The present disclosure relates to a thermoelectric material, and more specifically to a superlattice thermoelectric material and a thermoelectric device using the same. The superlattice thermoelectric material has a composition of a following Chemical Formula 1:(AX)n(D2X′3)m  ,<Chemical Formula 1>                wherein, in the Chemical Formula 1, A is at least one of Ge, Sn, and Pb, X is a chalcogen element, and at least one of S, Se, and Te, D is at least one of Bi and Sb, each of n and m is an integer between 1 and 100, and A or X is at least partially substituted with a dopant.

A thermoelectric effect refers to a reversible and direct energy conversion between a heat and an electricity. The thermoelectric effect results from movements, within a material, of a charge carrier, that is, an electrode and a hole.
In general, a thermoelectric material may be applied to an active cooling, a cogeneration, and the like using a Peltier effect and a Seebeck effect.
The Peltier effect is a phenomenon in which a hole in a p-type material and an electron in a n-type material move when a direct current (DC) voltage is applied from outside, resulting in exothermic and endothermic phenomena across the material. The Seebeck effect is a phenomenon in which an electron and a hole move when a heat is supplied from an external heat source, thereby generating a flow of a current to generate a power.
The active cooling using this thermoelectric material may improve a thermal stability of a device, generate no vibration and noise, and may not use a separate condenser and a refrigerant. Thus, the active cooling has been recognized as a compact and environment-friendly method.
The active cooling using this thermoelectric material may also be used for a refrigerant-free refrigerator, an air conditioner, various micro cooling systems, and the like. In particular, when a thermoelectric device is attached to various memory devices respectively, the device may be maintained at a uniform and stable temperature while reducing a volume compared to conventional cooling schemes. Thus, a performance of the device may be improved.
In one example, when the thermoelectric material is used for the thermoelectric power generation using the Seebeck effect, a waste heat may be used as an energy source. Therefore, the thermoelectric material may be applied to various fields such as an engine and an exhaust device of an automobile, an incineration plant, a steel mill waste heat, and the like to improve an energy efficiency and collect the waste heat. For example, a human body heat may be used as a power source for a medical device in a human body.
Not only a thermal conductivity should be reduced, but also a power factor defined as S2σ should be high to improve the performance of this thermoelectric material. However, a research on increasing the power factor actually has not been done much.

Superlattice thermoelectric material and thermoelectric device using same

UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COOPERATION GROUP OF KYUNG HEE UNIVERSITY


In one embodiment, a supporting case includes a lower case member and an upper case member. The mounting substrate is pinched between a lower cylindrical supporting portion and a upper cylindrical supporting portion. Peripheral regions of the mounting substrate that are on a peripheral side with respect to a part pinched between the lower cylindrical supporting portion and the upper cylindrical supporting portion are positioned in a space defined by a bottom plate portion, a lower peripheral-wall portion, and the lower cylindrical supporting portion of the lower case member and a top lid portion, an upper peripheral-wall portion, and the upper cylindrical supporting portion of the upper case member.

With an increase in the packing density of LSIs, the required linewidths of circuits included in semiconductor devices become finer year by year. To form a desired circuit pattern on a semiconductor device, a method is employed in which a high-precision original pattern (i.e., a mask, or also particularly called reticle, which is used in a stepper or a scanner) formed on quartz is transferred to a wafer in a reduced manner by using a reduced-projection exposure apparatus. The high-precision original pattern is drawn by using an electron-beam drawing apparatus, in which a so-called electron-beam lithography technique is employed.
A drawing apparatus using multi-beam can emit more beams at a time than in a case of drawing with a single electron beam and can greatly improve throughput. In such a multi-beam drawing apparatus, for example, an electron beam emitted from an electron gun is passed through an aperture member having a plurality of holes, whereby multiple beams (a plurality of electron beams) are formed. The multiple beams pass through respective blankers provided in a blanking plate. The blankers individually perform blanking deflection on the electron beams passing therethrough. Some electron beams that have been deflected by the blankers are blocked by the blankers, while the other electron beams that have not been deflected fall onto a sample.
Each of the beams forming the multi-beam has a small size. To improve throughput, many beams are necessary and the blanking plate needs to mount wiring lines and circuits for independently controlling the potentials of electrodes of the blankers. Data that defines the on or off state of each of the beams is transferred to the blanking plate. The amount of data transferred to the blanking plate is far greater than the amount of data required in a case of drawing with a single electron beam.
The blanking plate is die-bonded to a mounting substrate. The mounting substrate is provided with a circuit device for power stabilization, a control circuit, a relay circuit for data transfer, and so forth. A column of a drawing apparatus in which the mounting substrate mounting the blanking plate is disposed has a vacuum thereinside and has a low rate of heat exhaustion. Therefore, the above circuit devices may fail to be cooled satisfactorily and may become hot, generating some gas. Moreover, if the circuit devices are made of any materials that generate gas in a vacuum, such gas may be generated from the circuit devices in the vacuum column. If any gas is generated in the column, the aperture member may be contaminated and the holes for forming multiple beams may be clogged. In addition, if the circuit devices become hot, the circuit devices may cause malfunctions.
In another case, electrons scattered at the aperture member may charge up the surface or inside of the circuit devices on the mounting substrate and may cause malfunctions. In yet another case, an electromagnetic field generated by the electric current flowing through the circuit devices and the mounting substrate may disturb the paths of the electron beams and may deteriorate the drawing accuracy.

Supporting case and multi charged particle beam drawing apparatus


A method and apparatus for joining building panels, such as portable partitions, walls, floors, ceilings, or roofs. A cam device is located in one panel or member and is magnetically operated to engage a mating element located in an adjacent panel or member.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for building wall construction, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for joining two or more panels together.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A popular method for flexible allocation of space within a building utilizes portable partitions. Further, modular building has gained increased acceptance and usage throughout the construction industry. A standard means for connecting various modules consists of a male locking member attached to one module which must be physically operated through an opening in the module to engage a female receiving element attached to another module. See, for example, Van Praag, U.S. Pat. No. 3,818,661, issued June 25, 1974.


A polymer nanocomposite for separating a target gas from a second gas in a gas mixture includes: (a) a matrix formed from a modified polymer, and (b) nanoparticles incorporated in the matrix, the nanoparticles being functionalized to have a stable interaction with the matrix. The modified polymer has a backbone including (i) a polymer having a selectivity for the target gas over the second gas, and (ii) functional groups covalently linked to the polymer (i) as part of the backbone. The functional groups are capable of further increasing the selectivity of the modified polymer by interacting with the target gas and/or with the second gas.

This invention relates in general to materials and processes for gas separation, and in particular to polymer nanocomposites for separating a target gas from a second gas in a gas mixture. For example, the polymer nanocomposites can be useful for separating carbon dioxide from the hydrocarbons present in natural gas.
Natural gas is important as a fuel and as a raw material in the petrochemical and other chemical process industries. The term "natural gas" generally refers to gaseous hydrocarbons (comprised of methane and light hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane, and the like) which are found in deposits in the earth, often together with oil or coal. In common usage, deposits that are rich in natural gas are called natural gas fields and deposits that are rich in oil are called oil fields. Often, non-combustible gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen, and contaminants such as hydrogen sulfide, are found in combination with the hydrocarbons.
The composition of natural gas extracted from the earth varies. For example, a high quality gas field may contain as much as 95% methane with only minor amounts of other materials. On the other hand, gas fields with high proportions of non-combustible gases and/or contaminants are common. For example, a CO2-rich gas field may contain 40% to 70% or more carbon dioxide. Also, natural gas extracted from an oil field using CO2 flooding for enhanced oil recovery may be high in carbon dioxide.
For most markets, it is desirable to minimize the presence of non-combustible gases and contaminants in the product gas. For example, a typical gas pipeline specification requires no more than 2% carbon dioxide. Before CO2-rich natural gas is sent to the supply pipeline the carbon dioxide content is reduced.
Various techniques are known for removing carbon dioxide from natural gas. Among the techniques is absorption of carbon dioxide with a chemical or physical solvent or with a molecular sieve. For example, absorption with an amine is a widespread commercial process.
Another technique for removing carbon dioxide from natural gas is separation with a polymeric gas separation membrane. Different types of polymer membranes allow different gases under pressure to pass through them faster than other gases. For example, membranes made from cellulose acetate or polyimide are more permeable to carbon dioxide than hydrocarbon gases. Given a feed stream of natural gas, the carbon dioxide will pass through or permeate across a cellulose acetate membrane faster than will the hydrocarbon gases, resulting in a permeate stream concentrated in carbon dioxide and a residue stream concentrated in hydrocarbon gases.
Preferably, a polymeric gas separation membrane has a high selectivity or separation factor, i.e. the membrane is highly effective in separating carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon gases because it allows one type of gas to pass through much faster than the other. Also preferably, a polymeric gas separation membrane has a high flux, i.e., it allows a relatively high rate of flow of gas through the membrane so that the separation process is useful on a commercial scale. However, membranes with high selectivity are generally characterized by low permeability, while membranes with high permeability generally have low selectivity.
Another problem with polymeric gas separation membranes is that the gases can cause "fouling" or "poisoning" by plasticization or swelling of the membrane after a period of use, which damages the properties of the membrane and reduces its separation ability and flux. Also, some polymeric membranes lack sufficient strength and durability, or sufficient thermal and chemical stability, for use in a natural gas separation process. Lack of adequate strength leads to the use of thicker membranes, hindering the flow and transport of separated gases.
Different polymeric gas separation membranes and membrane composites have been tried in the past for separating carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon gases. For example, membranes have been made from polymers with heterocyclic functionality on the backbone to improve the selectivity of the membrane. Polymer crosslinking or processing technology has been used to improve the flux of the membrane. The separation membranes are often relatively thick to provide sufficient strength and durability, but the increased thickness adds to the resistance to gaseous flow and thus decreases flux.
Previously known polymeric membranes for separating carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon gas have suffered from various drawbacks and have not been totally successful. Consequently, it would be desirable to provide improved polymeric compositions for gas separation processes such as separating carbon dioxide from hydrocarbon gas.

Polymer nanocomposites for gas separation


A method for detecting a genetic polymorphism associated with Lavender Foal Syndrome or a predisposition thereto in a subject, the method including screening a genomic material sample from the subject for the presence of at least one polymorphism in a MYO5A gene.

Lavender Foal Syndrome is an autosomal recessive lethal disorder affecting Arabian foals which is also characterised by a dilute coat colour and severe neurological signs.
Lavender Foal syndrome (LFS), also referred to as dilute lethal (Bowling 1996), lethal LFS (Schott II & Petersen 2005), and coat colour dilution lethal (Fanelli 2005) is a condition only reported to affect Arabian foals (Bowling 1996; Fanelli 2005; Madigan 1997; Pascoe & Knottenbelt 1999) inherited in an autosomal recessive manner (Bowling 1996). Affected foals have an unusual dilute coat colour, demonstrate various neurological abnormalities, are not able to stand and nurse, and if the typical coat colour characteristic is overlooked may be incorrectly diagnosed as suffering from neonatal maladjustment syndrome (NMS), neonatal septicaemia or neonatal encephalopathy (Bowling 1996; Page et al. 2006). Post mortem evaluations have failed to yield any macroscopic findings, suggesting a biochemical cause for LFS. The prevalence of LFS remains unknown (Fanelli 2005; Page et al. 2006). A recent study using SNP chip technology has allowed researchers to identify a candidate region of 1 Mb containing 216 candidate genes for the disease (Gabreski et al. 2009). The disclosed embodiments locate genetic markers associated with the disease.

Oligonucleotides and methods for detecting lavender foal syndrome


In a communication system, a data processing system determines offload vectors for first base station carriers in a first wireless communication network. The offload vectors indicate offload availability per time frame for device offloads from the first base station carriers to second base station carriers in a second wireless communication network. The data processing system determines offload vector similarity among the first base station carriers to group the first base station carriers into a lowest number of carrier groups to maintain the offload vector similarity within the carrier groups above a similarity threshold. The data processing system generates and transfers a data structure that associates the first base station carriers with representative offload vectors for their carrier groups. Wireless communication devices receive and process the data structure to control offloads from the first base station carriers to the second base station carriers.

Wireless communication devices communicate with wireless networks using wireless protocols, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), Evolution Data Only (EVDO), High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), and the like. In particular, the wireless communication devices and wireless base stations in the networks exchange wireless signals in these protocols over base station carrier frequencies. For example, a wireless communication device may communicate with a first base station in a first wireless network over a first carrier frequency and then communicate with a second base station in a second wireless network over a second carrier frequency. A device offload occurs when the wireless communication device switches from using the first carrier frequency in the first network to using the second carrier frequency in the second wireless network. A specific carrier frequency in use at a particular base station is referred to as a base station carrier.
Typically, the wireless communication device selects the base station carrier to use based on a prioritized carrier list and comparative carrier signal strength. Unfortunately, the carrier list and signal strength may not adequately account for time-of-day and busy hour for the available base station carriers. To provide the additional time-of-day and busy hour control, time-based offload vectors are generated for each base station carrier to control offloads to the other carriers. In the typical network with hundreds or even thousands of base station carriers, this added control requires hundreds or thousands of offload vectors. The transfer of thousands of offload vectors to millions of wireless communication devices consumes a large amount of network resources.
This amount of offload vectors also impacts the individual wireless communication device. The wireless communication device must receive and periodically update the large data set that the multitude of offload vectors requires. The wireless communication device must also store and process this large data set to use the offload vectors. Thus, the amount of offload vectors also consumes a large amount of wireless communication device resources.

Shared offload vectors to control device offloads between wireless carrier frequencies


A process arrangement for distilling fuel grade ethanol includes a fermentation portion, a distillation portion, a condensation and dehydration portion, a separation and drying portion and an evaporation portion. The fermentation portion produces beer. The distillation portion, the condensation and dehydration portion and the separation and drying portion receives beer from the fermentation portion and produces hot ethanol vapor and thin stillage. In the evaporation portion, a set of first effect evaporators which are heated either by plant steam or hot ethanol vapor, concentrate thin stillage into mid stillage while producing first effect steam. The first effect steam from the first effect evaporators provides heat to a set of second effect evaporators which concentrate the mid stillage into a syrup for further drying. The second effect evaporators produce second effect steam which is used to heat the distillation portion of the process arrangement. The multiple evaporators of the first and second effects of the evaporation portion can be selectively taken off-line for maintenance while the evaporation portion and the remainder of the process arrangement continue to operate at full capacity.

Fuel grade ethanol distilled from grain has become increasingly popular as an alternate fuel for motor vehicles. Ethanol has also increased in popularity as a gasoline additive for formulating clean burning grades of gasoline for motor vehicles.
A fuel grade ethanol production process typically includes the steps of fermentation, distillation and evaporation. In the fermentation portion of a typical process, a slurry of milled corn is fermented to produce a beer having a concentration of ethanol that is usually no more than approximately 15% by volume. In the distillation portion of a typical process, the ethanol in the beer is extracted in distillation columns. Distillation columns typically have a multitude of horizontal trays for bringing rising ethanol vapor and descending liquid into contact. In a distillation column, low pressure steam percolates up through the beer as the beer cascades from higher trays to lower trays. As the rising steam heats the beer, the ethanol in the beer evaporates and rises to the top of the column where it exits as a vapor. The remaining water and other grain material in the beer descends to the bottom of the column to exit as "beer bottoms". After solids have been removed from the beer bottoms, the remaining liquid known as thin stillage is reduced in the evaporation portion of the process where liquid is boiled away from the thin stillage to produce a syrup.
To produce fuel grade ethanol, more than one interconnected distillation column is typically used to progressively purify the ethanol product. In a typical ethanol distillation process, a beer column receives beer and produces an intermediate ethanol vapor. A rectifier column receives the intermediate ethanol vapor from the beer column and produces 190 proof or 95% pure ethanol vapor. A third, side stripper column receives bottoms from the rectifier column and then produces an intermediate ethanol overhead vapor that is further purified by the rectifier column. The ethanol free bottoms from the side stripper column can be used to formulate cook water for the fermentation portion of the process. Because of the physical properties of an ethanol water solution, a distillation process can only practically produce an ethanol water solution that is approximately 95% ethanol and 5% water. A dehydrator is used to remove most of the remaining water to produce higher purity product. The dehydrator receives the 95% ethanol vapor and removes nearly all of the remaining water to produce ethanol having a water content of less than 0.25%. A dehydrator may contain beads of material which attract water to a greater degree than ethanol.
A fuel grade ethanol distillation process like the one described above also produces co-products. The fermentation portion of the process generates carbon dioxide gas which is often recovered for various industrial uses. The distillation portion of the process generates the above mentioned beer bottom byproduct that is free of ethanol and which contains unfermented solid remnants of the milled grain that was fermented to produce ethanol. This beer bottom byproduct can be mechanically separated into a mostly liquid component known as thin stillage and a mostly solid component know as distiller's grains. A drier can be employed to dry the distiller's grains to produce dry product. The distiller's grains are high in protein and therefore make an excellent feed for farm livestock. Because releasing the thin stillage would amount to a release of waste water, the thin stillage is usually evaporated in evaporators to produce a syrup which can also be dried in the distiller's grain dryer to further increase the output of the animal feed co-product.
The economic constraints confronting a fuel grade ethanol producer are more challenging than those faced by a distiller of spirits for human consumption. This is because fuel grade ethanol must have virtually no water content and it must be produced at low cost. Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a process arrangement for distilling ethanol that conserves energy and water. It is another object of this invention to provide a process arrangement for distilling ethanol that uses sets of evaporators that can each be taken off-line for maintenance while the evaporation portion of the process continues to operate at full capacity. It is yet another object of this invention to provide an ethanol distillation process arrangement that uses waste heat from the evaporators to heat the distillation portion of the process.


A violin shoulder cradle is designed for coupling to a violin to provide improved ergonomics and quality of sound when the violin is played. The violin shoulder cradle includes a shoulder support and coupling structure for attaching the cradle to the violin. The shoulder support includes a resonance chamber which is hollow for adding to the beauty of the sounds of the violin without detracting from the appearance of the violin during playing.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention broadly concerns a shoulder cradle useful for violins, violas and similar stringed instruments intended for support on the shoulder of the musician. More particularly, it is concerned with an ergonomically configured shoulder cradle which includes a resonance chamber to enhance the quality of the sound generated when the stringed instrument is played.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Violins and other stringed instruments produce tones when a bow is drawn across the strings, known as arco, or when the strings are finger-plucked (pizzacato). As used herein, xe2x80x9cviolinxe2x80x9d is intended to include similar instruments such as violins of reduced size, such as half or three-quarter sized violins, and violas, where the instrument is typically positioned between the shoulder and chin of the musician. The violin produces a sympathetic vibration between the instrument""s belly and back, which adds volume and resonance to the sound produced by the vibration of the strings. A chin rest is typically provided adjacent the tail piece between the between belly of the violin body which provides a support between the musician""s chin and the violin body.
Shoulder rests have sometimes been used between the violin body and the musician""s shoulder. In the simplest form, the cushion includes a small fabric or elastic cushion which if held between the back of the violin body and the shoulder of the wearer. These shoulder rests help to support the violin against the shoulder of the wearer whereby the hard wooden back of the violin is separated from the musician""s shoulder. However, they have lacked features which would inhibit the violin from slippage on the shoulder and which promote proper playing position. Further, the shoulder rests of the prior art have not contributed to the quality of the tones produced by the violin except insofar as the rest contributes to the comfort of the musician and thereby improves the performance.
There has thus developed a need for a violin shoulder cradle with improved ergonomics in adding to the comfort of the musician during the performance.
There has also developed a need for a violin shoulder cradle which while supporting the instrument on the musician""s shoulder, improves the resonance of the tones or sounds produced by the instrument.
These and other objects of the present invention are largely met by the violin shoulder cradle of the present invention. That is to say, the violin shoulder cradle hereof not only inhibits slippage of the instrument from the musician""s shoulder and promotes the maintenance of the violin in the proper playing position, but further is ergonomically configured for comfort and precise conformation to the shoulder of the musician, minimizes the possibility of damage to the violin during coupling and decoupling, provides an attractive appearance, and improves the quality of the sound or tones of the violin when it is played.
Broadly speaking, the violin shoulder cradle hereof shares many of the same features shown in my U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,044, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, in that it includes a base having a foundation body mounting a pad, the base further mounting gripping legs for coupling and decoupling to a violin without the necessity of tools. The body is especially configured to present an upper surface and a lower surface in use, two longitudinally spaced ends and a proximate edge and a remote edge. The terms xe2x80x9cupper surfacexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9clower surfacexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cproximate edgexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cremote edgexe2x80x9d are herein intended to refer to the relative position of the surfaces when the violin shoulder cradle is mounted to a violin and in place on the musician""s shoulder. The upper surface may be relatively planar or of any other configuration compatible for mounting in a facing relationship to the violin, whereas the lower surface is contoured and thus configured for the comfort and proper positioning on the shoulder of the musician. A waist of reduced thickness between the upper surface and lower surface of the foundation is positioned intermediate the two ends to facilitate the comfort of the musician and proper playing position, while the lower surface includes one or more stepped shelves. The stepped shelves, covered by the pad, engage the musician""s shoulder and clavicle, thereby providing levels of engagement in contrast to a surface without such shelves which is prone to slippage and less likely to yield proper positioning of the violin in use.
Additionally, the arms coupled to the base extend laterally to firmly grasp the instrument, thereby providing a solid and unitary platform to rest on the musician""s shoulder. At least one of the legs is yieldably and thus adjustably coupled to the base to permit the musician to not only accomodate differences in size of the instrument but further to avoid damage to the instrument during coupling and decoupling. The cradle will enable the musician to be more relaxed during performing, thereby accomodating good technique and allowing the musician to comfortably play longer and better.
In preferred embodiments, the foundation of the base includes a shell defining therein a hollow resonance chamber. The resonance chamber enhances the depth and quality of the sounds and tones of the instrument in that the foundation is positioned closely adjacent the back of the instrument so that the resonance chamber contributes to the resonance without altering the pitch of the sounds. The foundation preferably includes at least one port in the shell to allow passage of the sound from the resonance chamber. The at least one port provides an additional advantage, in that it permits that portion of couplers which connect and attach the legs to the foundation to be positioned within the resonance chamber while a leg passes through the port, thereby contributing to the appearance of the shoulder cradle and enabling the positioning of resilient cushions to placed between the foundation and the back of the instrument.
These and other advantages will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art with reference to the drawings and description which follow.


The present invention relates to a hygienic interactive system for sanitary material comprising a dispenser having at least three drawers, at least three buttons corresponding to the aforementioned three drawers, and a display screen; and, a disposal feature having at least two compartments and at least one sensor located on the top compartment The sensor being connected with the display screen and with drawers of the dispenser. The disposal additionally comprises at least three compartments containing an incinerating compartment.

The average age of women when begin their menstrual cycle is about 12.5 years, typically menorrhea lasts till a woman is between 48-50 years of age. Being a large part of a woman's life and lasting through the most productive and fertile years it presses the imminent need for advanced technology in this field. Currently there are multiple options for sanitary material dispensers available, there are also a few options for disposers. However, an advanced and compact system to serve the purpose of disposing while dispensing sanitary material for personal and public use is not currently available. The absence of such a unit results in great inconvenience. Most often women find themselves in embarrassing situations, by not knowing where to dispose the used sanitary material, especially in a unfamiliar environment (another's home or a public place). Many are too shy to step out of the toilet cabin and dispose it in the common trash cans; others are too lazy. In both scenarios many such sanitary materials end up being flushed down toilets and clogging the sewage system. Even if the sanitary material does reach the trash can, there is yet another problem of how the waste is disposed, often it is dumped in a landfill, where it may be left exposed presenting biohazard and due to the shear bulk of hygienic products consumed daily present a serious threat for the ecosystem. A further problem is that many women do not always carry a spare sanitary material with them. Therefore, when a menstrual flow starts unexpectedly or when the used sanitary material is due for dispose, the woman postpones the action until the new napkin is finally available to her. This may cause multiple problems, either she is she is not able to locate a sanitary material in a timely manner or the older material becomes overused, resulting in stress, potential infections or simply an unhygienic state of being.
Therefore, the current problems with sanitary waste disposal and material handling include as least the following: improper waste handling by users and disposers, inefficient waste disposal in terms of waste segregation, unhygienic sanitary material storage and under advanced sanitary material dispensing. Current technologies offer either disposal systems or dispensing systems as seen in U.S. Pat. No. 9,033,176 B2, which relates to a waste disposal apparatus for discreet and hygienic disposal of used bodily waste products, such as tampons, pads, liners, briefs, condoms, wipes etc. An advanced combination of an interactive and multifunctional system dedicated to disposal and dispensing of sanitary waste for women's hygiene is not available. Disposing machines although available by technology, have not been widely used due to the lack of practicality. Such units are neither aesthetically preferred in toilets nor are they compact and easy to be used directly by the women at the time of disposing.
For a phenomenon so widely existing and so essential to the fertility of women, an advanced technology is greatly demanded. Thus, there is a need for an urgent advances in this field that can address the problems posed above collectively.

Hygienic interactive system for sanitary material


There are provided a communication device, service-area adjusting method, and mobile communication system capable of accurately executing an optimization algorithm on an actual field. An EMS (a communication device) acquires an index value indicating downstream reception quality of a mobile station in a communication area from the mobile station via a base station in the communication area with respect to each mobile station. Then, the EMS determines whether to start or end the execution of arithmetic processing of a transmission parameter of each base station in the communication area by comparing a value based on at least any of average communication quality between the base station and mobile station in the communication area, throughput, and received power, which is obtained based on an index value of each mobile station, with a reference value.

In a mobile communication system, a telecommunications carrier, which provides services, preliminarily sets a transmission parameter of a wireless base station (hereinafter, simply referred to as a "base station") at the start of a service so as to obtain a desired service area (cell coverage) in a predetermined communication area including a plurality of base stations. A transmission parameter of a base station includes, for example, an antenna tilt angle (an antenna inclination angle) of the base station, transmission power, an azimuth (an angle of the vertical axis of the antenna), and an antenna pattern (antenna directivity), etc. As a method for arithmetic processing of such a transmission parameter, for example, an optimization algorithm is known.
For example, as a publicly-known method to optimize an antenna tilt angle, there is a method to quantify a decrease in inter-cell interference and a decrease in coverage area of a target cell and calculate a ratio of the decrease in coverage area of the target cell to the decrease in interference. In this method, a candidate inclination angle of a base station antenna at which the ratio of the decrease in coverage area of the target cell to the decrease in interference becomes maximum is identified as an optimum tilt angle of the base station antenna.
Furthermore, as a publicly-known method to optimize an antenna configuration, there is an annealing algorithm for adjusting a parameter of the antenna configuration while updating a temperature T so that an average throughput in each predetermined user distribution becomes optimal.
After a transmission parameter of a base station has been set and the operation of a system has been commenced, an initially-planned optimum service area is sometimes not obtained later on by a change of a system operational condition, a change of the wireless environment (for example, a change of a path loss due to a new building), and the like. Therefore, to maintain the quality of a communication service to a user of a mobile communication system, a telecommunications carrier regularly or irregularly executes the above-described optimization algorithm on a computer and adjusts the transmission parameter.    Patent Literature 1: International Publication Pamphlet No. WO 1999/017576    Non Patent Literature 1: Iana Siomina and Di Yuan, Enhancing HSDPA Performance via Automated and Large-scale Optimization of Radio Base Station Antenna Configuration, IEEE, 2008
However, it is difficult to automatically optimize a transmission parameter on an actual field by using the related optimization algorithm. Because, if an optimization algorithm for optimization of a tilt angle of each base station is constantly executed on the actual field, an optimization process is performed even under a situation where there is no need to perform the optimization process, and this causes a problem that the optimization algorithm is not properly executed or is not converged.

Device, method, and system for adjusting a mobile communication service area


Various methods, apparatuses/systems, and media for application of an N-dimensional hypercube datatype for automatically generating a data structure are provided. A database stores a plurality of data each associated with a corresponding application and each including metadata describing information about the data. A processor creates taxonomies describing data concepts associated with the metadata and store the taxonomies onto the database; receive the metadata and the taxonomies from the database via a communication network; automatically generate a cube set including a set of N-dimensional hypercubes from the received metadata to represent the metadata describing the information about the data; automatically generate a map from the cube set to express data quality checks and rules that apply to nodes in the map; and apply the data quality checks and rules to the received metadata to automatically generate a data structure.

Today's enterprises, corporations, agencies, institutions, and other organizations are facing a continuing problem of handling and processing a vast amount of data having differing formats (e.g., XML, JSON, Mainframe, etc.) in a quick and expedited manner. The vast amount of data often received on a daily basis may be now stored electronically and may need to be analyzed by a variety of persons within the organization relative to business or organizational goals, e.g., in building new applications or editing or decommissioning old applications. Each day, a data loader may load millions of data (e.g., entity data) having multiple formats which may require coding (and recoding when any changes occur to the data) for processing and analysis. The need to determine efficiently what data may be available for analysis and how to analyze disparate data across organizational management boundaries may prove to be extremely time consuming and confusing as the data being tracked increases and as organizations implement more specialized or distributed functions.
Many enterprises, especially banks, may be under increasing regulatory scrutiny, and this may include being able to substantiate data found on regulatory reports. It may be necessary to be able to trace data lineage from report content, back through applications acting as Authoritative Data Sources (ADS), back to the System of Record (SOR). For example, when building new applications, it may be necessary to be able to identify appropriate authoritative sources of data. When making change, or decommissioning old applications, it may be necessary to be able to identify all upstream and downstream impacts this would cause. All of the above may require that there may be metadata recorded or captured that describes the data present in nodes/applications, and flowing between them. It may also require that the metadata may be appropriately expressive and detailed, so that it doesn't just describe the "type" of the data, it also describes the "subset" of that type which might be involved in a particular deployment of the application, in a particular location, subject to particular constraints, etc. In addition, it may be critical that this metadata is represented in a form which allows mathematical operations to be performed upon it.
The harvesting of metadata describing data present and flowing may likely to include a mixture of automatic and manual capture, which may prove to be highly error prone.

Method and apparatus for application of an N-dimensional hypercube datatype


A semiconductor device of the present invention is arranged in such a manner that a MOS non-single-crystal silicon thin-film transistor including a non-single-crystal silicon thin film made of polycrystalline silicon, a MOS single-crystal silicon thin-film transistor including a single-crystal silicon thin film, and a metal wiring are provided on an insulating substrate. With this arrangement, (i) a semiconductor device in which a non-single-crystal silicon thin film and a single-crystal silicon thin-film device are formed and high-performance systems are integrated, (ii) a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device, and (iii) a single-crystal silicon substrate for forming the single-crystal silicon thin-film device of the semiconductor device are obtained.

There have been conventional liquid crystal display devices in which a thin-film transistor (hereinafter, TFT) made of amorphous silicon (hereinafter, a-Si) or polycrystalline silicon (hereinafter, P-Si) is formed on a glass substrate, which are used for driving liquid crystal display panels and organic EL panels, i.e. for performing active matrix drive.
In particular, liquid crystal display devices in which peripheral drives are integrated using p-Si that has high mobility and operates at a high speed have recently been used. Even so, a silicon device with improved performance is required for realizing system integration of devices such as an image processor and a timing controller which are required to have performance better than the above-mentioned peripheral devices.
This is because, when adopting P-Si, the mobility is decreased and an S (subthreshold) factor is increased due to localized states in a gap caused by the incompleteness of crystallinity and the deficiency around a grain boundary, so that the transistor does not have sufficient performance to form a high-performance silicon device.
Thus, to form a silicon device having higher performance, research has been done in which a device such as a thin-film transistor made of single-crystal silicon thin film is formed in advance, and then a semiconductor device is manufactured by bonding this thin-film transistor on an insulating substrate (e.g. WO93/15589 (published on Aug. 5, 1993), J. P. Salerno, "Single Crystal Silicon AMLCDs", Conference Record of the 1994 International Display Research Conference(IDRC) P. 39-44(1994), and Q.-Y. Tong & U. Gesele, "SEMICONDUCTOR WAFER BONDING: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY", John Wiley & Sons, New York (1999)).
WO93/15589 teaches that, using a semiconductor device in which a single-crystal silicon thin-film transistor formed in advance using an adhesive is printed on a glass substrate, a display of a display panel of an active matrix liquid crystal display device is manufactured.
However, according to this conventional semiconductor device and the manufacturing method thereof, since the adhesive is used for bonding the single-crystal silicon thin-film transistor, which has high performance, with the glass substrate, the bonding operation is cumbersome and hinders the improvement of productivity. Further, being bonded using the adhesive, the semiconductor device has low heat resistance, and it is not possible to form high-quality members such as an inorganic insulating film and a TFT in the subsequent process. For this reason, on the occasion of manufacturing an active matrix substrate, it is necessary to form a device including a TFT array before bonding the device to a substrate, and this has been a great disadvantage in terms of a cost/size ratio and formation of a wiring.
Moreover, WO93/15589 only teaches that a single-crystal silicon thin film device is formed on a glass substrate, and according to this arrangement, it is not possible to manufacture a high-performance/high-quality semiconductor device which has been sought after.
K. Warner, et al., 2002 IEEE International SOI Conference: October, pp. 123-125 (2002) teaches that an aligning mark is detected over a silicon substrate by means of infrared light so that aligning is performed. However, with this arrangement, it is not possible to increase resolution due to long wavelength of the light, and hence high-precision aligning cannot be performed.
Further, L. P. Allen et al., 2002 IEEE International SOI Conference: October, pp. 192-193 (2002) teaches that a silicon on a BOX (Buried Oxide) is evenly etched by a halogen gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) made of about 1500 atoms, and a high-frequency component of surface roughness on the surface of the silicon is removed by GCIB using oxygen.
Now, another problem which has conventionally been known will be discussed. A thin-film transistor (TFT) technology relates to manufacture of a transistor by forming a semiconductor film such as a silicon film on, for instance, a light-transmitting amorphous material such as a glass substrate. This TFT technology has been developed in line with the diffusion of personal intelligent communicators using liquid crystal display panels.
In the TFT technology, a polysilicon (polycrystalline) film is formed by, for instance, melting an amorphous silicon film on a substrate by applying laser thereto. Then from this polysilicon film or amorphous silicon film, a MOS TFT as a switching element is manufactured.
In this manner, using a device (MOS TFT) made from a silicon film, display panels such as a liquid crystal display panel and organic EL panel are manufactured.
Then pixels of the display panel are driven in an active matrix manner by the MOS TFT.
This arrangement has been used for devices such as a TFT liquid crystal display (LCD) device, a TFT organic electro-luminescence (OLED: Organic Light Emitting Diode) display device.
To drove the switching elements in an active matrix manner, a silicon device with higher performance is required and system integration of devices such as a peripheral driver and a timing controller is necessary.
However, it is not possible to obtain the required high performance when a conventionally-used amorphous silicon film or a polycrystal film is adopted.
This is because, in the polycrystal silicon film and the like, there are localized states in a gap caused by the incompleteness of crystallinity and the deficiency around a grain boundary. The existence of the localized states decreases the mobility. Further, due to the increase of a subthreshold (S) factor, the performance of the transistor is caused to be insufficient so that a high-performance silicon device cannot be formed.
Moreover, when the crystallinity of the silicon film is insufficient, a fixed charge tends to be formed at the interface between silicon and a gate insulating film. On this account, it is difficult to control a threshold voltage of the thin-film transistor, thereby being impossible to obtain a required threshold voltage.
In the case of the TFT liquid crystal display, a polycrystalline silicon film is formed from an amorphous silicon film by means of methods such as heating using laser light. In this process, since the energy of the laser causes a certain degree of fluctuation, the particle size of the obtained polycrystalline silicon film is not consistent. On this account, the mobility and threshold voltage greatly vary.
When an amorphous silicon film formed by methods such as a plasma CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) is heated by laser light and then crystallized, a temperature of a surrounding area of the film promptly rises to be nearly a melting point of silicon. Thus, when a non-alkali high strain point glass is adopted as a substrate, substances such as alkaline metal are diffused into the silicon through the glass. For this reason, the characteristics of the transistor to be obtained deteriorate.
To solve this problem, a device using single-crystal silicon has been developed, in parallel with research for further homogenization and improvement of crystallinity of polycrystalline silicon.
An SOI substrate is an example of devices using such single-crystal silicon (SOI is an abbreviation of Silicon on Insulator). SOI technology for the SOI substrate mainly relates to formation of a single-crystal semiconductor thin film on an amorphous substrate. This term, SOI technology, is not frequently used in respect of formation of a polycrystalline silicon film. SOI technology has been actively developed since 1980s.
As an example of the SOI substrate, there is a SIMOX (Separation by Implanted Oxygen) substrate which has been commercially available. This SIMOX substrate is formed by implanting oxygen into a silicon wafer. In this process, since oxygen, which is a relatively heavy element, is implanted to a predetermined depth, a crystalline structure of the silicon wafer is seriously damaged due to an accelerating voltage involved in the implantation. Thus, the SIMOX substrate has such a problem that the characteristics of single-crystal on the substrate are not sufficient. Further, the insulation performance is inadequate due to non-stoichiometry of a silicon dioxide film layer, and since a large amount of oxygen is required for the implantation, the costs for the ion implantation is high.
In response to this, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 5-211128/1993 (Tokukaihei 5-211128; published on Aug. 20, 1993) discloses a method of manufacturing a thin semiconductor film, which is arranged such that a single-crystal silicon piece is bonded on a silicon base substrate covered with an oxidized silicon film, and the resultant substrate with the silicon piece is manufactured to be a thin film.
According to this technology, a single-crystal silicon thin film can be formed on a single-crystal silicon base substrate on which an oxidized film has been formed in advance.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-30996 (Tokukai 2000-30996; published on Jan. 28, 2000) discloses a standard deviation of thickness of an oxidized film on a silicon wafer, regarding an SOI wafer and a manufacturing method thereof.
Also, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 6-268183/1994 (Tokukaihei 6-268183; published on Sep. 22, 1994) discloses a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, in which method a thinly-manufactured substrate on which a semiconductor device has been formed is transferred to another supporting substrate.
In this method, after a semiconductor element is formed on one side of a semiconductor layer, the semiconductor layer manufactured as a thin layer is bonded with a supporting substrate, by means of cold anode connection.
However, in this arrangement, micro-roughness of the oxidized silicon film on the substrate weakens the adhesive power so that film stripping occurs.
That is to say, according to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 5-211128/1993, the thickness of the oxidized film is significantly irregular when the film on the silicon base substrate is thickly formed. Thus, the irregularity of the surface becomes noticeable and the adhesiveness of the bonding and the characteristics of the SOI substrate deteriorate.
Note that, although Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-30996 includes the description regarding uniformity of the thickness of the single-crystal silicon thin film on occasions when the standard deviation of the thickness is large. However, the document does not mention the problems such as the formation of voids on the occasion of bonding and the stripping of the silicon film on the occasion of separation and stripping.
Further, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 6-268183/1994 does not describe the micro-roughness and flatness of the thinned semiconductor layer and the supporting substrate.
In this manner, the micro-roughness of the oxidized silicon film by which a light-transmitting substrate is covered weakens the adhesive power. On this account, separation and stripping occur so that the yield decreases due to reasons such as the film stripping after forming a silicon film on a substrate.

Single-crystal silicon substrate, SOI substrate, semiconductor device, display device, and manufacturing method of semiconductor device


An apparatus and corresponding methods for detecting a tailgating situation involving a second motor vehicle behind an automated vehicle, and performing an automated safety routine in response to the detected tailgating situation. The tailgating situation is detected based on a simultaneous occurrence of two or more conditions involving an estimated time to collision, lateral offsets of both vehicles with respect to a center of a lane, activation of a turn signal blinker of the second motor vehicle, or flashing of a headlamp of the second motor vehicle. The safety routine includes performing a lane change to an adjacent lane. When no adjacent lanes are available for a lane change, a maximum permissible deceleration rate is decreased while increasing a time gap between the automated vehicle and a third motor vehicle directly in front of the automated vehicle by automatically adjusting an amount of at least one of acceleration or braking.

Motor vehicles are being equipped with increasing amounts of sensor technology designed to assist drivers in manually handling their vehicles in a variety of situations. These sensors enable a variety of features such as parking assist, lane departure warning, and blind spot detection, all of which are now available as add-ons to standard vehicle configurations. Some of these sensors are also being used in connection with automated driving. Autonomous driving technology has experienced rapid development in recent years, but is still a long way from being able to operate without human control in all situations.
One commonly encountered situation that poses a difficult challenge to automated control is aggressive driving behavior by other drivers, in particular, tailgating. Because automated driving control techniques are designed to prioritize safety, a vehicle operating under automated control may travel more slowly than a manually operated vehicle. Thus the frequency with which an automated vehicle encounters a tailgater may be higher compared to manual driving. Automated vehicles therefore need to be able to handle tailgating situations in an effective manner. In addition, fully autonomous vehicles should be able to safely handle all situations, regardless of probability of occurrence of each situation.

Tailgating situation handling by an automated driving vehicle


A system and method for identifying relationships and correlations between community healthcare attributes includes automatically displays relationships between selected community health measures. A correlation tool automatically computes correlations between a selected main measure and each other measures in a set of community health measures for selected communities. The correlation tool automatically displays a ranked list of the other community health measures based on their correlation to the selected main measure. A relationship tool automatically computes correlations between selected measures in the set of community health measures for selected communities. The relationship tool displays a correlation graph indicating values of the selected measures for each of a selected set of communities. An adjusted correlation graph is automatically displayed to indicate adjusted values of the selected measures to accommodate a selected third measure as a control variable.

A large amount of consumer healthcare information is routinely collected by healthcare providers, insurance providers, government agencies, researchers and other institutions. Even though much of the information is stored electronically, analyzing the information to improve healthcare delivery generally involves extensive efforts to identify appropriate data sources and to secure access to the data sources. Useful healthcare information may be stored on diverse computer networks and data storage systems, which may often be difficult or impossible to access for research purposes. Refining or expanding research efforts to analyze different parameters may often involve repeated efforts to access different data sources. Due to these and other difficulties, useful data representations that are suitable to support decisions for healthcare resource allocation in various communities have heretofore been scarce.

System and method for identifying relationships in community healthcare measures


An object of the present invention is to provide a rolled web of optical film that has an optical orientation axis, which is less displaced from a predetermined angle throughout the entire area of the elongated rolled web, and can be easily produced according to the desired angle of the optical orientation axis, and a method of producing the rolled web of optical film. The rolled web of optical film includes an optical film layer having an optical orientation axis, and an adhesive film web including a release material layer and an adhesive material layer, the optical film layer being laid on the adhesive film web via the adhesive material layer and rolled up into a roll. The optical film layer is made up of plural optical film pieces that are arranged into a substantially elongated shape with end portions of the optical film pieces being adjacent to each other. The optical film pieces are formed by cutting an optical film web having an optical orientation axis, at least along cutting lines that cross the longitudinal direction of the optical film web. The optical film pieces are disposed on the adhesive film web to have the cutting lines oriented parallel to the longitudinal direction of the adhesive film web. Optical orientation axes of the optical film pieces each are oriented at a common angle relative to the longitudinal direction of the adhesive film web.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates mainly to a rolled web of optical film, in which an optical film having an optical orientation axis is rolled up into a roll, and a method of producing the rolled web of optical film, and more specifically relates to a rolled web of optical an, such as polarizing film, optical compensation film, etc., having an optical orientation axis oriented at a predetermined angle, and a method of producing the rolled web of optical film.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, an optical film laminate having various kinds of optical films laminated together is used as a constitutional element of a liquid crystal display device. For example, an optical film laminate, in which a polarizing film that makes only the light vibrating in a specific direction pass therethrough is laminated with various kinds of optical compensation films that improve the drawback of visibility due to the birefringent property of a liquid crystal cell to be used, and the like, are known.
Optical films for use in these optical film laminates each have an optical orientation axis. When in producing an optical film laminate, the respective optical films must be laminated to each other to have an optical orientation axis of one optical film oriented at a predetermined angle relative to the optical orientation axis of the opposite optical film.
A generally employed method of producing an optical film laminate includes cutting sheets of film from an optical film web that is subjected to uniaxial stretching or biaxial stretching to have an optical orientation axis substantially parallel to or substantially orthogonal to the longitudinal direction of the film web, and laminating the sheets of film to each other to have an optical orientation axis of one sheet oriented at a predetermined angle relative to the optical orientation axis of the opposite sheet.
Also, a study is also made on a method of producing an optical film laminate by laminating plural optical films respectively having different angles of optical orientation axis. For example, as described in Patent Document 1, a study is made on a method, which uses a diagonally stretched film obtained by stretching a film web at a predetermined angle relative to the longitudinal direction of the film. The diagonally stretched film can be provided with an optical orientation axis corresponding to a desired angle by changing the stretching angle, and therefore it is known a method in which an optical film laminate is produced by preparing a diagonally stretched film for each of the desired angles of the optical orientation axis and laminating those prepared films together.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Hei-11-231129
However, the former method requires an operation of laminating one by one sheet members cut from an optical film web that has been prepared by uniaxial stretching or biaxial stretching, when in preparing an optical film laminate, which poses a problem of making it difficult to produce optical film laminates in mass quantities, and a problem of deteriorating yield due to the non-laminated areas caused depending on the size of sheet members or angle of laminating the sheet members.
On the other hand, a diagonally stretched film described in the aforesaid Patent Document 1 poses a problem of causing variation in angle of the optical orientation axis. Specifically, a diagonally oriented film, which is stretched by using a tenter-stretching machine to obtain a desired angle of the optical orientation axis, is easy to be influenced by a tension (tensile force) applied to a film before it is stretched, or fluctuation in stretching angle. The diagonally stretched film is curved when it is rolled up into a roll, and hence is partially stretched or shrunken. Because of this, the rolled film web is easy to cause an axial displacement of the optical orientation axis throughout the entire area of the rolled film web, and thus is difficult to produce a rolled web of optical film with a stabilized quality.
Because complicated settings must be made for a diagonally stretched film in terms of stretching angle (direction), stretching force or the like according to the desired angle of the optical orientation axis, preparation of plural optical films respectively having different angles of the optical orientation axis is very troublesome.
Because it is very difficult to form a diagonally stretched film with a desired width in a stretching step, when it is laminated with other film (e.g., a different optical film or adhesive film), it is necessary to prepare a diagonally stretched film having a width greater than the other film and cut the diagonally stretched film to the width of the other film, which invites deterioration in yield.

Rolled web of optical film and method of producing the same


A protective cage and mounting device for a fuel tank of a vehicle such as school bus wherein the fuel tank is secured directly to the protection cage, the cage being secured to a vehicle frame rail. The protective cage includes a front section, rear section, side section, and a truss-like bottom shelf section, each of these sections being weldments constructed of low carbon, high strength steel tubing having rectangular cross-sections. The sections are welded to each other to produce stiff joints between said sections with the result that there is less parallelogramming and localized deformation of the protection cage in the event of an accident. Hold down devices are carried by the bottom shelf section for securing the fuel tank thereto.

The present invention relates generally to a fuel tank mounting and protecting cage for use with vehicles such as school buses.
The prior art protective cage and mounting device for vehicle gas tanks has proven successful in protecting the fuel tank against rupture in the event of an accident. FIG. 1 illustrates the prior art protective cage and fuel tank mounting mechanism, that were used on vehicles of the assignee of this patent. The protective cage is constructed from round tubing made of high carbon steel. The fuel tank has not been shown in FIG. 1 to better illustrate the fuel tank mounting mechanism and the protective cage. In this prior art device, the fuel tank is anchored to the longitudinal side of a vehicle frame rails, through the mounting mechanism. The fuel tank mounting mechanism includes a plurality of hanger brackets that are secured along their vertical legs to the vehicle frame rails. The fuel tank is supported on a shelf formed by the horizontal legs of the hanger brackets. Hold down devices secure the fuel tank to the hanger brackets. A heat shield is shown secured to the bottoms of the fuel tank hanger brackets.
The protective cage is also secured to the vehicle frame rail, and surrounds the three exposed sides of the fuel tank. The closed ends of the fuel tank add rigidity to the end sections of the fuel tank; however, the midsection of a fuel tank may be less rigid and therefore may be more vulnerable. An elongated angle member is connected to the protective cage and to the hanger brackets. However, this angle member is connected to the round tubing of the protective cage through hanger brackets which may not function to unite the protective cage and the fuel tank mounting mechanism such that they function as a unit in the event of a crash.
It has been asserted that, under some situations, a fuel tank that is mounted and protected by the above prior art mechanism could be ruptured. Although the prior art protective cage does provide protection for the mid-section of the fuel tank, because of the possible vulnerability of this section of the fuel tank compared to the end sections and the possibility that the protective cage could be bent into engagement with the fuel tank mid-section, additional protection will be provided for this area of the fuel tank. It is felt that the midsection of a fuel tank may be vulnerable, especially in the event of a side collision that is concentrated around the mid-portion of the protective cage. In such a collision, the prior art protective cage could collapse in on the fuel tank rather than transfer the impact force through the protective cage to the vehicle frame rails.
Within the space constraints imposed by the wall of the fuel tank and the inside surface of the side skirting of the vehicle, a circular cross-section is not the most efficient cross-section. Instead, a beam of rectangular cross-section can be better used to resist an externally imposed force. Also the high carbon steel from which the prior art protective cage was fabricated can be distorted by a relatively smaller force and thus absorbs a correspondingly smaller amount of impact force.

Vehicle fuel tank mounting and protective cage

Navistar International Transportation Corp.


A washing machine combined with a dryer is provided. In the washing machine combined with a dryer, a tub is provided, a dryer duct is installed outside of the tub to introduce a surrounding air into the tub, a heater is installed in the dryer duct to apply heat to the surrounding air, a temperature sensor is installed in the dryer duct to measure temperature inside the tub or temperature inside the dryer duct, and a dryer fan is installed in the dryer duct to draw in the surrounding air.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a washing machine, and more particularly, to a washing machine combined with a dryer, in which a hot steam generated during a hot water washing operation is prevented from reversely flowing to the outside.
2. Description of the Related Art
A washing machine is a home appliance for washing clothes automatically. In a typical washing machine, a motor spins a drum to agitate clothes together with water containing detergent to remove dirt from the clothes.
A drum type washing machine is becoming very common. In the drum type washing machine, clothes are lifted and dropped to force water and detergent solution to pass through the clothes to remove dirt from the clothes. Since the clothes are lifted and dropped in the drum, the drum type washing machine can clearly washes the clothes while damaging the clothes less than other types of washing machines. Also, the drum type washing machine can wash more clothes at a time than other types of washing machines.
Further, a washing machine combined with a dryer is introduced to eliminate the inconvenience of using a washing machine and a dryer separately. Washing machines combined with a dryer can be classified into a condenser type and a vented type depending on a drying method.
The washing machine combined with the condenser type dryer removes residual moisture from clothes by circulating a heated air through a drum. On the contrary, the washing machine combined with the vented type dryer removes residual moisture from clothes by blowing a heated air into a drum and discharging the air to the outside through a tub and an air-vent duct. Here, the air discharged has a relatively high humidity because it has taken moisture from the clothes in the drum.
The washing machine combined with the vented type dryer is provided at an upper portion with a dryer duct in which a flower fan and a heater are installed. The blower fan draws in air from between a cabinet and a tub, and the heater applies heat to the air. An outlet of the dryer duct is connected to a drum to direct the heated air into the drum. The air takes moisture from clothes in the drum and then the air is discharged to the outside.
However, the washing machine combined with the vented dryer has a disadvantage in that a hot steam, generated during a hot water washing operation, flows reversely into the dryer duct and leaks to the outside.
That is, through an inlet of the dryer duct where the blower fan is installed, the steam reversely flows toward a space between the tub and the cabinet and discharged to the outside of the washing machine through a gap defined at a connecting portion of the cabinet, thereby increasing humidity of the room and causing problems such as mildew on the walls.
Further, the steam makes the cabinet rusted. Furthermore, when the steam infiltrates into electric components and condenses therein, it causes malfunction of electrical components and increases the possibility of a fire.

Washing machine combined with dryer and controlling method thereof


A moving image network system which has high response to a moving image transmission request and prevents interruption of a moving image signal. Upon transmitting moving image data from terminal 1 to terminal 2, controller 20 adds a transmitter terminal address, priority and a coding type of the moving image data to transmission load information received by transmission load information receiver 17, and outputs the data to transmission load information transmitter 16. The controller 20 encodes/decodes moving image data in accordance with transmission load information of the moving image data and adjusts transmission data amount corresponding to transmission load of a transmission path.

1. Field of the Invention
Present invention relates to an information network system and terminal apparatus and, more particularly, to an information network system connected to a plurality of terminals such as multimedia, a work station, a personal computer and a printer.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, an information network system has been constructed as shown in FIG. 17.
In FIG. 17, reference numeral 49 denotes a transmission path such is a coaxial cable. Numerals 50 to 54 denote terminals connected to the transmission path 49. FIG. 17 shows only the construction of the terminal 52, however, the other terminals have the same construction.
In the terminal, numeral 61 denotes a data processor for generating transmission data and processing received data; 60, an output unit for transferring the transmission data generated by the data processor 61 to transmitter 56, which outputs the input data from the output unit 60 to the transmission path 49; 55, a receiver for receiving data from the transmission path 49; 59, an input unit for transferring the data received by the receiver 55 to the data processor 61; 57, a collision detector for detecting a collision with another terminal and outputting a detection result to the data processor 61; and 58, a carrier detector for detecting transmission from another terminal and outputting a detection result to the data processor 61.
In the conventional information network system having the above construction, a terminal which is going to perform data transmission confirms unused status of the transmission path 49 by the carrier detector 58, and transfers transmission data generated by the data processor 61 to the transmitter 56 via the output unit 60. The transmitter 56 converts the data into a predetermined signal and outputs the signal onto the transmission path 49.
If the collision detector 57 detects a collision, the terminal transmits a predetermined jam signal from the transmitter 56 and stands by in accordance with a predetermined back off algorithm, thereafter, retries transmission again. If no collision occurs, it transmits the transmission data.
In the above conventional information network system, the receiver 55 of all the terminals always monitors data on the transmission path 49, and in a case where a reception address added to the data on the transmission path 49 corresponds to the address of its own terminal, receives the data and transfers it to the input unit 59.
However, the conventional system has following problems.
In the conventional system, the right of use of the transmission path 49 is assigned to a terminal which has started transmission earlier than other terminals in a xe2x80x9cfirst come, first servedxe2x80x9d manner regardless of priority or emergency. Accordingly, the other terminals have to wait for the termination of transmission of the terminal that has obtained the use of the transmission path 49.
Further, in the conventional system, the transmission path 49 has not been efficiently used since data outputted onto the transmission path 49 is transmitted through the whole transmission path 49, and at this time, the transmission path 49 is used for only one transmission. For example, in FIG. 18, when the terminal 50 transmits data to the terminal 52, the data from the terminal 50 is also transmitted to the terminals 54 and 56 which are not the receiver terminals of the transmission. In this case, as a result, the terminals 54 and 50 cannot perform transmission.
As a moving image network system, an optical ring network having a structure as shown in FIG. 19 is considered. This network comprises video camera 65 as a moving image signal source, display 66 as a moving image output device and terminal 67 connected to the video camera 65 and the display 66. The terminal 67 has a function of encoding a moving image signal from the video camera 65 into a desired digital signal and outputting the signal to network interface 68 and a function of decoding a digital signal from the network interface 68 and inputting the decoded signal into the moving image output device.
The network interface 68 has a function of examining slots of a frame which circulates on the optical ring network and inserting a digital signal outputted from the terminal into an empty channel and a function of reading out a digital signal from a channel for the terminal. Optical fiber 69 is employed as a transmission path for an optical signal transmitted on the optical ring network.
However, the above optical ring network has a drawback that, as one channel is monopolistically assigned to the plural slots for one moving image signal transmission, a terminal which newly transmits a moving image transmission request when all the slots are used has to wait until one of the slots becomes empty, thus degrading response to transmission request.
To solve the above problem, sequentially changing the channel use in a predetermined time unit can be considered to realize transmission of moving image signals more than the number of the channels. In this case, however, the transmission of a moving image signal is halted at any time when the right of use of channel is lost.
Further, in the above optical ring network, transmission capacity of one channel is fixed. For this reason, if a transmission moving image is a lower resolution image or a transmission data amount is small, a part of the transmission capacity is wasted, thus degrading the usage efficiency of the transmission path in the entire network.
To solve this problem, the present applicant has proposed U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/924,629 filed on Aug. 4, 1992 prior to the present invention.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the aforementioned problems and drawbacks of the conventional systems, and has as its object to provide a network system and terminal apparatus which has high usage efficiency of a transmission path.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a network system and terminal apparatus which transmits transmission data without delay.
Further, another object of the present invention is to provide a terminal apparatus for a network system having high usage efficiency of a transmission path.
According to the present invention, the foregoing objects are attained by providing an information network system comprising: a plurality of terminals; and a plurality of transmission media forming a transmission path by connecting the plurality of terminals, wherein the plurality of terminals respectively have: a memory for relaying transmission information; and transmission means for transmitting the transmission information in accordance with priority order, wherein said system transmits the transmission information on the transmission path formed by the transmission media in a predetermined direction.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a network system and terminal apparatus for a moving image.
Further object of the present invention is to provide a network system and terminal apparatus which has high response to moving image transmission request.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a network system and terminal apparatus which transmits properly compressed moving image data corresponding to the status of a transmission path.
According to the present invention, the foregoing objects are attained by providing a moving image network system, in which a plurality of terminals are connected to each other via a bi-directional transmission path, for inserting moving image data into a plurality of slots and transmitting/receiving the moving image data, comprising: means for generating transmission load information regarding transmission of the moving image data on the transmission path; means for transmitting/receiving the transmission load information in a direction opposite to a transmission direction of the moving image data; coding means for encoding the moving image data based on a predetermined coding method in accordance with the transmission load information; and decoding means for decoding the moving image data based on a predetermined decoding method.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a network system and terminal apparatus having a novel structure or function.
Further object of the present invention is to provide a network system and terminal apparatus for encoding a plurality of moving images by compression-rate variable coding and transmitting the coded images.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters designate the same or similar parts throughout the figures thereof.


An IP packet transmission system is disclosed and more specifically it is a system using a hybrid ARQ method including a sliding purge window and having the transmitter opportunistically piggy-back a snapshot of the transmitter's transmit/send window in data frames. When the receiver receives this snapshot the receiver can compare it with its receive window and if a mismatch is detected, whereby the transmitter has moved on to the next packet, the receiver can now also sync up quicker and not wait for the regular timeout to progress ahead.

Impairments in wireless channels can cause bit errors that result in packet losses and adversely impact TCP throughput. Presence of interference (both in band and out of band) adds to the problem because it results in a higher error rate and diminished throughput. In such environments, intelligent schemes are required at several layers to mitigate the negative effects of these losses. ARQ mechanisms are widely used in wireless communication networks as a method to alleviate these issues, ensure data integrity, improve reliability, and to some extent guarantee in-order delivery of packets at the receiver.
When implemented at the link layer, in conjunction with Fragmentation and Re-assembly techniques, along with a sliding window approach as disclosed in US Provisional Application Ser. No. 61/735,264, "Hybrid ARQ System Using A Sliding Purge Window For Wireless Networks" filed Dec. 10, 2012 and incorporated herein, the transmitter usually can send multiple IP packets that are fragmented into several media access control (MAC) layer fragments. These fragments can be sent out of order and are then re-assembled at the receiver. This reassembly requires a MAC layer fragment identifier and sequence number. When the wireless channel degrades, as in a deep fade, the losses can continue for extended periods of time and within a second the receiver and transmitter can get out of sync because the acknowledgment messages (ACKs) are lost. What is proposed in this disclosure is a novel scheme to alleviate this problem by having the transmitter opportunistically piggy-back a snapshot of the transmitter's transmit/send window in data frames. When the receiver receives this snapshot the receiver can compare it with its receive window and if a mismatch is detected, whereby the transmitter has moved on to the next packet, the receiver can now also sync up quicker and not wait for the regular timeout to progress ahead.

Hybrid ARQ system with a snapshot feedback mechanism for interference prone wireless networks


In accordance with embodiments of the invention, RFID network control devices (RNCDs) are provided wherein RFID traffic signals from any one of multiple RFID readers may be routed to any of the RFID antennas coupled to the RNCD. Each reader coupled directly or indirectly to the RNCD, either through its own action or the action of the external host controller managing the reader, may issue commands to the RNCD, over the same cable used to carry RFID traffic signals, and cause the RNCD to set its internal switch configuration such that a channel is established for RFID traffic signals between that reader and a particular RFID antenna coupled to the RNCD. This may include commands from the reader or external host controller which place other intervening RNCD units in a bypass state so as to establish the required communications channel with a minimum of signal strength loss.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) systems and other forms of electronic article surveillance are increasingly used to track items whose locations or dispositions are of some economic, safety, or other interest. In these applications, typically, transponders or tags are attached to or placed inside the items to be tracked, and these transponders or tags are in at least intermittent communication with transceivers or readers which report the tag (and, by inference, item) location to people or software applications via a network to which the readers are directly or indirectly attached. Examples of RFID applications include tracking of retail items being offered for public sale within a store, inventory management of those items within the store backroom, on store shelving fixtures, displays, counters, cases, cabinets, closets, or other fixtures, and tracking of items to and through the point of sale and store exits. Item tracking applications also exist which involve warehouses, distribution centers, trucks, vans, shipping containers, and other points of storage or conveyance of items as they move through the retail supply chain. Another area of application of RFID technology involves asset tracking in which valuable items (not necessarily for sale to the public) are tracked in an environment to prevent theft, loss, or misplacement, or to maintain the integrity of the chain of custody of the asset. These applications of RFID technology are given by way of example only, and it should be understood that many other applications of the technology exist.
In the case of passive RFID systems, the RFID tag is powered by the electromagnetic carrier wave. Once powered, the passive tag interprets the radio frequency (RF) signals and provides an appropriate response, usually by creating a timed, intermittent disturbance in the electromagnetic carrier wave. These disturbances, which encode the tag response, are sensed by the reader through the reader's antenna. In the case of active RFID systems the tag contains its own power source, such as a battery, which it can use to either initiate RF communications with the reader by creating its own carrier wave and encoded RF signals, or else the tag power can be used to enhance the tag performance by increasing the tag's data processing rate or by increasing the power in the tag's response, and hence the maximum distance of communication between the tag and reader.
RFID systems typically use reader antennas to emit electromagnetic carrier waves encoded with digital signals to RFID tags. As such, the reader antenna is a critical component facilitating the communication between tag and reader, and influencing the quality of that communication. A reader antenna can be thought of as a transducer which converts signal-laden alternating electrical current from the reader into signal-laden oscillating electromagnetic fields or waves appropriate for a second antenna located in the tag, or alternatively, converts signal-laden oscillating electromagnetic fields or waves (sent from or modified by the tag) into signal-laden alternating electric current for demodulation by and communication with the reader. Types of antennas used in RFID systems include patch antennas, slot antennas, dipole antennas, loop antennas, and many other types and variations of these types.
The detection range of passive RFID systems is typically limited by signal strength over short ranges, for example, frequently less than a few feet for passive UHF RFID systems. Due to this read range limitation in passive UHF RFID systems, many applications make use of portable reader units or mobile carts with readers and antenna wands tethered to the readers with cables. These portable or mobile reader systems may be manually moved around a group of tagged items in order to detect all the tags, particularly where the tagged items are stored in a space significantly larger than the detection range of a stationary or fixed reader equipped with one fixed antenna. However, portable UHF reader and antenna units suffer from several disadvantages. The first involves the cost of human labor associated with the scanning activity. Fixed infrastructure, once paid for, is much cheaper to operate than are manual systems which have ongoing labor costs associated with them. In addition, portable units often lead to ambiguity regarding the precise location of the tags read. For instance, the reader location may be noted by the user, but the location of the tag during a read event may not be known sufficiently well for a given application. That is, the use of portable RFID readers often leads to a spatial resolution certainty of only a few feet, and many applications require knowledge of the location of the tagged items within a spatial resolution of a few inches. Portable RFID readers and mobile reader carts can also be more easily lost or stolen than is the case for fixed reader and antenna systems.
As an alternative to portable UHF RFID readers, a large fixed reader antenna driven with sufficient power to detect a larger number of tagged items may be used. However, such an antenna may be unwieldy, aesthetically displeasing, and the radiated power may surpass allowable legal or regulatory limits. Furthermore, these reader antennas are often located in stores or other locations were space is at a premium and it is expensive and inconvenient to use such large reader antennas. In addition, it should be noted that when a single large antenna is used to survey a large area (e.g., a set of retail shelves, or an entire cabinet, or entire counter, or the like), it is not possible to resolve the location of a tagged item to a particular spot on or small sub-section of the shelf fixture. In some applications it may be desirable to know the location of the tagged item with a spatial resolution of a few inches (e.g., if there are many small items on the retail shelf and it is desired to minimize manual searching and sorting time). In this situation the use of a single large reader antenna is not desirable because it is not generally possible to locate the item with the desired spatial resolution.
Alternatively, a fully automated or mechanized antenna system can be used. U.S. Pat. No. 7,132,945 describes a shelf system which employs a mechanized scanning antenna. This approach makes it possible to survey a relatively large area and also eliminates the need for human labor. However, the introduction of moving parts into a commercial shelf system may prove impractical because of higher system cost, greater installation complexity, and higher maintenance costs, and inconvenience of system downtime, as is often observed with machines which incorporate moving parts. Beam-forming smart antennas can scan the space with a narrow beam and without moving parts. However, as active devices they are usually big and expensive if compared with passive antennas.
To overcome the disadvantages of the approaches described above, fixed arrays of small antennas are utilized in some UHF RFID applications. In this approach numerous reader antennas spanning over a large area are connected to a single reader or group of readers via some sort of switching network, as described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 7,084,769. Smart shelving and other similar applications involving the tracking or inventory auditing of small tagged items in or on RFID-enabled shelves, cabinets, cases, racks, or other fixtures can make use of fixed arrays of small antennas. In tracking tagged stationary items in smart shelving and similar applications, fixed arrays of small antennas offer several advantages over portable readers, systems with a single large fixed antenna, and moving-antenna systems. First, the antennas themselves are small, and thus require relatively little power to survey the space surrounding each antenna. Thus, in systems which query these antennas one at a time, the system itself requires relatively little power (usually much less than 1 watt). By querying each of the small antennas in a large array, the system can thus survey a large area with relatively little power. Also, because the UHF antennas used in the antenna array are generally small and (due to their limited power and range of less than 1-12 inches) survey a small space with a specific known spatial location, it must also be true that the tagged items read by a specified antenna in the array are also located to the same spatial resolution of 1-12 inches. Thus systems using fixed arrays of small antennas can determine the location of tagged items with more precision than portable RFID readers and systems using a small number of relatively large antennas. Also, because each antenna in the array is relatively small, it is much easier to hide the antennas inside of the shelving or other storage fixture, thus improving aesthetics and minimizing damage from external disruptive events (e.g., children's curiosity-driven handling, or malicious activity by people in general). Also, an array of fixed antennas involves no moving parts and thus suffers from none of the disadvantages associated with moving parts, as described above. Also, small antennas like those used in such antenna arrays may be cheaper to replace when a single antenna element fails (relative to the cost of replacing a single large antenna). Also, fixed arrays of antennas do not require special manual labor to execute the scanning of tagged items and, therefore, do not have associated with them the high cost of manual labor associated with portable reader and antenna systems, or with mobile cart approaches.
Almost without exception, implementations of RFID technology involve the direct connection of antennas to an RFID reader, and thus limit the antenna-to-reader ratio to a relatively low number (almost never greater than four). Occasionally, implementations involve the use of multiplexing switches between the reader and the antennas, allowing for a larger number of antennas for each reader. FIG. 1 is a schematic illustrating a typical prior art approach. Individual RFID antennas 100 are connected to a central common RF communications cable 105 using simple switches or relays 110. Over the common cable, the antennas are driven from an RFID reader 120 which generates outgoing and interprets incoming RF signals, referred to herein as "RFID traffic signals" or just "traffic signals". Here RFID traffic signals deals specifically with the signals used to communicate between RFID readers and tags, but in some cases specifically noted in this document "RFID traffic" could also include device control and command signals. Unless otherwise stated, in the descriptions below "RFID traffic" refers to signals to and from antennas for communication with RFID tags. In FIG. 1 the reader is controlled by commands received from a computer 130. To initiate communication with tags (or transponders) 140 within the read range of a particular antenna, the computer 130 selects an antenna and sends the identity of the selected antenna to the switch controller 150, which in turn activates the selected antenna using a control line 115 coupled between the switch controller 150 and the antenna's associated relay 110. The other antennas are deactivated over their respective control lines. The computer 130 then instructs the reader 120 to collect the required information, and the results from the reader 120 are returned to the computer 130 and associated with the active antenna.
Even though the approach shown in FIG. 1 allows the use of many antennas with a single or small number of readers, the technology used to control the multiplexers is crude, requiring manual configuration of the network, and not allowing failover from one reader to another when a reader on the network is disabled. That is, these crude network implementation based on simple multiplexers involve the direct assignment of each antenna to a specific, single reader, and rely upon the health of that single reader for its operation.
The practical implementation of large arrays of small antennas using only a small number of readers depends upon a robust, simple, and economical signal routing approach. The current implementations described herein deal with an RF network control module and method for creation of a much more robust network in which each antenna can be accessed by any one of a collection of two or more readers, depending upon need. In prior art RFID antenna networks, each antenna is assigned to a particular reader and can be accessed by no other reader in the network. If a reader fails or goes off line for any reason, all of the antennas assigned to that reader are essentially dead to the network. Using the prior art, the only way to make it possible to access a particular antenna from more than one reader is to use complex combinations of multiplexers, separate control lines, and external switches. The current embodiments replace all of those components with a single device which allows multiple RFID readers access to the same set of antennas, thus providing the reader failover capability (i.e., a reader failure is detected by the host system managing the network, and is replaced by an active reader such that all antennas in the network remain accessible). Furthermore, a great advantage of the current embodiments over complex combinations of multiplexers, control lines, and external switches is that the current embodiments of the device can be controlled over the same lines that are used to carry the RFID traffic for communication with RFID tags. This greatly minimizes the cabling or wiring requirements for the network, providing lower cost, shorter installation times, easier maintenance, better aesthetics, smaller space requirements, and a number of other advantages. Because the current embodiments makes it practical to introduce redundant pathways in the network, allowing multiple readers to access a given antenna, it allows for network loading balancing. That is, the RFID network host system managing the readers can track the use of readers (load on readers) and use the switching capabilities of the device described in the current invention to spread the load evenly over the readers assigned to a given area of activity in the network.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.