The present invention is an apparatus and a method for casting a cementitious or stone pile into the ground. The present invention comprises an exterior driving casing and an interior mandrel acting in cooperation to hold and deliver the pile forming material. A retrievable driving driving shoe is also disclose.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for placing in-ground piles of either crushed stone or rock, grout or concrete, or some combination thereof.
2. Description of Prior Art
It has been known in the prior art, to make pilings from concrete by casting them in place in the ground. This is accomplished by driving an elongate mandrel, i.e., a hollow tube of a selected cross-sectional area, into the ground, filling the resultant hole with fluid grout, and then pulling the mandrel back out of the ground leaving the grout in place to cure. The holding ability of such a piling comes from end-bearing and from the friction which is created by the close contact between the pile's sidewalls and the surrounding soil. It has also become standard practice to place a foot, aka, pile driving shoe, having a larger cross-sectional area than the mandrel, at the bottom of the mandrel before it is driven into the ground. The foot forms an open space around the mandrel. The hole created by the driving of the mandrel is filled with grout, i.e., cementitious fluid, stones, or rock. In the prior art grout may be gravity fed into and/or around the mandrel as it is being driven into the ground. See, e.g., Steding, U.S. Pat. No. 3,851,485 and Poma, U.S. Pat. No. 4,018,056.
A significant problem with the gravity feed method is that the grout often cannot flow into the hole fast enough to keep up with its formation, thereby resulting in voids. If soil or objects in the soil fall into these voids, the resultant pile diameter will neck down at the locations of the voids, weakening the pile. Other prior art devices have attempted to overcome this problem by pumping the grout into the mandrel under positive pressure as the mandrel is being driven. See, e.g., Hochstrasser, U.S. Pat. No. 3,084,518 and Federer, U.S. Pat. No. 4,618,289. However, pumping grout is also very problematic due to the inability to maintain a sufficient volumetric flow rate due to grout's the high viscosity. Accordingly, pumping is sometimes no more effective than gravity filling.
A twist on the gravity fed approach is seen in DeWitt, U.S. Pat. No. 4,992,002. In DeWitt, the mandrel is filled with grout prior to driving into the ground. A irretrievable steel foot is placed at the bottom the mandrel, which prevents the premature release of the grout. When the desired depth is reached, the mandrel is lifted out of the ground, leaving the foot behind and the grout flows out the bottom of the mandrel.
All of the aforementioned approaches are subject to the problem of necking, because no exterior reinforcing casing is provided. The grout will be still be subject to necking as the mandrel is withdrawn. Without an exterior reinforcing casing there is no reinforcement against side-loading from earth movements, wind and other influences. Accordingly, excess concrete or grout must be pumped at the top of the hole to prevent the collapse of the hole. This adds to the cost of the pile.
To provide the necessary reinforcement, the use of a full-length exterior reinforcing casing has been adopted in some circumstances. However, this is also less than ideal because the exterior casing is permanently left in the ground, thereby increasing the costs for each pile.
Moreover, the aforementioned prior art devices suffer from lack of durability. All of the prior art devices teach the use of pile driving a single mandrel into the earth. Accordingly, the mandrel must be made of very sturdy material such as heavy steel to withstand the blows of the pile driving hammer and the resultant reactionary forces of the earth. It is not uncommon for such mandrels, despite their sturdiness, to deflect during the driving process, which in turn will lead to inadequate pile formation or lost time. In time, such mandrels may have to be scrapped because they have lost their straightness or because they cannot withstand the blows of the pile driver. This is wasteful and expensive.
Additionally, the aforementioned devices do not accommodate the attachment of a vibrator without the need to halt the process. A vibrator is often used to assist in the delivery of pile forming material, such as stone, crushed rock or aggregate, or some combination thereof, into the resultant hole. The vibrator is clamped on to the mandrel and vibrates the mandrel. Prior to initiating the vibrator, the pile driving hammer must be lifted off of the mandrel to prevent damage to the pile driver. This results in additional delay in the pile forming process and consequently results in additional costs for the installation of the pile.
Also as can be seen in the above discussion, the foregoing prior art devices are specific for certain types of materials, for example, the DeWitt device can only be utilized for installing piles made of grout, but not stone. Accordingly, a pile forming enterprise must have access to separate apparatuses depending on the requirements of the job. This increases inventory costs, overhead and capital outlay.
What is needed is a single apparatus that is more durable when compared with single mandrel embodiments, that eliminates the need for an external casing that is left in the ground, that can be used in multiple piling forming situations, grout, stone, crushed rock, etc., and that can utilize a retrievable foot.

Method and apparatus for forming in ground piles


Tube connectors are provided for connecting tubes together to form a framework where the connectors are substantially hidden from view by ends of the tubes. Each connector has a support body and several anchor bodies that are formed integrally with the support body or independent from it. The support body has six faces with at most six anchor bodies. For any face of the support body that does not have an anchor body, it is formed to be coplanar with a surface of an adjoining anchor body, allowing an end of a tube with a suitably shaped end portion to cover that face of the support body. A U-shaped aperture with a slanted through passage are provided at a junction of at least one anchor body with the support body. This allows a tool to be inserted into the connector to fix a final tube to the connector.

Known connectors for connecting tubes in an end-to-end configuration can be complicated in structure and therefore high in manufacturing cost. Furthermore, these known connectors are usually mounted between and outside the tubes and can be unsightly.
Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 7,229,230 discloses a tube connector comprising a number of anchor bodies extending from a common box section. The common box section is larger in cross-section than that of the anchor bodies such that the common box section provides end faces against which plain end portions of tubes abut when the anchor bodies are positioned within proximal ends of the tubes. A consequence of this arrangement is that the common box section remains exposed to view and is unsightly, particularly where tube connectors as taught by U.S. Pat. No. 7,229,320 are used in constructing tube frameworks for shelving or the like. Furthermore, the exposed common box sections of the tube connectors are prone to gather dust and are difficult to clean.

Tube connector for facilitating a covered connection between two or more tubes


A method for regenerating a particulate filter may comprise calculating a first estimated soot load of a particulate filter based on a pressure drop of an exhaust gas flowing through the particulate filter, and calculating a second estimated soot load of the particulate filter based on a mass balance of soot in the particulate filter. The method may further comprise calculating a hybrid estimated soot load based on the first estimated soot load and the second estimated soot load, wherein calculating the hybrid estimated soot load comprises applying at least one gate so as to weight a relative contribution of each of the first estimated soot load and the second estimated soot load to the hybrid estimated soot load, and causing regeneration of the particulate filter when the hybrid estimated soot load is greater than or equal to a threshold value.

Environmental concerns have motivated the implementation of emission requirements for internal combustion engines and other combustion systems throughout much of the world. Catalytic converters have been used to eliminate many of the pollutants present in exhaust gas; however, a filter is often required to remove particulate matter, such as, for example, ash and soot. Wall-flow particulate filters, for example, are often used in engine systems to remove particulates from the exhaust gas. Such particulate filters may be made of a honeycomb-like substrate with parallel flow channels or cells separated by internal porous walls. Inlet and outlet ends of the flow channels may be selectively plugged, such as, for example, in a checkerboard pattern, so that exhaust gas, once inside the substrate, is forced to pass through the internal porous walls, whereby the porous walls retain a portion of the particulates in the exhaust gas.
In this manner, wall-flow particulate filters have been found to be effective in removing particulates from exhaust gas. However, the pressure drop across the wall-flow particulate filter increases as the amount of particulates trapped in the porous walls increases. The increasing pressure drop results in a gradual rise in back pressure against the engine, and a corresponding decrease in the performance of the engine. Accordingly, soot is commonly oxidized and removed in a controlled regeneration process before excessive levels have accumulated.
The ability to measure or estimate the amount of particulate, such as, for example, soot accumulated in a particulate filter is valuable as it helps to determine the regeneration schedule for the filter. Optimizing a filter's regeneration frequency, for example, can reduce the negative impacts of regeneration (e.g. increased emissions and fuel consumption) from too frequent regeneration, and protect the filter from over-exposure and possible failure due to the heightened energy release caused by excessive particulate loading from too infrequent regeneration. Accurately estimating the particulate load level (e.g., soot load level) in a particulate filter may thus facilitate determining when to initiate a timely and controlled regeneration event.
Conventional methodologies for estimating soot load in a particulate filter include both pressure drop based techniques and mass balance based techniques. Pressure drop based systems and methods have been shown to accurately estimate soot load in a particulate filter even under very dynamic operating conditions. Under certain engine operating conditions, however, notably during long idle times, during active regeneration and during periods of filter ash conditioning, pressure drop based methods can also have some limitations, thereby providing somewhat less accurate soot load estimates during such periods.
On the other hand, although having somewhat limited accuracy under dynamic operating conditions and regions of fast transients, mass balance based techniques for estimating soot load can generally be relatively accurate during steady state conditions, including, for example, during long engine idle times and active regeneration. Furthermore, due to ash accumulation effects, mass balanced based estimation approaches are generally more reliable during periods of filter ash conditioning, for example, during the first few thousand miles of filter exposure to engine operation. Ash conditioning refers to a period of ash accumulation on a filter's wall surfaces. Prior to the formation of an ash layer, particulate matter is able to penetrate the filter wall, a filtration mode commonly referred to as deep-bed filtration. Once an ash layer is formed, however, particulate matter is unable to penetrate the filter wall and is primarily captured on the surface of the filter wall, a filtration mode commonly referred to as cake-bed filtration.
It may be desirable, therefore, to provide an approach for estimating soot load that provides relatively high levels of estimation accuracy throughout all periods of engine operation, for example, during both dynamic operating conditions and steady state conditions, long idle times and active regeneration, and during periods of filter ash conditioning. It also may be desirable to provide an approach for estimating particulate load that is relatively simple to implement, using the instrumentation and sensors already available as part of an engine's after-treatment system.

Methods for estimating particulate load in a particulate filter, and related systems


A low power dynamic logic circuit. By shifting a discharge NMOS transistor of a conventional dynamic logic circuit between an output terminal and a logic block, plus an additional charge and discharge control, the operation speed and power consumption of a dynamic circuit can be effectively improved. Using the charge redistribution to speed up the circuit operation and to reduce the body effect that affects the operation speed, the speed of the novel dynamic logic circuit is enhanced. By transferring the lump capacitor of the charge/discharge, the dynamic power can be effectively reduced. The lower power dynamic logic circuit can be used independently or combined with a conventionally dynamic logic circuit.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a dynamic logic circuit, and more particularly, to a low power dynamic logic circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
CMOS dynamic circuits originated in the 1980s. Since the CMOS circuit employing repetitive transistor networks (NMOS transistor network and PMOS network) to implement the circuit required excessive hardware, a single-side transistor network (only NMOS transistor network or PMOS network) replaced the CMOS circuit. However, the single-side transistor network is not supposed to lose the advantage of no static power consumption of the CMOS circuit. With this in mind, the CMOS dynamic circuit is developed and fabricated.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional dynamic logic circuit. In FIG. 1, the dynamic logic circuit comprises a PMOS transistor 102, a logic block 104 and an NMOS transistor 106. The PMOS transistor 102 and the NMOS transistor 106 are controlled by the same clock signal xcfx86, which is illustrated in FIG. 1B. The logic block 104 is used to implement a Boolean function. The dynamic logic circuit as shown in FIG. 1 controlled by the clock signal xcfx86 works in two phases, that is, a precharge phase and an evaluation phase. When the circuit works in the precharge phase, xcfx86=0, the PMOS transistor 102 is turned on, and the NMOS transistor 106 is turned off. Consequently, the output terminal O is charged to a high voltage (logic 1) via the PMOS transistor 102. When the circuit works in the evaluation phase, xcfx86=1, the PMOS transistor 102 is turned off, and the NMOS transistor 106 is turned on. Meanwhile, the logic block 104 is connected to the NMOS transistor 106 in series, so that the logic of the output terminal O is determined by the input terminal i to complete the Boolean function of the circuit.
FIG. 2A shows the way to use a domino circuit to construct the dynamic logic circuit. In FIG. 2A, two stages of domino circuit logic gates 202 and 204 are coupled to each other. The logic gates 202 and 204 are similar to each other with different complete logic. For example, the logic gate 202 comprises a logic unit 206 coupled to a driver unit 208, and the logic unit 206 comprises a PMOS transistor 210, a logic block 212 and an NMOS transistor 214 coupled together. The logic block 212 comprises an NMOS transistor 226 coupled to an NMOS transistor 228. The logic gate 204 comprises a logic unit 216 coupled to a driver unit 218. The logic unit 216 comprises a PMOS transistor 220, a logic block 222 and an NMOS transistor 224 coupled together. The logic block 222 comprises an NMOS transistor 230. The PMOS transistor 210, the PMOS transistor 220, the NMOS transistor 214 and the NMOS transistor 224 are controlled by the same clock signal xcfx86. The driver units 208 and 218 are made of inverters. The relative waveforms of the operation of the circuit are shown as FIG. 2B. The domino circuit is working in two phases, the precharge phase (xcfx86=0) and the evaluation phase (xcfx86=1). When xcfx86=0, the outputs Q and R of the logic units 206 and 216 are charged up to a high voltage. Through the inverter, the outputs P and Z of the logic gates 202 and 204 are 0. After xcfx86=1, initially, as the outputs P and Z are both low voltage, so that the NMOS transistor 230 to implement the Boolean function is shut off. However, when A and B are both logic 1, the output of the logic unit 206 is 0 after a time delay. Through the inverter, the output P is raised to logic 1. Similarly, when P is logic 1, Z is raised to logic 1 after a time delay. Accordingly, the data evaluation operation is performed sequentially without causing the problem of data race.
FIG. 3A shows a way of using a clock delay circuit to construct a dynamic logic circuit. In FIG. 3A, two stages of clock delay circuit logic gates 302 and 304 are coupled to each other. The logic gate 302 comprises a logic unit 306 that further comprises a PMOS transistor 308, a logic block 310 and an NMOS transistor 312 coupled together. The PMOS transistor 308 and the NMOS transistor 312 are controlled by the clock signal xcfx86. The logic gate 304 comprises a logic unit 314 that further comprises a PMOS transistor 316, a logic block 318 and an NMOS transistor 320. The PMOS transistor 316 and the NMOS transistor 320 are controlled by the clock signal xcfx86d. The relative waveforms of the operation of the circuit are shown in FIG. 3B. In FIG. 3B, the clock delay circuit is operated under two phases, that is, a precharge phase (xcfx86=0, xcfx86d=0) and an evaluation phase (xcfx86=1 and xcfx86d=1). When xcfx86=0, xcfx86d=0, the circuit is in the precharge phase. The outputs P and Z of the logic gates 302 and 304 are logic 1. When xcfx86=1, the logic gate 302 starts the evaluation. Meanwhile, xcfx86d is still 0. The output P is varied to logic 0 only when the input signals A and B are both logic 1. Consequently, xcfx86d is changed to 1. Meanwhile, the input of the logic gate 304 is stabilized, the output Z is not damaged by data race, and a correct evaluation can be performed.
Both the domino circuit and clock delay circuit are operated by applying the technique of an inverter gate or a clock delay to the logic unit. That is, the major part is still the logic unit. Therefore, if the performance of the logic unit is enhanced, for example, the operation speed is increased and the power consumption is reduced, the overall assembly of circuit can be enhanced.
FIG. 4 illustrates a conventional logic unit of a dynamic logic circuit with a NOR function. In FIG. 4, the logic unit of the logic circuit comprises a PMOS transistor 402, a logic block 404 and an NMOS transistor 406 coupled together. The PMOS transistor 402 and the NMOS transistor 406 are controlled by a clock signal xcfx86. The logic block 404 comprises k NMOS transistors connected in parallel. That is, the logic unit implements the NOR function with k inputs. When the logic block 404 connects k NMOS transistors in parallel, the parasitic capacitance of the drain and source regions are significant. The lump capacitor of the drain regions (including the parasitic capacitor and the wiring capacitor) is denoted by C1 408, while the lump capacitor of the source regions (including the parasitic capacitor and the wiring capacitor) is denoted by C2 410. When xcfx86=0 the PMOS transistor 402 charges the capacitors C1 408 and C2 410 up to VDD and VDDxe2x88x92VTN, wherein VDD is the operation voltage, and VTN is the threshold voltage of the NMOS transistor. When xcfx86=0, most of the input combinations (with a probability of (2kxe2x88x921)/2k) enables the charges stored in C1 408 and C2 410 to leak. As the speed of the logic unit is determined according to the transition from 1 to 0 of the output terminals, the discharging time will seriously affect the operation speed. In addition, this dynamic power consumption is significant with a high probability and is a major factor that affects the power consumption of the circuit.
According to the above, the conventional dynamic logic circuit still has a lot drawbacks such as:
1. Significant power consumption.
2. Long operation time.
The invention provides a novel CMOS basic dynamic logic circuit to improve the problems of large power consumption and long operation time for the conventional dynamic logic circuit.
The novel dynamic logic circuit provided by the invention comprises a charge unit, coupled to a first clock signal, and a discharge unit, coupled to a second clock signal and the charge unit. The first and the second clock signal are in inverted phase to each other.
The charge unit comprises a PMOS transistor, an NMOS transistor, a feedback PMOS transistor and a logic gate. The PMOS transistor has a gate coupled to the first clock signal and a source region coupled to a voltage source. The NMOS transistor has a gate coupled to the first clock signal, a drain region coupled to a drain region of the PMOS transistor, and a source region coupled to the discharge unit. The feedback PMOS transistor has a drain region coupled to the drain region of the NMOS transistor, and a source region coupled to the voltage source. The logic gate has a first terminal coupled to the drain region of the PMOS transistor and a second terminal coupled to a gate of the feedback PMOS transistor.
The discharge unit comprises a logic block and an NMOS transistor. The logic block has a first terminal coupled to the charge unit and a second terminal coupled to a ground voltage. The NMOS transistor has a gate coupled to the second clock signal, a drain region coupled to the first terminal of the logic block, and a source region coupled to the ground voltage. The logic block includes an NMOS transistor network. When the first clock signal is logic 0 and the second clock is logic 1, the low power dynamic logic circuit is in a precharge phase. When the first clock signal is logic 1 and the second clock signal is logic 0, the low power dynamic logic circuit is in an evaluation phase.
When the circuit is performing the precharge operation, the output terminal is charged to logic 1, where the output terminal is coupled to the drain region of the PMOS transistor of the charge unit. Meanwhile, the charge unit and the discharge unit are isolated by the NMOS transistor of the charge unit. No matter which circuit the logic gate is, and no matter what the output voltage of the logic gate is, the voltage of the output terminal is not affected. The NMOS transistor of the discharge unit is on at this time, and the internal node is precharged to logic 0 (that is, discharging). The internal node is coupled to the drain region of the NMOS transistor of the discharge unit.
When the circuit is performing the evaluation operation, the PMOS transistor of the charge unit is off, while the NMOS transistor thereof is on. The charge unit and the discharge unit conduct with each other. The logic value of the output terminal is determined by the logic block. If the logic block is to obtain a value of 0, the output terminal is discharged to 0. If the logic block is to obtain a value of 1, the charge redistribution occurs since the output terminal is precharged to logic 1, while the internal node is precharged to logic 0. Only to make the logic value of the output of the logic gate opposite to that of the output terminal, the feedback PMOS transistor will helps the output terminal and the internal node to recharge to logic 1. The output of the current circuit can be connected to next stage via the logic gate. Or alternatively, an inverter can be added to bring the output to the next stage.
Both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.


An ionic contact lens made from a terpolymer of 2,3-dihydroxypropyl methacrylate, 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, and methacrylic acid. The contact lens has excellent properties including good strength and excellent water retention properties and excellent dimensional stability.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a contact lens having improved properties. More particularly, the invention relates to an ionic contact lens having improved dimensional stability and water retention. The contact lens is made of an ionic polymer. The invention also relates to an ionic polymer useful in contact lenses, and also to methods of making and using the polymer and contact lens.
2. Description of Related Art
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,532,289 and U.S. Ser. No. 08/674,275 filed Jul. 1, 1996, both incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, the ability of a hydrogel lens to maintain its water saturated state is important for maximum lens stability. Hydrogel lenses dehydrate because water evaporates continuously from their surface. Dehydration of a contact lens results in a change in the dimensions of the lens, hence dehydration has a direct effect upon dimensional stability. Conventional contact lenses undergo a significant degree of dehydration during use and, accordingly, have a significant degree of dimensional instability, particularly at higher water contents.
Further, rehydration is important to the dimensional stability of a contact lens. If a lens material absorbs water rapidly, then the lens will more closely return to a water-saturated state during each blink, when the lens is bathed in tear fluid. Therefore, as a lens begins to dehydrate, a characteristic of rapid rehydration is extremely advantageous for maintaining saturation and maximum stability of the lens.
Unfortunately, conventional ionic contact lens development either has ignored the effect of rehydration rate upon lenses or has constructed lenses of materials with a less than optimal rate of rehydration. As such, there remains a need for an ionic contact lens possessing superior dimensional stability and having a low rate of dehydration and a high rate of rehydration.
Ionic hydrophilic lenses introduced in recent years have been based on either existing materials employing new production technology or slight modifications of known compositions. This lack of progress in the ionic soft lens field has resulted in a large variety of lens designs, but a narrow choice of lens materials and a narrow range of lens stabilities as measured by water balance ratio.
Limited choice in lens material is problematic when attempting to fit contact lenses on patients subject to a wide variety of physiological and environmental conditions. For example, an array of factors affect contact lens comfort and stability, such as, tear quantity, ambient humidity, prolonged open eye periods, and airflow around the eye. Especially difficult cases are posed by patients with dry eyes.
The dehydration of hydrophilic lenses is a major problem, affecting lens movement, lens power, oxygen permeability, and comfort. Various factors including patient physiology, environment, lens design, and lens material significantly influence the rate of dehydration, as described in Andrasko, Hydration Levels and Oxygen Transmissivities of Ophthalmic Polymer In Situ, Theses, Ohio State University, 1980, and McCarey et al. pH, Osmolarity and Temperature Effects on the Water Content of Hydrogel Contact Lenses, Contact and Intraocular Lens Medical Journal 8, 158-167, 1982. Thicker lenses also appear to dehydrate less than thinner lenses, as described in Businger et al., Die Beeinflussung der Dehydration von hydrophilen Kontaktlinsen durch verschiedene Linsenparameter, Deutsche Optiker Zeitung 40, 99-102 (1985).
While a variety of hydrophilic lens materials are available, they differ only slightly in their rates of dehydration, as described in Helton et al., Hydrogel Contact Lens Dehydration on Rates Determined by Thermogravimetric Analysis CLAO 17, 59-61 (1991). These factors are particularly pronounced during the cold season or in dry environments, see Andrasko et al., The Effect of Humidity on the Dehydration of Soft Contact Lenses on the Eye, Int. Cl. Clinic 7, 30 (1982) and Eng et al., The Wearing of Hydrophilic Contact Lenses Aboard a Commercial Jet Aircraft: 1 Humidity Effects on Fit, Aviat. Space Environ. Med. 53,235 (1982).
Non-ionic materials containing glyceryl methacrylate have been reported to have improved internal water retention over poly-HEMA, see Pescosolido, et al., Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Study of Dehydration in Glyceryl-methyl-methacrylate Contact Lens, Contactologia 15D, 64 (1993), see Businger, GMA/HEMA: First Report on a Clinical Trial, Contact Lens Spectrum (August 1995), see Benz and Ors, New Materials Demand More Accurate Measurements of Performance Contact Lens Spectrum (July 1997).
The ability of a hydrogel lens to maintain its saturated state is important for lens stability. All hydrogel lenses dehydrate. Water evaporates from the surface of a hydrogel lens continuously. The amount of water loss that a lens will experience depends upon the dehydration/rehydration behavior of the particular lens material, the quantity of tears deposited on the lens with each blink, the ambient humidity, temperature and air flow around the eye.
Superior dehydration/rehydration behavior of soft lens materials provides the material with increased dimensional stability. If a soft lens material can be made to dehydrate (allow evaporation) more slowly, then the lens will remain closer to its saturated state. Equally important is the importance of rehydration. If a lens material can be made to re-absorb water more rapidly, then the lens can return to a state closer to saturation during each blink, when the lens is bathed in tear fluid. Thus, an ideal soft contact lens is one constructed from a composition that is both slow to dehydrate and quick to rehydrate.

Benz Research and Development Corporation


The illumination optical system includes a beam shaper which converts an intensity distribution of a laser beam in each of a short axis direction and a long axis direction, which is a Gaussian distribution, into an intensity distribution of a parallel beam on a modulation surface of the optical modulator in each of the short axis direction and the long axis direction, which is a top hat distribution. The modulation surface and an irradiated surface are optically conjugated with respect to the long axis direction by a third lens and a fourth lens. Further, the modulation surface and a front focus position of the fourth lens are optically conjugated with respect to the short axis direction by a first lens, a second lens, and the third lens. The fourth lens condenses a beam having a top hat distribution at the front focus position onto the irradiated surface.

In recent years, an SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) type three-dimensional modeling apparatus has been used, which emits a modulated laser beam to a modeling material such as metal powder or the like and sinters the modeling material, to thereby perform three-dimensional modeling. In the three-dimensional modeling apparatus, an increase in the productivity is required, and it is considered that the power density (i.e., the light intensity per unit area) of the laser beam to be emitted to the modeling material should be increased. In an optical apparatus which modulates and emits the laser beam, however, if the power density of the laser beam entering an optical modulator is increased, the peak intensity (i.e., maximum intensity) of the laser beam having an intensity distribution which is a Gaussian distribution becomes too high and there arises a possibility that the optical modulator may be damaged.
On the other hand, National Publication of Translation No. 2018-521478 (Document 1) discloses a technique in which a light emitting apparatus used for stage lighting, a headlight, or the like is provided with a top-hat beam shaper for redistributing light having a first wavelength (for example, blue light) emitted from a laser diode or an LED into a beam having a spatially flat intensity distribution, to thereby improve the efficiency of converting the light having the first wavelength into light having a second wavelength (for example, yellow light) in a light conversion member.
In the above-described optical apparatus, it is thought that the amount of light to be inputted to the optical modulator can be increased without damaging the optical modulator by collimating the intensity distribution of the laser beam entering the optical modulator to be flat by using a top-hat beam shaper.
In this case, the intensity distribution of the laser beam collimated by the top-hat beam shaper becomes a top hat distribution on a modulation surface of the optical modulator, and becomes disordered at the other portions on an optical path. Therefore, since the intensity distribution of the laser beam is disordered even at a front focus position of a condensing lens for condensing the laser beam onto a target object, there is a possible problem that no main peak may appear in the intensity distribution of the laser beam at a back focus position (i.e., an irradiated surface on the target object) and the laser beam cannot be suitably condensed. Further, in a case where the intensity distribution of the laser beam emitted from the optical modulator is the Gaussian distribution, since the intensity distribution at the front focus position of the condensing lens is also the Gaussian distribution, the intensity distribution at the back focus position also becomes the Gaussian distribution and the laser beam can be suitably condensed.

Optical apparatus and three-dimensional modeling apparatus


Methods, systems, and computer-readable mediums for a data entry system are provided. A method of operating a data system in accordance with the invention includes a computer processor configured for receiving a viewing direction of a first party, where the first party is looking in the viewing direction to view a menu of information. The method further includes identifying a portion of the menu based on the viewing direction of the first party and displaying, to a second party, one or more menu choices associated with the identified portion of the menu. The method may also include receiving, from the second party, a selection of one of the one or more menu choices where the selection of the one menu choice by the second party is based, at least in part, on supplemental information received by the second party from the first party.

The advancement of computer and display technologies has increased the amount of information people interact with. Even though the computer and display systems add some automation to data entry processes, there is often still human involvement. In some cases, the data entry involves interactions between two or more humans. For example, a customer of a business may communicate with an employee of a business regarding a request or an order. The employee of the business often enters the customer's request into an electronic terminal of some type. Often the customer may be selecting from among many different offerings of the business, including many options, and/or sub-options of products or offerings of the business. The employee is typically using an order entry screen that may contain a large amount of information associated with all the available options.
In some cases, an order entry screen may include trees or tiers of menus which allow the employee to narrow down to the specific product the customer is requesting and/or options associated with that product. Businesses often attempt to offer more products and more variations of their products to be more competitive, to offer appealing alternatives to a wider range of customers, or for marketing reasons. In some cases, it can be difficult to quickly find the information on the display that the customer is asking about and/or requesting. In one specific example, a fast food restaurant may have a relatively large menu of food options. When a customer begins to order items, it may be difficult for the employee to quickly find the requested item(s) on the order entry screen from among all the different available options.
The challenges described above may be compounded by additional factors including: a complex menu with many items, a menu with similar sounding items, a menu with multiple items which use some of the same words, language or accent differences between the customer and the employee, a noisy background environment, communication between the customer and the employee occurs over a communication medium that makes the communication more difficult, high density displays that include a large amount of information on a single screen, employees who have little or no familiarity with the order entry screen, reconfiguration of order entry screens placing items in locations that are different than the locations employees have become used to, and/or multiple order entry screens.


A process is provided to prepare solid borozirconate and solid borotitanate cross-linkers, which comprises contacting zirconium or titanium complex with alkanolamine at particular mole ratios of boron, zirconium or titanium and alkanolamine. Use of the cross-linkers in compositions for oil field applications such as hydraulic fracturing and plugging of permeable zones are also disclosed.

The production of oil and natural gas from an underground well (subterranean formation) can be stimulated by a technique called hydraulic fracturing, in which a viscous fluid composition (fracturing fluid) containing a suspended proppant (e.g., sand, bauxite) is introduced into an oil or gas well via a conduit, such as tubing or casing, at a flow rate and a pressure which create, reopen and/or extend a fracture into the oil- or gas-containing formation. The proppant is carried into the fracture by the fluid composition and prevents closure of the formation after pressure is released. Leak-off of the fluid composition into the formation is limited by the fluid viscosity of the composition. Fluid viscosity also permits suspension of the proppant in the composition during the fracturing operation. Cross-linkers, such as borates, titanates or zirconates, are usually incorporated into the fluid composition to control viscosity.
Typically, less than one third of available oil is extracted from a well after it has been fractured before production rates decrease to a point at which recovery becomes uneconomical. Enhanced recovery of oil from such subterranean formations frequently involves attempting to displace the remaining crude oil with a driving fluid, e.g., gas, water, brine, steam, polymer solution, foam, or micellar solution. Ideally, such techniques (commonly called flooding techniques) provide a bank of oil of substantial depth being driven into a producing well; however, in practice this is frequently not the case. Oil-bearing strata are usually heterogeneous, some parts of them being more permeable than others. As a consequence, channeling frequently occurs, so that the driving fluid flows preferentially through permeable zones depleted of oil (so-called "thief zones") rather than through those parts of the strata which contain sufficient oil to make oil-recovery operations profitable.
Difficulties in oil recovery due to thief zones may be corrected by injecting an aqueous solution of an organic polymer and a cross-linker into a subterranean formation under conditions where the polymer will be cross-linked to produce a gel, thus reducing permeability of the subterranean formation to the driving fluid (gas, water, etc.). Polysaccharide- or partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide-based fluids cross-linked with certain aluminum, titanium, zirconium, and boron based compounds are used in these enhanced oil recovery applications. Cross-linked fluids or gels, whether for fracturing a subterranean formation or for reducing permeability of zones in subterranean formation, are now being used in hotter and deeper wells under a variety of temperature and pH conditions. In these operations the rate of cross-linking is critical to the successful generation of viscosity.
Boron compounds are typically used as cross-linkers in fracturing fluids used in low to mid temperature wells (150-250° F., 66-121° C.). A pH of 10 or greater is required. Cross-linking takes place immediately on mixing of boron compound with polymer base gel. Boron-cross-linked gels are not shear sensitive.
Existing delayed zirconium-based cross-linkers, based on triethanolamine or hydroxyalkylated ethylenediamine have been designed to initiate cross-linking in the wellbore. Therefore, they are ineffective at generating viscosity under mild surface temperature conditions. The gels are also shear sensitive and require higher horsepower (energy consumption) to pump.
The need exists in some fracturing fluid applications to generate an initial viscosity at the surface, followed by a delayed viscosity generation, once the fluid is subjected to higher down-hole temperatures. Current technology involves using a borate ion generating material in combination with a delayed zirconate cross-linker to accomplish both surface and delayed viscosity development. However, borate/zirconate cross-linking compositions suffer from disadvantages, such as, poor shelf stability, insufficient viscosity generation and undesirable cross-linking rates.
Most existing cross-linkers, including borate-based cross-linkers are liquid products which either freeze or become too viscous to pump under cold outdoor conditions such as found in Canada or the Rocky Mountains. There is a need for solid cross-linkers which can be used to generate high, thermally stable viscosity in a low and/or high pH environment. Such solid cross-linkers could be pre-blended with polymer, added as a solid to the aqueous polymer solution or dissolved in water and added to the aqueous polymer solution.
The need also exists for solid cross-linkers in off-shore fracturing operations, where the weight of chemicals being shipped and stored is critical. Solid cross-linkers which could contain two or more times the active metal (e.g., Zr or Ti) content of the liquid counterparts, would allow fracturing operations to be completed in a more economical fashion.
Still another need is for solid cross-linkers which are non-flammable. Many existing liquid borate, zirconate or titanate cross-linkers are flammable liquids.
U.S. Patent Application No. 2006/0058198 discloses a fluid additive comprising a cross-linker and a delay agent, wherein the cross-linker and delay agent such as sodium gluconate are combined in dry form in the field. The cross-linker may be a boron compound, a titanate, a zirconate, or a mixture thereof. In the field, the dry mixing can result in hour-to-hour or day-to-day variations due to weighing errors, incomplete mixing, or differing rates of solution.
Thus, there remain needs for solid borozirconate and borotitanate cross-linkers which are capable of generating excellent viscosity in the desired 3-5 minute range, and can be used in cold climates and off-shore applications.

Solid borozirconate and borotitanate cross-linkers


When a first device and a first attribute are specified, a data processing device registers the first device in association with first attribute and transmits an instruction to perform a process relating to the first attribute to the first device. If the first device possesses the second attribute, the data processing device registers the first device in association with the second attribute. The data processing device displays, on a display unit, a first image representing identification data of the first device when the second attribute is specified and the first device is registered in association with the second attribute. When the first image is selected, the data processing device transmits an instruction to perform a process relating to the second attribute to the first device corresponding to the selected first image.

Printing environments in which a user of a PC or other computer can select a desired printer from among a plurality of printers connected to a network and transmit a print command to the selected printer have become commonplace. The printer used most frequently by the user of the PC is registered as a default printer. Thereafter, the user can issue print commands on the PC to the printer registered as the default printer.


A waste retrieval device including a frame having a head portion, a member extending rearwardly therefrom and a retaining element, and a bag for containing at least partially the head portion, the bag including interconnected top and bottom panels sized to respectively extend over and under the head portion, a rear edge of the top panel being attachable to the frame by the retaining element, the top and bottom panels defining side portions providing extra bag material extending beyond the head portion when the bag at least partially contains the head portion to allow the bag to be inverted by moving a rear edge of the bottom panel under the head portion away from the member and back toward the member over the head portion and top panel.

In some countries, pet owners are obligated by law to remove waste material produced by their pet on a public property. Even where no law to that effect exists, pet owners are usually expected to remove such waste material, as waste material left on the streets, sidewalks, etc. is generally unappealing and unhygienic.
A number of scooper devices, i.e. devices used to pick up waste material on the ground, have pincer-like arms which are inserted in a bag and used to pick up the waste. The bag is then inverted, placing the soiled surface and the waste material inside the bag. However, pincer-like scoopers are generally not adapted to be used as catchers, i.e. to catch waste before the waste contacts the ground. Scooped waste material generally leaves a waste residue on the ground, which can be a health hazard, especially for children.
A variety of devices allow for support of a bag in an open position, the bag being maintained under the animal before the waste is produced, thus catching the waste in the bag which is then removed from the device and thrown away. The problem with such devices is that the bag can become soiled, either by the falling waste itself if the open end of the bag is not adequately aligned under the animal, or by the ground where the bottom of the bag makes contact. Thus, the user can be required to manipulate a dirty bag, which is not desirable.
Accordingly, improvements are desirable.

Waste retrieval and disposal device and method


A plane light source unit which may be advantageously used as a backlighting means for a liquid crystal display device, and which includes a transparent light guide having a side end surface as a light incident surface, a surface perpendicular to the light incident surface as a light emitting surface, and a light reflecting layer provided on an opposite surface to the light emitting surface; and a second element having a large number of prism units formed on the light emitting surface of the transparent light guide which receives the light emitted from the transparent light guide and emits the light in a predetermined direction; wherein at least one of the light emitting surface and the opposite surface of said transparent light guide has a directional light emitting function which emits the incident light from the light incident surface of the transparent light guide in an oblique direction to the incident light and has a regulation function which makes the luminance of the light through the light emitting surface uniform over the whole surface thereof.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plane light source unit, and more particularly to a plane light source unit which may be advantageously used as a backlighting means for a liquid crystal display device or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a backlighting means for a liquid crystal display device or the like generally has such a construction that a linear lamp is located at a focus of a reflector having a parabolic section while a milk-white diffusing plate is located above the lamp. Various improvements were made to optimize the configuration of the reflector, to adjust the diffusion coefficient of the diffusing plate.
Special constructions have also been provided which employ such a combination of a linear lamp and a light guide, one side end of which is adjacent to the lamp, and the configuration of the light guide is simulated by approximation to a point source and worked into a curved surface so as to emit the light in a particular direction, or the thickness of the light guide is varied along the direction of light, or else a lenticular is used wherein the prism angle is varied in accordance with the distance from the lamp, or otherwise such configurations as described above are combined suitably.
Recently, plane light source units have been used as liquid crystal display units. However, the display device, which uses a conventional plane light source unit to obtain a high quality display, requires a thick plane light source unit. In particular, a plane light source unit for a large display with a size of 10 to 12 inches requires the conventional unit having a thickness of 20 to 30 mm. Therefore, the conventional unit is impossible to be used as a thin plane light source unit.
Various plane light source devices of edge-light types have been proposed. Each of these devices has a transparent light guide comprising a plate-shape transparent material such as an acrylic resin. Incident light from one end surface of the transparent light guide is then emitted from the upper or lower surface of the light guide. However, such a large liquid crystal display device with a size of 10 to 12 inches results in a display where luminance is decreased according to the distance from the light source or display with uneven luminance, so that a display of high quality cannot often be obtained.
In order to solve this problem, a light guide having a thickness which varies according to the distance from a lamp, or a member which changes light path geometrically, is provided. However, such a member having a specific shape requires a precise work to form, and thus it becomes expensive to prepare. Furthermore, this member does utilize only a small portion of the incident light to the member.
Recently, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. (Tokukai-Hei) 1-245220 disclosed a plane light source unit of an edge-light type. This plane light source unit has a light guide with a layer of a light diffusing material which is applied or adhered on the surface thereof opposite to a light emitting surface or on a light diffusing surface of a provided member. The density of the amount of the light diffusing material applied increases as the distance from the portion of light incidence increases. Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. (Tokukai-Hei) 1-107406 disclosed a plane illuminating device which can uniformly illuminate the whole surface of a light diffusing plate. This device has a plurality of piled transparent plates, each of which has a different pattern of fine dots of light diffusing material thereon.
Since a non-light-transmissive inorganic material (e.g., white pigment such a titanium oxide or barium sulfate) is used, a loss of light occurs to lower the luminance of the emitted light.
Oe, one of the inventors of the present application, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,729,068 a light diffusing layer provided on the light guide through an intermediate layer having an intermediate characteristics of those of the light guide and the diffusing layer, and a light reflecting film (a light regulation member) to evenly illuminate the whole surface of the diffusing device.
The inventors of the present application proposed a plane light source unit which is an edge-light type, as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. (Tokukai-Hei) 1-244490 and 1-252933. This unit has a lens-like surface or a satin finished surface provided on at least one of a light emitting surface of a light guide and the opposite surface thereof, and a light regulation member having a light reflecting pattern which reflects most of the light near the light source but transmits almost all light near its central part, and a light diffusing plate provided on the emitting surface of the light guide.
The light diffusing device and the plane light source unit using the light regulation member show excellent effects regarding the uniformity in luminance of the emitted light. The device and the unit, however, cannot utilize the light which is reflected by the light regulating member, and accordingly the luminance of the emitted light lowers near the minimum value of the luminance before the regulation.
To provide a plane light source unit with an uniform and high luminance, the inventors of the present application proposed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/849,365 filed on May 5, 1992 a plane light source unit which is characterized in that at least one of the light emitting plane and the opposite surface of the transparent light guide has a directional light emitting function which emits the incident light from the light incident surface of the transparent light guide in an oblique direction to the incident light and has a regulation function which makes the luminance of the light uniform over the light emitting surface in the whole surface thereof. This plane light source unit has been designed to emit light as uniformly as possible in all directions. However, it is desired to concentrate emitted light in a particular direction depending upon application of a plane light source.
For example, in the case of application to a liquid cryatal color TV set for personal use or a liquid crystal display for a personal computer having a comparatively small viewing angle, it is required to emit the light only in a particular direction and make the amount of emitted light as uniform as possible over an entire emitting surface.
The inventors of the present application disclosed, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,126,882 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. (Tokukai-Hei) 2-17 and 2-84618, a plane light source unit comprising a first element having a lens-like surface or a satin finishied surface provided on at least one of a light emitting surface of a light guide and the opposite surface thereof, thereof, and a second element having a large number of prism units formed on the emitting surface which emitted the light from the emitting surface of the first element in a prescribed direction. This plane light source unit can easily form the light concentrated in a direction to be observed by a user. However, this unit is unsatisfactory in the uniformity and value of luminance of the emitted light.


There are provided short term enhancement methods and systems to improve perceptual quality in reproduced speech. According to one aspect, a method of enhancing a speech signal includes processing said speech signal to generate a plurality of frames, wherein each of said plurality frames includes a plurality of subframes, coding a previous subframe of said plurality of subframes using Code-Excited Linear Prediction to generate a previous excitation signal, and applying short term enhancement on said previous excitation signal to enhance a current excitation signal for a current subframe.

1. Technical Field
This invention relates to speech communication systems and, more particularly, to systems for digital speech coding.
2. Related Art
One prevalent mode of communication is by communication systems that include both wireline and wireless radio systems. Data and voice transmissions within a wireless system occur within a bandwidth of an allowed frequency range. Due to increased wireless communication traffic, reduced bandwidth of transmissions to improve capacity with the system is desirable.
Voice and data are transmitted digitally in wireless telecommunications due to noise immunity, reliability, compactness of equipment, and the ability to implement sophisticated signal processing functions using digital techniques. One form of digital transmission is accomplished using digital speech processing systems. Waveforms representing analog speech signals are sampled and then digitally encoded. The number of bits of the encoded signal can be expressed as a bit rate that specifies the number of bits to describe one second of speech. Over the years, significant variations and enhancements have been applied to waveform matching techniques in an effort to improve the quality of the synthesized speech and increase the speech compression.
A reduction in the quality of the synthesized (or reconstructed) speech may occur with respect to the original speech. This divergence in the quality of the synthesized speech is due in part to the failure to closely replicate perceptual aspects of the original speech with the bits of data available to describe the signal. Poor replication of the perceptual aspects could result in noise, loss of clarity and the failure to capture recognizable characteristics such as tone, pitch and magnitude. These characteristics allow a listener to recognize who the speaker is, as well as providing other perception based features, such as, intelligibility and naturalness of the speech.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems of speech coding that are capable of minimizing the bandwidth of original speech, while providing synthesized speech that closely resembles the original speech and captures the perceptually important features of the speech.

System for an adaptive excitation pattern for speech coding


Provided is a method of joining members having different thermal expansion coefficients, capable of joining them at a temperature lower than the melting point of Ag to obtain a joining layer having excellent durability to a thermal cycle. First Ag particles 3 having an average particle diameter of 50 nm or less and an Ag foil 4 or metal foil 4 having a smaller modulus of longitudinal elasticity than that of Ag are placed between two types of members 1 and 2 at least one of which has a lower thermal expansion coefficient than that of Ag, heated to join the members 1 and 2. A wax material 3, which is a powder mixture containing first Ag particles having an average particle diameter of 50 nm or less and second Ag particles or particles of a metal (having a modulus of longitudinal elasticity than that of Ag) having an average particle diameter of 20 μm or more and being contained in a volume fraction of 10 to 40% relative to a total volume of the powder mixture, is placed between the two types of members 1 and 2, heated to join the members 1 and 2. The metal foil 4 and the particles of a metal have an Ag coating layer on a surface thereof. The first member 1 is formed of one type of material selected from the group consisting of Si, SiC, Al2O3, AlN and Si3N4 and the second member is formed of Al or Cu.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of joining two types of members having different thermal expansion coefficients.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional method of joining two types of members, it is known to join members, for example, different metals or a metal member and a ceramic member, with an Ag wax material.
When pure Ag is used as the Ag wax material, the Ag wax material is placed as a joining layer between the members to be joined. However, when the pure Ag is melted by heating to the melting point of Ag, Ag and other metals are reacted to form alloys, with the result that the joining layer becomes fragile. Then, to join the members at a temperature lower than the melting point of Ag, use of an Ag wax material containing Ag particles in the order of nanometers has been investigated.
As a composition containing the nanometer Ag particles, an Ag-powder mixture is known, which is formed by blending spherical-form Ag powder or flake-form Ag powder and rod-form Ag powder having a lengthwise diameter of not more than 10 μm and a crystallite diameter of not less than 30 nm (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-49106). The Ag-powder mixture is blended with a resin component and an organic solvent to prepare Ag paste, which is then used as a means for providing electrical conduction when a circuit such as a circuit of a print wiring substrate is formed.
When the Ag wax material containing nanometer Ag particles is placed between the members to be joined and used as a joining layer, even if the thermal expansion coefficients of the members are smaller than that of Ag, the members can be joined. However, since the joining layer is formed of pure Ag, the thermal expansion coefficient thereof is as large as 19.1 ppm/K. Thus, when the members whose thermal expansion coefficients are smaller than that of Ag are repeatedly subjected to a thermal cycle consisting of heating and cooling steps, the joining layer may not show sufficient durability to the thermal cycle because of the difference in thermal expansion coefficient between the joining layer and the members.

Method of joining members having different thermal expansion coefficients


A system for raising water for OTEC and desalination is provided. The system includes at least one submerged platform positioned within a body of water, wherein the at least one submerged platform is buoyantly held up from a bottom surface of the body of water, and wherein the at least one submerged platform is held below a top surface of the body of water by at least one mooring attached to the bottom surface of the body of water. At least one cable is movably connected to the at least one submerged platform. At least one container is held by the at least one cable, wherein a quantity of water is emptied from the at least one container.

At present, ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses a cold water pipe to draw cold water from the deep sea, the pipe must either lie on the sea bed which is generally at least 5 miles from the land or it must be suspended. The OTEC pipe is so risky and expensive that OTEC is not commercially viable except in very ideal situations. OTEC uses the thermal difference between the warm tropical water and the cold sea water generally at least 1000 meters beneath the sea. The cold water is used in the condenser of a heat engine. The air conditioning industry also can utilize the cold water in the deep sea and it can also be used in mariculture and low temperature thermal desalination.
Thus the delivery of the cold water can be used in several different ways, and the way in which it is used and the proximity to the shore will determine the best method of importing the water. OTEC, low temperature desalination, and hydrogen production can be achieved at sea, or on land, the use of cold water in air conditioning requires for the water to be transported back to shore in most cases.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.

OTEC cold water retrieval and desalination systems


The present disclosure provides a positioning device, including a laser projector, and a servo system for driving the laser projector and collecting a coordinate data. The present disclosure further provides a positioning method and a color film coating machine, including a warehouse and a marble platform arranged in the warehouse, wherein further includes a positioning device, the positioning device includes a laser projector and a servo system for driving the laser projector and collecting a coordinate data, a projection direction of the laser projector is opposite to a surface of the marble platform. Compared with the prior art, by knowing the current position of the laser projector to output the corresponding coordinates, the corresponding target foreign objects can be quickly found on the marble platform according to the coordinates, cleared in time, the inspection time is saved, and the product yield is improved.

In the flat panel display manufacturing industry, dust from foreign bodies is an important issue affecting production. In the production process, when a piece of dust falls on the marble platform of the color film coating machine, the produced product will have a poor quality resulting from the so-called defect of Mura, which refers to defects of images displayed on a display panel in various forms of unevenness. Once a Mura defect is detected on a display panel by an inspection machine according to the coordinates provided by the inspection machine, an operator will carry out certain processes to clean the marble platform of the coating machine in order to remove a particle dust from the marble platform, and afterwards, the operation of the coating machine is resumed, and production of defect products can be terminated. With the size of the display panel getting larger generation by generation, the size of the marble platform of the coating machine is also getting larger. In an area as large as a room, how to locate and remove the particle dust precisely and quickly is the key to maintaining efficient production.
Therefore, the color film coating machine is generally attached to the edge of the marble platform with a graduated scale, engineers in the X-scale and Y-scale to provide reference to estimate the location of dust particles, and then clean it; as the scale is attached to the edge of the marble platform, when the coordinates of the target foreign objects in the marble platform around the edge position, you can lock the target within a relatively small error. However, when the target foreign object is far away from the surrounding edge of the marble platform, the error of the human eye and the error caused by the engineer moving up the marble platform can not accurately locate the coordinates of the target foreign object, thus extending the inspection and clearance time.

Positioning device and positioning method, color film coating machine

SHENZHEN CHINA STAR OPTOELECTRONICS SEMICONDUCTOR DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.


When a user account is in an alternate (fault) state, communication or sync between an application provider and a device or client application typically is interrupted. When parties do not support rich fault messaging, communication of the reason for the interruption and remediation steps has been impossible. An application server provides rich fault messaging using applications that do not provide explicit error messaging and protocols that do not provide explicit error messaging without changing either the application or the protocol by additional interactions between an identity provider and the application server. The application server uses authentication state information provided by the identity server to generate a notification sync event that appears to the application and the protocol to be a normal sync event. The notification sync event is used to provide the user with information needed to determine what the problem with the account is and how to fix it.

Many applications and services rely on username and password to authenticate a user. The user may be asked to enter his credentials each time he logs in. Sometimes the user's credentials are stored. Some applications access a second application on the user's behalf using a token. For example, a first application (called a "relying party" because the application relies on another entity to authenticate the user) can present the user's credentials to an identity provider. In response to successful authentication, the identity provider can then send the first application a token which the first application can use to access a second application on the user's behalf. Frequently, the second application updates information (e.g., data files) on the client application or device. Ensuring that computer files in two or more locations are updated according to a set of rules is called synchronizing or "syncing". For example, when a smartphone application accesses an online email provider, the user's inbox is synced with the email provider's inbox for the user by, for example, receiving the user's new emails on the smartphone.
When a user account is locked, applications and devices stop syncing (i.e., data files are not updated). To continue the smartphone example above, the user does not receive his new emails. Typically, the user has to take one or more actions to re-enable sync. Before taking these actions, the user may have to perform other tasks first, such as proving his identity. A number of tests have been devised to attempt to confirm that a user is who he says he is. As one example of many, Captcha is a type of challenge-response test that attempts to ensure that the response is really generated by a person. Another type of test asks a user to provide secondary proof of identity by providing profile information such as birthdate or answers to questions that agree with answers previously provided by the user and saved by the system. Yet another type of test asks a user to provide the one time code that is sent to an email address or mobile phone number previously provided by the user and saved by the system. When the user is able to successfully pass whatever test he is presented with, the account is unlocked. Other user actions such as updating a password may be requested before sync is re-enabled.
Existing synchronization mechanisms can include the programs used to synchronize files and the protocol used by the synchronizing programs. Some communications between applications and devices rely on legacy protocols that do not support rich fault messaging. Examples of protocols that lack rich fault messaging include but are not limited to POP, IMAP, Exchange Active Sync, and certain rich client interfaces used, for example, for email applications embedded into smartphones, smartphone authentication and game console authentication. These legacy client-server communication protocols do not provide built-in support for identification of the cause of the fault. When a problem with the user's account arises, an application or device that uses one of these legacy protocols may provide only a generic error message such as "unable to sync" without giving the user any information about what the problem is or how it can be fixed (remediation). Even if an existing mechanism uses a protocol that is capable of rich fault messaging, the programs that use the rich fault messaging protocol may not make use of its capabilities.

Communicating state information to legacy clients using legacy protocols


A method of controlling use of network-connectable devices is provided. The method includes monitoring by a first computational process, operating at a first processor utilization level, communication on a user device operated by a particular user and determining based on the monitoring by the first computational process a trigger event. The method further includes monitoring by a second computational process, operating at a second processor utilization level higher than the first processor utilization level, the communication on the user device responsive to determining the trigger event. Use of the user device is restricted based at least on the monitoring by the second computational process of the communication.

Parents often endeavor to limit the amount of time their children spend on various network-connectable computing devices including personal computers, tablets, cellular mobile devices, video game consoles, televisions, and electronic media players. Since network-connectable computing devices have become increasingly integral with a user's personal, academic and vocational life, it is not practical to arbitrarily preclude use of such devices. Concerned parents are often at a loss as to whether their child's use of a particular computing device is good and productive (e.g. group academic discussions) or objectionable (e.g. cyber bullying via a social media application). Monitoring such use is difficult and time consuming, and it is not necessarily practical to look over a child's shoulder while the child is using a computing device for example to view a chat window. Moreover, it may be desirable, especially for a teenage child, for the parent to respect a child's privacy and not be apprised of the specific details of their child's electronic communications.

Device monitoring and restriction system and method


Ultrasonic waveguides having improved velocity gain are disclosed for use in ultrasonic medical devices. Specifically, the ultrasonic waveguides comprises a first material having a higher acoustic impedance and a second material having a lower acoustic impedance.

The present disclosure generally relates to improved ultrasonic waveguides. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to ultrasonic waveguides having improved amplification and reduced modal coupling suitable for use in ultrasonic medical devices such as ultrasonic scalpels, phacoemulsifiers, soft tissue aspirators, other ultrasonic surgical tools, and the like.
Many modern surgical procedures involve the use of ultrasonic surgical devices that typically operate at frequencies between 20 kHz and 60 kHz. These devices have application in many surgical specialties including, for example, neurosurgery, general surgery, and ophthalmic surgery. In general, it is known that ultrasonic surgical devices generate ultrasonic frequency vibratory energy that is applied to an ultrasonic applicator that vibrates longitudinally and which contacts the tissues of a patient. The ultrasonic surgical device may, among other surgical effects, cut, fragment, and/or coagulate the contacted tissues of the patient.
Ultrasonic surgical devices are constrained in their ability to generate ultrasonic frequency vibratory energy due to limits inherent in the physical characteristics of the materials typically used to fabricate the devices. For example, titanium alloys are often used for fabrication of the ultrasonic waveguide that is used to contact the tissues of a patient (i.e., ultrasonic applicator). Titanium alloys have inherent fatigue strength and stress limitations that cannot be exceeded or the ultrasonic applicator will crack and/or break resulting in an unusable tool. As a further example, an ultrasonic waveguide, such as for use as an ultrasonic transducer to convert supplied electrical power to ultrasonic frequency vibratory energy, may be fabricated in a stepped-down fashion; that is, geometrically stepping down the diameter of the transducer. While the smaller diameter end of the transducer will typically have a higher amplitude and thus higher tip velocity due to the stepping down, the stepping down leads to considerable stresses at the step, which can result in less efficient transmission of energy, overheating of the transducer, and increased risk of failure.
Additionally, a phenomenon referred to as "modal coupling" can also be responsible for establishing the upper performance boundary of an ultrasonic surgical device. Modal coupling occurs when the vibratory amplitude of an ultrasonic waveguide of an ultrasonic surgical device is increased to such a level that the ultrasonic frequency vibratory energy at the desired resonant frequency is coupled to other modes of vibration, commonly referred to as "parasitic modes". The parasitic modes of vibration may be at lower frequencies, near-by frequencies, or higher frequencies, depending on the design of the system. The parasitic modes of vibration may be longitudinal modes or they may be transverse modes, or they may be more complicated coupled modes. Modal coupling is especially troublesome when the ultrasonic waveguide is an elongate probe or catheter with a length greater than one wavelength at the resonant frequency of the particular ultrasonic surgical device; however, modal coupling may also occur for ultrasonic waveguides shorter than one wavelength and for ultrasonic waveguides that are not shaped like an elongate probe, for example, flat or convex radiating surfaces.
The most common type of modal coupling encountered for ultrasonic surgical devices is the stimulation of a lower or near-by frequency transverse mode so that the ultrasonic waveguide vibrates in the desired longitudinal vibratory mode and an undesired transverse vibratory mode simultaneously. This type of coupled vibration can easily cause stresses in the ultrasonic waveguide material sufficient to break the ultrasonic waveguide.
Ultrasonic surgical devices that operate at high vibratory amplitudes may also generate undesirable heat, primarily in the ultrasonic transducer, but also in the material of other ultrasonic waveguides such as in an ultrasonic applicator, due to internal friction and other losses as the ultrasonic applicator vibrates. If the ultrasonic transducer becomes too hot during a typical procedure, active cooling, such as forced air or water cooling, of the ultrasonic transducer is required, making the ultrasonic surgical handpiece more expensive and more cumbersome due to the additional supply lines. Also, if the ultrasonic applicator becomes too hot, unwanted hot spots or unwanted active zones can result, damaging the tissues of a patient.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need in the art for ultrasonic medical devices and ultrasonic waveguides to be used in ultrasonic medical devices that have good amplification but greatly reduced stresses and heat generation. It would also be desirable for the ultrasonic waveguides to have a reduced risk of modal coupling.


A method of printing chipless RFID tags with unique features, includes printing a RFID antenna pattern precursor using a first printing process, wherein the RFID antenna pattern precursor includes a plurality of disconnected wire segments; and printing a conductive ink using a second print process to interconnect at least two of the plurality of disconnected wire segments, to produce a final RFID antenna with a unique antenna geometry.

Recently, radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has gained tremendous popularity as a device for storing and transmitting information. RFID technology utilizes a tag transponder, which is placed on an object, and a reader, also referred to herein as an interrogator, to read and identify the tag. RFID technologies are broadly categorized as using either "active" tags or "passive" tags. Active tags have a local power source (such as a battery) so that the active tag sends a signal to be read by the interrogator. Active tags have a longer signal range. "Passive" tags, in contrast, have no internal power source. Instead, passive tags derive power from the reader, and the passive tag re-transmits or transponds information upon receiving the signal from the reader. Passive tags have a much shorter signal range (typically less than 20 feet).
Both categories of tags have an electronic circuit that is typically in the form of an integrated circuit or silicon chip. The circuit stores and communicates identification data to the reader. In addition to the chip, the tag includes some form of antenna that is electrically connected to the chip. Active tags incorporate an antenna that communicates with the reader from the tag's own power source. For passive tags, the antenna acts as a transducer to convert radio frequency (RF) energy originating from the reader to electrical power. The chip then becomes energized and performs the communication function with the reader.
On the other hand, a chipless RFID tag has neither an integrated circuit nor discrete electronic components, such as the transistor or coil. This feature allows chipless RFID tags to be printed directly onto a substrate at lower costs than traditional RFID tags.
As a practical matter, RFID technology uses radio frequencies that have much better penetration characteristics to material than do optical signals, and will work under more hostile environmental conditions than bar code labels. Therefore, the RFID tags may be read through paint, water, dirt, dust, human bodies, concrete, or through the tagged item itself. RFID tags may be used in managing inventory, automatic identification of cars on toil roads, security systems, electronic access cards, keyless entry and the like.
Antennae are an element of RFID tags that are typically prepared via stamping/etching techniques, wherein a foil master is carved away to create the final structure. The RFID antenna may also be printed directly on the substrate using a conductive metal ink. The ink is printed on a substrate, followed by high temperature sintering in order to anneal the particles and to create a conductive line on the substrate. Alternatively, metal fibers may be incorporated directly into the substrate. For example, one chipless RFID technology from Inkode® Corp. uses embedded aluminum fibers that are embedded into paper. The aluminum fibers must be cut to the appropriate wavelength (¼ wavelength) and be incorporated into the paper fibers as a furnish additive during the papermaking process. Therefore, the Inkode® method is costly and tedious.
Although particulate metal materials may be used, the superior characteristics of nanoparticle metal materials in ink applications yields a better product. Metallic nanoparticles are particles having a diameter in the submicron size range. Nanoparticle metals have unique properties, which differ from those of bulk and atomic species. Metallic nanoparticles are characterized by enhanced reactivity of the surface atoms, high electric conductivity, and unique optical properties. For example, nanoparticles have a lower melting point than bulk metal, and a lower sintering temperature than that of bulk metal. The unique properties of metal nanoparticles result from their distinct electronic structure and from their extremely large surface area and high percentage of surface atoms.
Metallic nanoparticles are either crystalline or amorphous materials. They can be composed of pure metal, such as silver, gold, copper, etc., or a mixture of metals, such as alloys, or core of one or more metals such as copper covered by a shell of one or more other metals such as gold or silver. The nozzles in an inkjet printing head are approximately 1 μm in diameter. In order to jet a stream of particles through a nozzle, the particles' size should be less than approximately one-tenth of the nozzle diameter. This means that in order to inkjet a particle, its diameter must be less than about 100 nm.
Nickel has been used for conductive inks for a very limited extent because of its relatively low conductivity (approximately four times less than that of copper). Gold and silver can provide good conductivity, but are relatively expensive. Moreover, gold and silver require high temperatures for annealing, which can pose a challenge for printing on paper and plastic substrates. Copper provides good conductivity at a low price (about one percent of that of silver). Unfortunately, copper is easily oxidized and the oxide is non-conductive.
Copper-based nanoparticle inks are unstable and require an inert/reducing atmosphere during preparation and annealing in order to prevent spontaneous oxidation to non-conductive CuO or Cu2O. Copper polymer thick film (PFT) inks have been available for many years and can be used for special purposes, for example, where solderability is required. Another interesting strategy is to combine the advantages of both silver and copper. Silver plated copper particles are commercially available, and are used in some commercially available inks. Silver plating provides the advantages of silver for inter-particle contacts, while using the cheaper conductive metal (copper) for the bulk of the particle material. Thus, the only reliable means of preparing copper antennae is via electroplating on an existing metal surface.
Hybrid printing technology combines analog printing processes (such as offset lithography, flexography, etching, and letterpress printing) with digital printing processes (such as inkjet printing). In hybrid printing processes, inkjet printing is one particularly suitable digital printing method, because it can easily be integrated with other processes and machines. Hybrid printing technology has been used, for instance, to customize marketing material. An analog process is used to print the marketing material itself, while a digital process is used to add information only relevant to individual consumers.
Hybrid printing systems offer numerous advantages, for example, the high quality color production of analog methods and the fully variable printing capability of digital technology. Additionally, the workflow and job processing improvements that hybrid printing enables can have a significant economic impact on a plant's operations. Because hybrid systems enables a job to be completed, from a blank substrate to a finished product, in a single operation, hybrid systems minimizes material handling steps, work-in-process inventories, and a lot of labor that typically goes into such jobs when run in multiple steps. This, in turn, saves time and money, while reducing waste and drastically reducing the need for inventories.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,737,204 B2 to Swihart describes creating a hybrid digital/analog image, wherein an analog image is formed directly on a digitally generated image.
A printed antenna is one path towards chipless RFID tags, but the challenge lies in printing many RFID with unique features for item-level tagging. One method of creating RFID tags with unique features is to print each RFID tag individually via inkjet printing. However, this method is costly and highly time-consuming. Thus, there exists a need for a cheaper method of making RFID tags with unique features.

Individually unique hybrid printed antennae for chipless RFID applications


An integrated circuit is embodied on a monolithic substrate and incorporates a tuning module of the direct sampling type that is able to receive satellite digital television analog signals composed of several channels, as well as several channel decoding digital modules connected at the output of the tuning module so as to deliver respectively simultaneously several streams of data packets corresponding to several different selected channels.

1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the decoding of radiofrequency (RF) transmission channels conveying coded digital information. The invention thus applies advantageously to satellite digital telebroadcasting, for example, as defined in the DVB S (Digital Video Broadcasting-satellite) European specification based on the MPEG transmission standards, and using for example to convey the information, quadrature digital modulation. The invention also relates in particular to tuners, and also to demodulators and to the actual channel decoding processing.
2. Description of Related Art
Television signals originating from a satellite are amplified and converted into a predetermined frequency band (typically 950-2150 MHz) by way of a parabolic dish and a low noise converter which is located at the focus of the parabolic dish. This signal is then dispatched to the input of the tuner of the receiver. The purpose of the tuner is to select the desired channel and to output a baseband signal on the in phase path (I path) and on the quadrature path (Q path). This signal is then converted into a digital signal and demodulated. The channel decoding processing then also comprises a block which distinguishes the zeros from the ones, typically by means of majority logic, then performs the entire error correction, that is to say typically a Viterbi decoding, deinterlacing, Reed Solomon decoding and deshuffling. The channel decoding device outputs packets which are decoded in a conventional manner in a source decoding device in accordance with the MPEG standards so as to redeliver at the output the initial audio and video signals transmitted via the satellite.
At the input of the receiver, the signal received is composed of the collection of channels which are transmitted for the satellite and are transposed into the 950-2150 MHz frequency band. The overall power received is substantially equal to the mean power on a channel increased by ten times the Napierian logarithm of the number of channels. This signal possesses a considerable variation, of the order of 50 dBm.
At present, in receivers as a whole, the signal received at the input is normally filtered by a wideband type filter (whose passband is of the order of several hundred MHz) placed just after the low noise input amplifier, this being so as to avoid the saturation of the subsequent stages of the tuner (especially the controlled gain amplification stages as well as the mixers of the frequency transposition stage).
Furthermore, a first type of solution provides for the low noise amplifier and the wideband filters to be made outside the chip containing the controlled gain amplification stage as well as the frequency transposition stage. These filters, whose cutoff frequencies can be tailored by selecting the desired channel, are then embodied as discrete components such as "varicap" diodes. However, such components are of overly large size which is incompatible with a fully integrated embodiment of the tuner.
Moreover, in this type of solution, not only is the tuner not fully integrated, but it is made on a semiconductor substrate different from the substrate which supports the digital part (or digital domain) of the processing, namely the demodulation and the actual channel decoding. Stated otherwise, the demodulation and the channel decoding are carried out in a separate component from that integrating the tuner. Also, the tuner is generally screened so as to prevent the noise generated by the digital part from interfering in the mixing of the signals of the analog part. Thus, in this first type of solution, a front end device incorporated into a satellite television signals receiver, and capable of performing the tuning, demodulation and channel decoding, comprises several separate electronic components made on different chips.
Another type of solution has been envisaged and is described for example in French Patent Application No. 2,804,986. In this second type of solution, a unique "front end" electronic component is proposed, that is to say one embodied on a single chip, and integrating a radiofrequency tuner, a demodulator and a channel decoder.
It is turning out to be beneficial nowadays to be able to simultaneously output from the receiver several, that is to say at least two, MPEG data streams, corresponding respectively to different channels.
Now, if the first hardware solution mentioned above is adopted, such a receiver would then be composed of several identical elementary receivers, thereby leading to the production of a large number of different chips, so as to be able to incorporate the various different electronic packaging of each of the elementary receivers. This results in an increase in cost and a very considerable surface area.
If the second solution alluded to hereinabove is adopted, that is to say a unique electronic component, embodied on a single chip, it would then be necessary to produce on this unique chip, several completely separate tuners, capable of being controlled individually so as to select the various desired channels intended to be delivered simultaneously at the output of the receiver. However, embodying several completely separate tuners on one and the same chip would then lead to problems of coupling between the various voltage-controlled oscillators that are intended to generate the various mixing signals.
Thus, currently, the person skilled in the art, who wishes to produce a receiver of satellite digital television signals that is capable of simultaneously delivering several MPEG streams corresponding to several different channels, is confronted with a choice between two unsatisfactory solutions. Specifically, the first solution leads to the production of several different receivers produced on a considerable number of different chips, this being penalizing from a surface area and cost point of view. The other solution, more beneficial from a surface area point of view, poses technological problems of stray coupling.
There exists a need in the art for a solution to the foregoing problem.

Electronic component allowing the decoding of satellite digital television signals


A method and system for scheduling tasks in a computing device ensures substantially seamless processing of an active job while preventing starvation of background tasks. In one aspect, a method comprises the steps of statically allocating processor time to a background task class and dynamically allocating processor time to background tasks within the background task class based at least in part on a current count of the background tasks. The background task processor time may equal the background task class processor time divided by the current count. The method may further comprise, in each of successive processing periods, assigning a processor to each of the background tasks for their respective background task processor times and assigning the processor to active job tasks when the processor is not assigned to any of the background tasks. The computing device may be a printing device.

The present invention relates to scheduling of tasks in a computing device, such as a printing device and, more particularly, to allocating processing resources in a computing device to tasks in a manner that ensures substantially seamless processing of an active job while preventing starvation of background tasks.
Conventional operating systems for computing devices, such as printing devices, typically schedule tasks based on strict priority and schedule tasks at the some priority round-robin. Under this scheduling algorithm, background tasks, such as background print spooling tasks, typically receive little processing time because they have a lower priority than active job tasks. If the priority assignment of the background tasks were raised to the same level as the active job tasks (or, conversely, if the priority assignment of the active job tasks were lowered to the some level as the background tasks), the background tasks would receive abundant processing time but would interfere too much with the active job.
Some operating systems used in computing devices have introduced scheduling algorithms that allocate a specified block of processing time to a task upon creation of the task. While these scheduling algorithms can guarantee that a background task will not be starved-out, they suffer from other problems. First, these allocations generally cannot be reduced if the processor becomes oversubscribed. For example, if a second background spooling task is created while a first background spooling task is still pending, these algorithms will generally allocate the same amount of processing time to the second task as to the first, resulting in twice as much processing time being allocated to background spooling and too much interference with an active job. Second, these allocations are generally monolithic in their use of processing time. That is, once a background task starts to run it will claim the processor for the entire duration of the allocated block of processing time. This can lead to a sustained interruption in processing of an active job that is noticeable (e.g. "jerky" execution) and too lengthy from a user's perspective.

Deterministic task scheduling in a computing device