bartlett et al., Ejc Supplements 8:121, 2010). Thus, CEP17 is an independent predictor of anthracycline benefit. One of the caveats with this is that CEP17 duplication has no known biological function. The functional pathway related to anthracycline benefit in CEP17 duplicated tumors remains unknown. There is evidence (Munro et al., Br. J. Cancer 107:71-74, 2012) that suggests CEP17 acts as a surrogate biomarker for chromosome instability. A previous in silico study demonstrated chromosome instability (CIN) was associated with patient outcome.
Chromosomal instability describes genomic instability at the karyotypic level that results in alterations in chromosomal number or structure. Several mechanisms have been implicated in chromosomal instability, including compromised spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), sister chromatid cohesion defects, additional centrosomes, and abnormal spindle kinetochore attachments. Premitotic mechanisms can also include defects in DNA repair and replication pathways. Chromosomal instability is a driver of intercellular variation and is associated with poor prognosis in many patients with solid tumors (Carter et al., Nat. Genet. 38:1043-1048, 2006; Habermann et al. Int. J. Cancer 124:1552-1564, 2009). The top 25 and top 70 gene signatures associated with chromosomal instability, which were identified as predictive of clinical outcome based on in silico analysis of mRNA levels from cancer data sets, have been designated the "CIN25" and "CIN70" signatures, respectively (Carter et al., Nat. Genet. 38:1043-1048, 2006). The CIN70 chromosomal instability signature incorporates many genes whose mRNA expression levels correlate with cell proliferation, and have a role in the cell cycle. Furthermore high CIN70 signature expression was associated with paclitaxel resistance in ovarian cancers. The CIN25 signature includes the top 25 ranked genes of 70 gene signature (CIN70). The CIN25 signature was demonstrated to be predictive of anthracycline sensitivity. However, power calculations suggest that large sample sizes (e.g., 3000 samples) may be required for CIN25 signature to be statistically powered to validate the treatment by marker hazard ratio observed for this marker. CIN70 was originally linked to taxane resistance in ovarian and colorectal cancer and to chromosomal instability. Investigation of the CIN70 gene signature in a larger dataset such as National Epirubicin Adjuvant Trial (NEAT) may fully elucidate the role of CIN70 in anthracycline sensitivity. High CIN scores are associated with poor clinical outcome in breast, lung and brain tumors. Research from our group links the predictive effect of CEP17 in vivo, to CIN which itself is predictive of anthracycline benefit in the BR9601 trial (Munro et al., Br. J. Cancer 107:71-74, 2012).
Several studies have demonstrated correlations between grade and chromosomal instability. A study performed in our lab using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) demonstrated that tumors with a high percentage of chromosomal instability are correlated with high grade (Munro et al., Br J Cancer 107:71-74, 2012). It has been suggested that low-grade and intermediate grade tumors have fewer structural genomic aberrations and numerical aberrations in whole chromosomes (A'Hern et al., Nat Rev Clin Oncol 10:357-364, 2013; Dellas et al., Clin Cancer Res 8:1210-1216, 2002). A study performed by Szasz and colleagues (23) identified four CIN genes, AURKA, FOXM1, TOP2A, and TPX2, from the CIN70 signature based on the high level of correlation with histological tumor grade and in silico expressions of these genes. The CIN score of these four genes was able to stratify grade 2 breast cancer patients into good and poor prognostics cohorts even better than Ki67 and the mitotic index (Szasz et al., PLoS One 8:e56707, 2013).
There exists a need for improved methods for predicting treatment outcomes in cancer patient populations.

Methods and devices for predicting anthracycline treatment efficacy


In a fixing device employed in an electrophotographic imaging apparatus for fusing an unfixed toner image carrier on a recording sheet, a heat roller and a back-up roller are provided. The heat roller is provided with a heater mechanism installed therein, wherein the heater mechanism is arranged such that the temperature of a portion of the heat roller corresponding to the passing area of the recording sheet is higher than that of the other portions of the heat roller so that the temperature distribution of the heat roller heated by the heater mechanism becomes substantially uniform along its axial direction while the recording sheet is passing through the nip between the heat roller and the back-up roller.

The present invention relates to an heat roll fixing device employed in an electrophotographic imaging apparatus.
Conventionally, an electrophotographic imaging apparatus, such as a copy machine, laser beam printer and the like, is known wherein the uniformly charged surface of a photoconductive drum is exposed to light to form a latent image, charged toner is adhered to the latent image and developed to a toner image, and the toner image is then transferred onto a recording sheet and fixed thereon by a fixing device.
The electrophotographic imaging apparatus generally uses a so-called heat roll fixing device which heats, and pressingly fuses the toner image transferred on the recording sheet with the heat applied from a heated roller (heat roller) then fixes the same on the recording sheet. The heat roll fixing unit comprises a pair of fixing rollers composed of a heat roller and a press roller (also referred to as a back-up roller). The heat roller is composed of a cylindrical roller having a heating element, such as a halogen lamp or the like, inserted therein and heated to a predetermined temperature. The back-up roller is formed of a material, such as silicone rubber, having a heat resistant property and a predetermined elasticity and pressed against the heat roller by a predetermined pressure. The recording sheet carrying an unfixed toner image is caused to pass between the pair of fixing rollers to make the toner image to be heated and pressed so that the toner is fused and fixed on the recording sheet. This kind of the heat roll fixing device is advantageous in that it has an excellent heat efficiency and the fixing operation can be performed at a high speed.
The heat roller is controlled by feedback and thus kept at a temperature suitable for a fixing operation at all times. Usually, the heat roller is driven to rotate and then the back-up roller is rotated by the rotation of the heat roller; thus a recording sheet held between the pair of fixing rolls is fed by the fixing device (i.e., the pair of fixing rollers).
Nevertheless, the fixing device described above has a drawback in that the temperature of the back-up roller is irregularly distributed depending upon the width of a recording sheet to be subjected to a fixing operation. Thus, the back-up roller is irregularly expanded and deformed by the irregular temperature distribution, so that the fixing property and recording sheet feed capability of the fixing rollers are deteriorated.
More specifically, as shown in FIG. 1A, the temperature of the portion of the fixing device where a fixing operation is carried out (the portion contacting a recording sheet 20) is lowered because the heat of the portion is absorbed by the recording sheet 20 and the heat of the portion thereof where the fixing operation is not carried out is not absorbed by the recording sheet 20, and thus the temperature of a heat roller 11 in the axial direction thereof is irregularly distributed. Since an elastic material constituting a back-up roller generally has a large coefficient of thermal expansion, and since the heat of the back-up roller 12 in the axial direction thereof is also irregularly distributed in correspondence to the above irregular temperature distribution of the heat roller 11, the outside diameter of the portion in the axial direction thereof where the fixing operation is not carried out (the portion where the recording sheet does not contact) is enlarged and as shown in FIG. 1B, only the portion of the back-up roller where the recording sheet does not contact is pressed by the heat roller 11. (Note that any one of the heat roller 11 and the back-up roller 12 can be moved in the direction perpendicular to the axial direction thereof and urged toward another roller by an urging member, such as a spring, to provide a predetermined pressure and also note that FIG. 1B is exaggeratively drawn). As a result, a pressing force applied to the portion which contribute to the fixing operation is lowered and thus the fixing property and recording sheet feed capability are deteriorated. This problem arises more often when using a recording sheet having a width that is considerably narrower than the maximum width of a recording sheet which can be fixed with the fixing device (in other words, when a recording sheet having the width far narrower than the length of the heat roller is subjected to a fixing operation).
Further, the surface of the heat roller is finished to have a lower friction coefficient in order to prevent the adhesion of toner, and thus the feed of the recording sheet solely depends upon the back-up roller. With the arrangement that the back-up roller is rotated by the rotation of the heat roller, however, if the outside diameter of the portion of the back-up roller where the recording sheet contacts (the portion which contributes to the fixing operation of the loaded recording sheet) is made relatively smaller than that of the portion where the recording sheet does not contact the recording sheet, the circumferential speed of the back-up roller becomes smaller than a set value, thereby the feed speed of the recording sheet is lowered. As a result, if a recording sheet is a continuous paper or the like and there is provide a recording sheet feed mechanism in addition to the heat roll fixing device, the recording sheet feed speed thereof is not synchronized between the additional feed mechanism and the fixing unit, and the recording sheet may become loosened or jammed.
Further, since the heat roller has an irregular temperature distribution in the axial direction thereof which is caused by the width of a recording sheet, a temperature sensor for controlling the heat roller by feedback is preferably disposed to measure the temperature of the portion of the heat roller where the fixing operation is carried out. Even if, however, the temperature of the fixing portion is correctly measured, the temperature of the portion of the heat roller where the recording sheet does not contact (the portion through which the recording sheet does not pass) continuously increases to a high temperature and thus may adversely affect peripheral components and units.

Heat roll fixing unit with uniform heat distribution


A covering layer of leather, textile or plastic sheet material is indirectly attached to a supporting structure, such as a seat or a dashboard, by a band-like insert which is affixed to the covering layer by one or more rows of decorative stitches and is secured to the supporting structure by a pair of rod-like securing elements and a thread, or by one or more pairs of complementary male and female detent elements.

The invention relates to improvements in methods of and in devices for attaching covering layers, such as decorative layers of leather, fabric or plastic sheet material, to supporting structures. The attaching devices or attachments of the present invention can be used with advantage to secure covering layers to complex supporting structures such as molded dashboards in motor vehicles, seats, chairs or armchairs and/or others.
In accordance with heretofore known proposals, covering layers are attached to complex supporting structures by means of an adhesive. A drawback of such proposals is that solvents which are contained in adhesives are likely to penetrate through the covering layer and affect the appearance of the object. Moreover, the adhesive is likely to age and to permit separation of the covering layer from the supporting structure. For example aging of many types of adhesives is promoted by exposure to sun. Still further, adhesives cannot be used in connection with many types of covering layer materials and/or supporting structures and/or when the covering layer does not directly overlie the supporting structure because it must conceal one or more layers of cushioning material. For example, it is customary and often required to pad the dashboards of motor vehicles so as to soften the impact in the event of an accident. Bonding of covering layers to relatively thick and/or relatively soft paddings necessitates the utilization of large quantities of adhesive which is likely to provide unsightly spots at the exposed side of the covering layer.
Proposals to avoid reliance on adhesives include the utilization of staples, rivets, screws and like fasteners which are likely to detract from the appearance of the finished object and must be concealed behind moldings and/or capping strips at the exposed sides of the covering layers. This contributes to the cost-and bulk of the objects, especially if the supporting structure has a complex outline with cavities bounded by concave surfaces and/or protuberances bounded by convex surfaces.

Method of and devices for attaching covering layers to supporting structures


An apparatus and method for transferring a semiconductor die from an adhesive film to an output carrier is disclosed. The adhesive film and associated hoop assembly on which the die are secured are inverted so that die face downward, p-side down, from the film. And an output pack is positioned beneath the die. An ejector pin exerts a force on a side of the adhesive film opposite the side on which the semiconductor die is secured to release the die. A vacuum is provided through a port in the output pack, pulling the released die into the output pack. The transfer occurs in a single step and orients the die p-side down in the output pack, thus eliminating the control arm/vacuum collet assembly and associated handling steps of conventional transfer mechanisms.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to semiconductor processing, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for transferring a semiconductor die from an adhesive film hoop assembly to an output carrier pack.
2. Description of the Related Art
Semiconductor dies are typically manufactured by depositing on a wafer of material, such as silicon dioxide or gallium arsenide, a plurality of different layers of conductive, semiconductive and dielectric materials in precisely defined configurations. When the wafers are completed they are diced into individual dies, which are often very delicate. The individual semiconductor dies are difficult to handle during assembly of electronic apparatus because of their relatively small size and because certain types of semiconductor dies, such as laser diodes, are extremely fragile and thus easily damaged. A laser bar, also referred to as a bar of diodes, is formed by cleaving a section from a larger wafer on an adhesive film stretched over a hoop assembly. The wafer has a number of contiguous diodes, called the active strip, in a common substrate. The surface of the substrate in which the active strip is located is typically referred to as the p-side of the substrate. Typically, bonding pads, formed from a material such as gold, are formed on a surface of the semiconductor die to allow for connection of the semiconductor die to additional circuitry.
After the dies have been separated, they are placed on a die attach pad for bonding in an integrated circuit (IC) package or placed in a carrier for further packaging. This process is typically performed by a device known as a pick and place device. Each die is lifted by a collet and placed on a die attach pad or in a carrier. Die collets for placement of semiconductor dies are well known in the art.
FIG. 1 illustrates a typical commercially available pick and place device 10. Device 10 may include a microscope 12, an adjustable work platform 14, and a control arm 16. A collet 20 is secured at the end of the control arm which is designed to hold a semiconductor die (not shown) in position for die bonding or placement in a carrier or mounting member 18 positioned on the adjustable work platform 14.
FIG. 2 illustrates a conventional technique for transferring a semiconductor die from an adhesive film to a carrier which may be used by pick and place device 10 of FIG. 1.
A plurality of dies 40, usually rectangular in shape, are processed on a layer of adhesive film 32 by any technique as is known in the art. Adhesive film 32 is typically secured at its edges by clamps 34 as illustrated in FIG. 2. Disposed beneath adhesive film 32 is an expansion frame, such as for example a hoop frame 36, movable in the direction of arrow 38 such that expansion frame 36 pushes upward on film 32 distending it vertically and stretching it horizontally, providing a tense, flat surface on which the semiconductor dies 40 reside.
For placement of each die 40 on a die attach pad of an integrated circuit (IC) or in a carrier for further packaging, each die 40 is lifted from film 32 by collet 20 of pick and place device 10. Collet 20 has an aperture 46 at its distal end and a vacuum hole 48 extending through the length of collet 20 through which a vacuum pressure is exerted for lifting die 40. A die 40 is lifted by collet 20 by positioning aperture 46 over a die 20, exerting a vacuum pressure in the direction of arrow 52 and simultaneously moving an ejector pin 54 upwardly against the lower surface of film 32. Ejector pin 54 assists collet 20 in removing die 40 from adhesive film 32. Collet 20 is then moved upwardly away from film 32 by control arm 16 and positioned in another location for depositing the die 40 into another carrier (not shown), typically a pocket within a flat pack IC package.
There are problems, however, with the conventional pick and place operation as described with respect to FIG. 2. For example, the removal of die 40 from film 32 by collet 20 and placement into a carrier requires that the control arm 16 move very precisely and at high speeds to ensure that the die 40 are not damaged and the throughput maintained. Additionally, the manufacturing process of die 40 allows only for the p-side to be up, i.e., the p-side can only be formed on the surface 41 of die 40 facing toward the collet 20. It is preferable, for alignment purposes of the laser with external optics and also for thermal dissipation of the die 40, to mount the die 40 p-side down in the end circuit. Thus, the die 40, which is placed in an output carrier p-side up after being removed from film 32, must be re-oriented p-side down in another carrier before bonding in the end circuit. Currently this process is done using a mechanical flipping operation that is cumbersome and operator intensive, resulting in further risk of damaging the die 40 and increased production costs.
Thus, there exists a need for an apparatus and method for transferring a semiconductor die from an adhesive film to an output carrier that eliminates the control arm/vacuum collet assembly and associated handling steps and orients the die p-side down into the output carrier.

Apparatus and method for transferring semiconductor die to a carrier


A combined firearm receiver and rail includes a handguard rail and a receiver housing disposed within the handguard rail. The handguard rail includes one of a takedown lug clearance slot, a handguard magazine port, a handguard continuous rail, a handguard ejection port, an attachment location, accessory attachment points, a handguard charging handle latch retaining slot, a charging handle housing, a charging handle guideway, a bolt catch clearance slot, a barrel cavity, a receiver cavity, an exhaust port, and a handguard section. In one variation, the handguard section does not come into physical contact with a barrel or a barrel nut of the firearm.

The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Rail systems are strips of metal or plastic attached to a firearm to allow the ready attachment of various accessories, such as scopes, lights, hand grips, among others. Often the rail system interferes with the ejection of spent cartridges. This ejection interference may be caused by installation errors or design deficiencies. Ejection interference can cause many issues including malfunction of the firearm and cartridge impacts to the operator.
Customized ammunition generally involves a customized cartridge size or a customized projectile diameter. One issue with custom ammunition is that the ammunition is difficult to acquire because the ammunition is not mass-produced. The lack of mass-produced ammunition increases the cost of the ammunition and reduces the ability to sell the firearm that uses the ammunition.
During normal operation of a firearm (e.g. firearm discharge), significant amounts of flash (light), heat, noise (acoustics), and pollutants (e.g. spent gunpowder) are produced. It is desirable to reduce the flash, heat, and noise to improve the concealment of the firearm operator. Various sound reducing devices are employed to reduce noise levels. Unfortunately, these devices often increase the firearm barrel temperature, decrease shot accuracy, increase firearm weight, increase firearm blowback, increase manufacturing complexity, alter firearm recoil behavior, increase the time between successive shots on target.
The present disclosure addresses the issues of ejection interference, mass production of customized ammunition, firearm discharge, among other issues related firearm operation.