Embodiments of the disclosure provide a floating gate memory cell, including: a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate, the SOI substrate including a semiconductor bulk substrate, a buried oxide layer formed on the semiconductor bulk substrate, and a semiconductor layer formed on the buried oxide layer; a memory device, including: a control gate formed in the semiconductor layer of the SOI substrate; an insulating layer formed on the control gate; and a floating gate formed on the insulating layer; and a transistor device electrically connected to the memory device. The transistor device includes an active region formed in the semiconductor layer of the SOI substrate.

The present disclosure relates to semiconductor devices and integrated circuits, and more specifically to a floating gate memory cell and associated high density memory array structure.
Flash memory (for example, a flash erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM) or flash electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) is a semiconductor device that is formed from an array of memory cells, with each memory cell having a floating gate transistor. Each floating gate transistor includes a source, drain, floating gate, and control gate. The sources of each floating gate in each cell in a row of the array are connected to form a source line. To enable the individual memory elements of a flash memory chip to maintain the physical state with which they have been programmed, each memory region must be isolated from its neighboring regions, typically by shallow trench isolations.
Non-volatile memory devices, such as EEPROM and flash memory, are used in computers and other electronic devices to store data and/or programming instructions that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed and that must be saved when power is removed. Embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) has become increasingly important in applications ranging from data and code storage to circuit trimming and customization. By embedding a non-volatile memory in a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device, a single chip device can be manufactured and configured for a variety of applications. To combine non-volatile memory (such as flash EEPROM) into a standard CMOS process flow, many additional processing steps (and associated costs) are typically added to the standard CMOS process in order to construct the required additional device features (such as a floating gate or control gate) along with other system components.

Floating gate memory cell and memory array structure


Provided are a laser annealing apparatus, a laser annealing method, and a mask with which scan nonuniformity can be decreased. According to the present invention, all or some openings of a plurality of openings are configured so that a partial subregion of a prescribed region is irradiated with laser light. The plurality of openings are configured so that, between prescribed regions irradiated with laser light via a group of openings in one row arranged in a row direction and prescribed regions irradiated with laser light via a group of openings in another row arranged in the row direction, the number of times of laser light radiations in subregions having the same occupying region is the same, and at least two openings of a group of openings arranged in a column direction have different positions or shapes.

A liquid-crystal display of thin film transistor (TFT) type has a configuration in which a TFT substrate and a color filter substrate having colors of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) are bonded together with a specific space therebetween and liquid-crystal is injected in the space between the TFT substrate and the color filter substrate, thereby enabling display of a video under control of light transmittance of liquid crystal molecules on a pixel-by-pixel basis.
Data lines and scan lines are wired in a lattice manner in vertical and transverse directions on the TFT substrate, and pixels are provided at respective intersections of the data lines and the scan lines. The pixels each include a pixel electrode, a counter electrode, and a liquid crystal layer located between the pixel electrode and the counter electrode. A drive circuit for driving the data lines and the scan lines that is constituted by TFTs is provided in the vicinity of a display region constituted by the plurality of pixels.
For the TFTs, various TFTs are developed such as an amorphous silicon (amorphous, a-Si) TFT using a silicon semiconductor, a low-temperature polysilicon TFT including a semiconductor layer made of polysilicon (polycrystalline, p-Si). The a-Si TFT has high resistance and small leak current (leakage current). By contrast, the p-Si TFT has significantly larger electron mobility than the a-Si TFT.
Annealing processing by laser light irradiation can change an amorphous silicon layer to a polysilicon layer. For example, a laser annealing apparatus has been provided by which laser light emitted from a laser light source is shaped into a parallel beam by a lens group and the shaped parallel beam was irradiated on a substrate through a microlens array and a mask through which openings are formed. In a laser annealing apparatus such as above, a specific number of openings are formed through the mask in terms of a scanning direction of the substrate. Through laser light irradiation each time the substrate is moved by a pixel pitch, specific portions (irradiation regions) of the substrate can be irradiated with the laser light scan by times equal to the number of openings through one-cycle (see Patent Literature 1).

Laser annealing apparatus, laser annealing method, and mask


Methods and systems consistent with the present invention provide a comprehensive assessment and planning system. Methods and systems consistent with employ a preventive approach to predicting the likelihood of an entity entering a degraded future state by computing a risk value that reflects that likelihood. An embodiment applies to a comprehensive healthcare treatment and planning system. This healthcare system employs a preventive approach to healthcare by basing healthcare decisions on a multi-factorial computation of risk. The risk value is computed by evaluation of a function that considers a variety of historic, environmental, and systemic behaviors and conditions. In addition to considering a risk value, a treatment plan developed in accordance with the healthcare system considers symptoms and objectives of the treatment from the perspective of both the patient and the provider. The outcomes associated with treatment and risk assessment are fed back into the healthcare system to increase its accuracy and subsequent effectiveness in computing risk values over time.

The present invention relates generally to data processing systems and, more specifically, to an assessment and planning system that uses a multi-factorial computation of risk to determine an appropriate strategy for preventing an entity from entering an undesirable state.
A patient generally seeks medical advice and treatment from a healthcare provider when the patient experiences a medical condition that the patient is unable to treat. The term healthcare as used herein refers generally to any activity directed to the care and maintenance of a patient (e.g., a human being). A healthcare provider may thus provide services directed to the mental, emotional, or physical well-being of a patient. Accordingly, healthcare providers may include, for example, psychiatrists, podiatrists, dentists, substance abuse counselors, etc. A healthcare provider diagnoses a condition, or disease, and recommends a course of treatment to cure the condition, if such treatment exists. This model of reparative healthcare treatment focuses only on healing, or repairing, an existing condition.
To determine an appropriate treatment for an existing condition, a healthcare provider runs a series of diagnostic tests and collects clinical data related to the patient""s symptoms. The term xe2x80x9cclinical dataxe2x80x9d refers to the data measured and observed by a healthcare provider during examination of a patient, reflecting the patient""s health, or related to a health condition. The clinical data generally reflects the effects of a disease as determined at a point in time. For example, if a patient has a tumor, a healthcare provider may collect clinical data reflecting the tumor""s size, appearance, location, and texture.
After collecting the clinical data, the healthcare provider forms hypotheses about the cause of the condition, its severity, and its impact. Next, the healthcare provider diagnoses the condition and determines how to treat the condition. The patient only provides input into this process by enumerating symptoms and giving background information about the condition or related conditions.
Alternatively, a patient or healthcare provider may input clinical data into a computer program that calculates a value of risk. The risk value output by the computer program is a quantified measure indicating a patient""s likelihood of currently having a condition or disease as indicated by the patent""s symptoms. This computed value of risk may be considered in diagnosing a condition or disease.
For example, consider a situation where a patient enters a dentist""s office with red, swollen gums, extreme sensitivity to both hot and cold substances, and pain in several areas of her mouth. The dentist hypothesizes that the patient has periodontal disease. Or alternatively, the dentist inputs an enumerated list of the patient""s symptoms into a computer program which outputs a quantified indicator of the patient""s likelihood of either having periodontal disease, or if the patient""s periodontal disease is in remission, having an exacerbation of the periodontal disease.
Before proceeding with a diagnosis and plan for treatment, suppose the dentist runs a series of tests and makes observations to determine the accuracy of the initial hypothesis or indicator value. During the examination, suppose the dentist finds significant bone loss associated with several teeth and decides to restore the areas of bone loss with a bone graft procedure. After performing the bone graft procedure, the dentist submits claim forms to the patient""s insurance carrier for approval. The dentist may further recommend that the patient initiate a scheme of improved oral hygiene, including regular professional cleaning appointments to minimize or retard the effects of periodontal disease. Absent any obviously related complications, the patient and dentist consider the treatment a success and continue their relationship. If the insurance company refuses payment the patient must absorb the cost of the procedure.
This reparative model for healthcare treatment fails to consider how a patient""s intended behavior impacts the effectiveness of the treatment. In the example above, the patient""s condition may have been exacerbated by the patient""s smoking habit that the patient has no intention of ceasing. Additionally, the patient may be unable or unwilling to improve her oral hygiene. Both of these factors contribute to the effectiveness and longevity of a bone graft procedure. The model also fails to direct treatment towards the prevention of future conditions. For instance, in the example above, the patient""s periodontal disease is likely to worsen over time, absent any changes in the patient""s oral care. The bone graft procedure used to treat the most severe areas of bone loss fails to retard, prevent, or otherwise impact other areas of the patient""s gums that have been effected by the periodontal disease. Therefore, performing a bone graft, an intrusive and unpredictable procedure, as the only form of treatment, may not be the best treatment because it fails to address the likely progression of the disease and a potential need for subsequent treatment related to a current condition. A reparative treatment planning scheme fails to consider that current symptoms reflect only one indicator of the significance or severity of a condition. Further, the reparative model for treatment fails to consider the patient""s medical history and its impact on the effectiveness and longevity of treatment.
Overall, the reparative model for healthcare treatment planning focuses solely on healing an existing condition as indicated by diagnostic tests and clinical data. This model fails to consider various other factors that impact the effectiveness of treatment. As a result, the most effective and comprehensive treatment may not be administered. Similarly, because the reparative model fails to focus on preventing future conditions, it is likely to result in a higher number of procedures needed on a long-term basis. Patients and insurance companies experience inflated economic healthcare costs when healthcare providers administer unnecessary, overly intrusive, or ineffective treatment, or treatment that contributes to a new disease. Additionally, patients absorb high non-economic costs, in the form of emotional, mental, or physical anxiety, when they are subjected to unnecessary or overly intrusive procedures, as determined in light of the patient""s overall state of health. It is therefore desirable to improve healthcare systems.

Method and system for healthcare treatment planning and assessment


A pattern matching system that outputs an likeness values, comprising a designation block, a comparison block, a calculation block and an output block, is provided. The likeness value shows how much a first and second image compares to each other. The designation block designates a first and second image data as data to be compared. The first and second image data comprises 2^x of area data. The comparison block compares the data level of the area data corresponding to pattern areas at the relatively same location in the first and second images. The calculation block calculates the likeness value. The likeness value varies according to the number of the pattern areas where the absolute value of the difference between the compared data levels of the area data is less than a predetermined standard value.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pattern matching system that determines whether or not a plurality of images matches each other, and a targeted object pursuit system that pursues the movement of a specified targeted object within a plurality of images captured sequentially using the above pattern matching system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A pattern matching system that calculates the likeness between a plurality of images is known. The pattern matching is used for pursuit of a targeted object moving within a plurality of images captured sequentially.
In prior pattern matching, the likeness is calculated by the following operation. First, the captured image is divided into smaller image components and the luminance of the divided image components is detected. Second, the luminance level of each image component into which a first image is divided is compared to that of a corresponding image component, into which a second image of the same location but subsequent to the first image, is divided. Finally, a value based on the number of image components of which the luminance levels from the first and second images are in agreement with each other is calculated as the likeness between the first and second images.
The greater the number of image components that are compared, the greater the accuracy of the calculated likeness value suggesting whether or not the first and second images are in agreement with each other. However, the greater the number of compared image components also increases the size requirement, in bits, of the digital arithmetical unit necessary for the pattern matching system. On the other hand, even though a higher bit digital arithmetical unit is mounted, the capacity of the digital arithmetical unit is not always used completely.

Pattern matching system and targeted object pursuit system using light quantities in designated areas of images to be compared


A threshold voltage model with an impurity concentration profile in a channel direction taken into account is provided in the pocket implant MOSFET. With penetration length of the implanted pocket in the channel direction and the maximum impurity concentration of the implant pocket used as physical parameters, the threshold voltage model is obtained by linearly approximating the profile in the channel direction. By analytically solving the model by using a new threshold condition with inhomogeneous profile taken into account, the threshold voltage can be accurately obtained. Based on thus obtained model, the threshold voltage can be predicted and can be used for circuit design.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a threshold voltage model of pocket implant MOSFET and applications thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is essential to effectively suppress short-channel effect in order to miniaturize Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (herein referred to as "MOSFET" for both n-channel and p-channnel), and therefore, the pocket implant technology is popularly used. This pocket implant generates concentration profile with a peak located at a place deep below a source end and a drain end of a channel by implanting impurities of the type same as substrate impurities with gate used as a mask. Because regions with high impurity concentration formed at the source end and the drain end of the channel in this way absorb electric field induced in the channel direction and, in addition, a threshold voltage rises as gate length decreases, they can suppress reduction of the threshold voltage. Furthermore, because the concentration peak is located at the deep place, it is an advantage that carrier mobility could be less lowered than in the case a substrate with homogeneous high impurity concentration is used.
The pocket implant described above is the technique that could be a key to miniaturization of MOSFET. However, there has been no technique for easily analyzing the concentration profile of the implanted impurities. Consequently, in the pocket implant MOSFET, the dependence of threshold voltage on the drain voltage, channel length, etc. is unable to be accurately predicted and is a bottleneck in designing circuits.
Presently, Berkeley Short IGFET Model, Version-3, 4 (BSIM3, 4) is proposed as a MOSFET model and is served for use in the industry. In this BSIM3, 4, efforts are made to reproduce the measurability by introducing parameters whose physical meanings are undefined so as to apply the model to the pocket implant MOSFET. However, this model basically assumes that impurity concentration of the substrate is homogeneous, and furthermore, assumes that the reverse density of electric charge in an inversion layer is zero. Thus, it is essentially constrained to apply the model to the pocket implant MOSFET which has inhomogeneous impurity concentration distribution in the channel direction.

Method for calculating threshold voltage of pocket implant MOSFET

Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center


A pixel array substrate and a display panel are provided. The pixel array substrate includes a substrate, scan line groups, data lines, and pixel structures. The scan line groups are disposed on the substrate. The data lines are intersected with the scan line groups. The pixel structures are connected to the scan line groups and the data lines. Each pixel structure includes an active device group, a first pixel electrode, a second pixel electrode, and a connection electrode. The first pixel electrode is located between the second pixel electrode and the nth scan line group. The connection electrode is located at a side of the first pixel electrode adjacent to one data line. The second pixel electrode is electrically connected to the active device group through the connection electrode. The connection electrode, the first pixel electrode, and the second pixel electrode are of the same layer.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a pixel structure and a display panel, and particularly to a pixel structure and a display panel that can be applied for three-dimensional (3D) display technology.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays, the market demands the liquid crystal display (LCD) panel to develop its functions towards high contrast ratio, no gray scale inversion, little color shift, high luminance, full color, high color saturation, high response speed, and wide viewing angle. Currently, the technologies capable of fulfilling the demands of wide viewing angle include the twist nematic (TN) LCD having a wide viewing film, the in-plane switching (IPS) LCD, the fringe field switching (FFS) LCD, and the multi-domain vertically aligned (MVA) LCD.
However, besides high resolution and high color saturation, in order to satisfy the need of viewers to view realistic images, displays which are capable of displaying 3D images have been developed. The technology of 3D display can be roughly categorized into two types. One is the stereoscopic type which requires a viewer to wear specially designed glasses, and the other is the auto-stereoscopic type which allows the viewer to watch 3D images directly with naked eyes. The glasses used in the stereoscopic type 3D display technology can include color filter glasses, polarizing glasses, shutter glasses, and so forth. According to the stereoscopic type 3D display technology, a display emits light of different images with specific information to the left and the right eyes of the viewer through the glasses, and the images are combined to form a 3D image.
When seeing a 3D image through glasses, the quality of the image seen by the viewer is highly dependable on the viewing angle which is limited by the position of the viewer. Hence, how to lower the restriction of the viewing angle for 3D displays, and increase the viewing angle has become a focus in developing 3D displays.


This invention provides a laser trimming method for tuning the frequency of a spiral resonator, and for improving the characteristics of a high temperature superconductor filter comprised of high temperature superconductor spiral resonators, by tuning the individual high temperature superconductor spiral resonators. This invention also provides a method for tuning the resonance frequency of a high temperature superconductor planar coil. This invention also provides a laser ablation process for creating high temperature superconductor circuit elements.

High temperature superconductor (HTS) filters have applications in telecommunication, instrumentation and military equipment. The HTS filters have the advantages of extremely low in-band insertion loss, high out-of-band rejection and steep skirts due to the extremely low loss in the HTS materials. In a typical design, HTS filters and mini-multiplexers are comprised of spiral resonators.
Filter performance is highly dependent on the frequencies of the resonators of which the filter was comprised. In turn, variations in circuit parameters such as resonator patterning, substrate thickness and dielectric constant, and HTS material properties affect the frequency of the resonators. It is both difficult and costly to try to control these parameters precisely during production. The difficulty in producing the desired HTS filter pattern increases as the number of resonators or poles in the filter increases.
It is therefore desirable to tune the filters after they have been produced. One approach to tuning the center frequency of such a filter proposed by Shen, WO 01/41251, involves providing a plate spaced a distance apart from and opposite to the HTS filter. The plate contains a conductive film, preferably a HTS film, on at least a portion of the surface of the plate that faces the filter. The distance between the plate and the filter can be adjusted to tune the center frequency of the filter. Alternatively, the individual resonators of the filter can be mechanically tuned by adjusting a screw or a dielectric rod. However, since the resonators generally vary in a random fashion, each pole of the filter must be individually tuned and the tuning of each pole affects every other pole in the filter. The tuning process can typically take hours to perform.
Humphreys, U.S. Ser. No. 03/048,148, and N. J. Parker et al, 2000 IEEE MTT-S, page 1971, disclose tuning a microwave or RF circuit by directing a laser beam onto the microwave or RF circuit so as to alter the material properties of selected areas of the microwave or RF circuit. Results are disclosed for a simple microstrip λ/2 resonator and a pseudo-elliptic filter comprised of 3 simple microstrip λ/2 resonators. They disclose that it is easier to increase the resonator frequencies than to reduce them.
An object of the present invention is to tune the resonance frequency of a HTS spiral resonator or a HTS coil and to improve the production yield of HTS filters comprised of HTS spiral resonators by providing a method for tuning the characteristics of such a filter by tuning individual HTS spiral resonators.

Laser trimming to tune the resonance frequency of a spiral resonator, the characteristics of a high temperature superconductor filter comprised of spiral resonators, or the resonance of a planar coil


Stabilizing apparatus for controlling the position of a workpiece relative to a tool. The stabilizing apparatus includes an elongated base for attachment to the tool, an elongated adjustable support that is essentially parallel to the base, and an interconnecting structure that enables the adjustable support to move relative to the base. When a workpiece moves toward the tool, it displaces the adjustable support toward the base thereby compressing springs in the interconnecting structure. This produces a clamping force against an opposed work support surface that stabilizes the position of the workpiece transversely to the direction of travel but allows movement along the work path. Multiple stabilizing apparatus can be used to provide both vertical and horizontal clamping forces.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to power woodworking, machine and other bench tools for cutting, shaping and drilling a workpiece and more specifically to apparatus for stabilizing the workpiece during its displacement relative to the tool.
2. Description of Related Art
Power woodworking and machine tools to which this invention pertains include table saws, radial arm saws, shapers, router tables, drill presses and the like. These tools, hereinafter call "bench tools," comprise certain basic components. Each has a "work surface" that supports the workpiece. Tables associated with each of the specified bench tools and others typically provide such a work surface. Bench tools also include a cutting mechanism, or cutting tool, such as a saw blade, drill bit, router bit or the like, and an arbor or chuck for attaching the cutting tool to an electric motor.
A typical table provides a horizontal work surface that supports the workpiece during its relative displacement with respect to the cutting tool. On some bench tools, the operator moves the workpiece across the work surface into contact with a cutting tool that is at a fixed position on the table. For example, a table saw comprises a motorized circular saw supported below a horizontal work surface. The top portion of the saw blade extends above the work surface into the tool work plane where cutting takes place. The operator slides a workpiece along the work surface past the rotating blade thereby to cut the workpiece. On other bench tools, the workpiece is stationary on the work surface while the cutting tool is moved into contact with the workpiece. For example, in a drill press a vertically oriented drill displaces along a vertical axis into a workpiece held in one position on the work surface. A radial arm saw is another example of such a bench tool.
Some bench tools, such as table saws, router tables and shapers, often include a vertical fence that mounts to the table adjacent to the cutting tool. Prior art fences generally comprise one or more square or rectangular plates mounted on the bench work surface perpendicular to the work surface. As an operator moves the workpiece past the cutting tool, the fence engages a vertical workpiece surface to stabilize the horizontal position of the workpiece relative to the cutting unit. The fence thus establishes a "second work surface" that is substantially perpendicular to the plane of the horizontal work surface that the table defines.
In order to move a workpiece in a straight line, an operator must exert a force on the workpiece that has three orthogonally directed components. A first or vertical component is perpendicular to the work surface to maintain firm contact between the workpiece and the horizontal work surface. A second or horizontal component is parallel to the work surface and normal to the fence to maintain the workpiece against the fence. The third is another horizontal component parallel to the fence to displace the workpiece past the cutting tool. On a table saw, for example, the operator must continuously hold the workpiece horizontally against the fence and vertically on the work surface while simultaneously feeding the workpiece toward and past the cutting saw blade.
It is often difficult to maintain such orthogonal forces uniformly against the workpiece as it moves. This is particularly true with woodworking tools because the wood is not uniform, so the resistance to pressure produced as the workpiece engages the cutting tool can vary greatly and unexpectedly. It can also be particularly difficult to simultaneously push a long workpiece toward the cutting blade while holding the workpiece firmly against the fence, since the operator must initially push the back end of the workpiece, which may be a substantial distance from the tool and fence, toward the cutting tool. If the workpiece moves relative to the fence, an uneven cut results. If the workpiece moves relative to the horizontal work surface, the cutting tool can drive the workpiece back toward the operator. Finally, it becomes difficult and dangerous to maintain all these force components as the end of a workpiece passes the cutting tool because the operator's fingers often are proximate the cutting tool.
U.S. Pat. No. 552,610 to Fisher discloses a protective hood that extends over a cutting blade on a jointer or shaper to prevent an operator's hands from contacting the cutting blade. The hood moves vertically relative to a fence according to the size of wood being cut. The hood also reciprocates horizontally with respect to the fence to cover the cutting blade during use.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,895,517 to Rhett discloses a protective guard for a jointer that closes behind the back end of a workpiece and toward a fence to prevent an operator's fingers from contacting the cutting blade. The guard is spring-projected toward the fence and comprises a leading member with a cam edge and a trailing frame member that supports a plurality of posts, each of which is independently spring-projected toward the fence. As the leading end of a workpiece engages the cam edge of the leading member, the guard moves from the fence to allow for continued feeding of the workpiece. As the trailing end passes the leading member, a spring drives the leading member back to the fence before the operator's fingers can reach the cutting tool. Simultaneously, the posts move into abutting engagement with the workpiece thereby to cover the cutterhead while the workpiece passes over the cutterhead. As the trailing end of the workpiece moves past the cutterhead, the posts are driven sequentially toward the fence
U.S. Pat. No. 1,394,499 to Ingstrum discloses a protective guard for a jointer that comprises an elongated extendable body with a pivoted, spring-biased toggle arm at one end. The guard covers a rotating hub whenever a table is not being used. As a workpiece advances along a fence toward the cutterhead, it engages a cam head and pivots the toggle arm toward the fence to move the protective guard away from the fence. This allows the workpiece to pass the elongated body. When the trailing end of the workpiece passes the toggle arm, the toggle arm pivots away from the fence, and the elongated body returns to its extended position against the fence.
The apparatus disclosed in each of the foregoing patents forces a workpiece against a fence as the workpiece passes a cutting tool. However, the apparatus applies such lateral pressure only at the point where the workpiece engages the cutting tool. The apparatus does not apply uniform pressure along the entire length of the workpiece or along any continuous substantial portion thereof. The operator's ability to push the workpiece in a straight path past the cutting tool in contact with a fence and work surface is still required. Moreover, the apparatus is adapted for use with a single type bench tool. Fisher discusses jointers or shapers; Rhett and Ingstrum only discuss jointers. The structures are not readily adapted for use with a wide variety of bench tools including, but not limited to, table saws, radial arm saws, router tables, shapers and drill presses.


A seat member including a vertical seat back mounted to a horizontal seat bottom includes a mounting member mounting the seat to a floor plate of a transport vehicle, such as a sled or wagon, wherein the vertical seat back and the horizontal seat bottom each include loop pairs selectively securable to channeling tether lines for permitting suspension of the seat to an overhead support for use of the seat as a swing structure. The seat utilizes a "Y" shaped belt harness for securement of an individual to the seat structure.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of invention relates to seat apparatus, and more particularly pertains to a new and improved conversion seat kit wherein the same is arranged for selective mounting to a transport vehicle or alternatively to an overhead support.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Seat structure of various types are utilized throughout the prior art in the mounting of an individual to various modes of entertainment and transport. Particularly in association of small children mounted to the seat structure and particularly children with limited physical capacity, the seat organization of the prior art has failed to provide an organization to permit security and convenience in the mounting of the seat structure relative to a transport vehicle and alternatively to an overhead support for the use of the seat as a swing.
As such, it may be appreciated that there continues to be a need for a new and improved conversion seat kit as set forth by the instant invention which address both the problems of ease of use as well as effectiveness in construction and in this respect, the present invention substantially fulfills this need.


In a process for the detection of the limit level of liquids and bulk materials in containers and pipelines, the change in the oscillation behavior of a sensor which is excited to oscillation is detected electronically and used to trigger a switch command. As sensor there is used a parallel bimorph piezoelectric element (22) having a common central electrode (44) and two outer electrodes (46, 48). A first alternating voltage (U1) with an oscillator frequency (f1) is applied between the central electrode (44) and a first outer electrode (46), a second alternating voltage is measured as amplitude of oscillation (U2) with corresponding oscillation frequency (f2) between the central electrode (44) and the second outer electrode (48), and the measured amplitude of oscillation (U2) or oscillation frequency (f2) is converted into an output switch signal.. In a device suitable for the carrying out of the process, the piezoelectric element (22) is inserted in liquid-tight manner into a plastic cover (24), the plastic cover (24) in its turn being fastened in liquid-tight manner to a plastic housing which passes through the wall (16) of a container or a pipeline, and the plastic cover (24) together with the piezoelectric element (22) extends into a protective tube (18) developed on the plastic housing (12).

The present invention relates to a process for detecting the limit level of liquids and bulk materials in containers and pipelines, in which the change of the oscillation behavior of a sensor which is excited to oscillation is detected electronically and used to trigger a switch command. The invention also relates to an apparatus suitable for the carrying out of the process.
Containers or tanks are used in practically all applications of pipeline systems. Frequently, when a minimum level therein is reached, a switch signal must be given off which, for instance, controls a pump for the filling of a container. If the upper level of filling is reached by the end of a given period of time, then the pump must be turned off by a second switch signal. It is also conceivable that a pump to convey a fluid out of a tank until a minimum level has been reached. The pump must then be turned off in order to avoid having it operate dry. In may industrial processes, it is also necessary to know whether a pipeline is full or empty. For example, in the case of centrifugal pumps running dry is generally to be avoided so that a pump should be turned on only when the pipe on the intake side is full.
For the detection of the limit level, so-called vibration limit switches are known, for instance from Federal Republic of Germany 42 03 967 C2. The vibratory part used as sensor consists of a vibratory fork, the vibration behavior of which changes as the sensor is covered by the material being introduced. This change in oscillation is detected by an integrated measurement electronic system and a switch command is given. Limit switches which are based on the oscillating-fork principle are strong, accurate, free of adjustment, and require little maintenance. Made of metal, they are, however, unsuitable, or scarcely suitable, for many fluids or for highly pure uses.
In view of this prior art, it is the principle object of the present invention to provide a method, as well as an apparatus, of the aforementioned type which, in addition to said advantages of the processes and apparatus based on the vibration principle, have a broader field of use with respect to liquids.

Process and apparatus for detecting the limit level of liquids and bulk materials


The invention concerns a lift-off process for patterning layers that are deposited and/or sputtered. The invention provides a two-layer resist and a patterning method using the resist. The patterning method can readily produce burr-free layers on a substrate.

Lift-off is a general term for a process of forming a pattern of organic or inorganic thin layers by:
applying a resist onto a workpiece surface;
patterning the resist layer by a photolithography technique;
depositing and/or sputtering an organic or inorganic substance over the resist layer and areas in which the resist has been cleared; and
releasing the resist layer together with the overlying organic or inorganic thin layer.
As a consequence, the organic or inorganic substance found in the orifices of the resist layer remains there to form a desired pattern.
In this lift-off process, the resist pattern profile is very important. For example, positive resists will typically produce a pattern which tapers forward as shown in FIG. 2(c). Releasing of this forward tapered resist will result in a pattern of layers having burrs on their edges as shown in FIG. 2(d).
A specific example will be given with respect to the processing of MR magnetic head sliders. Here, the aforesaid lift-off process is used to form a DLC (diamond like carbon) layer on an ABS (air bearing surface) for the purpose of pad protection. As described above, the lift-off process can produce burrs on the edges of DLC layers. The burrs on the DLC layers can scratch the magnetic recording disks of HDD (hard disk drive) or can be a foreign object to cause HDD failures.
With such problems, it will be effective to use negative resists or image reversal resists which can be formed into a reverse tapered pattern. As shown in FIG. 3(c), the orifices of this reverse tapered layer have a larger size in the bottom than in the top, so that the formation of burrs can be prevented.
However, this method in general has a difficult control of the resist pattern profile. Further, it is difficult to observe the resist pattern with a light microscope and also to release the resist layer which has been hardened.
In respect to the workpiece surface as a substrate, it will usually have irregularities, which are relatively large for the thickness of applied resist, as a result of the process steps the workpiece has undergone. Because of this, it has been difficult to form a resist layer in uniform thickness.
In the above processing of MR magnetic heads, a number of strip pieces called row bars are processed as being stuck on a jog with their ABS upward. Since these row bars have a gap between the neighboring ones, a direct application of a liquid resist is impossible; therefore, a resist film such as a dry film is generally employed instead.
From the viewpoint of improving the productivity of workpieces, there has been a need for a technology which can be incorporated into the production process without disrupting the flow of process steps and by which a pattern can be readily formed on a workpiece surface.
The present inventors studied earnestly in view of the aforesaid circumstances. As a result, they have developed a two-layer laminate that comprises a resist layer (I) formed from a specific positive radiation-sensitive resin composition 1 and a resist layer (II) formed from a specific positive radiation-sensitive resin composition 2. This two-layer laminate can be formed into an undercut resist pattern by single photoexposure and development. Thus, the patterning method using the two-layer laminate can produce a burr-free layer with ease. The present invention has been completed based on these findings.
It is an object of the invention to provide a resist layer which can leave a burr-free layer on a substrate with ease, and a patterning method using the same.

Two-layer film and method of forming pattern with the same

Abstract: The method comprises the steps of:                sequentially applying positive radiation-sensitive resin compositions 1 and 2 to form a two-layer laminate;        subjecting the two-layer resist to single exposure and development to produce fine patterns having an undercut cross section;        depositing and/or sputtering an organic or inorganic thin layer with use of the resist pattern as a mask; and        lifting off the resist pattern to leave a pattern of the thin layer in desired shape.


A method of optimizing steam methane reforming in a multiple cell, down-fired furnace. The method includes the steps of introducing hydrocarbons and steam to a plurality of catalyst filled process tubes, combusting gases through a plurality of center cell down-fired burners at a burner discharge velocity of V m/s, and a mass flow rate of 1 kg/s, combusting gases through outer cell down-fired burners at a burner discharge velocity of 1.5V-2V m/s and a mass flow rate of 0.5-0.65 kg/s, and finally discharging combustion products from the outer cell down-fired burners and the center cell down-fired burners at a substantially uniform momentum.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved method of configuring and using a furnace. More specifically, the invention relates to an improved method to reduce deflections of burner flames in down-fired, steam methane reforming furnaces in order to optimize performance.
2. Prior Art
Steam methane reforming ("SMR") processes for the production of synthesis gas are well known in the art. SMR involves a reaction of a hydrocarbon feedstock, typically in the form of natural gas, refinery gas, or naphtha, with steam at high temperatures. This reaction is in the presence of catalysts and produces a gas mixture primarily made up of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, commonly known as syngas. The syngas is collected and further processed in another system.
The SMR reaction may take place within different types of furnace configurations with burners on the top, sides, or bottom of the furnace. A typical configuration includes multiple cell or chamber furnaces with rows of down-fired burners lining each cell or chamber. Each cell is separated by vertically aligned rows of catalyst-filled process tubes.
In such a furnace, there may be several center cells and two outer cells. The outer most cells are adjacent to a refractory lined furnace wall. Therefore, they only have process tubes on one side of the cell. The center cells may vary in number from one (1) to several, depending on the furnace capacity. Each center cell is bounded by a row of process tubes along either side. The top of each cell is lined with multiple, down-fired burners.
The hydrocarbons and the steam are introduced at the top of the process tubes thereby to react with the catalyst contained within the process tubes in order to form syngas (primarily H2 and CO). The syngas is removed through the bottom of the process tubes and further refined by another process. Forming syngas from hydrocarbons and steam is a highly endothermic reaction requiring much heat. The rows of down-fired burners generate flames to provide the heat necessary for the reaction. Below such flames, furnace gases and combustion products flow downward and finally out through inlets of tunnels located in each cell.
In a typical down-fired burner furnace, the center cells have process tubes on either side, therefore there is twice as much heat transfer surface in a center cell than there is in an outer cell, which is lined with process tubes on one side and then refractory lined furnace wall on the other side. Further, the outer cells normally have fifty percent to sixty-five percent (50%-65%) of the firing rate when compared to the center cells and as a result, the outer cells only have fifty percent to sixty-five percent (50%-65%) of the mass flow rate of the center cell burners.
Multiple chambered, down-fired reforming furnaces have complex gas flow patterns. Open space between each individual process tube allows for combustion products from the down-fired burners to pass into the adjacent cell, and vice versa. The combustion product flow patterns can be strong enough to cause deflections of the burner flames which ultimately leads to uneven heating of the process tubes and excessive tube metal temperatures. This combustion product flow between adjacent cells is a result of unequal flow momentum from the mass flow rate discrepancy between the outer cells and the center cells.
The larger, center burners and the smaller, outer burners are both designed for the same air pressure loss. Assuming the burners are geometrically proportional to the flow, then the velocity of the gases exiting the burner tile will be the same for both sized burners. The gases exit through a burner discharge area at a certain velocity termed a burner discharge velocity. However, the mass flow rate of the outer cell burners will be fifty percent to sixty-five percent (50%-65%) of the mass flow rate of the center cell burners. As a result, the momentum of the combustion product flow from the outer cell burners will also be fifty percent to sixty-five percent (50%-65%) of the center cell burners. The higher momentum of the center cell burners creates a lower static pressure zone at the burner discharge area near the top of the center cells than is present at the top of the outer cells. This static pressure difference causes the combustion products from the outer cells to flow toward the center cells. The combustion product flow also causes the flames from the outer cell burners to bend toward the process tubes of the center cells and in many cases, the flames cause the metal of the process tubes to overheat. Reducing the temperature of the process tubes would require reducing the firing rate of the burners which would ultimately limit the capacity of the furnace.
The foregoing gas flow problems are known in the art. Joshi et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,686,611 B2 discloses a method and apparatus for generating straightened flames in a furnace. The method and corresponding apparatus involves the addition of oxidant conduits to introduce an oxidant to the fuel.
DiMartino, Sr., et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,795,148 also attempts to cure the problem of unstable flame patterns and finds that wind external to the furnace is a contributing factor to the problem. DiMartino teaches an apparatus that controls the amount of air received by the furnace burners and provides uniform air pressure going to the burners.
However, neither Joshi et al., nor DiMartino, Sr. et al., nor the other prior art account for the mass flow discrepancy between the center cell burners and the outer cell burners.
It is therefore desirable to provide a method for use in a furnace which provides for substantially uniform temperatures between the multiple rows of process tubes, without the process tubes overheating.
It is further desirable to provide a method for use in a furnace which provides for the combustion product flow to have a substantially uniform momentum across outer cells and center cells.
It is further desirable to provide a method for reducing burner flame deflection and resulting impingement of flames on process tubes in a furnace.

Method for optimizing down fired reforming furnaces


The disclosure relates to an enhanced Doherty amplifier that provides significant performance improvements over conventional Doherty amplifiers. The enhanced Doherty amplifier includes a power splitter, combining node, a carrier path, and a peaking path. The power splitter is configured to receive an input signal and split the input signal into a carrier signal provided at a carrier splitter output and a peaking signal provided at a peaking splitter output. The carrier path includes carrier power amplifier circuitry, a carrier input network coupled between the carrier splitter output and the carrier power amplifier circuitry, and a carrier output network coupled between the carrier power amplifier circuitry and the Doherty combining node. The peaking path includes peaking power amplifier circuitry, a peaking input network coupled between the peaking splitter output and the peaking power amplifier circuitry, and a carrier output network coupled between the power amplifier circuitry and the Doherty combining node.

As current mobile communication systems evolve and new communications systems are developed, there is continuing demand for more powerful and efficient power amplifiers that are capable of operating over broader frequency ranges. Many of these communication systems employ mobile devices and access points, such as base stations, that are battery powered. For such communication devices, more efficient power amplifiers yield longer operating times between battery charges.
Further, the transmit power levels for mobile devices and especially access points are continuing to increase at the same time that sizes of these devices are shrinking. As the power levels increase, the amount of heat that is generated during amplification generally increases. Therefore, designers are faced with dissipating greater quantities of heat from shrinking communication devices or reducing the amount of heat generated by the power amplifiers therein. More efficient power amplifiers are preferred because they generate less heat than less efficient power amplifiers at corresponding power levels, and thus reduce the amount of heat to dissipate during operation.
Given the ever increasing demand for efficiency, the Doherty amplifier has become a popular power amplifier in mobile communication applications, especially base station applications. While relatively efficient compared to its rivals, the Doherty amplifier has a relatively limited bandwidth of operation. For example, a well-designed Doherty amplifier may provide an instantaneous bandwidth of 5 percent, which corresponds to about 100 MHz for a 2 GHz signal and is generally sufficient to support a single communication band. For example, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS) devices operate in a band between 2.11 and 2.17 GHz, and thus require an instantaneous bandwidth of 60 MHz (2.17 GHz-2.11 GHz). A Doherty amplifier can be configured to support an instantaneous bandwidth of 60 MHz for the UMTS band. Accordingly, for communication devices that only need to support a single communication band, the limited operating bandwidth of the Doherty power amplifier poses no problems.
However, modern communication devices are often required to support various communication standards that employ different modulation techniques over a wide range of operating frequencies. These standards include but are not limited to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Personal Communication Service (PCS), Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Long Term Evolution (LTE), and the like.
The bands of operation for these standards range from around 800 MHz to 4 GHz for consumer telecommunication applications and from 20 MHz to 6 GHz for military applications. The GSM standards alone employ bands ranging from around 800 MHz to 2 GHz. For example, GSM-850 uses an 824-894 MHz band, GSM-900 uses an 890-960 MHz band, GSM-1800 uses a 1710-1880 MHz band, and GSM-1900 uses an 1850-1990 MHz band. UMTS uses a 2.11-2.17 GHz band. LTE uses a 2.6-2.7 GHz band, and WiMAX uses bands centered about 2.3, 2.5, 3.3 and 3.5 GHz. Thus, for devices that need to support multiple communication bands, a single Doherty amplifier is not sufficient.
For communication devices that support multiple standards over disparate communication bands, designers often employ multiple power amplifier chains for each of the different communication bands, which increases the size, cost, and complexity of the communication devices. As such, there is a need to increase the effective operating range of a Doherty power amplifier to support multiple communication bands, which are spread over a significant frequency range, while maintaining the efficiency afforded by current Doherty power amplifier designs.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


An aircraft region comprising a main aisle extending along a longitudinal axis of an aircraft cabin, a door aisle extending along a transverse axis of the aircraft cabin substantially perpendicularly to the main aisle and an aircraft monument arranged in the door aisle and comprising at least one flight attendant seat facing a section of the main aisle adjoining the door aisle.

The invention relates to an aircraft region formed in particular by a region of an aircraft cabin.
A passenger cabin of a modern commercial aircraft normally comprises at least one main aisle extending along a longitudinal axis of the passenger cabin. Running perpendicularly to the main aisle is at least one door aisle which connects the main aisle to an aircraft door. A lateral boundary of the door aisle can be formed by a side wall of a monument adjoining the door aisle. Such an aircraft region arrangement is described, for example, in DE 10 2011 013 049 A1 or WO 2012/119718 A1.
Furthermore, the passenger cabin of a commercial aircraft is normally equipped with flight attendant seats on which flight attendants can sit during take-off and landing as well as during turbulences and breaks of the aircraft. The flight attendant seats are normally arranged in the door regions of the aircraft cabin. From DE 10 2008 009 938 A1 or US 2009/206200 A1 there is known, for example, a flight attendant seat, the backrest of which adjoins a side wall of a monument, for example a toilet module, and which has a folding seat element pivotable relative to the backrest.


A slide track includes a slide track includes an inner track and a positioning member. The inner track includes a limiting groove and two positioning holes spaced from the limiting groove. The inner track further includes a hollow portion. The positioning holes are located between the limiting groove and the hollow portion. The positioning member further includes a stop portion and a pressing portion respectively extending away from two opposite sides of a base. The base includes two opposite faces between the stop portion and the pressing portion. A connection portion is formed on each opposite face of the base. A positioning portion is connected to each connection portion. Each positioning portion is positioned in one of the positioning holes of the inner track. The pressing portion is aligned with the hollow portion of the inner track. The stop portion is aligned with the limiting groove of the inner track.

The present invention relates to a slide track with a positioning effect and, more particularly, to a slide track including an inner track and a positioning member assembled with the inner track by snap-fitting.
In installation of a server of a rack-mounted computer server system to a slide track, an engagement button on a side of the server is inserted downwards into and, thus, engages in an engagement groove of the slide track, and a positioning member on the slide track positions the engagement button to prevent the engagement button from disengaging from the engagement groove.
However, the positioning member is generally connected to the slide track by riveting or screwing, which is troublesome. Furthermore, in use of the positioning member, the positioning member deforms to permit passage of the engagement button, and the engagement button is positioned after passing through the positioning member, leading to the risk of damage to the positioning member. Furthermore, replacement of the positioning member is not easy when the positioning member is riveted or screwed to the track.
Thus, a need exists for a novel slide track overcoming the problems and disadvantages of the prior art.

Kunshan Lemtech Slide Technology Co., Ltd.


System (1) for providing indication of the position of a refuelling boom (2) in a tanker aircraft relative to a receptacle (17) in a receiver aircraft during refuelling operations, in particular in the approximation operation, the system (1) comprising a plurality of light emitting devices (23-33) mountable on the boom (2), each emitting device (23-33) providing a respective visible light beam, said light beams providing spots of incidence (3-13) when contacting the receptacle (17) in the receptor aircraft, in such a manner that the position of the spots of incidence (3-13) on the receptacle (17) varies depending on the position of the refuelling boom (2) relative to the receiver aircraft in the approximation operation. The invention also relates to a method for the approximation operation of a refuelling boom (2) in a tanker aircraft to a receptacle (17) in a receiver aircraft operating such a system (1).

For in-flight refuelling operations, one usual method is based on the use of a boom device for interconnecting a tanker aircraft with a receiver aircraft or receptor in flight, which is basically a telescopic or extensible tube attached to the underside of the tanker aircraft by means of an articulation element, that provides fuel passage from the tanker aircraft to the receiver aircraft. At the tanker aircraft, the operator controls visually all steps and procedures for a safe refuelling operation. From the tanker, the operator controls the boom movements and therefore manipulates the boom until it makes a physical connection with the receptacle of the approaching receptor aircraft. Once the refuelling operation is finished in a certain session, the boom is hoisted up to its secured position in the tanker aircraft.
This operation, in particular the approximation operation of the boom relative to the receiver aircraft, is very sensitive and must be effected in a very precise and accurate way because of security reasons.
Typically, and used in the field of robotics, sensing apparatus comprising laser light generators and ultrasound sensors are used for generating signals usable for guiding a robot. This is disclosed, for example, in document U.S. Pat. No. 7,283,892. Ultrasound sensors used in the field of in-flight refuelling operations have the problem of the in-flight air velocity disturbing the sensor measurements, being this problem aggravated by the object being moving.
Another possibility is to use distance measurement by laser interferometry, as it is for example disclosed in documents WO 03/058158, EP 1750086, EP 0469718, EP 0027763 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,828,456. This system is not, however, applied to the field of refuelling.
The present invention comes to solve the above-mentioned drawbacks.

Indication system and method for refuelling operations


An image processing apparatus includes a control portion and an output portion. The control portion sets a letter included in a document as a target letter, and performs connection processing of connecting the target letter and a next letter to each other with a connection line without changing the font of the target letter and without changing the font of the next letter, the next letter being a letter positioned immediately after the target letter in order of alignment in a writing direction. The output portion outputs the document after the connection processing is performed on the document.

The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus and a method for controlling the image processing apparatus.
Conventionally, personal computers, image forming apparatuses, and so forth have been known as image processing apparatuses. These image processing apparatus are capable of outputting a document created by using word-processing software or the like. The conventional image processing apparatuses perform displaying, printing, etc. of the document.
For example, the conventional image processing apparatuses are provided with a function of converting the font of a letter in the document from the original font to a handwriting font (a script font). By using this function, it is possible to convert the letters in the document into handwritten-style letters (that is, it is possible to naturally connect two adjacent letters to each other).

Image processing apparatus and method for controlling image processing apparatus


A control loop detects the presence of cross-talk between first, second and third adjacent amplitude modulated wavelength division modulated channels of an optical communications system. A receiver including a demultiplexer, such as an Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG), receives portions of the energy in the channels to derive first, second and third electrical signals that are respectively replicas of the modulation of the first, second and third channels. Wavelength drift of the carried frequencies of the channels in detected by comparing the three signals in an electronic combinatorial logic unit.

In an optical communications system a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) scheme can be employed. To this end, the optical communications system can comprise a demultiplexer, for example an AWG. The AWG comprises an input port for receiving a multiplexed optical signal comprising a number of wavelengths, each wavelength corresponding to a different communications channel. The AWG also comprises a plurality of output ports. The multiplexed optical signal is demultiplexed by the AWG, each communications channel being output by a different output port of the AWG.
Each of the different communications channels is separated from an adjacent communications channel by a predetermined channel spacing. The predetermined channel spacing is usually dictated by a technical standard relating to the WDM scheme employed. For example, the predetermined channel spacing presently specified by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is 100 GHz.
It is known that AWGs are susceptible to thermal variations that cause the optical energy of a first given channel at a first spatial position to encroach upon/drift into a second given channel at a second spatial position adjacent the first channel. The AWG is linear and so when shifting of the given channel to a second spatial position occurs within the AWG, such shifting occurs for all of the channels present.
As the predetermined channel spacing between adjacent channels decreases, the impact of wavelength drift between adjacent channels, i.e. cross-talk, increases.
In order to obviate cross-talk, fine temperature control of the AWG is necessary. Typically, a control loop is provided coupled to a thermoelectric cooler, the thermoelectric cooler being coupled to the AWG. In order to implement control, it is clearly necessary to monitor the temperature to provide a feedback signal. It is known to use a thermistor to provide such feedback of temperature of the AWG. However, using thermistors, it is difficult to control the temperature of the AWG to within less than one degree Celsius.

Method of detecting the presence of cross-talk and apparatus therefor


A trench MOSFET layout with multiple trenched floating gates and at least one trenched channel stop gate in termination area shorted with drain region is disclosed to make it feasibly achieved after die sawing. The layout consisted of multiple trench MOSFETs connected together with multiple sawing trenched gates across a space between two trench MOSFETs having a width same as scribe line. Dummy cells formed between an edge trench and active area act as buffer cells to absorb avalanche energy when gate bias is increasing for turning on channel, therefore, the UIS failure issue is avoided and the avalanche capability of the trench MOSFET is enhanced.

In U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,519,477 and 8,487,372, trench MOSFETs were disclosed having body and source regions between trench gates in active area (as shown in FIG. 1A), multiple floating trench gates (FTG) and channel stop trench gates (CSTG) surrounding the active area in termination area and sawing trench gates (SWTG) across scribe line area (as shown in FIG. 1B and FIG. 1C). The prior arts structures in termination area are used to avoid channeling between drain and source.
FIG. 1E is a top view of the trench MOSFETs of the prior arts. After the UIS (Unclamped Inductance Switching) test, failed sites always occur near an edge of the active area of the trench MOSFET, as shown in FIG. 1E, which is resulted from the turning on of the parasitic bipolar transistor, as illustrated in FIG. 1D (U.S. patent Ser. No. 08/680,610). The trenched gates in an edge trench (as illustrated in FIG. 1E) near the edge of the active area are turned on first when bias voltage on a gate metal runner is increasing for turning on a channel region, resulting in the parasitic bipolar transistor turning on first near the edge of the active area, thus weakening the avalanche capability of the trench MOSFET.
Therefore, there is still a need in the art of the semiconductor device and design and fabrication, particularly for trench MOSFET design and fabrication, to provide a novel cell structure, device configuration that would resolve the difficulties mentioned above. Specifically, it would be desirable to provide a new and improved device configuration to enhance the avalanche capability of semiconductor power devices.

Trench MOSFETs having dummy cells for avalanche capability improvement


The present invention relates to 7-membered nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds and methods of making the same. Using a novel aza-[4+3] cycloaddition reaction, the 7-membered heterocyclic compounds are synthesized by reacting a first reactant and a second reactant. Exemplary first reactants and second reactants include α-halohydroxamates and dienes, respectively.

The [4+3] cycloaddition reaction of oxyallylcations with dienes has been intensively studied over the last five decades. This reaction has become a premier method for the construction of 7-membered carbocyclic compounds and has found numerous applications in target directed synthesis.
In addition to 7-membered carbocyclic compounds, 7-membered heterocyclic molecules, such as 7-membered nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds, are also of interest as targets possessing useful biological activity or as synthetic intermediates. However, a [4+3] cycloaddition reaction has yet to be developed to prepare 7-membered nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds.
Accordingly, a need exists for new 7-membered nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds and methods of synthesizing said 7-membered nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds.

Nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compounds and methods of making the same

Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education, on Behalf of the University of Nevada, Reno


Methods and systems for characterizing two or more nucleic acids in a sample. The method can include the steps of providing a hybrid machine learning approach that enables rapid and automated deconvolution of DNA mixtures of multiple contributors. The input is analyzed by an expert system which is implemented in the form of a rule set. The rule set establishes requirements based on expectations on the biology and methods used. The methods and systems also include a machine learning algorithm that is either incorporated into the expert system, or utilizes the output of the expert system for analysis. The machine learning algorithm can be any of a variety of different algorithms or combinations of algorithms used to perform classification in a complex data environment.

The present invention relates to methods for identifying nucleic acid in a sample and, more particularly, to methods and systems for performing DNA mixture interpretation using a hybrid machine learning approach.
At the core of the genetic identification field, particularly in regard to forensic applications and clinical/medical research, is the challenge of DNA mixture interpretation. A DNA sample mixture can be defined as a mixture of two or more biological samples, and mastery of their interpretation can greatly impact the course of criminal investigations and/or quality of intelligence. The two primary components of mixture analysis are at least: (1) the identification of the minimum number of contributors to the sample, followed by (2) an attempt at mixture deconvolution.
Although historically expert systems have been in use for this problem, they often fail to meet the needs of the community, and there is continued demand by forensic communities for reliable methods of automation for mixture interpretation. The present state-of-the-art in DNA mixture interpretation includes expert systems which often have limited use, primarily focusing on improving the timeliness of analysis performed by forensic analysts. These systems capture the computational aspects of mixture analysis without taking more subjective factors into account. Further, these systems are used for simple mixtures, typically of two individuals (and thus low complexity). Although more advanced systems capable of analyzing 3-4 individual mixtures exists, these systems are both time- and cost-prohibitive.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for methods and systems that perform complicated DNA mixture interpretation in both a time-effective and cost-effective manner.

System and method for inter-species DNA mixture interpretation


Disclosed herein are the methods of using di-cationic or di-anionic compounds, which are derived from primary amine through an aza-Michael addition with an activated olefin, in a corrosion control composition to mitigate corrosion of a surface in a water system. The disclosed methods or compositions are found to be more effective than those methods or compositions including commonly used single quaternary compounds for mitigating corrosion for a metal surface in water systems.

Quaternary ammonium compounds comprise an important subcategory of surfactants because they contain unique properties. A main distinction between quaternary ammonium compounds and other surfactants is their unique structure. Quaternary ammonium compounds consist mainly of two moieties, a hydrophobic group, e.g., long alkyl group, and a quaternary ammonium salt group. The unique positive charge of the ammonium plays a key role, e.g., electrostatic interactions, between the surfactant and surface.
Industrial water systems employ process water to serve many different purposes but may be prone to microbial contamination and fouling. Metal surfaces in any water system are prone to corrosion, partly due to microbial contamination and fouling.
Corrosion inhibitors are often added into a water system to protect its metal surfaces infrastructure, such as carbon steel pipelines, from corrosion. However, the quaternary ammonium compounds used for such purposes are often bis quaternary species or species quaternized with benzyl chloride and are known to be very hazardous. In additional, governmental regulations exist to release any water containing single quaternary compounds into the environment.
Therefore, there is a continuing need for different or alternative quaternary ammonium compounds that are better and safer corrosion control agents.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the present disclosure to develop novel corrosion control agents having improved corrosion control properties.
It is a further objective of the disclosure to develop methods and corrosion control compositions to make the corrosion in a water system more efficient and effective.
These and other objects, advantages and features of the present disclosure will become apparent from the following specification taken in conjunction with the claims set forth herein.

Use of di-ionic compounds as corrosion inhibitors in a water system


A system, method and computer program product for solving a problem based on ontology methods for data/knowledge presentation and processing, may be implemented in a linguistic processing module. The basic components of the linguistic processing module may be a linguistic knowledge base (KB), an ontology KB, and/or an expert KB. The problem solved may include a user or an inventor problem. The method may include storing a user query which may include a structured, or a non-structured description, parsing a non-structured query to create a structured query including a formal semantic representation of the query, semantically expanding the formal semantic representation, searching the expert KB using the formal semantic representations to local solutions for the problem, and semantically sorting the solutions to produce a list of solutions of the problem.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to solution automation of inventor and user problems, and more particularly, to using semantic methods of information and knowledge representation and processing for solving such problems.
2. Related Art
Solving inventor problems and technical problems of a user may require, first of all, good information support, i.e. operative access to information or knowledge. Good information support can answer how to solve the problem or can facilitate providing information related to the solution of the problem (for example, information in another knowledge domain, in the same knowledge domain but in other type of system, etc.) that is able to point to the inventor or user the needed direction for the solution search. Conventionally, computer based information retrieval may be performed by means of a search engine.
In unsophisticated information retrieval systems, a search may be performed by searching for the presence of key words (inputted by the user) in documents contained in a database. This kind of search may be characterized by low precision and recall. Modern information retrieval systems should provide the user the possibility of formulating a query in natural language, i.e. the systems should have a natural language user interface. Then, the automatic linguistic analysis of the query is performed and its formal representation created. The linguistic analysis can be performed at different levels of depth of natural language. This analysis, in an ideal case, should include the semantic level. It is important to recognize not only relations between different elements of the query (usually, the most informative elements), but as well the relations between query elements and the corresponding components from an outer world model or a certain knowledge domain. Thus, it became desirable to use semantic relations between concepts, described in models of knowledge representation such as a thesaurus or ontology, to improve information retrieval system performance in different manners in various applications.
Ontology is a hierarchical lexical structure where concepts expressed by words or word-combinations are defined and are linked with semantic relations. Ontologies can be domain-specific or general depending on the terms they describe and attempt to reflect a human's knowledge about the specific domain or the surrounding world. Since ontology represents a valuable and extensive set of data, ontology can be successfully used in information retrieval to improve the precision and the recall of search results.
Some information retrieval systems like the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,675,159 B1 ("the '159 patent"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, use ontologies to index collections of documents with ontology-based predicate structures. The system of the '159 patent extracts the concepts behind user queries to return only the documents that match these concepts. The system has the capabilities of an ontology-based search system and it can search for logically structured groupings of items from the ontology. For example, from an exemplary query "What is the current situation of the stock market?" an attribute extractor extracts direct attributes "current", "situation", "stock", and "market" from the query. The attribute extractor can also, e.g., expand attribute "stock" to "finance", "banks", "brokerages", "Wall Street", etc. by using an ontology that contains hierarchically-arranged concepts.
The information presented in a knowledge base search and retrieval system, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,821, ("the '821 patent") and the related document knowledge base research and retrieval system, described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,460,034 B1, ("the '034 patent") (the contents of both of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties) use a knowledge base (that stores associations among terminology/categories that have a lexical, semantic or usage association.) for document theme vectors identification (by inferring topics from terminology of a document), document classification in categories and are also able to retrieve a relevant document in response to a query by expanding query terms and the theme with the help of the knowledge base. The '034 system includes factual knowledge base queries as well as concept knowledge base queries. The factual knowledge base queries identify, in response to a query, the relevant themes, and the documents classified for those themes. In contrast, the concept knowledge base queries do not identify specific documents in response to a query, but identify the potential existence of a document by displaying associated categories and themes.
The content processing system of the '821 and '034 patents include a linguistic engine, a knowledge catalog processor, a theme vector processor, and a morphology section. The linguistic engine, which includes a grammar parser and a theme parser, processes the document set by analyzing the grammatical or contextual aspects of each document, as well as analyzing the stylistic and thematic attributes of each document. Specifically, the linguistic engine generates, as part of the structured output, contextual tags, thematic tags, and stylistic tags that characterize each document.
The knowledge base of the '821 and '034 patents is used to generate an expanded set of query terms, and the expanded query term set is used to select additional documents. To expand a query term using the knowledge base, the levels or tiers of the classification hierarchy as well as the knowledge base associations are used to select nodes within predefined criteria. In one embodiment, the query term strength is decreased based on the distance weight (e.g. query term weights are decreased by 50% for each point of semantic distance when expanding either to a more general category, (e.g. a parent category) or to an association), and all nodes with a resultant query term weight greater than one are selected. All child categories and terms beneath a node are selected.
However, the system of the '821 and '034 patents is oriented mainly to theme vector identification. The '034 system requires the documents from the retrieved database to be indexed with special contextual, thematic and stylistic tags and the query terms expansion based on ontology is used to retrieve additional documents taking into consideration its theme vector.
Ontology also is conventionally applied in database management systems. In International patent application publication No. WO-2003/030025A1 ("the '025 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, the database management system uses ontology to solve the problems of semantic heterogeneity, and semantic mismatch and query integration against distributed resources. The proposed solution to the problems of semantic heterogeneity is to formally specify the meaning of the terminology of each system using ontologies (shared and personal ones). Thus, the system of the '025 publication provides a distributed query solution for a network having a plurality of database resources. The network helps users to make queries which retrieve and join data from more than one resource, which may be of more than one type such as an SQL or XML database.
Consequently, ontology is used in the system of the '025 publication to disambiguate terminology vagueness while retrieving information from different heterogeneous information resources.
In U.S. patent application Publication No. 2002/0107844 A1 ("the '844 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, ontology is referred to be used in an information generation and retrieval system as an instrument that helps to build semantic representation of the sentence in the form of a conceptual graph. During the information request procedure, a natural language query of a user is transformed to the conceptual graph by analyzing sentence structure and semantic structure and then a conceptual graph in a database, which is nearest to the conceptual graph of the query with respect to sense is searched and semantic appropriateness is computed to display information indexed by the searched conceptual graph to the user.
Thus, the application of ontology in information retrieval implies conceptual graph building as well as the query and database conceptual graph comparison.
The method and apparatus for active information discovery and retrieval, described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,498,795 B1, ("the '795 patent"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, use an active network framework and an ontology-based information hierarchy for semantic structuring and automated information binding, and provide a symmetrical framework for information filtering and binding in the network. Queries from information requesters are directly routed to relevant information sources and contents from information providers are distributed to the destinations that expressed an interest in the information.
The method of the '795 patent implies creating content ontology instance trees and query ontology instance trees on each of the active network nodes. Active networks architecture and an ontology-based information hierarchy are used as the network and the semantic frameworks respectively. The system uses simple hypertext markup language (HTML) ontology extensions (SHOE). When a SHOE instance makes specific claims based upon a particular ontology, a software agent can draw on that particular ontology to infer knowledge that is not directly stated. The ontology provides context as implicit knowledge. SHOE tags allow defining new ontologies based on existing ones. The search operational model is applied on any part of sub-hierarchy of the ontology instance tree. Special coefficients are calculated to determine the probability of the child nodes of ontology to be accessed with the parent node of ontology.
Hence, ontology in the '795 patent is used for semantic structuring of the retrieved information, which implies previous annotation with ontological tags (using SHOE, both automatically or manually) of the information resources, and only then it is possible to retrieve information based on the ontology relations represented by SHOE tags.
In U.S. patent application Publication No. 2002/0116169 A1("the '169 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a method and apparatus for generating normalized representations of strings is described. Ontologies, thesauri, and terminological databases are used therein as means for normalization of semantic representation of the string.
The described method of the '169 publication attempts to increase the retrieval performance of information retrieval systems by suggesting use of ontology to semantically normalize query and database strings.
An ontology-based information management system and method, described in U.S. patent application Publication No. 2003/0177112, ("the '112 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, uses ontology to provide semantic mapping between entries in a structured data source, and concepts in an unstructured data source and includes processes for creating, validating, augmenting, and combining ontologies for life sciences, informatics and other disciplines. The system of the '112 publication proposes to use an ontology to enable effective syntactic and semantic mapping between mapping entities discovered using concept-based text searching, and those derived from data warehousing and mining in a plurality of disciplines.
The system of the '112 publication may evaluate the distance between a pair of terms in a given information space using an information retrieval engine capable of categorizing large document sets.
Nevertheless, the proposed method of the '112 publication is mainly oriented to managing information sources based on ontologies, which help to integrate structured and unstructured data. The information sources are the source of creating new ontologies combining them, etc. The information retrieval engine is based on the categorization of the data.
Ontology is also used for query expansion. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,822,731 ("the '731 patent"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a semantic network is applied to maximize the number of relevant documents identified during a query search by semantically expanding the search in response to the part of speech associated with each query term in the search.
In U.S. patent application Publication No. 2001/0003183 A1, ("the '183 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a method and apparatus for knowledgebase searching is described. Ontologies are an integral part of this system. A library of query templates and a dictionary that relates keywords to more abstract concepts are first prepared on a computer system. Each template contains one or more typed variables. A query is then generated by entering into the system one or more keywords. Each keyword is abstracted to concept (using different thesauri and ontologies). Each concept may be further refined by additional abstraction, or by picking one concept from several candidates, or by successive abstraction and rejection of different keywords until an acceptable concept is found. Next, for the concepts that are obtained, the system finds all query templates are then instantiated with those concepts or with the keywords used to form the concepts. The user then selects the most appropriate query from among the instantiated query templates. The system of the '183 publication may be applied in formulating queries to access any set of information sources. The '183 publication system is particularly useful to access distributed, heterogeneous databases which do not have a single standardized vocabulary or structure.
In fact, the latter three above-mentioned methods represent key word search expansion by means of ontology with different variations.
The method and device for supporting information retrieval by using ontology, and storage medium recording information retrieval support program, described in JP-2000222436, ("the '436 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, is designed to provide an information retrieval supporting method. The method is capable of dynamically preparing a database selection menu for selection of a database suited for retrieving information required by a user. The solution suggested by the author of the '436 publication is ontology describing the concept system of information managed by a database as tree structure of information concepts from a higher degree of abstraction to a lower degree of abstraction and a database selection menu for specifying the concept of information required to be retrieved by a user is dynamically generated by presenting concepts registered in the ontology stepwise from the higher degree of abstraction to the lower degree of abstraction.
Briefly, the method of the '436 publication suggests using ontology, reflecting database content, to help a user to specify the concept that is searched by refinement or generalization of the concept.
The method and system for query reformulation for searching of information is described in U.S. patent application Publication No. 20020147578 A1("the '578 publication"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The method provides reformulating the query by eliminating one or more non-interesting terms using semantic and syntactic information for one or more of the terms; and querying a database of information based upon the reformulated query. Numerous interrelated dictionaries, thesauri and ontologies are used in the course of processing each question.
Hence, ontology in the system of the '578 publication is a part of system that reformulates a query by eliminating non-informative terms.
Ontology is also applied in information retrieval systems to rank query feedback terms, as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,378 B1("the '378 patent"), the contents of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The information retrieval system processes the queries, identifies topics related to the query as well as query feedback terms, and then links both the topics and feedback terms to nodes of the knowledge base with corresponding terminological concepts. At least one focal node is selected from the knowledge base based on the topics to determine a conceptual proximity between the focal node and the query feedback nodes. Hierarchical relations from ontology are used to calculate semantic proximity between focal categories and query feedback terms. The query feedback terms are ranked based on conceptual proximity to the focal node.
Thus, in the '378 patent's information retrieval system, ontology is used for topic identification in the knowledge base and in the query and then for calculating the semantic proximity between query feedback terms and the node chosen from the database on the basis of determined topic.
Therefore, the idea of using ontology to improve information retrieval system performance is not new and it is disclosed in different manners in various patents. For example, some of the different manners disclosed include searching in structured and unstructured databases, document theme or topic identification, normalization of semantic representation of the string, search and integration of different types of data, query expansion, etc. As far as ontology use in query expansion is concerned, ontology is applied, generally, to expand keyword-based and concept-based search and hierarchical relations from ontology, and may be preponderantly used in a certain knowledge domain.

Method using ontology and user query processing to solve inventor problems and user problems