In an RF power LDMOS transistor comprising multiple pairs of parallel gate fingers (11) located on opposite side of an associated p+ sinker (23), and metal clamps (14) for short-circuiting the p+ sinkers (23), each gate finger (11) of a pair is associated with separate metal clamps (14) that short-circuit the n+ source region (20) and the p+ sinker (23) associated with particular gate finger (11). The separate metal clamps (14) associated with each gate finger pairs are separated by a slot (15) that extends between the parallel gate fingers (11), and a metal runner (13) extends in the slot (15) between the separate metal clamps (14) associated with each finger pair from a gate pad. Both gate fingers (11) of a gate finger pair are connected to the associated metal runner (13) at both ends and at predetermined positions along their lengths.

Discrete RF power LDMOS transistors are primarily used for building power amplifiers used in radio base stations.
A top view of a portion of the layout of a traditional RF power LDMOS transistor is illustrated in FIG. 1. The transistor comprises a number of parallel LDMOS transistor cells, two of which are shown in FIG. 1, where the cells are an interdigitated finger structure containing pairs of drain fingers 1, pairs of gate fingers 2 and source/bulk metal clamps 3. The drain fingers 1 and the gate fingers 2 are connected to a drain feeder bar 4 and a gate feeder bar 5, respectively, on opposite sides of the transistor cells as shown in FIG. 1. Traditional LDMOS Power transistors comprise a number of parallel cells.
However, third generation (3G) wireless systems set new demands on RF power transistors. Not only higher frequency (>2 GHz), which in itself is a challenge, but extreme demands on linearity has compelled designers of power amplifiers to use power transistors way below their rated maximum output power. It is at this backed off output power level the transistors must perform, i.e. have high gain and good efficiency.
These new demands have forced RF power transistor designers to leave the old "parallel cells" layout of the transistors and switch to a slightly different design. The 3G design uses only one interdigitated transistor cell, rotated 90 degrees compared to the orientation of the cells in the older design.
The largest benefit with this new design is a considerably reduced transistor periphery per active transistor area, which in turn results in lower output capacitance and improved efficiency.
In order to make the gate periphery equal to a transistor with multiple parallel cells, the single cell needs to be stretched in both dimensions, so that it contains many more fingers. In order to keep a decent aspect ratio of the transistor die, the fingers also need to be much longer.
The principle for the 3G design is shown in FIG. 2 which is a top view of a portion of the layout of a known 3G RF power LDMOS transistor. Pairs of drain fingers 6, of which only one pair is shown in FIG. 2, are connected to a common drain bond pad (not shown). Pairs of gate fingers 7, of which only one pair is shown in FIG. 2, are interconnected at their ends and at predetermined positions along their lengths by pieces of a first metal layer. One such interconnection piece 8 is shown in FIG. 2. Source/bulk metal clamps 9, also produced from said first metal layer, extend over the pair of gate fingers 7 between the interconnection pieces.
As described above, the 3G design is unavoidably associated with longer fingers. This is a problem especially on the gate side of the transistor. The gate fingers are usually made of highly doped polysilicon, possibly with a layer of metal silicide on top, in order to reduce the resistivity. However, the resistance in the gate fingers is far from negligible, and at some point the length of the gate fingers will affect transistor performance negatively.
The way this problem has been solved in the known 3G design of the transistor is by introducing a second metal layer. By doing this, one can design a metal runner 10 on top of the source/bulk clamps 9. The metal runner 10 is isolated from the clamps 9 by a dielectric layer (not shown in FIG. 2), and is connected to the pair of gate fingers 7 at predetermined positions along the length of gate fingers 7 via the interconnection piece 8 as well as at their respective ends. One end of the metal runners 10 is connected to a common gate bond pad (not shown).
Hereby, the effective length of each gate finger will be equal to half the distance between two gate interconnection pieces.
However, the introduction of the second metal layer in the transistor design adds complexity both to the design and to the production process. In this connection, it should be pointed out that in FIG. 2, the drain fingers 6 are made up of two metal layers, namely the second metal layer on top of the first metal layer. Two extra mask steps together with a number of extra process steps need to be added to the production process of the transistor die.

RF power LDMOS transistor with multiple gate fingers


A method of and system for authenticating concealed and statistically varying multi-dimensional data comprising: acquiring an initial measurement of an item, wherein the initial measurement is subject to measurement error; applying a transformation to the initial measurement to generate reference template data; acquiring a subsequent measurement of an item, wherein the subsequent measurement is subject to measurement error; applying the transformation to the subsequent measurement; and calculating a Euclidean distance metric between the transformed measurements; wherein the calculated Euclidean distance metric is identical to a Euclidean distance metric between the measurement prior to transformation.

The present invention relates to authentication of concealed data without converting the data to its unconcealed form.
Note that the following discussion refers to a number of publications by author(s) and year of publication, and that due to recent publication dates certain publications are not to be considered as prior art vis-a-vis the present invention. Discussion of such publications herein is given for more complete background and is not to be construed as an admission that such publications are prior art for patentability determination purposes.
In many situations, it is desirable to authenticate data without revealing the data in detail. For instance, a party to a multilateral treaty might want to convince monitoring inspectors of the treaty that collected data represents a particular weapon type without revealing a detailed gamma spectrum of the weapon, which may in fact be classified. Even if the classified data can be kept private via an alternative representation, consistent correspondence between the classified and unclassified representations may reveal too much information about the weapon. As another example, the government may wish to utilize an information hiding mechanism to mitigate the concern of the private sector in providing proprietary information for national infrastructure protection.
Encryption alone cannot solve this problem. Additionally, certain data are prone to statistical variation, thus creating difficulties for consistent authentication results using standard digital authentication techniques. Gamma spectra are also examples of statistically variant data where measurements of the same sample with the same equipment will result in different spectra due to Poisson noise conditions.
Finally, public key cryptographic techniques are often useful in situations where one authenticating party seeks to convince multiple verifying parties or when the origination of data must be verifiable, thus providing non-repudiation. The present invention permits use of digital public key mechanisms to authenticate data prone to statistical variation and ability to hide data details while still proving the authenticity and integrity of the data.
Although the weapon inspection problem will be used as the primary exemplary application of the present invention, other applications exist with a similar problem set. For example, the use of biometrics (fingerprint, retina scan, voice patterns, etc.) to enable or authorize a certain function, such as entrance into a building, faces similar challenges. A biometric reading from the same individual using the same equipment will likely be slightly different each time. Moreover, the use of biometric information may have privacy implications that drive the need for hiding the detailed biometric information itself.
Generally speaking, any authentication process will have two steps. The first step is to initialize the authentication system by acquiring a reliable template of the item in question. In the weapon inspection application, this will be a representative weapon from the class of treaty-limited items. In the biometric application, initialization requires verification of the individual using information such as a birth certificate, driver's license, fingerprint, or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sample, and acquisition of the initial biometric. The initialization step requires that the representative item (e.g., weapon or person) be certified to truly be a member of the class. This generally requires additional off-line inspection processes that will not be discussed further.
With the acquisition of an authentic template of monitored items, subsequent inspections can occur in the second part of the process. In the weapon authentication application, the basic problem is to make a class association as opposed to differentiating between individual weapons of the same class. In the biometric application, the original biometric is used as a template for subsequent authentication of the individual.
An approach developed for use in biometric identification utilizes error correction coding techniques. G. I. Davida, et al., "On Enabling Secure Applications Through Off-line Biometric Identification", Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, Oakland, Calif. (May 1998). It uses majority coding to construct a template of a biometric that is known to vary between measurements. Majority coding takes a number of measurements (preferably odd) and assigns each bit of the template to the value that is most often represented in the measurements using a majority rule. The template is then encoded into a code vector with a specified amount of redundancy. The amount of redundancy and the encoding technique used determines how many bits can be corrected in the template. In other words, if a vector does not perfectly match any codeword (template), then the closest codeword (in a Hamming sense) is generally assigned. The distance between codewords is representative of the number of correctable bits as well. A similar method is employed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,315, to Strait, et al., entitled "Method and System for Normalizing Biometric Variations to Authenticate Users from a Public Database and that Ensures Individual Biometric Data Privacy."
During verification, the same majority coding technique is used to acquire a biometric representative from a number of measurements. Since majority coding is a bit-oriented technique, the idea is to use it to acquire a representative test biometric. The hope is that is it within a specified Hamming distance of the original biometric template. If the representative is close enough to the template, it can be decoded into the exact biometric using bounded distance decoding.
A speech scrambling invention uses a data hiding technique that is similar to the method described herein. V. Senk, et al., "A New Speech Scrambling Concept Based on Hadamard Matrices", IEEE Signal Processing Letters 4(6): 161-163 (June 1997). However, the present invention constrains the input signal via scaling and centering prior to permuted transformation and they propose no authentication of the output signal. Scaling and centering of the input signal allows strong statements about the security of the invention. Independent of the permutation key and input spectrum, the output of the constrained permuted transform is consistent with a realization of Gaussian white noise. Hence, the distribution of the components of the output signal is substantially non-informative about the input signal.

Authenticating concealed private data while maintaining concealment


A process for delivering a predetermined ratio of a compressible fluid and a non-compressible fluid which comprises the measurement of only the flowrate of the compressible fluid, the activation of an air-driven positive displacement pump at appropriate times, the pumping of a non-compressible fluid with the air-driven pump, mixing the supercritical fluid and non-compressible fluid and depositing the mixture onto a substrate.

The use of supercritical fluids as a transport medium for the manufacture of surface coatings is well known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,923,720 discloses the use of supercritical fluids to reduce the consistency of viscous coating compositions to allow for their application as liquid sprays.
A particular type of coating commonly used in industrial applications is a mold release agent. Mold release agents find use in such varied arts as molding plastics, resins and elastomers, baking food products and coating surfaces, all of which utilize a release surface to prevent the adhesion of plastics, resins, food products and coatings, as the case may be, to the substrate to which they are supplied or applied.
One common method of applying a mold release agent to a substrate is to spray the agent onto the mold. The use of a supercritical fluid as a viscosity reduction medium in mold release spray applications has become more common with the environmental hazards associated with solvents and other volatile organic compounds.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,107 discloses a mold release coating process and apparatus using supercritical fluids. In either batch or continuous processes, predetermined amounts of supercritical fluid and mold release agent are both measured prior to mixing and being sprayed onto a substrate.
Measurement of the supercritical fluid flowrate may be accomplished by a variety of methods as the physical properties of the fluid are predictable. However measurement of the mold release agent is more complicated. Mold release agents are commonly waxes suspended in a solvent. The mixture has a viscosity which varies widely with shear rate, which increases the difficulty of flow measurement. The wax suspended in the solvent also tends to settle out or agglomerate and clog passageways in typical measurement metering devices, thus rending these devices unreliable.
Therefore it is of particular interest in the art to supply a controlled amount of a mold release agent to be mixed with a supercritical fluid which does not require the use of multiple flow meters to measure both the supercritical and non-compressible fluid.

Supercritical ratio control system utilizing a sonic flow venturi and an air-driven positive displacement pump

Union Carbide Chemicals & Plastics Technology Corporation


A small-sized motor for electric power steering, in which coil connection can be easily performed with space saving, and a method for manufacturing the motor. Multi-phase stator coils assembled in a stator coil are connected per phase by connecting rings at coil ends of the stator coils. A bus bar supplied with electric power from the exterior is stacked onto the connecting rings in the axial direction of the motor and is electrically connected to the connecting rings.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a motor for electric power steering and a method for manufacturing the motor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a motor for electric power steering, which is suitable for a motor having multi-phase stator coils and includes connecting members per phase and among phases, and to a method for manufacturing the motor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a known motor, winding conductors are interconnected per phase to constitute multi-phase stator coils, and the stator coils are electrically connected to power harnesses per phase. Then, the power harnesses are withdrawn out of the motor.
As disclosed in, e.g., JP-A-2003-134724, there is also known a motor in which winding conductors are interconnected by flat-plate conductors per phase to constitute multi-phase stator coils, and the flat-plate conductors are withdrawn out of the motor.

Motor for electric power steering and method for manufacturing the same


In a method and apparatus for protecting a plurality of same semiconductor switching elements used in a PWM inverter from being overheated, a junction temperature rise T.sub.n of one of the switching elements is derived on the basis of an output frequency of the inverter (.omega. c), an output current (I) of the inverter, and a control factor (a) and when T.sub.n >T.sub.nref, the overheat in the corresponding switching element occurs so that a gate signal for each switching element is not inputted or an PWM off duty ratio on a pulse duty ratio of the gate signal is increased to limit the output current of the inverter.

The present invention relates to apparatus and method for protecting switching elements used in an inverter from being overheated applicable to a vector control system for an induction motor.
In a case where an induction motor is driven by means of the inverter, either one of upper or lower positioned switching element in one arm of the inverter is conducted (turned on). In a low frequency driving of the motor, the duration of time during which either of the upper or lower positioned switching element is relatively long, so that a temperature ripple in an internal junction of the one of the switching elements becomes large. In detail, as an output frequency of the inverter becomes low, the element internal junction temperature becomes higher if a total loss of the one of the switching elements remains unchanged.
FIGS. 5A and 5B show change patterns of the output current of the inverter and the temperature ripple of the switching element junction temperature during a normal driving (relatively high frequency driving) of the induction motor.
FIG. 5C and 5D show change patterns of the output current of the inverter and the temperature ripple of the switching element junction temperature during the low frequency driving of the same motor where an effective value of the output current is equal to the case of FIG. 5A.
As shown in FIGS. 5A to 5D, the junction temperature of the switching element becomes high during the on state of the switching element and becomes low during the off state thereof. That is to say, the temperature rise and drop are repeated for each of a half period of the output frequency. The difference between the maximum temperature and the minimum temperature is called the temperature ripple. In the case of the low frequency driving as shown in FIG. 5B, the duration of time during which the one of the switching elements is conducted (turned on) or turned off becomes long so that the temperature ripple becomes large.
Japanese Patent Application First Publication No. Heisei 7-255166 published on Oct. 3, 1995 exemplifies a method for protecting power switching elements used in an inverter.
In the disclosed power switching element protecting method, an output current of the inverter to a load (induction motor) is detected by means of a current detector to protect the switching elements from being overheated and a controller for the inverter is installed in which an on-and-off control for each of the switching elements is carried out so that the output current does not exceed a predetermined current value.
For example, a time limit characteristic of each switching element used for controlling the on-and-off of the switching elements is such that as time passes, the output current (load current) becomes lower. That is to say, each of the switching elements is protected from being overheated by providing a limit for the magnitude of the output current of the inverter and the duration of the output current flow.
However, since only the magnitude of the output current and a casing temperature of the one of the switching element are detected and read in the above-described Japanese Patent Application Publication, it is not sufficient for each of the switching elements to be protected from being overheated in such a low frequency, a large current driving situation as described above.

Method and apparatus for protecting switching element of inverter from being overheated


Disclosed is a dispersion liquid containing fine cellulose fiber capable of uniform dispersion in an organic solution or resin and capable of use in electronic components. Further disclosed are a laminate body and a cellulose film obtained from fine cellulose fibers with improved water resistance. Further disclosed are a fine cellulose fiber dispersion liquid which forms a film as an undercoat of a base material, in particular of a base material made from naturally occurring materials such as polylactic acid, wherein said film has an improved adhesiveness with respect to said base material; and a laminate body using the same. The fine cellulose fiber dispersion liquid contains at least fine cellulose fibers, and either an ammonia or an organic alkali.

In recent years, various natural polysaccharides, such as naturally occurring starch, cellulose, chitin/chitosan, and derivatives thereof, have attracted attention as biomass materials, relative to conventional petroleum-based resins, with increasing concerns about environmental issues. In addition, base materials formed by biodegradable resins, which are decomposable into water and carbon dioxide in the environment, also attract attention and are commercially available. Specific examples thereof include aliphatic polyesters yielded by microorganisms, various polysaccharides such as naturally-occurring starch, cellulose, chitin/chitosan, and derivatives thereof, biodegradable resins completely obtained by chemical synthesis, and polylactic acids obtained by polymerizing lactic acid derived from a starch or other raw materials.
Among the above, the cellulose, which is yielded in the largest quantity on earth, attracts attention as a functional material, because the cellulose is fibriform, has a high crystallinity, a high strength, and a low linear expansion coefficient, and is excellent in chemical stability and living body safety. Particularly, a fine cellulose fiber has been applied in a paper-strengthening agent, a filter aid, a food additive, or the like, and actively developed in recent years.
As a manufacturing method of the fine cellulose fiber, Patent Document 1, for example, discloses a fibrillating (pulverizing) method in which a cellulose suspension is sprayed under a high-pressure of 100 MPa or higher and thereby reducing the pressure.
Patent Document 2 discloses a method for obtaining a fine cellulose fiber by dispersing a cellulose in a medium, the cellulose having carboxyl groups obtained by partially oxidizing hydroxyl groups of the cellulose using a TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidinoxy radical) catalyst. The method makes it possible to obtain, with relative ease, the fine cellulose fiber having a type I cellulose crystalline structure by utilizing electronic repulsion of the carboxy groups having negative electrical charges.
Patent Document 3 disclose a method for obtaining an epoxy resin composite by adding a modified fine cellulose fiber to an epoxy resin, the modified fine cellulose fiber being obtained by treating a fine cellulose fiber with an organic onium compound, the fine cellulose fiber being obtained by dispersing a cellulose in a medium, the cellulose having carboxyl groups obtained by partially oxidizing hydroxyl groups of the cellulose using a TEMPO catalyst.
Patent Document 4 discloses a method for obtaining a gas barrier composite compact by coating and drying a gas barrier material on a PET film or a base material made of polylactic acid or the like, the gas barrier material containing a fine cellulose fiber having an average fiber diameter of 200 nm or less being prepared by dispersing in water an oxidized cellulose obtained by a TEMPO oxidation treatment.

Fine cellulose fiber dispersion liquid and manufacturing method thereof, cellulose film and laminate body


A device for reducing vehicle aerodynamic resistance for vehicles having a generally rectangular body disposed above rear wheels, comprising a plurality of load bearing struts attached to the bottom of the rectangular body adjacent its sides, a plurality of opposing flat sheets attached to the load bearing struts, and angled flaps attached to the lower edge of the opposing sheets defining an obtuse angle with the opposing flat sheets extending inwardly with respect to the sides of the rectangular body to a predetermined height above the ground, which, stiffen the opposing flat sheets, bend to resist damage when struck by the ground, and guide airflow around the rear wheels of the vehicle to reduce its aerodynamic resistance when moving.

It is well known that streamlining the undercarriage of a long vehicle such as a trailer truck or straight van truck will reduce the aerodynamic resistance of a moving vehicle and thus save fuel. However, streamlining the undercarriage of a long vehicle such as a semi-trailer is impractical because integrated enclosures are heavy, costly, easily damaged, interfere with standardized structural design, and prevent access to parts and equipment underneath the vehicle. Consequently, removable attachments have been designed to streamline the undercarriage of long vehicles. However, past designs for removable attachments have failed to achieve significant utilization because they are typically large and heavy enclosures or one piece structures, which are difficult to transport when not mounted on the trailer, difficult to mount, require drilling or welding the undercarriage when mounting, incompatible with different trailer and truck geometries, easily damaged, difficult to repair, become filled with snow and ice in winter driving conditions, do not provide the maximum drag decrease possible, and are too costly to generate a significant return on investment though associated fuel use reductions. The device described herein uses a minimal amount of material resulting in reduced weight and production costs and provides a maximized drag reduction. Prototypes of the device, constructed under U.S. Government contract No. DE-FC36-03G013173 awarded by the Department of Energy, weighed under 150 lbs and reduced a semi-trailer's fuel consumption by 4% in Society of Automotive Engineer's (SAE) J1321 type II standardized fuel economy tests conducted by a respected independent research center. The improved aerodynamic performance of the devise described herein when compared to past designs for aerodynamic attachments, that extend the side wall of the truck or trailer directly toward the ground, is due to the addition of angled flaps directed toward the center of the vehicle. The geometry of the angled flaps was tuned to provide the maximum drag reduction possible by directing crosswind airflow beneath the trailer's rear wheels and axles. The straight side extensions of past designs create low pressure vacuums that tend to direct crosswind airflow into the wheels and axles and can cause large side forces that push the vehicle off its intended course. The angled flaps also provide stiffing means, necessary to prevent the wind induced flapping or oscillations common to the straight side extensions of past designs. Unlike the straight side extensions of past designs, which tend to buckle or collapse in a random fashion if struck by protrusions on the ground (or the ground when the vehicle travels over uneven surfaces) and may sustain damage even if constructed of flexible materials, the angled flaps bend uniformly toward the vehicle if stuck by the ground and return to their original position. The device described herein is easily packaged and shipped, can be easily mounted on the undercarriage of trailers and trucks of different geometries and construction without modification, requires no welding or drilling in the undercarriage when mounting, resists damage, and damaged areas can be easily repaired with replacement parts. The device described herein does not enclose the undercarriage of the trailer like past designs, thereby preventing snow and ice build-up and allowing convenient access to parts underneath the trailer or truck. Unlike past designs, the device described herein also improves road safety by absorbing significant impact in the event of a side collision. Absorbing side impact helps prevent passenger vehicles from entering the area underneath the trailer, which often results in serious accidents because the vehicle is crushed by the trailers rear wheels.

Device for reducing vehicle aerodynamic resistance


Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to data synchronization and provide a method, system and computer program product for protocol optimization for client and server synchronization. In one embodiment a protocol optimization method for client and server synchronization can be provided. The method can include receiving server updates from a synchronization server, and applying each update to a client data store in parallel to requesting additional ones of the server updates from the synchronization server before completing the application to the client data store. In one aspect of the embodiment, receiving server updates from a synchronization server can include receiving server update subsets of a singular server update for a synchronization conversation from a synchronization server.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of data synchronization and more particularly to the use of a synchronization framework to provide data synchronization services.
Description of the Related Art
Personal computers no longer are the most common vehicle through which users connect to data communications networks like the Internet. Now that computing can be viewed as being truly everywhere, computer scientists and information technologists have begun to rethink those services that can be provided to meet the needs of mobile computing users. In consequence, the study of pervasive computing has resulted in substantial innovation in the field of network connectivity. "Pervasive computing" has been defined as referring to any non-constrained computing device not physically tethered to a data communications network. Thus, pervasive computing devices refer not only to computers wirelessly linked to networks, but also to handheld computing devices, wearable systems, embedded computing systems and the like.
Most pervasive devices, including notebook computers, handheld computers and even data enabled cellular telephones permit data synchronization with a different computing device, for example a desktop computer. Data synchronization refers to the harmonization of data between two data sources such that the data contained in each data source can be reconciled notwithstanding changes to the data applied in either or both of the data sources. Modern pervasive devices provide for a synchronization process through a direct cable link, a modem link, or a network link to a host computing device. Wireless pervasive devices further can accommodate synchronization over infrared or radio frequency links.
To facilitate the synchronization of disparate devices hosting different applications, synchronization frameworks like the framework specified by "SyncML" have been proposed. Generally, a synchronization framework defines an interoperable protocol for data synchronization between heterogeneous data stores on pervasive devices and connected servers. Such synchronization frameworks further define the message exchange between client and server to accomplish synchronization. Yet, by design, synchronization frameworks do not specify the actual process required to accomplish synchronization.
Contemporary protocol synchronization frameworks facilitate the harmonization of data in the data stores of a local and host device over a communications medium such as a wireless link. In the ordinary course of synchronization, a client device retrieves data updates since a last synchronization from the local data store and provides those updates to the host device. The host device applies the updates to the host data store and provides updates since the last synchronization from the host data store to the client device. To identify updated data, the host device relies upon local identifiers previously provided by the client device.
The client, upon receipt of the host updates, iterates through each update applying the same to the local data store. Only once all updates have been applied locally, will the client device provide updated mapping information to the host device in order to facilitate subsequent synchronizations. As such, it will be recognized by the skilled artisan that the serial nature of client side updates and the heavy reliance upon providing a local identifier mapping can render contemporary synchronization protocols susceptible to failure conditions and slow responsiveness. Additionally, the skilled artisan will recognize that processing in the client device can be slow compared to processing in the server and the network link further can inhibit the speed of synchronization.
Specifically, where the communications link becomes interrupted mid-synchronization, all progress will be lost. Moreover, in as much as the client device must await the completion of the update process in the local data store before forwarding the local identifier mapping to the host device, substantial delays can be incurred where the update process is slow due to the nature of an applicable pervasive device. Finally, contemporary synchronization protocols fail to account for the reality of traffic transfer with the bulk of the update traffic in a synchronization process stemming from the host device rather than the client device.

Protocol optimization for client and server synchronization

International Business Machines Corporation


A collimator for a detector is disclosed. The collimator comprises: a bottom plate provided with imaging through holes distributed in an array, each of the imaging through holes comprising a first hole segment and a second hole segment, the transverse size of the first hole segment gradually decreasing in a direction from a free end to the second hole segment, and the transverse size of the second hole segment gradually decreasing in a direction from the free end to the first hole segment; a shielding case formed on the bottom plate; and a top plate disposed in the shielding case and closing at least a part of an opening of the shielding case, the top plate being provided with shielding through holes distributed in an array, and the imaging through holes being in one-to-one correspondence with the shielding through holes.

Emission tomography is a non-invasive nuclear medical imaging method. Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) is a type of emission tomography and has been widely used in pre-clinical drug research and clinical disease diagnosis. Spatial resolution and detection efficiency are two important technical indicators of measuring the imaging performance of SPECT. SPECT imaging needs to collimate rays and often uses parallel-hole collimators in traditional clinical practice. With the development of nuclear medicine, the spatial resolution and detection efficiency of SPECT using the parallel-hole collimators cannot meet higher clinical requirements. For imaging of small organs, such as heart, thyroid, brain and the like, if traditional SPECT detectors are equipped with special multi-pinhole collimator, higher detection efficiency and better spatial resolution can be achieved by narrowing an imaging field of view and designing suitable magnification and arrangement of the pinholes. Therefore, the multi-pinhole SPECT imaging system is currently an important trend for the development of emission tomography.
However, the clinical application of multi-pinhole collimators still needs to overcome some difficulties. Although the multi-pinhole collimator has a field of view targeted at a small human organ, radioactive rays from other parts of the human body may also generate projections on the detector through the pinholes, and if these projections overlap with a projection of the small organ, the reconstructed spatial resolution will be reduced or it will be difficult to reconstruct a reasonable image. In order to obtain higher detection efficiency, the pinholes of the multi-pinhole collimator need to be designed with a relatively large diameter, in which case the overlap of projections will be aggravated due to the influence of a penumbra region of pinhole projections. By increasing the thickness of a collimator plate, the penumbra region can be reduced to a certain extent, but the excessive thickness of collimators increases the material cost and the processing difficulty, which cannot be applied in practice.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop a collimator that can effectively eliminate the overlap of different pinhole projections in the multi-pinhole collimators and take into account detection efficiency, spatial resolution, and reconstructed image quality.

Collimator for detector and application thereof


Water purification is achieved by contacting the water with a container of charcoal, zeolite and a bimetallic alloy. In a preferred embodiment, the three components are segregated from each other and contained in a bag having three compartments.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of purifying water, particularly purifying the water used in hot tubs and the like, and most particularly to methods of purifying hot tubs not involving addition of substantial amounts of dissolved chemicals in the water.
2. State of the Art
Recreational users of hot tubs, spas, and whirl pool baths of various sorts, hereinafter generically referred to as hot tubs, enjoy and use them more than ever. At one time or another, most of the users have noticed the nearly universal problem affecting water quality that most hot tubs have: maintaining clear, sanitary and odor free water after frequent uses.
Many solutions have been tried to maintain the water quality. One common method is the brute force method of adding large amounts of chlorine to the water. This tends to give hot tubs a distinct chlorine odor and can, at times be strong enough to cause mild respiratory distress. Moreover, the amount of chlorine tends to become so concentrated, that, with time all of the water in the hot tub must be replaced.
Another solution tried is the on-site generation of ozone gas (O.sub.3). Ozone is a toxic gas, more toxic than chlorine, and it must be generated on site, requiring expensive and troublesome equipment to generate. It is troublesome to regulate, and production of more than the required amount can cause mucus membrane and eye irritation in the users of the equipment, and in large enough quantities, over production can erode covers used to protect the hot tub between uses. Even so, rarely can the generation equipment meet the demands for enough ozone to maintain the water quality placed on the system by frequent use of several people.
Yet another type of purification used is the ionization method. In this approach to the problem an electric current is passed between two electrodes, usually silver and copper, immersed in he water. This method leaves a copper residua in the water, indeed that is one of the reasons the method works. But copper can cause stains on the plaster used for the inside of the hot tub.
Combinations of the ozone method and the ionization method have been tried and the results have been poor. The resulting system is very expensive, the treatment irritating to the users, and the treatment is not long lasting.
Whatever method is used to purify the hot tub, the water in an average hot tub must be changed every three months or so and the attempt at purification process must start anew.
The hot tub user needs a better method to assure that the water contacting his body is pure, clean, and pleasant to be in.

Water purification system for hot tubs and the like


An electrical fuse and a first dielectric layer thereupon are formed on a semiconductor substrate. Self-assembling block copolymers containing two or more different polymeric block components are applied into a recessed region surrounded by a dielectric template layer. The self-assembling block copolymers are then annealed to form a pattern of multiple circles having a sublithographic diameter. The pattern of multiple circles is transferred into the first dielectric layer by a reactive ion etch, wherein the portion of the first dielectric layer above the fuselink has a honeycomb pattern comprising multiple circular cylindrical holes. A second dielectric layer is formed over the circular cylindrical holes by a non-conformal chemical vapor deposition and sublithographic cavities are formed on the fuselink. The sublithographic cavities provide enhanced thermal insulation relative to dielectric materials to the fuselink so that the electrical fuse may be programmed with less programming current.

Electrical fuses (eFuses) are used in the semiconductor industry to implement array redundancy, field programmable arrays, analog component trimming circuits, and chip identification circuits. Once programmed, the programmed state of an electrical fuse does not revert to the original state on its own, that is, the programmed state of the fuse is not reversible. For this reason, electrical fuses are called One-Time-Programmable (OTP) memory elements.
The mechanism for programming an electrical fuse is electromigration of a metal semiconductor alloy induced by an applied electrical field and a raised temperature on a portion of the electrical fuse structure. The metal semiconductor alloy is electromigrated under these conditions from the portion of the electrical fuse structure, thereby increasing the resistance of the electrical fuse structure. The rate and extent of electromigration during programming of an electrical fuse is dependent on the temperature and the current density at the electromigrated portion.
An electrical fuse typically comprises an anode, a cathode, and a fuselink. The fuselink is a narrow strip of a conductive material adjoining the anode and cathode. During programming of the electrical fuse, a positive voltage bias is applied to the anode and a negative voltage bias is applied to the cathode. As electrical current flows through the fuselink having a narrow cross-sectional area, the temperature of the fuselink is elevated. A high current density combined with the elevated temperature at the fuselink facilitates electromigration of the conductive material, which may comprise a metal silicide.
In general, the higher the temperature of the fuselink, the easier it is to electromigrate the conductive material, i.e., the less current is needed to induce electromigration. Since programming of electrical fuses typically takes a substantial amount of current, for example, a programming current of about 5 mA for an electrical fuse having a fuselink width of about 63 nm, it is advantageous to provide effective thermal isolation to the fuselink to keep the temperature of the fuselink elevated during the programming.
While fuselinks of conventional electrical fuses are insulated by dielectric materials so that heat loss from the fuselink is contained during programming of the electrical fuse, improved thermal isolation of the fuselink and a higher temperature during programming would reduce the amount of electrical current needed for programming the electrical fuse. Such a reduction in the electrical current needed for programming would allow reduction of the size of a programming transistor.
In view of the above, there exists a need for an electrical fuse structure having improved thermal isolation around a fuselink, and consequently requiring less programming current, and methods of manufacturing the same.

Electrical fuse having sublithographic cavities thereupon


A momentum management system for attitude control of a spacecraft includes a housing to be fixed to the spacecraft and a momentum wheel rotor in the housing for storing angular momentum. A gimbal assembly mounts the rotor in the housing. The rotor is driven by a drive with its output coupled to the rotor. A torque generation imparts torque to the rotor about axes orthogonal to the drive axis. The gimbal assembly includes a gimbal ring coupling the drive output to the rotor. The gimbal ring in turn includes flexure joints connecting the gimbal ring to the drive and the rotor. The flexure joints are configured to permit the rotor to tilt about two flexure axes orthogonal to the drive axis to incline the rotor axis through a range of angles from about 0 degrees to about 7 degrees with respect to the drive axis under the control of said torque generation device. The preferred flexure joint is formed from two resilient, crossing webs. The webs have ring ends connected to the body of the gimbal ring and mounting ends connected to either the drive or the rotor. The system includes a launch restraint system to limit movement of the rotor along the drive axis, including a stop mounted on the drive output and a cage mounted on the rotor, surrounding the stop. Under high acceleration, the cage engages the stop to support the rotor, relieving excess stress on the flexures of the gimbal suspension. The launch restraint system also includes deflection stops adjacent opposite sides of each web of each flexure for limiting deflection of the webs.

Spacecraft attitude control systems, such as those used to control the attitudes of satellites, are based on the direct control of angular momentum. The goal of such systems is to point a satellite, or portions of a satellite, at the earth, other celestial bodies, or another spacecraft. Attitude control may be achieved by maintaining a non-zero angular momentum state by including spinning bodies within the spacecraft. Such spacecraft are generally called body stabilized or three axis spacecraft. The present invention is intended for such three axis spacecraft, whether in geosynchronous or low earth orbit missions.
High accuracy three axis attitude control is currently based on control of stored angular momentum. For high accuracy, it is possible to use three or more reaction wheels, so that the total angular momentum magnitude and direction can be controlled, within the spacecraft body, by varying the speeds of each of the wheels. The wheels are usually mounted in an orthogonal triad. To provide redundancy, an additional wheel must be supplied for each axis, a costly and heavy approach. Control versatility can also he obtained with four wheels mounted in a skewed configuration so that any three wheels can be used for control in the event of the failure of any one wheel. A major drawback of the multi-wheel configurations is the number of wheels, with attendant redundancy, and the associated duplicated electronic boxes which are needed.
An alternative momentum management system uses a double gimballed momentum wheel in which a single momentum wheel is mounted within a two axis gimbal fixed to the spacecraft. Actuation of the gimbals to re-orient the momentum wheel provides control of the angular momentum within the spacecraft body as required for control while limiting the total number of rotors to just a prime and redundant system. A conventional double gimballed wheel consists of a momentum wheel mounted on a platform which can articulate. A trio of stepper motor driven linear jack screws is used to provide the tilt capability. The three actuators are needed to provide some redundancy in each wheel since jack screws can wear and eventually fail. A total angular deviation of about 6 degrees is adequate for this configuration. In principal, the double gimballed wheel has all the advantages of three reaction wheels with a momentum control capability in all directions while using but a single wheel. However, it suffers from two major disadvantages. The first is a result of the actuators which operate in discrete steps. This limits the pointing accuracy and requires careful nutation control. The second disadvantage is the complex mechanical configuration. It has numerous points of possible failure. These extra mechanisms add mass and cost and unreliability which are not desirable for small, low cost satellites.
It is noteworthy that all of the current momentum management approaches, provide momentum control only and cannot be used to measure body rotation rates.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a novel system and method for momentum management in spacecraft attitude control that obviates or mitigates the disadvantages of the prior art.

System and method for spacecraft attitude control


A horizontally adjustable hinge (10) includes a frame leaf (11) and a door leaf (14). A capturing member (16) receives the head (19a) of an adjustment screw (19). An adjusting hole (14e) allows access for a tool to rotate the adjustment screw (19), and thereby horizontally adjust the hinge (10).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an adjustable hinge and more particularly to an adjustable hinge that is adjustable in the horizontal direction.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A number of different adjustable hinges have been used to adjust doors relative to the frames in which the doors are mounted. This allows the doors to be level and fit well within the frame. These adjustable hinges may be of a standard variety or a snap-in variety. Adjustable hinges are often more complex and are of greater difficulty to install than non-adjustable hinges. In addition, the adjustable hinges are often time-consuming and somewhat difficult to adjust in manipulating the adjustment mechanisms.
One example of such an adjustable hinge is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 10/786,608 entitled "Hinge Device". In FIG. 24 there is shown an adjustment means 184 that consists of a first screw body 184′ which can be screwed into or out of a door frame 182 for abutment with the rear side of a hinge flap 181 and a fixing screw 184″. While this is an advantageous design for an adjustable door hinge, it does utilize two parts for the adjustment.
The present invention addresses the designs of the prior art and provides for a simpler design wherein the adjustment screw is captured in one of the leaves of the hinge.


A bending device has a bending mechanism for bending an elongate object to be processed by holding the object by both a bending die and a clamping die and revolving the clamping die which is able to revolve around the bending die. The bending device includes a fixing base on which the bending mechanism is mounted. A chuck mechanism for holding the object is provided in the bending device, and the bending device is provided with an articulated robot for moving the chuck mechanism.

Conventionally, as described in Patent Document 1, such a bending device has been known, in which an object is held by a chuck mechanism, a bending mechanism is attached to the distal end of an articulated robot having three sets of joints turning around an axis parallel to the axial direction of the object, the bending mechanism is moved to a predetermined position by turning the respective joints, simultaneously the chuck mechanism is moved by a moving mechanism in the axial direction of the object, and bending is carried out at a plurality of points.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2001-212624


A method for regulating output of a high voltage generator includes monitoring a voltage output of the generator and comparing it to a voltage setpoint to generate an error signal. A load on the generator is monitored to generate a load signal. The load signal is conducted to a feedforward signal generator. The feedforward signal generator is configured to produce a feedforward signal corresponding to the load and to at least one parameter related to an output impedance of the high voltage generator. The error signal is conducted to a high voltage regulation loop. The control loop output and the feedforward signal generator output are coupled to a driver for the high voltage generator.

This disclosure relates generally to the field of high voltage power supplies that may be used in devices such as radiation generators. More specifically, the disclosure relates to voltage regulation methods and devices for maintaining high voltage within predetermined tolerances notwithstanding changes in load on the high voltage power supply and environmental conditions to which the instrument having the high voltage power supply is exposed.
Electronic radiation generators, for example, (including pulsed neutron generators and x-ray generators) require high voltages for the production of the desired nuclear radiation. These voltages, which can exceed 100 kV DC, and may be as much as 500 kV, are produced by power supplies typically of the Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier design. The simplest Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier design includes an array or ladder-like structure of stages where, under an AC drive signal (e.g., Us in the schematic below) the voltage at the output of the n-th stage is n times the peak-to-peak value of Us.). Each stage includes discrete components, specifically (2) capacitors and (2) diodes in the arrangement shown in the electrical schematic diagram in FIG. 1. Also included is a voltage divider (or "bleed") resistor chain (not shown) that may be used to measure the power supply output voltage.
It is known in the art to use a regulation loop to control the high voltage which may or may not include a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) regulation loop. Most types of control loops use an error term related to the difference between a high voltage monitor, which may be measured using a voltage divider with a bleed resistor, and a high voltage set point. Such control loop may be implemented in analog or digital form. The control loop adjusts the drive voltage, defined by Us in FIG. 1, to cause the power supply to generate the desired high voltage output. One limitation of known control loops arises when the load current (e.g., beam current in an x-ray or neutron generator) varies rapidly (i.e. faster than the response time of the control loop) temporally. The changes in load cause the high voltage output to vary, which may stress the high voltage system including the components that make up the ladder and the insulation system surrounding the high voltage power supply. As a hypothetical example, if 5 kV control signal (Us) were used to generate 100 kV power supply output, under heavy load and with an insulation system designed to withstand 110 kV, if the load abruptly dropped, the power supply high voltage output could quickly increase to 120 kV if the effective output impedance of the high voltage power supply is large. This could cause the insulation system or power supply components to be damaged, perhaps permanently.
Conversely, when there is a sudden increase in load current, the high voltage could drop, and in the case of an electrically operated radiation generator, the radiation output and possibly the measurement made by an instrument using such generator could be affected.
To mitigate the foregoing limitation, it is known in the art to use a hardware-embodied circuit to monitor the load current, which tends to lead the change in output voltage, and add a proportional voltage to the drive voltage (Us) or otherwise modify a drive signal such as drive frequency or drive duty factor. In the event that the load current is reduced, the proportional voltage or drive signal would be reduced, thus mitigating the risk of overshoot and subsequent damage to the high voltage system. Corresponding, opposite changes to the drive signal may be applied in the event the load current increases. An example hardware embodied circuit to control the drive signal can be observed in FIG. 2.

Method and apparatus for regulating high voltage


A staged rotisserie for cooking poultry includes a housing having an inlet end and an outlet end and a plurality of discrete heating stations spaced within the housing between the inlet end and the outlet end. A plurality of poultry spits are moved through the housing, each spit supporting a poultry thereon. An admission mechanism is provided for controlling admission of spits into the housing. An advancement and driving mechanism advances the spits through the housing in sequential fashion and drives the spits in rotation within the housing, and is operative to ensure that each spit resides within the housing for a pre-determined length of time to ensure that the poultry is properly cooked, thereby avoiding undercooking and overcooking.

In the general field of industrial cooking and baking, there are numerous processes and techniques that are employed. For example, it is known to process some products using batch cooking operations in which a number of products are placed in an oven, cooked for a time, and then removed, after which a subsequent batch of products is placed in the oven for cooking and the process repeats.
It is also known in industrial food processing and cooking to process foods as they are moved along a conveyor line in a rather continuous fashion. For example, cookies are often cooked this way by placing raw cookie dough on a conveyor and conveying the cookie dough through an oven chamber at a predetermined speed to have the cookie dough resident in the oven chamber for a predetermined length of time in order to bake the cookies adequately. This results in baked cookies exiting the downstream end of the oven ready for packaging.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,857 of Buller-Colthurst relates to a food processing chamber and technique for the processing of meat and poultry products in the processed meat trade. The '857 patent describes that a process chamber is operated in a batch mode such that a batch of products can be introduced into a zone and then simply left stationary during its processing time in that zone. Once that time is up, the batch then can be moved to the next zone and simply left to stand in the next zone and so on. The '857 patent further describes that in order to move batches or units of products through the zones, a step-wise or batch conveyor system is provided.
In the common manner of cooking chicken or other poultry in a restaurant, a rotisserie is used in which poultry are placed on skewers or spits and the spits are placed within a small oven. The individual spits are rotated about their axis and the group of spits revolve around a central axis to provide even cooking of all of the poultry in the rotisserie. Such a system is shown generally in U.S. Pat. No. 5,471,915 of Lopata. Unfortunately, such a system generally fails to control the residence time of each individual poultry item. Indeed, unless all the poultry items are placed in the rotisserie at the same time and later removed all at once, some poultry items can be cooked for too long, other poultry items can be cooked just the right length of time, while still other poultry items can be cooked not long enough. This is very important inasmuch as even slight undercooking of poultry can pose a serious health risk to consumers by virtue of a failure to completely kill all bacteria that might be present on or in the poultry.
Moreover, even slight overcooking of the poultry is highly undesirable as it tends to make the poultry rather tough and dry (poultry seems to be particularly sensitive to overcooking).
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need yet remains for a rotisserie for cooking food items such as poultry, which rotisserie ensures precise control over the cooking of the meat therein to ensure proper doneness of the meat. It is to the provision of such a rotisserie that the present invention is primarily directed.


A small portable instrument monitors residual muscle tension as indicated by electrical activity from electrodes monitoring the muscles. A bio feedback signal is generated whenever tension exceeds a preset threshold and slows or stops as the tension is reduced towards the threshold. The bio feedback signal enables the user to learn how to voluntarily reduce excess muscle tension and lessen harmful health effects caused by stress. The instrument is battery powered, miniaturized and is designed to fit into an ambulatory setting.

The invention relates to a portable apparatus and a method for detecting and reducing tension and stress in a human subject using bio feedback.
Stress is an everyday fact of life for millions of people. Stressful situations are often found in the workplace and at home. This stress can lead to long-term physical and psychological problems. Research has shown that stress can be reduced through the alteration of brain wave patterns that the brain uses in order to function. Stimuli, such as sound and light, can affect and actually alter the flow of these brain wave patterns.
Bio feedback systems are known in the art for use in detecting levels of stress in subjects and providing the appropriate stimuli to affect and alter the flow of brain wave patterns. Bio feedback systems monitor and process bioelectrical signals generated in specific topological regions of a human subject""s nervous system and produce a sensory stimulus when the system detects the presence or absence of certain characteristics in the signal. These characteristics may be correlated with a desired condition of the human subject""s nervous system. The sensory stimulus provided by the bio feedback system, typically an audio or visual stimulus, or a combination of the two, is fed back to the human subject who associates the presence of the stimulus with the goal of achieving the desired condition of the nervous system. By responding to the stimulus, the human subject can be trained to control the wave form patterns of the monitored bioelectrical signals and thereby control the nervous system. Such a bio feedback system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,616 to Ross.
Because bio feedback devices operate on the basis of internal stimuli, that is stimuli produced in response to bioelectrical signals generated by the human subject, the success of the bio feedback device depends upon a human subject attempting to consciously control a state of stress. Many people cannot affect such control over their involuntary nervous systems. In addition, bio feedback systems are usually expensive, require complex equipment, and require an expert to operate.
Prior art devices have attempted to overcome these limitations by producing a state of mental harmonization or relaxation in a human subject without detecting the state of stress, that is, through the use of a program of external stimuli. However, such systems do not provide a stress detection system and, therefore, the stimuli cannot be tailored to a human subject""s changing state of stress and individual needs.
Tension and stress in human subjects may result in involuntary muscle movement. This muscle activity in the human body is initiated by electrical nerve impulses from the brain. These impulses may be measured at the surface of the skin as a voltage. The magnitude of the voltage signal is very small, on the order of micro volts. The magnitude of the electrical activity varies proportionately with the force of the muscle movement.
A small portable instrument is used to monitor residual muscle tension, as indicated by electrical activity from spurious motor neuron firings. The instrument is connected to one or more electrodes that receive electrical impulses created by activated nerves in the human subject""s muscle groups. A bio feedback signal is generated whenever tension exceeds a pre-set threshold and slows or stops as tension is reduced towards the threshold. This enables the user to learn how to voluntarily reduce excess muscle tension and lesson the harmful health effects caused by stress. The instrument is battery powered and is miniaturized to fit comfortably on a human subject, such as in a shirt pocket. Alternatively, the instrument may be attached to the clothing of the human subject by velcro or by a clip-on device, or may be attached to the body of the human subject using a band with a velcro fastener, for example.
In an embodiment, three electrodes are attached to the skin of the human subject, along a chosen muscle group. A sensitive instrument amplifier detects differential voltage, while rejecting common mode signals. The desired signals are isolated through a band pass filter, of approximately 100 Hz, for example. The signals are then amplified. Signals that exceed a set point are integrated and produce a feedback signal through a small speaker, at a rate proportional to the amount of muscle tension.
The electrodes may be attached to the human subject on a desired muscle group, such as the trapezius muscles (shoulder and back), for example.
The instrument is ideal for a person sitting at a desk, using a computer keyboard, or any other position or situation where a person has a tendency to build up tension and stress in the neck, shoulders and back muscles. Such stress, if not reduced, may cause disturbing irritability, headaches, shoulder pain, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, tingling and numbness in fingers, hands and arms, or any other pain associated with stress buildup.
The apparatus and method may be used by the human subject to learn when tension and stress will occur. By repeatedly using the apparatus, the human subject will learn what activities or conditions are likely to cause high levels of tension and stress. The human subject can then modify or avoid the activities or conditions so as to prevent the buildup of harmful stress.

Portable tension and stress detector and method


A method for transmitting keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) data includes converting, by a service board, KVM data into a KVM packet; sending the KVM packet to a switch board through a BASE channel, so that the switch board forwards the KVM packet to a remote console. The embodiments of the present invention are mainly applied to a process for implementing KVM data transmission based on ATCA architecture.

With the rapid development of Internet services and the continuous increasing of the number of Internet users, network traffic keeps rising continuously, and application and deployment of IT devices such as servers become more and more important. A server provides various services such as web access, file download, stream media for Internet users, and also provides a graphical user interface, a keyboard interface, and a mouse interface, which is convenient for network maintenance personnel to configure and maintain the device. Generally, human machine interfaces such as a keyboard, a video, and a mouse of the server are collectively called KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse, keyboard, video, mouse). Because the number of servers is large, it is impossible to connect the KVM to each server one by one during maintenance. Therefore, as shown in FIG. 1, a previous method is to connect one KVM to an external KVM switch device which is connected to multiple servers. Through this method, although remote management of the server is implemented, each server needs to provide cables of a keyboard, a mouse, and a video, which causes problems of increased costs and messy wiring. Moreover, because an analog switch manner is adopted, the cables of the keyboard, mouse, and video cannot be too long, and are generally tens of meters; otherwise, signal quality is affected, so only a local server can be managed, and a regional limit exists.
In order to solve the problems of messy wiring and regional limit, a KVM over IP (KVM over IP) technology is currently used. Through the technology, KVM data is converted into an IP packet, and transmitted through a network, thus effectively solving the foregoing problems. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 2, each server provides a KVM over IP module. The KVM over IP module may convert video output of a video card into an Ethernet packet and send the Ethernet packet to a console, or restore packaged keyboard and mouse information on a console into original data. The Ethernet packet including the KVM data may be transmitted in a network cable, so the number of transmission cables is reduced, thus solving the problem of messy wiring. Moreover, the server and a switch are connected through the network, and the switch and the console are also connected through the network, so the console and the server may be separated in different cities, thus solving the problem of regional limit.
ATCA (Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture, advanced telecom computing architecture) is a telecommunication level platform based on the PICMG standard, which takes requirements for performance and reliability in the telecommunication field into consideration. The ATCA architecture provides an independent management channel and a service channel. The management channel includes an IPMB (Intelligent Platform Management Bus, intelligent platform management bus) channel based on an IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface, intelligent platform management interface) protocol and a BASE channel (management channel) based on an IP protocol. The service channel is a FABRIC channel (service channel) based on optional various protocols. As shown in FIG. 3, these channels have a dual-star structure. Each service board provides two IPMB interfaces, two BASE interfaces, and two FABRIC interfaces. The two IPMB interfaces are connected to two management boards. The two BASE interfaces and two FABRIC interfaces are connected to two switch boards.
An IPMB channel is used to transmit KVM information, specifically as shown in FIG. 4. A south bridge of a service board provides a PCI bus, which is connected to a display chip with a PCI interface. Video information output from the display chip is sent to an FPGA through a DVI interface. The FPGA compresses video data and sends the compressed video data to a BMC through an LPC interface. The BMC is a processor which is with low performance and dedicated to management. The BMC directly interfaces with an IPMB channel on a backplane, and may convert the compressed video data into an IMPI packet and send the IPMI packet to a management board. The management board converts the IPMI packet into an IP packet, and sends the IP packet to a switch board through a network port of a BASE channel. The switch board sends the IP packet to a remote console through a network port of its panel. Data amount of video information is large. For example, the data amount is 1.4 Gbps in the case of a resolution of 1024*768, a refresh rate of 75 Hz, and 24-bit true color. However, a maximum bandwidth of the IPMB channel is 400 Kbps, and when two IPMB channels are used simultaneously, only an 800 Kbps bandwidth is reached, which is far less than 1.4 Gbps. Therefore, the video data must be compressed substantially to satisfy the bandwidth requirement. However, the quality and refresh rate of a substantially-compressed video image must be affected greatly, thus causing the problem of image distortion. The BMC is further connected to the south bridge through two USB interfaces, and may simulate operations of a keyboard and a mouse. Due to the problem of the very low IPMB bandwidth, the compressed video data may be transmitted with difficulty, and the too large data amount causes a long delay of operating the keyboard and mouse by a user, and normal IPMI communication is affected.
In another implementation, four reserved pins on a Zone1 connector of an ATCA service board are customized as an FE channel (two for sending signals, and two for receiving signals). KVM data is transmitted through the FE channel. Specifically, as shown in FIG. 5, each service board has a KVM over IP module, which may convert the KVM data into an IP packet and transfer the IP packet to a management board through the FE channel. The ATCA specification does not limit an implementation manner (for example, signal definition, connector selection, or a slot location of a backplane interface) of the management board, so a switch chip may be provided on the management board to aggregate KVM over IP packets from all service boards, and then send the KVM over IP packets to a remote console through another network port of a panel. In this solution, the definition of the backplane interface is modified, and an original backplane and management board must be changed to be used with the service board, so compatibility is poor.
When the KVM information is transmitted through the IPMB channel, although the problem of poor compatibility does not exist, due to insufficient bandwidth of the data transmission channel, the problems of image distortion and delays of mouse and keyboard operations occur. When the KVM information is transmitted through the customized FE channel, although the bandwidth of the data transmission channel is not limited, because the FE channel is the channel customized through the four reserved pins on the Zone1 connector of the service board, it is required that the board and the backplane are customized, the compatibility is poor.

Method, service board, and system for transmitting KVM data


An in-line splice closure for splicing two hybrid fiber and signal conductor cables includes an outer housing having opposing first and second ends for receiving respective ends of the cables. An organizer tube extends within the outer housing. Electrical connectors are positioned within the organizer tube for connecting signal conductors of the first and second hybrid cables. The splice closure preferably includes at least one optical splice for connecting optical fibers of the first and second cables, and an optical fiber support wrapped around an outer surface of the organizer tube for supporting the at least one optical splice and adjacent optical fiber slack portions. The organizer tube preferably has a predetermined diameter and the optical fiber support preferably supports the optical fiber slack portions so as not to exceed the minimum bend radius. The organizer tube preferably has a longitudinally extending groove in an outer surface portion for receiving buffer tubes of the cables. The optical fiber support may comprise a flexible substrate for supporting the fibers. The flexible substrate may comprise a body of flexible compressible material having a disk or oval shape and having radially extending slits for receiving optical fiber slack portions. The flexible substrate may alternately include integrally formed guide portions.

Optical fibers are widely used in telecommunications applications because of their wide bandwidth and ability to carry signals for long distances. An optical fiber cable may carry a plurality of individual optical fibers. Each fiber, in turn, can carry digital or analog signals over a relatively long distance without requiring amplifiers. In addition to providing such backbone communications, optical fiber cables are also being used to drop high bandwidth signals to groups of subscribers or directly to individual subscribers Such drop cables are typically low fiber count cables which are connected at one end to a trunk distribution system, and at the other end to electronics which convert the optical signals to electrical signals.
There may be occasions where it is desired to splice an optical fiber cable, such as for repair or installation. U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,732, for example, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, discloses an in-line splice closure for an optical fiber cable. The patent discloses a cylindrical core having tapered ends extending between first and second ends of the splice closure. The fiber slack is positioned on a sheet, such as of polymeric foam for cushioning, and the sheet is wrapped around the core. Accordingly, the minimum bend radius of the optical fibers is not exceeded as the slack fiber forms a pair of helices of opposite handedness. A heat shrink sleeve may be placed over the tube and fibers to complete the splice closure. Unfortunately, the amount of slack that may be stored is somewhat limited in that the slack must follow a helical pattern.
Copper wire cables are also widely used for communications. The copper wires are typically arranged in twisted pairs to reduce the effects of noise. The twisted pairs may also have a relatively large bandwidth for short distances, as may be the case for drop cable applications.
There are so-called hybrid or composite optical fiber and copper wire cables that combine the benefits of both technologies, such as for subscriber drop applications. One such hybrid cable includes two cable portions, one for copper pairs or signal conductors, and the other for optical fibers, and wherein both cable portions are enclosed within a common outer jacket or sheath. The signal conductor cable portion typically includes a metallic shield and an overall plastic jacket. In addition, the optical fiber cable portion typically includes a central buffer tube surrounding the fibers. A typical hybrid drop cable may contain from 2 to 6 twisted pairs of signal conductors, and from 1 to 4 optical fibers, and an overall plastic jacket.
Although the splice closure described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,498,732 represents a significant advance in a compact and rugged splice closure, it has no provisions for splicing or connecting the signal conductors of a hybrid cable. Unfortunately, conventional splice closures for either optical fibers or signal conductors are not readily adapted for such hybrid cables, especially where a relatively compact splice closure is desired, and wherein the bend radius of the optical fibers may not be exceeded.

Hybrid cable splice closure and related methods


The present invention is generally directed to a take-up frame assembly that is adapted to maintain a conveyor belt under constant tension. The take-up frame assembly, in one embodiment, can include a fluid cylinder having a retractable piston. The piston is interconnected with a bearing mounted to a shaft supporting the conveyor belt. The fluid cylinder includes a fluid regulator which can be used to maintain constant pressure within the cylinder and to thus apply a constant force to the bearing. The take-up frame assembly can also be used in combination with a controller and belt alignment devices which sense the relative position of the conveyor belt. When the conveyor belt falls out of alignment, the controller is capable of varying the pressure within the fluid cylinders in order to realign the belt.

The present invention is generally directed to conveyor belt assemblies used to transport materials from one location to another. Conventional conveyor belt assemblies typically include an endless loop-type conveyor belt, wherein at least one end of the belt is supported by a shaft-mounted pulley having an adjustable position. The pulley shaft is adjustable in a manner that increases or decreases the amount of tension applied to the conveyor belt. The assembly used to adjust the position of the shaft is referred to as a "take-up frame."
Generally, take-up frames of the prior art have assumed one of several configurations. For example, in one common embodiment, the take-up frame includes a pair of opposing bearings mounted to respective ends of a pulley shaft. Each of the bearings are secured to a bearing block which is slidably supported by a corresponding frame member positioned adjacent to the conveyor belt. The bearing block is movable within the frame member in a direction perpendicular to the shaft. Each of the bearing blocks are held in place at a particular position within the frame member by a take-up screw. By rotating the take-up screw and moving the position of the bearing block, greater or lesser tension can be placed on the conveyor belt. Such conventional take-up frames are disclosed, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,791,474 to Richard and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,212,502 to Ames et al.
These "screw-type" take-up frames are generally configured to place the pulley shaft in a set position. Thus, the take-up frame will not compensate for expansion and contraction of the belt due to temperature fluctuations or for other reasons. Insufficient tension or excess tension placed on the belt can sometimes lead to belt slippage, belt misalignment, or other undesirable effects.
In addition, "screw-type" take-up frames also cannot readily counteract the effect of shock loading. Shock loading occurs when a foreign object, such as a rock, tool or other object, travels on the return side of the belt and gets caught between the belt and one of the pulleys, causing a substantial increase in tension on the belt. Shock loading can damage the belt and the components of the take-up frame assembly itself.
Various attempts have been made to create a take-up frame that will compensate for the above described irregularities that may occur when the conveyor belt is running. For instance, Bryant Products, Inc. of Ashippun, Wis. markets a take-up frame known as the TELESCOPER. This particular take-up frame employs a spring that applies a force to a pulley shaft supporting a conveyor belt. The spring compensates for some fluctuations that occur as the conveyor is moving. By incorporating a spring, the take-up frame applies greater tension to the conveyor belt as the spring is compressed.
Previously, the assignee of the present invention built and sold a take-up frame assembly designed specifically to cushion the stresses placed on a conveyor belt caused by a chain drive. The take-up frame assembly included a bearing and bearing block connected to a hydraulic cylinder. The hydraulic cylinder was placed in communication with an accumulator. In this arrangement, the hydraulic cylinder acted much like a spring.
Although the above-discussed prior art has provided great advances in take-up frames for conveyor belt assemblies, there is room for further improvement. In particular, a need exists for a take-up frame that maintains a conveyor belt under substantially constant tension, even during conveyor belt expansion or contraction or during shock loading. The present invention is directed to improved take-up frame assemblies that not only place a conveyor belt under substantially constant tension, but also provide a means for gauging the amount of tension in the belt.

Take-up frame assembly for placing a conveyor under constant tension


A process for the preparation of halogenated alkanes is provided. In particular, a process is provided for the highly selective preparation of haloalkanes, including 1,1,1,3,3-pentachloropropane, pentachlorobutane, and hepatchlorohexane, in good yield.

The production of haloalkanes by the addition of olefins to starting material haloalkanes is well known in the art. Further, it is known that the product's carbon chain length increases by at least one carbon atom compared to the starting material, which drastically increases the product's boiling point making recovery of the product difficult and diminishing product yield.
Several addition reactions for producing synthetically useful haloalkanes, such as 1,1,1,3,3-pentachloropropane ("HCC-240"), are described in the prior art. For example, Kotora et al. "Addition of Tetrachloromethane to Halogenated Ethenes Catalyzed by Transition Metal Complexes", 77 J. Molec. Catal. 51-60 (1992) disclose the preparation of HCC-240 from carbon tetrachloride and vinyl chloride using both cuprous chloride and Cu(CH.sub.3 -CN).sub.4 !ClO.sub.4 complexes with an n-butylamine cocatalyst. Catalyst and cocatalyst removal is achieved by water wash which destroys the catalyst. Additionally, the use of perchlorates in the process poses handling problems because perchlorates are extremely explosive.
Kotora et al., "Selective Addition of Polyhalogenated Compounds to Chlorosubstituted Ethenes Catalyzed by a Copper Complex", 44 React. Kinet. Catal. Lett. 415-19 (1991) disclose the preparation of HCC-240 from carbon tetrachloride and vinyl chloride using a cuprous chloride complex catalyst with 2-propylamine as a cocatalyst. The reported HCC-240 yield, however, is only 71%. Zhiryukina et al. "Synthesis of Polychloroalkanes With Several Different Chlorine-Containing Groups", 1 Izv. Akad. Nauk SSR, Ser. Khim. 152-57 (1983) disclose a process for preparing HCC-240 from carbon tetrachloride and vinyl chloride using an Fe(CO).sub.5 -ethanol catalyst, which process reportedly yields 25% HFC-240. Both of these disclosed processes are disadvantageous in that they have a low selectivity for HFC-240. The Zhiryukina et al. process is further disadvantageous because it uses a highly toxic catalyst.
None of the prior art processes provides for haloalkane production in high yield and for the recycle of unreacted materials. Thus, a need exists for an efficient and economical process for the preparation of haloalkanes in high yield.

Process for the preparation of halogenated alkanes


A rotary ring of a hub unit has an annular end face on one side in the axial direction, and a tapered outer periphery in a radially outer region of the end face. The diameter of the tapered outer periphery increases toward the other side in the axial direction. An outer ring of a joint has an annular end face on the other side in the axial direction, and had a tapered inner periphery in a radially outer region of the end face. The diameter of the tapered inner periphery increases toward the other side in the axial direction, and the tapered inner periphery faces the tapered outer periphery. Splines are formed in the tapered outer periphery and splines are formed in the tapered inner periphery, and the splines of the tapered outer periphery and the splines of the tapered inner periphery mesh with each other.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a wheel support device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to support a wheel such that the wheel is rotatable with respect to a suspension provided on a body of a vehicle, for example, a wheel support device shown in FIG. 4 is used. The wheel support device includes a hub unit 80 and a joint 90 that transmits torque to the hub unit 80.
The hub unit 80 includes a fixed ring 81, a rotary ring 82, and rolling elements 83. Internal splines 84 are formed in the inner periphery of the rotary ring 82. The fixed ring 81 is fixed to the suspension. The wheel is connected to the rotary ring 82. The rolling elements 83 are arranged between the fixed ring 81 and the rotary ring 82. The joint 90 has an outer ring 89. The outer ring 89 has a tubular body portion 88 and a shaft portion 87. The shaft portion 87 extends from the body portion 88 in the axial direction. External splines 86 that mesh with the internal splines 84 are formed on the outer periphery of the shaft portion 87 so that torque transmission between the hub unit 80 and the joint 90 is allowed.
When the configuration shown in FIG. 4 is employed, many processes are required to assemble the hub unit 80 and the joint 90 together. That is, the following processes are required. First, an alignment for positioning the hub unit 80 and the outer ring 89 of the joint 90 such that the hub unit 80 and the outer ring 89 extend along the same straight line is performed (first process). The shaft portion 87 of the joint 90 is press-fitted (temporarily press-fitted) into the rotary ring 82, and the distal end of the shaft portion 87 is protruded from an axial end face (left end face in FIG. 4) of the rotary ring 82 (second process). A temporary nut (not shown) is screwed to a threaded portion 87a formed at the distal end of the shaft portion 87 (third process). By screwing the temporary nut to the threaded portion 87a, the shaft portion 87 is press-fitted (fully press-fitted) into the rotary ring 82 until no gap remains between the rotary ring 82 of the hub unit 80 and the outer ring 89 of the joint 90 (fourth process). The temporary nut is removed from the shaft portion 87 (fifth process). A nut 85 is fastened to the threaded portion 87a of the shaft portion 87 (sixth process). The nut 85 is fixed to the axial end face of the rotary ring 82 by crimping, or the like, to prevent loosening of the nut 85 (seventh process). As shown in FIG. 4, the shaft portion 87 is press-fitted into the rotary ring 82 so that the external splines 86 that extend in the axial direction mesh with the internal splines 84 that extend in the axial direction. Therefore, particularly strict dimensional control is required to form the splines 86, 84. As a result, many man-hours are required also in the process of forming the splines.
Therefore, in order to make it easier to assemble a hub unit and a joint together, for example, a wheel support device (wheel bearing device) described in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-284920 (JP 2008-284920 A) (see FIG. 4) is used. In the wheel support device, first splines are formed in an annular side face of a rotary ring of the hub unit, the annular side face being on one side of the rotary ring in the axial direction. In addition, second splines that mesh with the first splines are formed in an annular side face of an outer ring of the joint, the annular side face being on the other side of the outer ring in the axial direction. The first splines are formed in substantially the entirety of the annular side face of the rotary ring. The second splines are formed in substantially the entirety of the annular side face of the outer ring.
In the case of the wheel support device described in JP 2008-284920 A (see FIG. 4), the hub unit and the joint are assembled together in the following manner. First, the hub unit and the outer ring of the joint are arranged so as to face each other in the axial direction. Then, the first splines of the hub unit and the second splines of the joint are meshed with each other. After that, the hub unit and the outer ring of the joint are fastened together with a bolt.
As described above, in the case of the wheel support device described in JP 2008-284920 A (see FIG. 4), it is easy to assemble the hub unit and the joint together. However, as described above, the first splines and the second splines are formed in substantially the entirety of the corresponding annular side faces. Therefore, in order to form the first and second splines through plastic working with the use of, for example, a press, a large pressing load is required. In addition, in order to accurately form the entirety of the splines, a high-level working technique is required. Therefore, for example, there is a wheel support device in which splines are formed only in an outer peripheral region of an annular side face of a rotary ring of a hub unit, the annular side face being on one side of the rotary ring in the axial direction (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-174178 (JP 2008-174178 A) (see FIG. 3)).
In the hub unit described in JP 2008-174178 A (see FIG. 3), splines need to be formed only in the outer peripheral region of the annular side face. Therefore, a press load that is required to form the splines through plastic working with the use of, for example, a press is smaller than that in the case of the hub unit described in JP 2008-284920 A (see FIG. 4). Therefore, it is easier to accurately form the splines than in the case of the hub unit described in JP 2008-284920 A.
However, in the case where the splines are formed only in part of the annular side face, contact pressure that acts on the splines may increase as transmission torque increases. That is, in the case where the splines are formed in part of the annular side face, the magnitude of torque that is transmitted between the joint and the hub unit may be limited.