A method, apparatus, and pultruded product formed by adding resin coated fibers at each of successive heated dies having respectively larger die openings to build up a composite pultruded product in stages. Each successive pultruded layer is cured at an exterior surface by heat from the die wall and at an interior surface by heat from the cured product emerging from the previous heated die. By forming the pultruded product in layers, higher line speeds, and a higher quality product which is consistently cured throughout its cross-section are achieved. Hybrid composites can be produced by varying the fiber type and/or the resin type in one or more stages.

This invention relates to method and apparatus for producing reinforced polymeric composites, as well as the product produced thereby. More specifically, this invention relates to a pultrusion process, commonly used for producing continuous and constant cross-section products, as well as for producing non-constant cross-section products. The invention is applicable to pultrusion of thermoset composites, as well as pultrusion of thermoplastic composites.
Typically, in a pultrusion process to manufacture polymeric composite products, the fibers (unidirectional, unidirectional with in-situ weaving, or woven mats) are drawn through a dip bath, where they become impregnated with the resin and then through a heated die which controls the shape and size of the product. As the material moves through the die, its outside surface is heated until it is effectively at the same temperature as the die. The core temperature, near the center of the product, will lag behind the die temperature by an amount that depends upon the part geometry and upon the effective thermal properties (thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity, volumetric specific heat) of the resin/fiber mixture. As the temperature of the product rises, the rate of reaction of the exothermic curing process will increase rapidly, with attendant generation of heat. This is the characteristic of thermoset resins.
If the part is drawn through the die too rapidly, or if the die temperature is too low, the part will not cure completely. If the part thickness is large, it takes more time for the heat to conduct to the center of the part, which means the line speed must be reduced for proper curing of the product. In addition, for large thickness products, the heat generated due to exothermic reaction at the product center may not have time to conduct out, which may result in excessive temperatures inside the composite. These excessive temperatures can crack and delaminate the composite, thus damaging the composite part. Currently, for moderate thicknesses, pre-heating of the resin/fiber mass by RF heating is used. Where pultrusion of moderate thickness composites is possible, only conservative line speeds with limited productivity are used. Applications such as structural composites required in infrastructure demand much higher thicknesses, for which the current technology is not adequate.
An object of the invention is to provide a simple and modified pultrusion process and the corresponding apparatus for producing thicker cross-section polymeric composites which overcomes the limitations of the prior art as described above.
Another object of the invention is to increase the line speeds and hence the productivity.
Another object of the invention is to provide a process and apparatus for producing hybrid composites that can be tailored to different applications.
These and other objects have been achieved according to the present invention by providing a method of producing a pultruded product, comprising: pulling a first fiber coated with a first resin through a first heated die having a first die opening, a first product emerging from the first heated die; and subsequently pulling the first product and a second fiber coated with a second resin through a second heated die having a second die opening which is larger than the first die opening.
These and other objects have also been achieved according to the present invention by providing an apparatus for producing a pultruded product, comprising: a first heated die having a first die opening; a second heated die having a second die opening which is larger than the first die opening; a supply system which supplies a resin coated fiber to each of the heated dies; and a puller which pulls the resin coated fiber and a product emerging from each of said heated dies through subsequent of said heated dies.
These and other objects have also been achieved according to the present invention by providing a composite pultruded product, comprising: an first layer formed by pulling a first fiber coated with a first resin through a first heated die having a first die opening; a second layer formed by pulling the first layer and a second fiber coated with a second resin through a second heated die having a second die opening which is larger than the first die opening.
As mentioned above, this invention provides modification to the current pultrusion process. Also, as mentioned above, the limitation of the current process is the thickness of the product. There is a maximum thickness, depending upon the properties of the composite, above which it is neither practical nor feasible to produce composites with the current art. The present invention overcomes this limitation. Instead of pultruding the thick product in one stage, multiple stages are used to produce the product of final size with a practical thickness product cured in each stage. This allows the product to be pulled at the line speed that is practical for the optimum product thickness in each stage. This line speed will be much higher than that is possible in single-stage for producing the thick part. The process of the invention is still continuous. The apparatus governing the invention will include multiple heated die cavities with successively increasing cavity size. The apparatus can be an integrated pultrusion machine with the dies mounted on the same bed or multiple pultrusion machines assembled in series to produce the product of final dimensions.
The apparatus and the method can be effectively used for producing the hybrid composites, i.e., different fibers and different resins can be used for the same structure depending upon the application.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Apparatus for and method of producing thick polymeric composites


An outsole including a base member, an insert member and a member for attaching a blade chassis to the insert member. The base member includes an outer surface, a ball region and a heel region. The insert member is integrally molded with at least a portion of the outer surface of the base member.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to skate boots for ice skating and inline skating, and, more specifically, to skate boots having an outsole with a rigid insert member which rigidifies the outsole, and aids in the direct transfer of energy from the skater to the blade chassis, and, in turn, the skating surface.
2. Background Art
Skate boots of the type attached to blade chassis for use with ice skates or inline skates are well known in the art. Generally, the blade chassis is attached to a rigid base member or sole. The sole is generally of a single planar material which extends from the toe and ball of the boot to the heel of the boot. The upper portion of the skate boot meets the sole and is attached thereto.
Such a construction has certain drawbacks. The skater, while able to transfer energy to the surface through the blade chassis, incurs significant energy losses. Not only does the foot of the skater move relative to the sole of the boot, but the blade chassis flexes relative to the sole. As a result of these movements, some of the energy generated by the skater is lost in these counterproductive movements and, in turn, some energy is not transferred to the blade chassis and the outside surface. The losses result in an overall loss of performance which is especially noticeable upon acceleration and turning or otherwise changing direction.
Other skate constructions have included vertical side panels with the sole. These side panels are integral with the sole, but extend upward along the boot a predetermined distance. While such prior art skates appear to limit the foot's movement (or sliding) relative to the sole, they do not prevent or limit the flexing and the bending of the sole relative to the blade chassis. Accordingly, with such constructions, a greater than negligible energy loss is nevertheless experienced, and, some of the energy imparted by the skater still does not reach the blade chassis and the surface.
Still other skate constructions have utilized a molded or machined unitized blade chassis and a sole out of a single piece of material. Inasmuch as the desired material properties for the sole and for the blade chassis are generally not the same, a unitary construction has inherent drawbacks. Additionally, for the same reasons, these skates are generally bulky, as the material from which they are constructed must be suitable for any and all regions of the blade carrier and the sole and the greatest stress that may be incurred by any region. As such, these skates, in certain instances, may lessen energy losses due to lost motion and flexing, however, any increased energy transfer over other skates, tends to be offset by greater bulk and compromise to comfort.

Skate boot having an outsole with a rigid insert


A method, system and computer program product for deploying a pattern. A placement engine of a hierarchical tier selects the region(s) of a next lower tier based on placement policies and constraints at the next lower tier and availability of the artifacts required by the virtual machine instance(s) in the next lower tier utilizing the summarization of resource usage and availability at the next lower tier. The placement engine at the lowest tier selects the compute node(s) in the selected region(s) of the lowest tier to place the virtual machine instances of the pattern based on placement policies and constraints at the compute node level and availability of the artifacts required by the virtual machine instance(s) of the pattern in the compute node level. In this manner, the virtual machine instances of the pattern can be effectively deployed when the resources of the cloud environment are large and geographically dispersed.

In a cloud computing environment, computing is delivered as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices as a metered service over a network, such as the Internet. In such an environment, computation, software, data access and storage services are provided to users that do not require knowledge of the physical location and configuration of the system that delivers the services.
In a virtualized computer environment, such as may be implemented in a physical cloud computing node of the cloud computing environment, the virtualized computer environment includes a virtual operating system. The virtual operating system includes a common base portion and separate user portions that all run on a physical computer. The physical computer is referred to as a host. The common base portion may be referred to as a hypervisor and each user portion may be called a guest. Each guest is a logical partition of the physical resources of the computer. A guest operating system runs on each guest, and the guest appears to the guest operating system as a real computer. Each guest operating system may host one or more virtual machines.
An administrator of the cloud computing environment may build a reusable pattern which defines the topology and application environment used to service the customer (i.e., the user receiving the services provided by the cloud computing environment) as well as satisfies the customer requirements, such as application and processing requirements. The pattern is an abstract model of the topology and application environment that encapsulates the installation, configuration and management of middleware and applications, such as the middleware and applications that run on the virtual machines in the physical cloud computing nodes. Such a pattern can be deployed repeatedly thereby avoiding the need to provision these environments individually and manually.
Currently, such a pattern is deployed to compute nodes (e.g., servers) of the cloud computing nodes by a placement engine. The placement engine is configured to select the "best" compute nodes to deploy the pattern, such as the compute nodes to place the virtual machine instances of the pattern. Typically, the placement engine selects the best compute nodes to deploy the pattern utilizing the known state of the physical and virtual resources in the cloud computing environment. However, such an approach is not effective when the physical and virtual resources of the cloud computing environment are extremely large and geographically dispersed since it will become impossible for the placement engine to know the state of the physical and virtual resources in such a cloud computing environment.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Deploying virtual machine instances of a pattern to regions of a hierarchical tier using placement policies and constraints

International Business Machines Corporation


To provide a lenticular lens sheet having a fine light shielding pattern that has high color reproducibility. [MEANS FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS] The above problem can be solved by a lenticular lens sheet, in which the average primary particle diameter of carbon black contained in a light shielding layer is not less than 10 nm and not more than 50 nm and, preferably, in an image of the cross-section of the light shielding layer under scanning electron microscopic observation, the area ratio of carbon black to the whole image is not less than 60% and not more than 95%, and a process for producing the lenticular lens sheet.

Lenticular sheets for use as rear projection screens are generally provided with a light shielding pattern for contrast improvement. In view of the recent better picture quality and higher definition requirements, however, the demand for rear projection screen display systems using liquid crystal displays or digital micromirror devices with smaller pixels has been growing. Therefore, lenticular lens sheets provided with a finer pitch light shielding pattern have become necessary so as to avoid moiré patterns resulting from interference of pixels with lenticular lenses.
In the art, as illustrated in Patent Document 1, for instance, a process has been employed which comprises providing a lenticular sheet, on the observing surface side thereof, with a photocurable adhesive resin layer, exposing the same from the lens surface side to cure light condensing parts alone and thereby eliminate the adhesive property of those parts, further scattering a toner from the observing surface side to allow the toner to stick only to those parts which retain their adhesive property and removing the residues other than the toner sticking to the adhesive parts.
However, when finer lens pitches are required for attaining better picture quality and higher definition, the process of Patent Document 1 has a problem in that a light shielding pattern with distinct dividing lines can hardly be obtained.
On the other hand, a printing process using a transfer sheet characterized in that a color layer comprising a color pigment, a high molecular weight polymer and, in addition to the color pigment, fine particles with an average primary particle diameter of not larger than 2 μm has been proposed as a process for forming a light shielding pattern with distinct dividing lines, as described in Patent Document 2, for instance. Although this process is a process appropriate for rendering the dividing lines distinct, the non-pigment fine particles contained in the color layer reduce the blackness of the light shielding pattern on the observing surface side and the color reproducibility tends to decrease upon projection in a light room.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Kokai Publication S59-121033 (scope of claim for patent, examples, etc.)    Patent Document 2: Japanese Kokai Publication 2003-162006 (scope of claim for patent, examples, etc.)    Patent Document 3: Japanese Kokai Publication 2004-246352 (scope of claim for patent, examples, etc.)

Lens sheet, process for producing the same, and resin composition for transfer material


A plasma display device includes a chassis base supporting a plasma display panel (PDP). A heat conducting medium is interposed between the chassis base and the PDP, and a heat sink presses toward the heat conducting medium through the penetration hole.

(a) Field
The present invention relates to a plasma display device, and more particularly to a plasma display device having an enhanced heat radiation structure.
(b) Description of the Related Art
As is well known in the art, a plasma display device realizes a desired image using a plasma discharge. Such a plasma display device generally includes a plasma display panel (PDP) for rendering the desired image through plasma discharge activated by an external power source, a chassis base for firmly holding the PDP at its front side, and circuit boards mounted on a rear side of the chassis base for driving the PDP. Front and rear cases are combined with front and rear sides of a PDP module (i.e., a combination of a PDP, a chassis base, and circuit boards)to form such a plasma display device.
Since rendering of a desired image by a PDP is achieved using a plasma discharge as described above, a PDP generally produces a significant amount of heat during its image rendering. A PDP may be damaged when a temperature of thereof increases excessively, so heat dissipation efficiency of a PDP plays an important role in its durability. In this sense, increasing heat dissipation of a PDP has always been an important research topic in the field.
Examples of heat dissipation mechanisms of a PDP may be found in numerous prior technical documents, for example in Laid Open Japanese Patent publication 09-097015 (applicant: MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC IND CO. LTD, date of publication: Apr. 8, 1997), and Laid Open Korean Patent publication 1998-0011613 (applicant: MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC IND CO. LTD, date of publication: Apr. 30, 1998).
As can be gathered from the technical documents, a heat dissipation mechanism of a plasma display device according to the prior art may be generally summarized as follows.
A chassis base is formed of a metal (e.g., aluminum or a compound thereof) having high heat conductivity such that heat generated at a PDP may be easily dissipated. A heat transferring material such as a heat dissipation sheet is disposed between the PDP and the chassis base such that the heat generated at the PDP may be easily transferred to the chassis base. A heat dissipation member (e.g., a heat sink or cooling fins) is attached to a rear side of the chassis base such that a dissipation effect of heat occurs through a front side thereof from the PDP. Therefore, the heat generated at the PDP is transferred to the chassis base through the heat dissipation sheet, and is finally dissipated at the heat dissipation member.
According to such a heat dissipation mechanism of the prior art, when the chassis base and the PDP are attached interposing the heat dissipation sheet, air is frequently trapped to form a layer therebetween. This results from wide areas of the chassis base and the PDP having difficulty forming uniformly close contact therebetween at all spots, and in addition, because a sufficiently high pressure applied for attachment may easily cause damage to the PDP.
In order to reduce formation of such an air layer between the PDP and the chassis base interposing the heat dissipation sheet, according to the prior art, slits for discharging air are frequently formed at the heat dissipation sheet, or the thickness of the heat dissipation sheet is varied in different areas.
However, such features do not sufficiently prevent the occurrence of such an air layer at areas that need to be cooled by dissipating heat. That is, such an air layer is still frequently formed at some locations of the wide PDP-attached area that are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Different amounts of heat are generated at the PDP at different areas and, accordingly, a surface temperature of the PDP becomes different at different areas. It is therefore preferable that a heat dissipation mechanism of a plasma display device be enhanced such that heat dissipation efficiency may be determined and controlled appropriately, depending on the area of need.
Another problem presented by the prior art heat dissipation mechanism is that negative effects of the dissipated heat on circuit boards mounted on a rear side of the chassis base are ignored, since the general concern has only been about dissipation of heat generated at the PDP. The heat of the PDP is dissipated mainly through the rear side of the chassis base, and such dissipated heat affects elements included in the circuit boards mounted at the rear side of the chassis base. That is, the heat of air heated at the rear side of the chassis base is easily transferred to the elements of the circuit boards mounted at the rear side of the chassis base, e.g., through leads on the surface of the circuit boards.
Therefore, a reduction of heat transfer from a chassis base to a circuit board may enhance the stability and durability of a plasma display device.


Terminal equipment for telecommunications and information processing with improved electromagnetic compatibility (EMC). The equipment has a human-machine interface (HMI), a metallic telecommunications interface (TCI), and optionally a power line interface (PLI). First common-mode rejection filters consisting of common-mode choke coils and shunt capacitors are placed at the HMI interface of the equipment, while second common-mode rejection filters consisting of the same components are placed at the TCI and PLI interfaces. High-frequency junction points of the first and second common-mode rejection filters are interconnected with a bypass circuit. Being isolated from the signal ground and frame ground of the equipment, the bypass circuit is an independent non-grounded circuit. Such internal structure makes it possible to reject noise signals induced by an external noise source and also to suppress spurious radiation from an internal noise source.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to terminal equipment for telecommunications and information processing with improved electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and more specifically, to terminal equipment for telecommunications and information processing which has a human-machine interface (HMI) and a metallic telecommunications interface (TCI).
2. Description of the Related Art
Electromagnetic compatibility of terminal equipment for telecommunications and information processing, including telecommunication terminal equipment (TTE) and information technology equipment (ITE), has been strongly demanded these days, from practical viewpoints as well as in some legal aspects.
Publication No.22 issued by the International Special Committee on Radio Interference (CISPR) in the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) provides standards specifically concerning electromagnetic interference (EMI) for ITE. Another publication CISPR No.24, a draft standard under review, describes about immunity from electromagnetic interference. EMC-related legislation in many countries is based on those international standards, and the TTE and ITE are now about to become subject to the regulation requiring conformity to their relevant standards.
As described above, the requirement of electromagnetic compatibility in the terminal equipment for telecommunications and information processing (hereafter, shortened as "info-telecom equipment") has two aspects: immunity and interference. First, the immunity is defined as a tolerance to attack by electromagnetic waves which may be available in a predetermined electromagnetic environment, where the info-telecom equipment must operate as designed without any problems. Second, the interference calls for limitation of electromagnetic disturbance to the environment at a predetermined level.
For more practical example, the info-telecom equipment is required to exhibit enough immunity to an approaching citizens band (CB) radio device with high power outputs violating the regulations. It is also demanded to have a prescribed immunity to an industrial-scientific-medical (ISM) device installed nearby. Note that those noise-generating devices would produce a field strength as high as 1 V/m to 10 V/m. In addition to such immunity performance, the info-telecom equipment is regulated not to produce too much electromagnetic noises that could cause audible noises, beat disturbance, or malfunctions of television sets and/or radio receivers in the neighborhood.
The info-telecom equipment subject to the EMC regulation includes a vast range of devices encompassing telecommunications terminal equipment such as analog and digital telephone sets and facsimiles, and information technology equipment such as personal computers, word processors, and computer's dedicated I/O terminals.
Take analog/digital telephone sets for instance. Their main bodies are connected to human-machine interface (HMI) devices such as handsets and headsets, as well as being wired to a public telephone network through a metallic telecommunications interface (TCI). Likewise, the information technology equipment is often coupled to some HMI devices such as keyboards, display units, microphones, and speakers, besides being linked to TCI facilities through modems for an analog circuit or through terminal adapters for a digital circuit. As such, the info-telecom equipment in general has connections to both HMI and TCI, and in many cases, has a power line interface (PLI), through which the equipment is supplied with its main power from a commercial power source.
Those HMI and TCI connection lines, however, may work as antennas to catch some electromagnetic noises or to emit them to the outside space. Therefore, when thinking about measures to be taken for solving the EMC problems (including both immunity and interference) in the info-telecom equipment, it must cover not only the main body of the equipment but the entire system including the HMI and TCI connections.
FIG. 31 is a diagram showing an outline of the info-telecom equipment to describe EMC problems concerned therewith. As previously explained, the main body of telecommunications terminal 110 is connected to an HMI unit 120 via HMI cables 131 and 132. The terminal 110 is also connected to a public or private communication network 160 via a TCI cable 141 and to an AC power supply 150 via a PLI cord 142.
The telecommunications terminal 110 consists of the following circuits: a receiver 111 and a driver 112 for interfacing with the HMI unit 120; an internal circuit 113 for main processing; a driver 114, a receiver 115, and a hybrid circuit 116 for interfacing with the TCI facilities. The internal circuit 113 is organized by a signal processing circuit, clock oscillators, and a CPU chip. This kind of circuit may malfunction if attacked by some external noise signals that exceed an allowable level or contain some frequency components which is particularly critical in their mutual interference. In turn, the components in the internal circuit 113 can be a source of electromagnetic noises that may affect operations of peripheral devices. Returning to FIG. 31, the HMI unit 120 contains a transmitter 121 and a receiver 122.
When an electromagnetic noise source 161 is closely located to the HMI cable 131, some electromagnetic noise signals will enter the telecommunications terminal 110 as indicated by a broken line A1. Similarly, when further electromagnetic noise sources 162 and 163 approach the TCI cable 141 and the PLI cord 142, some noise signals may go into the terminal 110 as indicated by broken lines A2 and A3, respectively.
On the other hand, a noise current having leaked from the internal circuit 113 to the HMI cable 132 will cause an emission of electromagnetic noise toward the outside of the terminal 110 as indicated by a broken line B1. Likewise, another noise current from the internal circuit 113 to the TCI cable 141 would result in an electromagnetic noise emission as indicated by a broken line B2.
The following description will present the detailed propagation paths of electromagnetic noise signals. FIG. 32 is a diagram showing such possible paths along which the noise goes into the telecommunications terminal 110. In addition to the aforementioned receiver 111, internal circuit 113, and driver 114, FIG. 32 shows two more components in the terminal 110: a common-mode choke coil Lc1 inserted between the HMI cable 131 and receiver 111, and another common-mode choke coil Lc2 inserted between the TCI cable 141 and driver 114.
An input signal source Eh is connected at the far end of the HMI cable 131, and another input signal source Et is provided at the far end of the TCI cable 141. There are two more signal sources in FIG. 32, which voltages are developed over the earth potential, being induced by external electromagnetic noise sources. Under the assumption that the two induced voltages have nearly the same amplitude, a symbol Un is assigned to both of them. The signal ground SG and frame ground FG of the telecommunications terminal 110 are connected to each other at a single point and those two ground potentials have a capacitive coupling to the ground through a stray capacitance Cs.
The route of noise currents that flow into the terminal will be now discussed below. The induced voltage Un at the HMI cable 131 can be 1 V to 3 V in some cases that a portable telephone or CB radio device is placed near the terminal. The Un noise current enters the internal circuit 113 through the HMI cable 131 and internal coupling capacitance Cc1 and Cc2 (as indicated by broken lines) and flows away to the ground via the signal ground SG, frame ground FG, and stray capacitance Cs.
Another induced voltage that appears on the TCI cable 141 has a similar voltage level and it causes a noise current that circulates in a loop formed by coupling capacitance Cc3 and Cc4, signal ground SG, frame ground FG, and stray capacitance Cs.
Generally speaking, because of a difference in capacitance between Cc1 and Cc2 and some other reasons, the impedance of the two signal conductors of the HMI cable 131 are not balanced with respect to the ground, thus causing a difference in their respective currents from the common noise source Un (i.e., a difference in common-mode currents). This unbalanced circuit scheme produces a difference in the noise voltages observed at two input terminals of the receiver 111 with respect to the ground potential, and it will cause a variation in its envelope detection signal because of non-linearity of input characteristics of the receiver 111. That is, the induced noise voltage Un results in a demodulation noise voltage (i.e., a differential voltage between the two signal conductors), which will degrade the S/N ratio in reception of the input signal Eh. This can be a cause of interference troubles in the case of analog HMI or deterioration of bit error rates (BER) in the case of digital HMI. The same problems as described above can happen to the driver 114 at the TCI side of the terminal.
Further, when the frequency of the electromagnetic noise source is equal to the internal clock frequency or bus cycle frequency or expressed as an integral multiple (or fraction) thereof, a beat may occur and it sometimes leads to a malfunction of counters and dividers contained in the internal circuit 113.
Use of common-mode choke coils is one of the traditional techniques that have been widely adapted as a countermeasure to the above noise problems. In the telecommunications terminal of FIG. 34, for example, the common-mode choke coils Lc1 and Lc2 are placed at the connection points of the HMI cable 131 and TCI cable 141. However, those choke coils do not provide enough performance for the reasons described below.
FIG. 33 is a diagram schematically representing the telecommunications terminal 110 and associated cables in FIG. 32 as an equivalent antenna circuit. FIG. 33 shows how the terminal 110 with the cables 131 and 141 will behave when they are exposed in a strong noise field. According to this figure, one end of the HMI cable 131, at least, is electrically open with respect to the ground, while the body of the terminal 110 has a certain impedance to the ground lower than that of the HMI cable 131 due to its stray capacitance Cs. As a result, a standing wave Ua is produced on the HMI cable 131, which wave has a voltage loop at the open end of the HMI cable 131 and a voltage node at the body of the terminal 110.
On the other hand, the noise wave induced on the TCI cable 141, which is longer than the HMI cable 131 in most cases, propagates through the body of the terminal 110 and reflects at the open end of the HMI cable 131. This also causes a standing wave Ub, continuous to the aforementioned standing wave Ua, whose voltage loop is at the point one half-wavelength away from the end of the HMI cable 131. The voltage node of the standing wave Ub is located at the body of the terminal 110. As such, the system shown in FIG. 32 can be expressed in the equivalent antenna system in FIG. 33.
When the electrical length (i.e., the length of a conductor in terms of wavelength) of the HMI cable 131 including a loading effect of the common-mode choke coils Lc1 and Lc2 is an odd multiple of quarter-wavelength, the antenna system shown in FIG. 33 will resonate at that frequency, thus causing an induced noise current flowing through the telecommunications terminal 110 as indicated by the broken line I. This noise current will then produce maximum amplitude of voltage drop Vi at the internal circuit 113.
More specific calculations will be now presented, taking the following three examples for the electrical length of the HMI cable 131 including common-mode choke coils in the terminal 110. When the total electrical length is about 2.8 m, 1.5 m, or 0.5 m, the noise immunity of the terminal 110 will be expected to deteriorate at the frequencies 27 MHz (CB radio service), 50 MHz (amateur band), or 144 MHz (amateur band), respectively. It is because the above-listed electrical lengths coincide with one quarter-wavelength at those frequencies. Likewise, the noise immunity may be degraded at 80 MHz (FM radio), 150 MHz (police radio), or 430 MHz (amateur band), at which frequencies the above-listed electrical lengths correspond to three quarter-wavelengths.
In general, antenna systems will reversibly work for both transmission and reception of radio signals. Thus the HMI and TCI cables 131 and 141 also serve as a transmission antenna that will radiate spurious radio waves to the surrounding air if there is any internal noise source. As a matter of fact, a broadband noise source does exist inside the telecommunications terminal 110, such as clock oscillators and their divided frequency signals. FIG. 34 schematically shows such behavior as a transmission antenna of the telecommunications terminal 110 in FIG. 32. A noise source Vn in FIG. 34 represents clock oscillators and the like which may cause spurious radiation.
Similarly to the mechanism of external noise reception, the spurious radio waves are emitted from the equivalent antenna system of FIG. 34. When the electrical length of the HMI cable 131 including a loading effect of the common-mode choke coils Lc1 and Lc2 equals any odd multiple of quarter-wavelength of the internal noise signal, the antenna system resonates and thus radiates spurious waves at enhanced strength.
As a result of resonance, such spurious emission can sometimes exceed a tolerance level defined in some EMI regulations. The above discussion has clarified some EMC problems with telecommunications terminal equipment, however, the same problems can happen to information technology equipment having communications capabilities integrated therein or externally added thereto. A PLI cord, when attached, will function as part of the antenna element in the same way as the TCI cable.
As described above, since the HMI and TCI cables or PLI cord may serve as a reception antenna, the info-telecom equipment is likely to be affected by an external source of electromagnetic noise. Also, since the same cables act in turn as a transmission antenna resonating at internal noise frequencies, it makes an enhanced radiation of electromagnetic noise to outside. Those EMC problems, however, have not been solved yet by conventional techniques.


A light guide plate, a dual-view backlight module having the light guide plate and a dual-view display device having the dual-view backlight module are provided. A lower surface of the light guide plate includes at least one V-shaped groove configured to reflect a light ray, which is incident onto the lower surface of the light guide plate from sides thereof, onto an upper surface of the light guide plate by sides of the at least one V-shaped groove, the reflected light ray leaving the light guide plate from the upper surface thereof. The V-shaped groove on the light guide plate refracts the light from the two sides of the V-shaped groove, so that the light leaving the upper surface of the light guide plate can form dual-view backlight with a good brightness enhancement effect and a dual-view display having a high brightness can be manufactured.

Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relates to the technical field of display, and more particular, to a light guide plate, a dual-view backlight module having the light guide plate and a dual-view display device having the dual-view backlight module.
Description of the Related Art
A dual-view display is mainly used in a limited space. With the dual-view display, different images can be observed from different views by using a single screen. Since the dual-view display realizes the display function of two displays by using a single display, cost and installation space can be remarkably saved. Such display is mainly applied in vehicle display devices. The fundamental requirement of a display angle for the dual-view display is shown in FIG. 1. The visible view of the dual-view display is in a range of 22.5°-45°. The center of the visual field is optimally at 30°. Specific conditions are determined according to requirements for a backlight plate.
In the prior art, a backlight module of the dual-view display may be provided with a lower prism. However, a brightness enhancement effect realized by the low prism is bad, and thus a dual-view display with a high brightness cannot be realized.

Light guide plate, dual-view backlight module and dual-view display device


A fixing apparatus according to the present invention includes a heat roller 2 which includes an elastic member 2b having an outer diameter which is different from another one in an axial direction, and a conductive layer 2c provided outside of the elastic member 2b, wherein a maximum outer diameter and a minimum outer diameter of the elastic member 2b has a difference therebetween ranging from 0.2 mm to 3.0 mm.

The present invention relates to a fixing apparatus for fixing a developer image onto paper, and more particularly, to a fixing apparatus utilizing an inductive heating method.
An image forming apparatus utilizing a digital technology, for example, an electronic copying machine has a fixing apparatus for applying a pressure onto a developer image melted by heating, thereby fixing the image onto paper.
The fixing apparatus comprises: a heat roller for melting a developer, for example, a toner; and a pressure roller for applying a predetermined pressure to the heat roller, wherein a predetermined contact width (nip width) is formed in a contact region (nip portion) between the heat roller and the pressure roller. On the paper passing though the nip portion, the developer image on the paper melted by a heat from the heat roller is fixed by a pressure from the pressure roller. In recent years, there has been utilized an inductively driven heating apparatus in which a thin film metal conductive layer is formed at the outside of the heat roller, and the metal conductive layer is heated by utilizing inductive heating.
For example, as disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2002-295452, there is known a roller which comprises electricity and heat insulating property, the roller being applicable to a roller which is excellent in heat insulating property, which is fast in rising during heating, and which requires elasticity, and a heating apparatus using the roller.
In addition, in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2002-213434, there is disclosed a technique for broadening a non-offset region which is a range of a fixing temperature, the technique being capable of sufficiently greatly forming a nip width which is a contact length between a heat roller and a pressure roller in a transport direction of recording paper, and obtaining a fixing image with a good quality on which a toner is sufficiently fused onto the recording paper, and is not released therefrom.
If the nip width formed at the nip portion between the heat roller and the pressure roller is not sufficiently allocated, there is a problem that a good image is not formed.


The invention relates to an apparatus for power control by phase gating of an AC voltage, which supplies an electrical load (14), and for reduction of harmonics which are created by the phase gating, in particular up to a region of 4 kHz, preferably in the region of the third harmonic, having a first circuit element (12) (TRIAC) which is connected in series with the load (14) and is driven by a control device (20) in order to carry out phase gating. The apparatus is distinguished in that a second circuit element (34) is provided in series with a resistance element (32), with the series circuit being arranged in parallel with the first circuit element (12) and with the control device (20) being designed such that it drives the second circuit element (34) shortly before the first circuit element (12) and switches it to the on state for a short time period. The invention also relates to a method for harmonic reduction in the range up to 4 kHz, preferably of the third harmonic, for power control by phase gating.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for power control by phase gating of an AC voltage, which supplies an electrical load, and for reduction of harmonics which are created by the phase gating up to a region of 4 kHz, preferably in the region of the third harmonic, having an electric motor as the load, having a first circuit element which is connected in series with the load and is driven by a control device in order to carry out phase gating, and having a resistance element. The invention also relates to a method for harmonic reduction in the range up to 4 kHz, preferably in the region of the third harmonic, for power control by phase gating.
An apparatus and a method for power control by means of phase gating are known, for example, from the article by S. Williamson et al. "Acoustic noise and pulsating torques in a TRIAC-controlled permanent-split-capacitor fan motor", IEE Proceedings, Vol. 128, Pt.B, No. 4, July 1981, pages 201-206, or the application DE 198 50 905 A1 from the same applicant.
Document DE 10052910 A1 discloses an electric machine which comprises a brake resistance directly mounted on the machine. DE 2 131 750 A discloses a circuit for reducing distortions caused by phase gating. The circuit comprises to TRIACs which are triggered in succession. EP 0 760 551 A2 discloses an electrical device for controlling heater. The device also comprises two TRIACs for switching the heater.
Generally apparatuses for phase gating are used to control the power which is supplied to an electrical load by periodically switching the load on and off via a circuit element. A TRIAC is normally used as the circuit element, is connected in series with the load, and is triggered via a control device. The control device has a series circuit comprising a resistor and a trigger capacitor, which is arranged in parallel with the TRIAC. The trigger signal is tapped off between the resistor and the trigger capacitor and is supplied to the control input (gate) of the TRIAC via a series circuit comprising a resistor and a trigger element in the form of DIAC. In addition to these control devices, which are designed in analog, integrated circuits have also in the meantime become available which carry out this drive function.
In the case of power control by phase gating of the AC voltage that is supplied to the load, undesirable harmonics are produced, whose extent is governed by European Standards. These Standards must be satisfied by the power control apparatuses, for which reason solutions in order to reduce these harmonics have been proposed in recent years.
The third harmonic in particular plays a special role in the reduction of harmonics, for which reason previous solutions have concentrated in particular on the reduction of these third harmonics. One example of an apparatus for reducing the third harmonic is disclosed, for example, in EP 0 859 452 B1 from the same applicant. In the solution disclosed there, the phase angle or trigger angle is varied by the control device by a predetermined value, for example in successive full cycles. The result of such asymmetry in the trigger angle leads to even-numbered harmonics which increase only slowly, and to greatly reduced odd-numbered harmonics.
Although this solution approach has been proven in practice and allows the existing Standards to be complied with in this way without any problems, there is, of course, still the desire to find an even more cost-effective solution. Furthermore, an apparatus would be desirable whose humming in the region of 25 Hz is considerably less than in the case of the apparatus disclosed in the abovementioned document.

Apparatus for power control by phase gating and a method for harmonic reduction


A synchronous memory circuit having a memory array and a control circuit. The control circuit is responsive to a clock signal having a rising edge and a falling edge. The control circuit generates control signals for accessing the memory array at the rising edge and the falling edge of the clock signal. A read circuit is responsive to the control signals and generates read data signals indicative of data stored in the memory array. A write circuit is responsive to the control signals and stores data in the memory array.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to a method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving data at a frequency greater than a clock signal and, more particularly, to a memory circuit and associated method for transmitting and receiving data at both the rising edge and the falling edge of the clock signal.
2. Description of the Background
Synchronous memory devices, such as static random access memory (SRAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), are triggered by an externally supplied clock signal. Typically, access to the memory device is triggered once per clock cycle, at either the rising edge or the falling edge of the clock signal.
Architecture for a typical memory system includes not only the memory circuit itself, such as SRAM and DRAM, but also a processor for controlling the system and additional circuits for supporting operation of the system. For example, in a cache memory system the support circuits include a cache control logic and a TAG device for supporting the operation of the memory circuit. Regardless of the particular memory system, the prior art method of operating synchronous memory circuits is problematic when, for example, one component of the system, such as the memory device, cannot operate as quickly as another component of the system, such as the processor. For example, it may be desirable to run a Pentium.RTM. processor (manufactured by Intel, Corp., Santa Clara, Calif.) at 133 Megahertz, but it requires expensive memory circuits and associated logic that can also operate at 133 Megahertz. Significant monetary savings can be realized if slower, less expensive memory devices and associated logic, such as that which operates at 66 Megahertz, can be used with a 133 Megahertz processor.
Thus, the need exists for a memory system that can utilize a high speed processor with less expensive, lower speed memory devices and associated logic while still transferring data at the high speed of the processor. Furthermore, the need exists for a memory circuit for use in such a system to transmit data at twice the frequency of the clock signal.

Method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving data at both the rising edge and the falling edge of a clock signal


Apparatuses, systems, and methods are disclosed for managing cache pools. A storage request module monitors storage requests received by a cache. The storage requests include read requests and write requests. A read pool module adjusts a size of a read pool of the cache to increase a read hit rate of the storage requests. A dirty write pool module adjusts a size of a dirty write pool of the cache to increase a dirty write hit rate of the storage requests.

1. Field
The subject matter disclosed herein relates to caching data and more particularly relates to managing contents of a cache.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cache device typically has a smaller storage capacity than the backing store with which the cache device is associated. As a cache device fills with cached data, certain cached data may be evicted to free up room to cache additional data. If data is evicted from a cache device, a subsequent request for the evicted data yields a cache miss. Evicting the wrong data from a cache device can increase the number of cache misses and decrease the efficiency of the cache device.
In cache devices that store both read data and write data, available storage capacity is also shared between read data and write data. A static division of a cache device between read data and write data can also be an inefficient use of the cache device if the static division does not reflect a user's working data set of read data and write data.

Intelligent Intellectual Property Holdings 2 LLC


The invention relates to a clamping device for a rod which moves in an axial translatory or rotating manner. Said clamping device comprises a housing, a clamping sleeve which is axially fixed therein, a tensioning piston which can be displaced in the housing embodied as a cylinder, and a spring device for pre-tensioning the piston in the direction of the clamping sleeve in the locking state. Said spring device includes at least one helical plate spring which, in the event of a fracture, maintains the holding force and the dynamic course of the same. In one embodiment, the at least one helical plate spring is coaxially arranged in relation to the rod. In another embodiment, a plurality of helical plate springs are arranged on the circumference of the rod such that they are parallel with the axis thereof, for distribution of a pre-tensioning force acting on the spring device.

Certain clamping devices for axially movable rods, e.g. piston rods of working cylinders, or fixed rods, are known. A clamping device of this kind is described in DE 37 07 046 A1. Clamping devices of this kind are connected to a moving component or device relating to the rod which is to be clamped, and the clamping force is generated for example by means of a tensioning piston with an inner cone and a clamping sleeve with an outer cone. As the level of clamping force is directly dependent on the level of spring force, sets of plate springs are always used for high retaining or clamping forces in the prior art, which depending on the requirements consist of single- or multi-layer plate springs lined up in rows in alternate directions and are arranged coaxially.
The mode of operation under high forces is as follows. To release the clamping sleeve from the rod, the tensioning piston is pushed by hydraulic pressure counter to the spring force of the spring assembly, so that the clamping sleeve is no longer acted upon at its outer cone and the rod is thus released. To initiate the clamping action, i.e. to act on the outer cone of the clamping sleeve, the hydraulic pressure is removed, so that the spring force of the spring assembly can come into effect.
Problems arise with clamping devices of this kind particularly when one of the plate springs forming the spring assembly breaks, as this causes the spring unit as a whole to lose most of its bias. This is associated with a loss of the ability to transmit force to the tensioning piston and consequently a substantial reduction in the clamping force or retaining force.
On the other hand, bodies concerned with safety in the workplace, such as the professional and trade associations, demand that when any operational locking/securing mechanisms are used for presses and injection moulding machines, there must be no loss of the safety function even if a spring should break, i.e. the retaining force of the clamping device and hence the dynamic course should still be preserved. Particularly in the field of presses and injection molding machines referred to above, where the clamping and retaining mechanisms have to withstand very great forces which could endanger the lives of the operating staff, it is essential to comply with these professional requirements, which determine whether a clamping device will be authorized and released for use.
In the past, clamping devices for meeting these requirements were fitted with a clamping jaw arrangement which allows a hydraulically driven piston rod to be safely secured. A clamping jaw arrangement of this kind is known for example from published German application DE-OS 23 33 491. A disadvantage of the known clamping jaw arrangements is that in practice, when the clamping jaws are used, the forces applied frequently lead to jamming which can only be freed again with difficulty depending on the magnitude of the forces occurring and absorbed and sometimes lead to damage or even destruction of the apparatus, if the jamming is serious.


A device and method for protecting the end of a wooden utility pole set in the ground. A split cylindrical casing is provided which can be placed around the lower end of a wooden utility pole just before it is installed in the ground. The casing comprises an elongate, relatively thin cylindrical member having one closed end and being split into two sections connected together along the side thereof. The connection acts as a hinge. The edges of the casing where it is split are provided with a fastener, one part of the fastener being disposed along the edge of one part of the casing and another part of the fastener being disposed along the edge of the other part of the casing. When the cylindrical casing is closed, the edge of one part overlaps the edge of the other part so that the respective parts of the fasteners fit matingly together. Preferably, the fastener extends the entire length of the casing and entirely across the bottom end thereof. Preferably, the casing is made of high grade plastic.

This invention relates to devices and methods for protecting wooden utility poles of the type used to support aerial electric and telephone lines from deterioration, and particularly to casings for placement over the end of a wooden utility pole when it is set in the ground so as to prevent the pole from deteriorating due to absorption of moisture and living organisms.
As is well known, wooden utility poles with one end set in the ground are commonly used to support aerial electric and telephone lines. Such poles are subject to deterioration due to the absorption of moisture and the activity of living organisms such as bacteria, fungi, insects and borers. To maximize the life of the wooden poles, the poles usually are treated with creosote or some other material which combats deterioration of the poles. While such materials greatly increase the useful life of wooden utility poles, they do not entirely prevent deterioration. Consequently, there is a need for devices and methods to increase further the life of a wooden pole set in the ground to support aerial electric and telephone wires.
Some devices for protecting the top of wooden poles are known. For example, Finger et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,319,328 discloses a cylindrical cap to be placed on the upper end of a wooden utility pole to protect that end from moisture, bacteria fungi, insects and borers. Watts, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,245,931 and Watts, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,090 also disclose caps for protecting the upper end of a wooden pole. However, none is well adapted for rapid and convenient placement over the lower end of a utility pole when that pole is about to be placed in the ground so as to entirely separate the lower end of the post from the ground and seal it off from moisture, bacteria, fungi, insects and borers.
McEwen U.S. Pat. No. 368,222 discloses a wooden post having an earthen ware casing to protect the post in the ground. However, the casing is bulky, difficult to install and does not entirely protect the lower end of the post.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved device and method for protecting the lower end of a wood utility pole set in the ground.

Electric and telephone pole ground protector


A storage compartment arrangement for a motor vehicle, in particular an automobile, is provided. The arrangement can include a storage compartment, a storage compartment cover displaceable by a drive, a key and a control device, which is configured to cooperate with the key and to displace, in particular to close, the storage compartment cover on the basis of an actuation of the key.

It is known to optionally cover a storage compartment of an automobile with a storage compartment cover which is displaceable by a drive. In particular, when the storage compartment cover in a preferred embodiment has a display, for example of a vehicle information, navigation, entertainment and/or telecommunication system ("articulating display"), advantageously a storage site, in particular for valuable objects, can be provided which, when the cover is closed, is not visible and is protected from access. However, this presupposes that the driver, on leaving the vehicle, closes the cover. If he has forgotten this, hitherto he has to laboriously open the vehicle again, get in and close the cover directly.
From DE 103 40 817 A1 it is known, in connection with a so-called comfort entry/go function, to unlock and lock a glove compartment lock by remote control.
Therefore, it may be desirable to improve the operating comfort of a motor vehicle. In addition, other objects, desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent summary and detailed description, and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background.

Storage compartment arrangement for a motor vehicle with a displaceable storage compartment cover


An apparatus and a method for storing diagnostic software on a data storage device provides one or more ghost partitions overlapping a user partition on a data storage device. During a factory download of the application software as well as the diagnostics software, the apparatus creates a user partition and one or more overlapping ghost partitions. Next, it determines a minimum and maximum partition size for the ghost partition(s) and allocates the ghost partition size(s) appropriately. The apparatus then creates one or more master boot records (MBRs), one for each created partition. The ghost partition containing the diagnostics software is set as the active partition to allow the diagnostic software to be executed. Upon completion of the diagnostics process, the MBR for a second ghost partition is enabled so that upon reboot, download verification software located on a second ghost partition can be executed to ensure the correctness of the software downloading process. Next, the ghost partitions are disabled to reclaim storage space back to the user partition and the MBR for the user partition is set as the active partition so that upon reboot, only user partitions are visible. Further, in the event that the diagnostics software needs to be executed for quality control purposes, the MBR containing data on the ghost partition with the diagnostics software replaces the MBR for the user partition so that the ghost partition with diagnostics software can be resurrected after it has been previously disabled. No master boot records for any of the user or system partitions are modified at any time during the process. Additionally, the MBR and file allocation table (FAT) for the ghost partition may be cleared so test data cannot be accessed after the factory test processes. Since the ghost partitions overlap user partitions, after the ghost partitions have been disabled, data storage is automatically reclaimed by the user partitions when needed. The ghost partitions can properly function while overlapping the user partitions because while in the controlled environment of the factory, data will not be arbitrarily written to the user partition (otherwise both user and ghost partition data could become corrupt). Thus, the present invention avoids the need to set up a large system partition and avoids wasting disk space associated with manufacturing diagnostics.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to computer diagnostics system, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for creating and deleting a partition on a data storage device with the diagnostic system.
2. Description of the Related Art
The continual reduction in size and cost of personal computers has been instrumental in the rapid acceptance of computer technology by corporations and consumers. Even with ultra large scale integration technology, which reduces the number of components in personal computers, these personal computers are still highly complex hardware assemblies. Thus, even computers assembled using high quality components and careful assembly procedures are still subject to occasional manufacturing defects and failures during use.
The costs associated with such defects and failures in terms of manufacturer warranty obligations and end user down time are relatively high. Thus, users are demanding that their computer be reliable and be available at virtually any time. Computers, however, can experience problems associated with any one of their major components, such as the hard drive, the display, the memory, and the processor. It is important, therefore, to provide a diagnostic capability for the computer system that can test the operation of the computer in a multi-tasking environment to closely simulate the actual environment that the computer system operates in.
To satisfy such requirements, prior to the delivery of the computers to end users following the manufacture or subsequent repair, the computer circuit boards are normally subjected to functional tests to determine whether they operate properly. Furthermore, during use, the user may experience problems relating to either hardware problems or improper software configurations. To isolate the fault, the user may wish to subject his or her computer system to the functional tests to satisfy the user that the hardware or driver level software is not the culprit of the problems.
One type of diagnostic program is embedded into a non-volatile memory of the computer. In an IBM compatible personal computer, the test is called "Power On Self Test" (POST) and is arranged in personal computers as a portion of the basic input/output system (BIOS). Such BIOS-POST diagnostic program is executed automatically and mandatorily when the computer system boots. One problem that occurs with the placement of test codes in the BIOS-POST diagnostic program is the execution speed and the size of the actual code. First, users do not want to wait for an extensive diagnostic testing during each boot. Therefore, the POST-diagnostics routines cannot be as sophisticated and as thorough as possible. Furthermore, the POST diagnostics routine is constrained by tight memory requirements, and therefore is limited to simple and time-efficient tests without an easy to use graphical user interface inherently present in the Windows interface.
Another functional testing method employs specialized diagnostics software which is transferred to the computer system under test via one or more disks. The testing software is typically loaded onto the computer to be tested and a technician or a user initiates the execution of the software for testing the computer. The diagnostic software is designed to test the operation and interconnection of the circuit board components and other hardware, and to provide graphic displays on the monitor indicating the nature of any identified faults. Diagnostic software of this type is commercially available for most computer system manufacturers and original equipment manufacturers. Additionally, after-market diagnostic software is also commercially available from independent software vendors.
One disadvantage caused by disk-based test or diagnostics tools is the need to completely remove the test software from the data storage device upon completion of such test. Traditionally, such removal entails the execution of an uninstall software which ensures that various Windows files relating to the test software are removed that the Windows INI file is properly updated. The execution of such uninstall software in a production environment is undesirable due to the time and expense associated with executing and monitoring the uninstall software. Further, the user's Windows INI files may become corrupted during the uninstall process. Thus, it is desirable to install the disk operating system as well as the test software on the target computer at once and quickly and completely reclaim the space taken by the disk-based diagnostics routines after the completion of the factory tests.
One alternative to storing diagnostics software in the user's partition is to store the software in a system partition. The system partition needs to be small to minimize the usurpation of disk space from user applications. As prior diagnostics software required less than 20 megabytes, the system partition can be kept at a manageable size. However, with the advent of graphically orientated operating systems such as Windows 95, a partition with a minimum size of 25 megabytes or greater could be needed for diagnostic software during the manufacturing phase. Due to the size and the number of operating system files required to start the operating system and the size and number of files required to run modern diagnostic software, traditional provisions on the disk drive's system partition are insufficient to load the diagnostic software. However, the setup of a larger system partition would deprive the user of much needed disk drive space after diagnostics has been executing in the manufacturing phase. Thus, what is needed is an apparatus and a method for minimizing the amount of disk space ultimately lost to manufacturing diagnostics files.


An article turning-round apparatus includes a rotary table rotated by a first shaft, load-carrying tables mounted on the rotary table along a peripheral zone thereof, a first conveyor serving to convey articles to a first station and a second conveyor serving to convey the articles away from a second station. Each load-carrying table is either a first load-carrying table adapted to rotate counterclockwise or a second load-carrying table adapted to rotate clockwise around its own axis as it moves along with the peripheral zone of the rotary table. The articles are successively loaded, at the first station, on these load-carrying tables. The first load-carrying table is turned counterclockwise approximately by 90° and the second load-carrying table is turned clockwise approximately by 90° in the course of traveling from the first station to the second station.

The present invention relates to an apparatus adapted to turn round a series of predetermined articles successively. The present application is based on, and claims priority from, Japanese Application Serial Number 2002-333358, filed Nov. 18, 2002, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1996-310705A discloses a work turning-round apparatus proposed, which successively turns round a plurality of works fed at regular intervals by an angle of 90° relative to a direction in which the works are conveyed. These works are held on the apparatus in the course of being turned round.
The work turning-round apparatus disclosed in the above-cited Publication comprises a guide rail presenting a substantially oval profile, an endless conveyor circularly running along the guide rail, a plurality of carriages mounted on the endless conveyor and moving on the guide rail, table bases rotatably mounted on the carriages and work tables mounted on the table bases integrally therewith. The endless conveyor has a loading station and an unloading station for the sheet-like works and a pair of connecting conveyor sections extending between the loading station and the unloading station. In the case of this well-known work turning-round apparatus, rectilinear sections of the guide rail define the loading station and the unloading station, respectively, and curved sections of the guide rail define the connecting conveyor sections, respectively.
With this work turning-round apparatus, the works are held, at the loading station, on the respective work tables of the carriages and travel toward the unloading station through one of the connecting conveyor sections as the endless conveyor runs. Each of the table bases rotates by an angle of 90° relative to the associated carriage around its axis extending in a direction crossing the direction in which the works are conveyed and thereby turns round the work held on the work table by the corresponding angle. At the unloading station, this work is conveyed away from the turning-round apparatus. After the work has been conveyed away from the turning-round apparatus, the table base rotates again by an angle of 90° relative to the associated carriage, at the other of the connecting conveyor sections, around its axis crossing the direction in which the works are conveyed. In this way, each of the works rotates by an angle of 180° while the associated table base makes a circuit of the guide rail.
With the work turning-round apparatus disclosed in the above-cited Publication, the table bases can be rotated along the connecting conveyor sections but can be rotated neither at the loading station nor at the unloading station. This is for the reason that the guide rail rectilinearly extends at the loading and unloading stations and a plurality of the table bases closely lined up along these stations. If it is intended to rotate a pair of the adjacent table bases along the rectilinear sections of the guide rail defined by the loading and unloading stations, these table bases will bump against each other and prevented from smoothly rotating. Along the curved connecting conveyor sections, on the other hand, there is a difference in level between each pair of the adjacent table bases and therefore each of these adjacent table bases can be rotated without any interference with each other.
This work turning-round apparatus is constructed so that the table bases rotate around their own axes along the curved sections of the guide rail (i.e., connecting conveyor sections) and loading as well as unloading of the works is carried out along the rectilinear sections of the guide rail (i.e., the loading station and the unloading station). Thus a restriction is imposed on the positions on the apparatus at which the works are loaded and are unloaded.
In this work turning-round apparatus, the carriages travel on the guide rail by means of guide rollers mounted on these carriages and a plurality of the table bases rotate on their own axes while these table bases travel on the guide rail. Such construction not complicates the structure of the apparatus but also is unsuitable for the purpose of turning round the works at a high velocity.


A set of candidate parallel pages is identified based on trigger words in one or more pages downloaded from a given network location (such as a website). A set of document trees representing each of the candidate pages are aligned to identify translationally parallel content and hyperlinks. The parallel content is further fed into conventional sentence aligner for parallel sentences. And the parallel hyperlinks usually refer to other parallel documents, and lead to a recursive mining of parallel documents.

Parallel bilingual corpora, as used herein, refers to textual data in a first language that is identified as a translation of textual data in a second language. For the sake of example, the textual data discussed herein is documents, but other textual data can be used as well.
When one document is a translation of another document, the two documents are referred to as parallel, bilingual documents. Therefore, a parallel, bilingual corpora refers to a corpus of data in a first language that is a translation of a corpus of data in a second language.
Within a set of parallel documents, sentences in those documents which are translations of one another are often identified. These are referred to as aligned sentences. Therefore, if a document in a first language coincides with a parallel document in a second language, and the sentences in the two documents are aligned with one another (in that a sentence in the first language is aligned with its translation in the second language) then the two documents are referred to as parallel, sentence-aligned, bilingual documents.
There is currently a wide need for parallel, bilingual corpora. For instance, such corpora are often critical resources for training statistical machine translation systems, and for performing cross-lingual information retrieval. Additionally, some such corpora have even been exploited for various monolingual natural language processing tasks, such as word sense disambiguation and paraphrase acquisition.
However, large scale parallel corpora are currently not readily available for most language pairs. Even in those languages where some such corpora are available, the data in those corpora are usually restricted to government documents or news wire texts. Because of the particular writing styles or domain-specific language used in these types of documents, these corpora cannot be easily used in training data driven machine translation systems or information retrieval systems, or even the monolingual, natural language processors discussed above, for a range of domains in different language pairs.
There has recently been a sharp increase in the number of bilingual pages available on wide area networks (such as websites). Therefore, some web mining systems have been developed to automatically obtain parallel, bilingual corpora from the worldwide web. These systems use uniform resource locators (URLs), and assume that parallel web pages are named with predefined patterns to facilitate website maintenance. Therefore, when these systems are given bilingual website URLs, they use the predefined URL patterns in an attempt to discover candidate parallel documents within that website. Content-based features are then used to verify the translational equivalents of the candidate pairs.
These types of systems have met with limited success. For instance, there is a wide diversity of web page styles and website maintenance mechanisms. Therefore, bilingual websites often use varied naming schemes for parallel documents, which do not conform to predefined patterns.
In addition, these URL pattern-based mining systems can be problematic with respect to bandwidth. These types of mining processes require a full host crawling to collect URLs before using predefined URL patterns to discover possible parallel documents. Therefore, these URL pattern-based systems often require high bandwidth, and high cost, and result in slow download speeds. Since even many bilingual websites have only a very limited number of parallel documents, a significant portion of the network bandwidth is wasted on downloading web pages that do not have translational counterparts.
In addition, due to the noisy nature of web documents, parallel web pages may include non-translational content and many out of vocabulary words. Both of these reduce the sentence alignment accuracy, even after two parallel documents have been identified. Further, conventional sentence aligners only operate on conventional text, without considering other factors, such as layout similarity.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.

Aligning hierarchial and sequential document trees to identify parallel data


The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for removing and recovering copper by treating an acidic waste liquid containing copper ions such as an etching waste liquid resulting from etching a copper printed board in an etching solution of cupric chloride and a waste liquid after renewing a plating bath liquid in producing electrolytic copper foil. In particular, a copper recovering method of recovering copper from a copper-containing acidic waste liquid includes adding a liquid mixture of a copper-containing acidic waste liquid and an oxidizing agent to an alkaline agent solution while a pH of the alkaline agent solution to which the liquid mixture has been added is being controlled so as never to decrease to seven or lower, and by obtaining a solid material whose main component is copper oxide.

As an acidic waste liquid containing highly concentrated copper ions (hereinafter referred to as copper-containing acidic waste liquid), there have been known an etching waste liquid resulting from a process of etching a copper printed board in an etching solution of cupric chloride, a waste liquid after renewing a plating bath liquid in a process of producing electrolytic copper foil, and the like. These waste liquids contain copper whose concentration is as high as 5-20 percent by mass (hereinafter simply referred to as %), and contain coexisting chloride ions and sulfate ions whose concentrations are normally as high as 5-30%.
As a recovery treatment of copper from the copper-containing acidic waste liquid, there has been partly conducted a method of recovering metal copper precipitated by a reaction between copper ions and scrap iron caused by differences of ionization tendency of copper and iron. However, according to this method, a recovery rate of copper from the waste liquid is low, and there still remains waste liquid which contains iron ions eluted by the reaction with copper ions, and uncollected copper ions. Thus, it is hard to say that this method is an efficient treatment method because treatment of the remaining waste liquid is separately required.
Further, as a commonly-used method, there has been known a treatment method of removing heavy metals in the form of hydroxide precipitated by adding alkaline substances such as sodium hydroxide to the waste liquid. However, this method is unsuitable for treating the copper-containing acidic waste liquid which has a high concentration of copper ions because resultant sludge is bulky and large in amount.
Furthermore, as a treatment of the etching waste liquid, there has been attempted a treatment method for recovering copper in the form of copper oxide by adding alkaline substances in the waste liquid to change copper ions into insoluble hydroxide followed by adding an oxidizing agent to produce copper oxide (see e.g. Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2004-50096 (patent application No. 2002-212857)). However, in this technique, when hypochlorite, chloride of lime or the like, each of which contains chloride ions, is used as the oxidizing agent, the concentration of chloride ions in the waste liquid after addition of the oxidizing agent becomes higher, thereby causing problems such as a formation of double salt of copper chloride and copper oxide and undesirable incorporation of salt content into the sludge. If the waste liquid is a liquid having a low concentration of copper ions, less than a few percent, such as washing wastewater after an etching process, this technique does not really cause a problem. However, in the case where the waste liquid that contains a high concentration of copper ions is treated, there remain problems to be solved, such as a problem of an increase of impurities contained in the recovered copper oxide.
On the other hand, when hydrogen peroxide is used as an oxidizing agent, the above-mentioned increase of salts does not occur. However, an efficient treatment of the waste liquid cannot be carried out because of the following problems. Specifically, when treating a strong acidic waste liquid having copper ions and chloride ions or sulfate ions which coexist in high concentrations, a solid material whose main component is a double salt of copper hydroxide and copper chloride or a double salt of copper hydroxide and copper sulfate is precipitated under conditions of a pH of about 1.5 or higher in a process of neutralization by adding an alkaline agent to the strong acidic waste liquid to change the pH level from an acidic property to a neutral or alkaline property. The solid material whose main component is the above double salt has a high concentration of impurities and is bulkier than copper oxide, and hence the recovery treatment efficiency is low. In particular, when treating the waste liquid containing highly-concentrated copper, the waste liquid changes into pasty sludge in the course of neutralization, thus causing difficulty in its treatment.
Further, the above double salts are hard to be decomposed by oxidization with hydrogen peroxide, and the double salts act as catalyst for decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Therefore, even if hydrogen peroxide is added as an oxidization agent to the liquid in which the solid material has been precipitated, hydrogen peroxide is itself decomposed and consumed, thus causing a problem that the reaction is finished with the oxidization for producing copper oxide uncompleted.
In order to avoid a change of the treated waste liquid into the pasty object due to the precipitation of the solid material whose main component is the double salt, it is effective to dilute the waste liquid so that a concentration of copper ions is not more than about 10 g/L and a concentration of chloride ions or sulfate ions is not more than about 20 g/L during a neutralization treatment. However, in this treatment, there is a problem that a large amount of dilution water is required and accordingly a facility for this treatment becomes large.
Further, when treating a strong acidic waste liquid having copper ions and chloride ions or sulfate ions which coexist in high concentrations, such as an etching waste liquid containing copper ions, even if hydrogen peroxide is added to the acidic waste liquid containing copper in advance, a precipitate whose main component is the above-mentioned double salts is partly produced in the course of a neutralization reaction caused by adding an alkaline agent to the acidic waste liquid to change the liquid property from acidic to neutral or alkaline. Accordingly, most of hydrogen peroxide is catalytically decomposed and consumed. Then, the reaction of oxidization treatment for producing copper oxide is finished with the oxidization uncompleted due to a lack of the amount of hydrogen peroxide. In compensation for this, it is possible to improve the condition of oxidization treatment by adding hydrogen peroxide excessively to the waste liquid in anticipation of the lack of hydrogen peroxide during the oxidizing reaction. However, a large amount of additive chemicals is required, and thus such treatment is inefficient. Even in this case, the double salts which are not oxidatively decomposed with hydrogen peroxide still remain in sludge. A concentration of double salts can be reduced by rinsing the sludge with water sufficiently to remove the double salts from the sludge. However, a large amount of rinsing water is required and another treatment is required because copper ions are contained in rinsing wastewater, and thus such treatment is inefficient.
Furthermore, in these technologies, the treatment is conducted under the condition where a solution property is alkaline, i.e. a pH is in the range of eight to 12 by adding the alkaline agent to the acidic solution. Thus, neutralization treatment is required again in order to adjust a solution property to approximately neutral property in subsequent processes such as a dewatering process of the recovered solid material and a discharging process of a separated liquid. In this case, it is hard to say that this method is efficient because chemicals for re-neutralization are needed.
As described above, there has been no technology to recover only copper efficiently from copper-containing acidic waste liquids containing highly-concentrated copper ions and highly-concentrated salts like chloride ions which hinder the recovery and recycling of copper, and thus these waste liquids have been generally collected and discarded without recycling by industrial waste disposers.

Method and apparatus for removing and recovering copper from copper-containing acidic waste liquid and method for producing copper-containing substance


A probe plate assembly for use in a circuit board test fixture is disclosed. First and second plates are mounted substantially parallel to one another and with a space between them. Probe pins are mounted to the first plate and oriented so that they can contact a device under test on the side of the first plate opposite the space. Electrical contacts are mounted to the second plate and oriented so that they can contact a test head on the side of the second plate opposite the space. Flexible conductors electrically couple the probe pins to the electrical contacts. In a disclosed embodiment, the probe pins are spring probes, and the second plate contains clearance holes disposed adjacent the spring probes. Each of the clearance holes has sufficient diameter to allow the socket tail of one of the spring probes to pass through it without substantial friction. The result is that forces from the test head are mechanically decoupled from the first plate, thus preventing bowing of the first plate. In a further disclosed embodiment, a spacer is disposed between and near the periphery of the first and second plates. The spacer may be one continuous gasket piece forming a vacuum seal around the perimeters of the first and second plates. The spacer, as well as the first and second plates, may be made of fiberglass. The first plate may be thinner or less rigid than the second plate and may alternatively be made, for example, of transparent plexiglass.

FIG. 1 is an exploded cross-sectional view of a prior art circuit board test fixture 100. Test fixture 100 includes test head 102, probe plate assembly 104 and protective plate 106.
Test head 102 is equipped with numerous test head pins 110 that are mounted to test head platform 112. For ease of illustration, the number of test head pins shown in the drawing is intentionally low. An actual test fixture would more commonly contain one or two thousand test head pins, and a high-node-count test fixture may contain perhaps three thousand or more test head pins. Each of test head pins 110 is a spring-loaded probe-and-socket assembly well known in the industry. Typically, the spring probes selected for each of test head pins 110 might be capable of exerting a force of perhaps four ounces. Test head pins 110 are electrically coupled to test head control system 114. Test head control system 114 provides generic test resources such as power, ground and programmable signal sources sufficient to verify the functionality of a wide variety of circuit board types.
Probe plate assembly 104 includes probe plate 116, frame 118 and alignment plate 120. Frame 118 is typically made of aluminum, steel or other metal. Probe plate 116 is typically made of type G10 fiberglass. Alignment plate 120 is typically made of plastic. Numerous probe pins 122 are mounted to probe plate 116. Probe pins 122 are also conventional spring-loaded probe-and-socket assemblies. However, the spring force selected for probe pins 122 usually would be somewhat higher than the spring force selected for test head pins 110. For example, the spring probes selected for each of probe pins 122 might be capable of exerting perhaps eight ounces of force. Numerous personality pins 124 are also mounted to probe plate 116. Personality pins 124 are not spring loaded, but have a mounting member and a conducting member. The mounting member is typically installed in probe plate 116 using an interference fit. The conducting member extends from the mounting member and is operable to make contact with a test head pin 110. Although the conducting member is substantially rigid along its own axis, it is capable of moving radially to some degree away from the axis of the mounting member. This movement enables personality pins 124 to pass through holes in alignment plate 120 that are not perfectly collinear with the axis of the personality pin mounting member. Further background relating to personality pins 124 may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,007, titled "Bendable Pin Board Test Fixture," invented by Stephen J. Cook and Michael L. Bullock, assigned to Hewlett-Packard Company and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. The mounting location of personality pins 124 on probe plate 116 is dictated by the arrangement of the various test resources that are permanently connected to test head pins 110. The mounting location of probe pins 122, on the other hand, is dictated by the arrangement of test nodes 128 on device-under-test ("DUT") 108. Probe pins 122 are electrically coupled to personality pins 124 typically by wire wrap or solder connections 126. Numerous alignment rods 130 (typically tooling pins) are also mounted to probe plate 116. Alignment rods 130 provide guidance for the proper installation of protective plate 106 and DUT 108 onto test fixture 100.
Vacuum source 132 is coupled to test fixture 100 via valve 134. Channels 136, 138 and 140 are provided within test head platform 112, frame 118 and probe plate 116, respectively, in order to communicate the vacuum to the underside of protective plate 106. Oversized probe pin holes 142 in protective plate 106 communicate the vacuum to the underside of DUT 108, causing it to be pulled firmly down onto test fixture 100 when the vacuum is applied. The result is that probe pins 122 engage test nodes 128. Gasket material 144 is provided on both sides of protective plate 106 to complete the vacuum seal. Vacuum is only one method commonly used to engage DUT 108 with probe pins 122. Other known methods include the application of force from the top side of DUT 108 using pneumatic, hydraulic or motor-driven devices. Once DUT 108 has engaged probe pins 122, test head control system 114 can automatically exercise DUT 108 as necessary to verify its functionality.
Further background relating to prior art circuit board test fixtures may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,234, titled "Vacuum Actuated Test Fixture," invented by Stephen J. Cook and Kris J. Kanack, assigned to Hewlett-Packard Company and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
Test fixtures like test fixture 100 work well when the number of test head pins 110 is low to moderate--for example, less than 3,000 nodes. In systems having a high node count, however, problems arise because of the aggregate force exerted by test head pins 110 on probe plate 116 via personality pins 124. Consider the case of a test head having a node count of 5,000 nodes: If each test head pin exerts a force of four ounces, the aggregate force applied to probe plate 116 by personality pins 124 will equal 1,250 pounds. FIG. 2 illustrates the problems caused by such large forces. While probe plate 116 may be able to withstand the force without breaking, probe plate 116 nevertheless begins to bow up towards protective plate 106 and DUT 108. This bowing causes some of the probe pins, such as probe pin 122A, to be closer to DUT 108 than other probe pins, such as probe pins 122B and 122C. In addition, the bowing of probe plate 116 causes the probe pins and alignment rods to fan out radially. These effects cause numerous problems. First, it can become difficult to mount DUT 108 onto test fixture 100 because the ends of alignment rods 130 are displaced from their original positions. If DUT 108 can be mounted onto the alignment rods, then it may yet be difficult to unmount DUT 108 because the alignment rods may bind against the sides of the alignment rod holes within DUT 108. Second, the bowing of probe plate 116 and the consequent raising of the center-most probe pins makes it difficult to maintain the vacuum seal of the test fixture. Third, in extreme cases of bowing such as that shown in FIG. 2, the probe pins may miss their intended targets as indicated at 146, 148 and 150. These problems get worse as the node count increases and as the size of the test fixture increases.
Although attempts have been made to strengthen probe plate 116 by reinforcing it or making it thicker, such attempts have generally led to more expensive and cumbersome embodiments and have not successfully prevented the just-described bowing problem. Moreover, it is sometimes desirable to use a transparent plexiglass material for probe plate 116 so that operators may see into the test fixture. Plexiglass is significantly less strong than opaque fiberglass materials such as type G10 fiberglass. Therefore, with high-node-count test fixtures such as test fixture 100, plexiglass may not be used to form probe plate 116 because it exacerbates the bowing of probe plate 116.

Probe plate assembly for high-node-count circuit board test fixtures


Banding and clamp for use to in high voltage environments of over 15 kV. The banding includes and inner core and an outer insulative layer. The inner core has non-piercing edges. The inner core is configured to have strength to prevent movement of components to which the banding is attached. The outer insulative layer surrounds at least a portion of the inner core. The outer insulative has a phase-to-ground rating of greater than 15 kV.

Banding or clamps are used for many applications to retain one component in relation to another component. The banding is configured to have the strength required to hold the components together over time. Various bands may include a cover or layer which is used to provide a cushioned surface between the inner strength core of the banding and the components, thereby preventing the inner strength core from damaging the components.
While banding is useful in many applications, in high voltage environments, known banding cannot be used as the banding can case arcing or other types of problems which can lead to the failure of the components or the system.
It would, therefore, be beneficial to provide banding which overcomes the deficiencies of the prior art. In particular, it would be beneficial to provide insulative banding which can be used effectively in high voltage environments.