A fusing device comprising: a frame; a cover hinged to the frame, a heating roller mounted in the cover; a first pressing roller to form a first fusing nip through contact with the heating roller; a second pressing roller to form a second fusing nip, through which a printing medium passes, after passing through the first fusing nip; and a first resilient member connected to the frame and the cover, to bias the first and second pressing rollers toward the heating roller.

1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, to a fusing device having improved performance and compactness, and an image forming apparatus having the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an image forming apparatus refers to an apparatus that forms an image on a printing medium, in accordance with input image signals. For example, a printer, a photocopier, a facsimile, and a multifunction peripheral (MFP) having combined functions of the aforementioned apparatuses, are examples of image forming apparatuses.
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus forms a desired image in the following process. First, a surface of a photoconductive medium is electrified to a predetermined electric potential. A laser beam is projected onto the surface of the photoconductive medium, to thereby form an electrostatic latent image. A toner image is obtained, by applying toner to the electrostatic latent image. Next, the toner image is transferred to a recording medium, and then fixed on the recording medium, by passing through a fusing device.
A fusing device generally comprises a heating roller including a heat source therein, and a pressing roller to form a fusing nip, through contact with the heating roller. As a printing medium, having a transferred toner image, is passed between the heating roller and the pressing roller, the toner image is fixed on the printing medium, by heat transmitted from the inside of the heating roller, and pressure between the heating roller and the pressing roller.
Currently, the tendency is toward high-speed and compact image forming apparatuses. Accordingly, fusing devices that have improved performance and a reduced size, are sought after.
Since the performance of a fusing device depends on the width of a fusing nip, it is preferable to enlarge a diameter of the pressing roller, to produce a higher performance fusing device. However, in this case, a diameter of the heating roller has to be accordingly enlarged, thereby increasing the size of the fusing device.
Considering such problems, a fusing device employing a pair of relatively small pressing rollers has been introduced, as shown in FIG. 1. The fusing device comprises a heating roller 1 including a heat source 1a, and first and second pressing rollers 2 and 3 disposed along a feeding direction of a printing medium M, and tightly contacting the heating roller 1. The first pressing roller 2 is biased toward the heating roller 1, by a first compression spring 4 mounted on the opposite side to the heating roller 1. The second pressing roller 3 is biased toward the heating roller 1, by a second compression spring 5. The use of the two pressing rollers 2 and 3 produces two fusing nips, which thereby increase a total nip area, resulting in the fusing device having improved fusing performance, while keeping a compact size.
In the fusing device shown in FIG. 1, however, the first compression spring 4 is mounted to the opposite side to the heating roller 1, to push the first pressing roller 2 toward the heating roller 1. In such a structure, the height of the fusing device should be increased, in order to secure a mounting space 6 for the first compression spring 4. This increases the size of the image forming apparatus.
Besides the performance improvement and the size reduction, a transfer path, along which the printing medium is transferred, is also a consideration. The printing medium can be curled as it passes through the fusing device. Without proper guidance, the curled printing medium may be jammed inside the fusing device, which can result in loss of image quality.

Fusing device and image apparatus having a biased pressing roller


An integrated pumping module for use in a thermal management system, for example for a fuel cell. The integrated pumping module includes a diverting or mixing valve closely coupled to a pump element, such as the volute chamber of a centrifugal pump. The valve chamber and the pump chamber are closely and directly coupled through a connecting passage so as to minimize pressure drop as a liquid coolant passes through the connecting passage from the valve chamber to the pump chamber. A bypass inlet and outlet opening are provided in the valve chamber to permit all or a portion of the coolant flow to be diverted to a radiator once the coolant reaches a predetermined temperature. The integrated pumping module may also be provided with a filter housing into which a portion of the coolant flow may be diverted.

Thermal management systems are used in a variety of applications where temperature modulation of heat-generating components is required. One such application is in the thermal management of a fuel cell system, whether stationary or vehicular, which typically contains a number of heat-generating components requiring temperature modulation. Fuel cell systems include one or more heat transfer circuits, each of which may include its own heat exchanger, circulation pump, mixing valve and/or diverting valve.
In order to reduce complexity, cost and space requirements of fuel cell systems, it is desirable to reduce the number of components making up the thermal management system.


A martial arts practice device that includes a standard and a means for supporting the standard in a substantially vertical position. The invention provides a system of inter-fastened pads to mount a striking pad to the standard. The standard has a front side and two lateral sides. An elongated pad is positioned on the standard so that its two longitudinally oriented cushions cover the two lateral sides of the standard. The two longitudinally oriented cushions define an opening through which the front side of the standard is accessible. Several protective pads are mounted to the longitudinally oriented cushions to cover the opening and fix the elongated pad to the standard. At least one striking-pad plate is mounted on the standard and each such plate is used to mount a striking pad to the standard. The striking-pad plate has a fitting for receiving a flexible member. Each striking pad has a central bore with a fabric collar around the top of the central bore. The striking pad is inserted through the central opening of a rim pad and the fabric collar is fastened to a ring-shaped fastening means on the rim pad. The striking pad is slid over the flexible member so that the flexible member is inserted into the striking pad's central bore and the rim pad is fastened to the longitudinally oriented cushions of the elongated pads, thereby fastening the striking pad to the standard.

Exercise devices are used for various reasons including improving the skills and techniques needed to perform various athletic and physical movements. In the field of martial arts, a number of devices have been developed to help those learning a martial art improve and hone their ability to execute specific physical movements such as kicks, punches, and blocks. One such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,451 (the "'451 patent"). The device shown in the '451 patent includes a plurality of striking pads which are attached to an upright support. Each of the pads includes a cylindrically shaped, flexible pad member which is secured over a pintl which, in turn, is attached to a moveable spring. The spring is positioned within an aperture formed in a truncated, conically-shaped base plate which is fastened to the upright by threaded fasteners.
The pads in the device shown in the '451 patent are designed to be struck by an individual who is practicing a martial-arts movement. Normally, the pads are oriented perpendicular to the upright. When a pad is struck, it is deflected to a position askew from the original position. Specifically, the pad member moves over the truncated, conically-shaped base late in response to being hit. After a strike, the spring-mounted pintl causes the pad to return to its original position, with the pad moving back to a substantially perpendicular position with respect to the upright. Thus, the device may be used to execute numerous repetitions of a specific movement with the striking pad moving back to substantially the same point after each repetition.
While the device shown in the '451 patent is useful, it does suffer from several shortcomings. In particular, the mechanism used to attach the striking pads to the upright is unduly complex and includes numerous components. This makes the device relatively expensive to manufacture and maintain. For example, manufacturing a conically-shaped base plate for the mounting assembly requires relatively sophisticated manufacturing facilities which, of course, increase the overall price of the practice device. Further, each spring used to connect a striking pad to the upright is subject to wear and stretching, which reduces its resiliency and ultimately necessitates that it be replaced when it becomes worn out.
Another device used to practice martial arts is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,552 (the "'552 patent"). This device includes an upright support having a plurality of flexible, focus target pads releasably secured to it. This device also has drawbacks. First, the devices requires relatively complex assemblies to mount each of the target pads to the upright. Second, while designing a device to have a releasable target pad may be useful in some instances, training that requires high numbers of repetitions can not be accomplished with this device, as the pads are likely to fly off the upright support after they are struck.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a martial arts practice device that may be used to practice specific physical movements by having a user strike a target or pad. Further, it would be desirable to have a device designed with target or striking pads that return to a predetermined position after being struck, so that 1) a high number of repetitions of a movement can be executed and 2) complex movements resulting in multiple blows or strikes to the same point or position can be practiced. Further still, it would be desirable to have a device that is relatively simple and inexpensive to build.

Martial arts practice device having an improved mechanism for mounting striking pads


Techniques are described for training and/or utilizing an end-to-end speaker diarization model. In various implementations, the model is a recurrent neural network (RNN) model, such as an RNN model that includes at least one memory layer, such as a long short-term memory (LSTM) layer. Audio features of audio data can be applied as input to an end-to-end speaker diarization model trained according to implementations disclosed herein, and the model utilized to process the audio features to generate, as direct output over the model, speaker diarization results. Further, the end-to-end speaker diarization model can be a sequence-to-sequence model, where the sequence can have variable length. Accordingly, the model can be utilized to generate speaker diarization results for any of various length audio segments.

Speaker diarization is a branch of audio signal analysis that involves portioning an input audio stream into homogenous segments according to speaker identity. It answers the question of "who spoke when" in a multi-speaker environment. For example, speaker diarization can be utilized to identify that a first segment of an input audio stream is attributable to a first human speaker (without particularly identifying who the first human speaker is), a second segment of the input audio stream is attributable to a disparate second human speaker (without particularly identifying who the first human speaker is), a third segment of the input audio stream is attributable to the first human speaker, etc. Speaker diarization has a wide variety of applications including multimedia information retrieval, speaker turn analysis, and audio processing.
A typical speaker diarization system usually consists of four steps: (1) speech segmentation, where the input audio is segmented into short sections that are assumed to have a single speaker, and the non-speech sections are filtered out; (2) audio embedding extraction, where specific features are extracted from the segmented sections; (3) clustering, where the number of speakers is determined, and the extracted audio embeddings are clustered into these speakers; and optionally (4) resegmentation, where the clustering results are further refined to produce the final diarization results.
With such a typical speaker diarization system, errors can be introduced at each step, and can propagate to further steps, thereby causing erroneous diarization results and thereby adversely impacting further applications that may rely on the erroneous diarization results. For example, speech segmentation can rely on a voice activity detector (VAD) in performing the speech segmentation, and the VAD can introduce errors. Also, for example, errors can additionally or alternatively be introduced in speech segmentation as a result of low resolution of long segments and/or as a result of short segments having insufficient audio to produce accurate audio embeddings. As another example, audio embeddings can be generated locally without using any global information, which can additionally or alternatively introduce errors. As yet another example, clustering of the audio embeddings can additionally or alternatively introduce errors, as it involves unsupervised learning where accuracy is supposed to be low.

Speaker diartzation using an end-to-end model


A lens drive device may include a movable body, a support body supporting the movable body through a spring member, and a magnetic drive mechanism provided with a coil. The movable body includes a coil winding part, end parts for restricting a range of the coil winding part, and a changing part for changing a drawing direction of the coil. The spring member is disposed near the other end part of the movable body and electrically connected with winding start and winding end of the coil. A coil winding method for the lens drive device may include a drawing step in which a coil is drawn between end parts, a changing step in which a drawing direction of the coil is changed by the changing part, and a winding step in which the coil is wound around the coil winding part.

As cell phones with cameras in which a camera is mounted have become popular in recent years, chances photographing various objects to be photographed by using the cell phone have increased. For example, there is a case that an object such as a friend or landscape which is apart from a lens of a camera to some extent is photographed (normal photographing) and, alternatively, there is a case that an object such as a timetable for bus or petals of a flower at a position near the lens of the camera is photographed (close-up photographing).
In the close-up photographing (macro-photographing), a lens position of a camera is required to locate at a position nearer on an object side than a lens position at the time of normal photographing. Therefore, this type of photographing lens system is provided with a drive mechanism for driving a lens to move in the optical axis direction. The drive mechanism is driven by changing a switch to move a lens in the optical axis direction (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-94364).
The lens drive device which is disclosed in the above-mentioned Patent Reference includes a movable lens body, a drive mechanism for moving the movable lens body in an optical axis direction, a fixed body which movably supports the movable lens body in the optical axis direction, and a restriction means (plate spring) for restricting movement of the movable lens body. The drive mechanism includes a magnet and a coil. In the structure as described above, while an electric current is supplied to the coil to generate an electromagnetic force, a restriction force against the electromagnetic force is generated by the restriction means. Magnitudes of both the restriction force and the electromagnetic force are adjusted to be capable of stopping the movable lens body at a desired position.
In this structure, the above-mentioned restriction means (plate spring) also functions as an electrical contact with an external apparatus (for example, a cell phone with camera) into which the lens drive device is assembled. The restriction means which functions as the electrical contact is commonly disposed at a lower end of the lens drive device (image sensor element side). When the coil is structured so that the coil is divided into two upper-and-lower layers, at first, for example, a coil has been wound around for a lower layer and next, the oil is wound around for an upper layer. For a winding start portion in the lower layer, a successively winding wire is wound around on the wire which has been wound first and thus the winding start portion hardly come loose.
However, for a winding end portion in the upper layer, different from the winding start portion in the lower layer, there is no holding part for the wire and thus the winding end portion comes loose easily.
In other words, in a case that the coil has a structure divided into two upper-and-lower layers, in order to connect a lower layer coil to an upper layer coil, the lower layer coil is wound around so as to be formed in an odd-number of layers toward an outer side in a radial direction of the movable lens body (movable body). In addition, when the same number of layers is wound around for both the upper layer and the lower layer in order to generate substantially the same electromagnetic force in the upper layer and the lower layer, a winding end portion of the upper layer coil is located on an opposite side to a winding start portion (near an upper end of the movable lens body). In this case, when the winding end portion of the coil is temporarily fixed with an adhesive or the like and then the winding end portion of the coil is drawn to the lower part of the movable lens body, the winding end portion may easily come loose. On the contrary, when the coil is firstly wound around on the upper layer side, the winding start portion may become loose easily. Further, this problem may also occur in a structure that the coil is not divided into the two upper-and-lower layers.

Lens drive device and coil winding method


In a voice coding-and-transmission system using a differential coding, a degradation of voice quality caused by a silent period transmission network and an ATM network is prevented without improving a silent-period elimination transmission network and existing transmission networks such as a STM network. In a relay node 104, an encoder 114 codes a voice signal from a decoder 108 again for a transient period immediately after a voice is started, and a transmission node 100 and a reception node 102 are tandem-connected. The encoder 114 and a decoder 122 at a reception node 102 are given respectively same reference values of a differential processing by memories 118, 128 when the voice is started, thereby preventing an abnormal sound generation due to a mismatch of inner statuses thereof when the voice is started. During the transient period, the internal statuses of an encoder 106 at a reception node 100 and the decoder 122 are closed each other. After the transient period is elapsed, switching a switch in a silent-period eliminator 112 to a digital-one-link, thereby preventing the degradation of the voice quality caused by quantization errors.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a voice coding-and-transmission system for compressing and transmitting a voice signal at a high efficiency, with particularly improved voice quality.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In today's age of multimedia communication, communication networks are used not only for voice, as exemplified by the telephone, but also for transmission of images and computer data. Transmission of large amounts of information such as images and computer data is realized by the digital art. That is, information to be transmitted is digital-coded and the switching system is also improved from circuit switching to packet switching. In the future, communication by ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) will be the mainstream technology used to efficiently transmit such varied information.
To more efficiently perform transmission and correspondingly increase the transmitted information content, data to be transmitted is divided into units such as packets or cells which are transmitted by time division multiplexing. Voice transmission has hitherto used a high-efficiency voice coding art for efficiently coding a voice signal by removing redundant components from the signal by differential coding or a similar art.
High-efficiency voice coding systems for performing coding by using a difference include predictive differential coding system such as the ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation) coding system. The predictive differential coding system predicts present signals based on past signals and quantizes differences between values of the predicted signal and values of the actual signal. Because a difference generally has a value smaller than the original data, the number of bits of a code obtained by quantizing the difference is smaller than the number of bits of a code not depending on a difference. A coding part and a decoding part of this system have respective internal states, which are used as a reference value for a differential processing. The internal state consists of a set of parameters which represent the past voice signal.
In a transmission by an ATM network, multiple transmission lines are used by digital-coding information sources such as voice, image, and computer data, dividing the sources into a unit, called a cell, and transmitting asynchronously in a burst mode to improve an efficiency of utilizing the transmission lines. In communication with the ATM network, the above-mentioned high efficiency voice coding technology can be used in combination therewith. As the majority of traffic is due to voice information, applying high efficiency voice coding technology to voice information will reduce transmission amount and achieve higher efficiency transmission.
Moreover, the voice coding system includes the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Recommendation G.728 coding system (LD-CELP system: Low-Delay Code-Excited Linear Prediction) whose block diagram is shown in FIG. 28 in addition to the above ADPCM. This coding system is described in Draft CCITT Recommendation G.728 "Coding of Speech at 16 Kbits/s using Code Excited Linear Prediction (LD-CELP)" in detail. This coding system is based on the backward adaption for performing adaptation of a synthesizing filter and excitation gain in accordance with past voice signals. This system also has an aggregate of parameters of the past voice signal as an internal state, which is used as a reference for a differential processing of a synthesis filter coefficient, an adaptive gain coefficient, or the like.
Recently, because of a request for higher efficiency as described above, the silent-period elimination art of excluding a silent part when transmitting a voice signal has been used. It is known that the silent-period elimination art can decrease the total quantity of voice signals to be transmitted to a transmission line with a small voice-quality degradation and realizes higher-efficiency voice transmission according to a statistical multiplication effect. In the case of the silent-period-eliminated voice transmission system, however, operations of a decoding part for receiving and decoding a differential-coded voice signal become indefinite because there is no voice information transmitted during silent periods. That is, when a silent state (this may be referred to as a state with no talk spurt) changes to a voiceful state (this may be referred to as a state with a talk spurt), the internal state of an coding part for generating a voice code does not coincide with that of a decoding part. Therefore, the decoding part is not always able to decode a correct voice signal, even if the part is given a correct high-efficiency code with no transmission line error. This phenomenon frequently appears as uncomfortable abnormal sounds, such as a click or oscillation sound, in a regenerated sound at a reception node.
FIG. 45 is a block diagram of a conventional voice coding-and-transmission system for solving the above problem. This diagram is based on the block diagram shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 2-181552.
This voice transmitting system forms a set of structures by a transmission node 2 and a reception node 4. Under a state with a talk spurt, that is, at a voicefilled period, the transmission node 2 codes a voice signal using a high-efficiency voice encoder 6 and transmits the signal to a transmission line 10 via a changeover switch 8. Because the changeover switch 8 of the transmission node 2 is switched so as to transmit no data to the transmission line 10 with no talk spurt, that is, at a silent time, a silent-period-eliminated voice code is transmitted from the transmission node 2. A voice detector 12 detects a voice or silence of a voice signal and switches the changeover switch 8.
The reception node 4 decodes a voice code sent from the transmission line 10 to a voice signal by a decoder 14 and outputs the signal. While silent period elimination is performed, the changeover switch 16 is switched to the pseudo-background-noise signal generator 18 side and artificial noises are output from the reception node 4. A voice/silence information extractor 20 detects voice or silence in accordance with a voice code and switches the changeover switch 16. In this system, the transmission node 2 is provided with a memory 22 storing a predetermined internal state of the encoder 6, while the reception node 4 is provided with a memory 24 storing the same content with the memory 22. Moreover, at the transition which a voice signal changes from a silent state to a voiceful state and causes the above problem, the voice detector 12 and the voice/silence information extractor 20 synchronously detect the transition, a reference value for differential processing is set from the memory 22 to the encoder 6 as an internal state in the transmission node 2, and the same reference value for differential processing as that of the encoder 6 is sent from the memory 24 to the decoder 14 as an internal state in the reception node 4. Thus, the timing in which a talk spurt is detected synchronizes between the transmission node 2 and the reception node 4 and, at this point, both internal states are reset to the same state. Therefore, the internal state of the encoder 6 always coincides with that of the decoder 14 in a voice period and thereby, it is possible to avoid abnormal sound at the head of a talk spurt.
In the future, as described above, a silent-period-eliminating transmission network or an ATM network will mainly be constructed using the above arts.
However, transmission networks that do not eliminate silent periods and STM (Synchronous Transfer Mode) networks have already been constructed. These transmission networks were constructed as an infrastructure, in many cases using a great deal of capital. Therefore, it is economically difficult to immediately replace them with silent-period-eliminating transmission networks or ATM networks, or otherwise improve them. Therefore, to construct a large network including a range covered by these conventional transmission networks, it is necessary to allow networks eliminating silent periods and networks not eliminating silent periods, or ATM network and STM networks to coexist respectively.
For the time being, it is possible to realize coexistence of both networks by connecting two types of networks with a relay node.
There are two methods for connecting the silent-period-eliminating network and the silent period network, as shown in FIGS. 47 and 48. These Figures illustrates a transmission from the silent-period-eliminating network to the silent period network. In addition, there are two methods for connecting the ATM network and the STM network as shown in FIGS. 49 and 50. These Figures illustrates a transmission from the ATM network to the STM network.
FIG. 47 is a block diagram of a transmission system consisting of tandem-connecting networks eliminating silent periods and of networks not eliminating silent period connected through a relay node. In FIG. 47, components having corresponding functions as those in FIG. 45 are provided with the same symbol, and their description is omitted. An encoder 32 of a transmission node 30 of this system performs the coding, not eliminating silent periods, and transmits a generated voice code to a transmission line 34 (transmission line B). A relay node 36 receives the voice code from the transmission line B, silent-period-eliminates the voice code, and transmits the silent-period-eliminated voice code to the reception node 4 through a transmission line A. The relay node 36 decodes the voice code from the transmission node 30 as a voice signal by a decoder 38 and, thereafter, codes the voice signal as a silent-period-eliminated voice code and transmits it to the reception node 4. The processing, after decoding by the decoder 38, uses the silent-period-eliminated transmission system using the synchronous resetting described for FIG. 45. Therefore, in the case of this transmission system, because the relay node 36 performs decoding once and then coding again, the transmission lines A and B are from the viewpoint of coding greatly independent from each other and, this system is therefore referred to as a tandem connection.
FIG. 48 is a block diagram of a transmission system constituted by connecting networks eliminating silent periods and networks not eliminating silent periods by digital-one-link through a relay node. In FIG. 48, components having corresponding function as those in FIG. 47 are provided with the same symbol and their description is omitted. A voice code with no silent period eliminated that is transmitted to the transmission line 34 from the transmission node 30 is silent-period-eliminated by a relay node 50 and transmitted to a reception node 54 through a transmission line 52 (transmission line A).
In the relay node 50, a decoder 56 decodes a voice code sent from a transmission line B to restore a voice signal. A voice detector 58 detects voice or silence (presence or absence of a talk spurt) in accordance with the voice signal and controls a changeover switch 60. The changeover switch 60 connects the transmission line B to the transmission line A only when a voice code with no silent period eliminated from the transmission line B has a talk spurt. When the voice code does not have any talk spurts, it is abandoned and no data is output to the transmission line A. Thereby, a silent-period-eliminated voice code is transmitted to the transmission line A. In this connection, a processing delay unit 62 delays the voice code from the transmission line B by the processing time in the decoder 56 and the voice detector 58 and realize the synchronization between the operation of the changeover switch 60 and the voice code.
The reception node 54 decodes a silent-period-eliminated voice code transmitted from the relay node 50 to the reception node 54 through the transmission line A as a voice signal by a decoder 64 corresponding to the encoder 32 of the reception node 30 and outputs the decoded voice code. When no voice code is input from the transmission line A, that is, while silent period elimination is performed, a voice/silence information extractor 66 switches a changeover switch 68 toward a pseudo-background-noise signal generator 70 to output artificial noise from the reception node 54.
Thus, the relay node 60 only performs switching. Therefore, though a voice code transmitted to the reception node 54 is silent-period-eliminated, the voice code itself is transmitted from the transmission node 30. Therefore, in the case of this transmission system, the transmission lines A and B are well combined with each other and this is thus referred to as a digital-one-link.
FIG. 49 is a block diagram of a conventional transmission system constituted by tandem-connecting the ATM network and the STM network through a relay node. An encoder 73 of a transmission node 72 in the system digitizes a voice signal and performs the coding at a high compression rate. A cell composer 74 assorts a sequential voice code coded with the encoder 73 and transmits the code to a transmission line A. The transmission line A is the ATM network. The voice code is transmitted through the transmission line A in cell units in a burst mode.
In the relay node 75, a buffer 76 absorbs a transmission fluctuation of the cell, and then a cell decomposer 77 decomposes the received cell to produce the sequential voice code. An vanished cell detector 78 detects a dead cell due to a disuse or a delay in the ATM network, and controls operations of each portion in the relay node 75. A decoder 79 decodes a voice code extracted from the cell to an original digital sampling voice signal, for example a PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) voice signal. A synchronous incoming unit 80 mates an operation timing between the decoder 73 and the decoder 79. An vanished cell compensator 81 compensates a voice signal for the vanished cell. A memory 82 stores a latest voice signal for compensating the cell. A selector switch 83 is a switch for selecting either the voice signal decoded in the decoder 79 or the voice signal compensated the vanished cell. An encoder 84 is same as the encoder 73. A transmission line B is the STM network. A reception node 85 has a decoder 86 corresponding to the decoder 79.
For voice communication, a real time ability is required. Therefore, a retransmission procedure that a data communication utilizes cannot be applied thereto, if a cell disuse occurs which is a specific cause of degrading of the ATM network. Especially, in an ATM voice communication combining with the high-efficiency coding, cell size is fixed at 53 bytes. With a more efficient coding method, more information can be accommodated in one cell, resulting in greater damage in regenerated voice due to cell disuse. Consequently, to realize a high quality voice transmission with the ATM, a processing for regenerating a natural voice is necessary for interpolating/assuming the information included in the vanished cell.
The system as shown in FIG. 49 utilizes the following method as one countermeasure against cell vanishing. The vanished cell detector 78 monitors cells reaching the relay node 75, detects disappeared cells in the ATM network or those not reaching the relay node 75 within a predetermined period, and sends a control signal based on the detection results to the vanished cell compensator 81 and the selector switch 83. As a method for detecting the vanished cell, the cell composer 74, for example, adds an index representing a sending order to a pay load portion of the cell, and the vanished cell detector 78 monitors whether or not the index is lost.
Once the vanished cell detector 78 notifies the vanished cell compensator 81 of an elimination of the cell, the vanished cell compensator 81 interpolates / extrapolates or mutes the lost voice signal based on a past voice signal stored in the memory 82. In addition, the selector switch 83 chooses between an output of the decoder 79 and an output signal of the vanished cell compensator 81 based on a control signal from the vanished cell detector 78. Chosen signal is reapplied the high efficiency coding with the encoder 84, and is sent to the transmission line B (STM network). Thereby, a voice code with reduced cell vanishing damage is sent from the relay node 75.
In the relay node 75, coding is performed again after the voice code is decoded. Therefore, the transmission system has mutually highly independent transmission lines A and B in view of coding. For this reason the system is called the tandem connection system.
As a voice high efficiency coding algorithm used in the encoders 73, 84 and the decoders 79, 86, ITU-T Recommendation G.726/727 ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation), ITU-T Recommendation G.728 LD-CELP (Low-Delay Code-Excited Linear Prediction), and ITU-T Recommendation G.729 CS-ACELP (Conjugate Structure Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction) or the like is well known.
FIG. 50 is a block diagram of a conventional transmission system consisting of digital-one-linking the ATM network and the STM network through a relay node. Components in FIG. 50 having corresponding functions as those in FIG. 49 are provided with the same symbol and their description is omitted. A cell including high efficiency voice code which is sent from the transmission node 72 to the transmission line A (ATM network) is decomposed by the relay node 90, remounted to a synchronous frame, and then transmitted to the reception node 85 through the transmission line B (STM network).
The reception node 85 decodes the voice code, which is transmitted from the relay node 90 through the transmission line B, using the decoder 86 corresponding to the encoder 73 at the transmission node 72, and outputs the decoded voice code. Thus, the relay node 90 only performs a switching. The voice code for transmitting to the reception node 85 is a signal sent from the transmission node 72 itself. Therefore, the transmission system has mutually highly integrated transmission lines A and B in view of encoding. This is a reason that the system is called the digital-one-link system.
Connecting the transmission lines A and B according to a tandem connection or digital-one-link has the following problems. In the case of tandem-connecting a network eliminating silent period and a network not eliminating silent period as shown in FIG. 47, a voice code from the transmission node 30 is once decoded to a voice signal and then transmitted in accordance with the silent period elimination using synchronous resetting. Therefore, the internal state of the encoder 6 of the relay node 36 coincides with that of the reception node 4 and abnormal sound is avoided as described above. However, because the processing of decoding and coding a voice code is performed in a relay node, a voice signal input to a transmission node is coded and decoded twice before it is output from a reception node. Therefore, a problem occurs that quantization errors are accumulated and the quality of a voice signal output from the reception node 4 deteriorates. It is known that the above quality degradation becomes more remarkable as an elimination rate increases, though the quality degradation is almost inconsequential at a high bit rate (16 Kbit/s or more). Because a voice transmission system uses a low bit rate, it is impossible to ignore the above voice quality degradation. This is entirely applicable to the transmission system combined with the high efficiency coding where the ATM network and the STM network is tandem-connected as shown in FIG. 49.
However, in the case of connecting a network eliminating silent period and a network not eliminating silent period according to digital-one-link as shown in FIG. 48, the conditions are completely reversed. In this case, because a voice code corresponding to presence of a talk spurt transmitted to the reception node 54 is the same as a voice code generated in the transmission node 30, voice-signal quality degradation due to accumulation of quantization errors is prevented. However, the internal state of the encoder 32 of the transmission node 30 does not generally coincide with that of the decoder 64 of the reception node 4 at the timing of change from a silent state to a voiceful state. That is, because reference values of the differences in coding/decoding are different, though the voice codes are same, a problem again occurs that abnormal sound is produced. This abnormal sound is not only unpleasant to a user, but it also causes the problem of extreme degradation of speech content clarity because the abnormal sound is generally produced at the head of a talk spurt.
For a transmission system combining high efficiency coding technology in which the ATM network and the STM network are connected in digital-one-link as shown in FIG. 50, the voice code for transmitting to the reception node 85 is the same as the voice code generated at the transmission node 72. Therefore, voice-signal quality degradation due to an accumulation of quantization errors is prevented. However, in the relay node, only switching is performed and extracting voice information from the voice code is not performed. Normally, it is difficult to directly compensate for the vanished voice code by a simple method such as interpolation/extrapolation/assumption without decoding the voice code applied the high efficiency coding.
Accordingly, it is extremely difficult to remove the impact of the cell vanishing in the relay node of the transmission system, although the cell vanishing itself can be detected. As a result, the voice information transmitted to the reception node 85 is discontinuous to induce an abnormal sound at the reception node 85 making a listener uncomfortable. In addition, a missing phoneme remarkably lowers speech comprehension. Nevertheless, to remove the impact due to the cell vanishing at the reception node 85 nevertheless in the digital-one-link connection, the information about the cell vanishing detected in the relay node may be transmitted to, for example, the STM network by providing a signal line separately, and other mechanism for a countermeasure of the cell vanishing may be provided at the reception node 85. However, connecting the ATM network and the STM network is required in case that the STM network and the reception node 85 are existing systems, as described above. Consequently, the solution of removing the impact due to the cell vanishing at the reception node 85 needs an improvement or alternation of the existing system, and lacks reality.
As described above, conventionally, problems have been existed in housing the transmission network in the silent period transmission network or in the ATM network without improving the voice communication system at a side of existing silent-period-vanished transmission network or a side of existing STM network.

Voice coding-and-transmission system with silent period elimination


A cylinder block, such as that for an internal combustion engine, having at least one cylinder bore formed by a cylinder wall continuously comprised of a piston-sliding surface and at an end of the cylinder bore a recessed surface, wherein the entire area of the piston-sliding surface is plated without a step thereon, thereby improving durability of the plating coating, especially in an engine downsized while maintaining the displacement volume.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cylinder block, especially of an internal combustion engine, having at least one cylinder bore, and particularly to such a cylinder block having at least one cylinder bore formed by a cylindrical wall having a step-less plating coating, and a recessed cylindrical wall at an end, which cylinder block allows for preventing the plating coating from being detached at the edge caused by reciprocal movement of a piston. This invention also relates to a method for forming the above plating coating on the cylindrical wall.
2. Background of the Art
Heretofore, in order to lighten engines, cylinder blocks are made of an aluminum alloy in many cases, wherein the cylinder bore walls, i.e., piston-sliding surfaces, are plated with a metal such as nickel so as to improve durability of the walls.
FIG. 9 is a schematic vertical cross-sectional partial view showing a conventional plating apparatus into which a cylinder block is fitted during plating treatment. FIG. 10 is a schematic partial cross-sectional view showing a sealing-associated portion of the plating apparatus of FIG. 9, in which FIG. 10B is a schematic enlarged view of the circled portion of FIG. 10A. A high-speed plating apparatus 80 comprises an upper-surface supporting member 81 and a lower-surface supporting member 82 on which an upper surface 90a and a lower surface 90b of a cylinder block 90 are respectively placed, and a seal member 83 which is inserted using a shaft 83a into a cylinder bore 91 from the upper end. Upper and lower directions in the figures are lower and upper directions in the cylinder block in operation, since the cylinder block is set upside-down when fitted into the plating apparatus. The seal member 83 comprises an upper pressing member 83b, a lower pressing member 83c, and an O-ring 83d which is compressed between the upper pressing member 83b and the lower pressing member 83c. The upper pressing member 83b is connected to the shaft 83a. The upper-surface supporting member 81 is provided with a passage-forming cylindrical electrode 85 which is concentrically inserted into the interior of the cylinder bore 91 from the upper end of the cylinder bore 91 in such a way as to maintain a gap between the passage-forming cylindrical electrode 85 and the cylinder bore 91. Plating solution is introduced into the interior of the cylinder bore 91 through a plating solution passage 84 via a plating solution inlet 86, and while flowing along the inner wall of the cylinder bore 91, the plating solution is impressed with a voltage, thereby forming a plating coating 92 on the inner wall of the cylinder bore 91. The plating solution is then moved into a return passage 85a formed in the inside of the cylindrical electrode 85, and then returned to a treated-solution recovery passage (not shown). The flow of the plating solution is indicated with arrows in FIG. 9.
The cylinder bore 91 is constituted by a honing surface 91a, which is a surface subjected to honing treatment with a honing blade after plating, and a honing-release surface 91b, which is a recessed surface for releasing the honing blade, i.e., the diameter of the circumference of the honing-release surface 91b is greater than that of the honing surface 91a. Both the honing surface 91a and the honing-release surface 91b are formed when the cylinder block is cast. During operation of an engine, a piston (not shown) reciprocally slides upon the honing surface 91a in such a way that a piston skirt does not protrude from the lower end of the honing surface 91a even when the piston reaches the lower dead point. Accordingly, heretofore, only the honing surface 91a is plated by sealing the cylinder bore 91 at a lower position of the honing surface with a sealing member 83, as shown in FIGS. 10A and 10B.
The above embodiment is advantageous and economical in view of material costs incurred in metal plating, since only the area upon which the piston slides is plated.
However, despite the above advantage, the above embodiment has a drawback when the piston skirt descends slightly below the lower end of the honing surface. That is, the likelihood of detaching the lower edge of the plating coating 92 from the cylinder wall is significant, especially in a downsized engine in which the piston skirt 93a of the piston 93 descends beyond the lower end of the honing surface 91a when the piston 93 reaches the lower dead point, i.e., the height of the cylinder block is minimized, in order to realize a high-output downsized engine.

Cylinder block with stepless plating coating and method for forming stepless plating coating


In an air intake assembly, a portion of an inner peripheral wall of an intake funnel pipe is provided as a pivotally movable blocking body, so that when unthrottled, an inner wall surface of the blocking body is flush with the inner peripheral wall of the funnel pipe. The blocking body has a substantially trianglular outline shape, the apex of which is positioned on top when viewed along the axis of the support shaft. The support shaft is positioned at the apex of the blocking body, and allows pivotal movement of the blocking body, on the downstream side thereof, to allow adjustment of the rate of air flow through the funnel pipe. The blocking body within the funnel pipe of an air intake assembly allows a smooth flow of air therepast when actuated to throttle the air intake channel, and does not obstruct the air intake channel when inactive.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vehicle intake systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to an air-intake routing and control structure for a motorcycle or similar vehicle.
2. Description of the Background Art
In the related art, an air-intake structure is known that includes an intake air control mechanism, for adjusting the amount of intake air passing through the air-intake channel connected to an engine. The adjustment is achieved using by a throttle valve, and an intake air flow control valve provided separately from the throttle valve. The known intake air flow control valve is positioned between a main body of the intake air control mechanism on which the throttle valve is provided, and an intake air-introducing member, such as a funnel pipe which constitutes part of the air-intake channel. The known intake air control valve varies the cross-sectional area of the air-intake channel by allowing part of the intake air control valve to project into the air-intake channel. An intake air control mechanism of this type is disclosed in Japanese Patent document JP-UM-A-63-60041.
However, as disclosed in the arrangement described in Japanese Patent document JP-UM-A-63-60041, when the distance between the engine and the intake air-introducing member is small, it is difficult to provide a main body of the intake air control mechanism within this small space. Further, it is difficult to obtain an installation space for installing the main body having the throttle valve provided thereon and the intake air control valve together in the intake air control mechanism within the available space. Therefore, satisfactory arrangement of the intake air control valve is difficult to achieve.

Air intake structure for a vehicle, and vehicle including same


A method and apparatus for preparing low-concentration polysilicate microgels from a water soluble silicate and a strong acid in which the silicate and acid are mixed at a rate to produce a Reynolds number of at least 4000, the mixture is aged and then diluted to a silica concentration of not more than 1.0 wt. %.

The present invention relates to an improved method and apparatus for preparing low-concentration polysilicate microgels, i.e., aqueous solutions having an active silica concentration of generally less than about 1.0 wt. %, which are formed by the partial gelation of an alkali metal silicate or a polysilicate, such as sodium polysilicate, having in its most common form one part Na.sub.2 O to 3.3 parts SiO.sub.2 by weight. The microgels, which are referred to as "active" silica in contrast to commercial colloidal silica, comprise solutions of from 1 to 2 nm diameter silica particles which have a surface area of at least about 1000 m.sup.2 /g. The particles are linked together during preparation, i.e., during partial gelation, to form aggregates which are arranged into three-dimensional networks and chains. A critical aspect of the invention is the ability to produce the microgels within a reasonable time period, i.e., not longer than about 15 minutes until the microgel is ready for use, without the risk of solidification and with minimum formation of undesirable silica deposits within the processing equipment. Polysilicate microgels produced according to the invention are particularly useful in combinations with water soluble cationic polymers as a drainage and retention aid in papermaking.
The present invention is an improved method and apparatus for continuously preparing a low-concentration polysilicate microgel which comprises:
(a) simultaneously introducing a first stream comprising a water soluble silicate solution and a second stream comprising a strong acid having a pKa less than 6 into a mixing zone where the streams converge at an angle of not less than 30 deg and at a rate sufficient to produce a Reynolds number of at least about 4000 and a resulting silicate/acid mixture having a silica concentration in the range of from about 1.0 to 6.0 wt. % and a pH in the range of from 2 to 10.5;
(b) aging the silicate/acid mixture for a period of time sufficient to achieve a desired level of partial gelation, usually for at least 10 seconds but not more than about 15 minutes; and
(c) diluting the aged mixture to a silica concentration of not greater than about 1.0 wt. % whereby gelation is stabilized.
For best results, the silica concentration of the water soluble silicate starting solution is in the range of from 2 to 10 wt. % silica, and the concentration of the strong acid (e.g., sulfuric acid) is in the range of from 1 to 20 wt. % acid as the two streams are being introduced into the mixing zone. The preferred conditions in the mixing zone are a Reynolds number greater than 6000, a silica concentration in the range of 1.5 to 3.5 wt. % and a pH in the range of 7 to 10. The most preferred conditions are a Reynolds number greater than 6000, silica concentration of 2 wt. % and a pH of 9.
The apparatus according to the invention comprises:
(a) a first reservoir for containing a water soluble silicate solution;
(b) a second reservoir for containing a strong acid having a pKa of less than 6;
(c) a mixing device having a first inlet which communicates with said first reservoir, a second inlet arranged at an angle of at least 30 deg with respect to said first inlet which communicates with said second reservoir, and an exit;
(d) a first pumping means located between said first reservoir and said mixing device for pumping a stream of silicate solution from said first reservoir into said first inlet, and first control means for controlling the concentration of silica in said silicate solution while said solution is being pumped such that the silica concentration in the exit solution from the mixing device is in the range of 1 to 6 wt. %;
(e) a second pumping means located between said second reservoir and said mixing device for pumping a stream of acid from said second reservoir into said second inlet at a rate relative to the rate of said first pumping means sufficient to produce a Reynolds number within said mixing device of at least 4000 in the region where the streams converge whereby said silicate and said acid are thoroughly mixed;
(f) mixture control means located within said exit and responsive to the flow rate of said acid into said mixing device for controlling the pH of the silicate/acid mixture in the range of from 2 to 10.5;
(g) a receiving tank;
(h) an elongated transfer loop which communicates with the exit of said mixing device and said receiving tank for transferring said mixture therebetween; and
(i) a dilution means for diluting the silicate/acid mixture in the receiving tank to a silica concentration of not more than 1.0 wt. %.
In an alternate embodiment, the apparatus of the invention includes a NaOH reservoir and means for periodically flushing the production system with warm NaOH which has been heated to a temperature of from 40.degree. to 60.degree. C. whereby deposits of silica can be solubilized and removed.
In a further embodiment of the invention, an agitating gas stream such as a stream of air or nitrogen or other inert gas can be introduced into the mixing device described by means of an additional inlet located at or near the mixing junction. Gas agitation provides an important industrial benefit in that it permits low silicate flow rates to be employed while maintaining the required turbulence and Reynolds number in the mixing zone.
The method and apparatus of the invention are capable of producing stable polysilicate microgels within a convenient time frame of not more than about 15-16 minutes, but usually within 30 to 90 seconds, without the risk of solidification and with minimum formation of undesirable silica deposits within the processing equipment. Temperature of operation is usually within the range of 0.degree.-50.degree. C.

Method and apparatus for preparing low-concentration polysilicate microgels


The present invention discloses a position device that includes an angular rotation sensor for use in connection with a throttle valve assembly. The rotation sensor consists of a stationary and rotating unit provided in an enclosed cap element. The present invention also includes an adjusting device having an angular rotation sensor and a throttle unit.

This application claims priority to German application Nos. 199 03 490.7 (now German Patent DE 199 03 490) and 299 01 516.5, both of which were filed on Jan. 29, 1999.
The invention relates to a position device for a throttle valve that contains at least an angular rotation sensor unit and a control unit that is arranged on the throttle valve element, and more particularly the invention relates to a device wherein the throttle valve with a throttle valve shaft element is arranged in a housing element, so that it can be adjusted.
A position device of the aforementioned type is known from WO 95 14 911 A1. In that reference, which discloses an enclosed throttle valve housing, a throttle valve with a throttle valve shaft is arranged so that it may rotate. An angular rotation sensor, which consists of a stationary and a rotating unit, is connected to the throttle valve shaft. In a stator element of the stationary unit, a Hall-effect element is arranged. The rotating unit features a ring magnet that can be moved around the stator element. This angular rotation sensor is, however, arranged in a cup-shaped housing and placed on the throttle valve housing from the outside.
In the event that a motor unit and a transmission unit are used as a drive unit, they are placed in the actuator housing together with the angular rotation sensor and a circuit unit. The actuator housing is then placed on the throttle housing. In both cases it is visible from the outside that the throttle valve housing has been fitted with accessories. In addition, dirt, etc., can build up, particularly between the throttle valve housing and the actuator housing.
DE 197 13 838 A1 discloses a throttle valve potentiometer. In that reference, a positioning motor that acts upon a throttle valve shaft via a reducing gear transmission is installed in or attached to a throttle valve housing. A carrier plate is glued into the throttle valve housing. The carrier plate carries contact rails and/or sliding contacts, wherein a collector, which is positioned on the throttle valve shaft, slides over the rails. The carrier plate, the contact rails and/or sliding contacts as well as the collector form the throttle valve potentiometer.
It is a disadvantage that the throttle valve potentiometer can only be constructed and assembled in one place together with the throttle unit. In addition, the insertion of the potentiometer is time intensive and complex.
Additionally, adjusting devices are known, for example, from 95 14 911 A1, which discloses a throttle valve contained in a throttle valve housing. The throttle valve is retained rotatably in the throttle valve housing by a throttle valve shaft. An angular rotation sensor, a transmission unit, and a motor unit that are connected to each other are contained in a sensor housing. A specially configured electronics housing separately contains a circuit unit. The individual housing elements can be plugged together. The angular rotation sensor consists of a stationary component in relation to which a rotatable component can be moved. The stationary element is a stator element consisting of two half-moon-shaped partial stator elements between which a distancing gap is located that retains a Hall probe. The rotating element is a ring magnet element that is retained by a magnet unit connected by a shaft.
Although this adjusting device is a proven design, the assembly effort is still too high. In addition, the angular rotation sensor, the motor, and the transmission cannot be attached to any throttle unit.
The present invention is directed to a position device for a throttle of the aforementioned type in such a way that the assembly with the throttle valve housing and the throttle valve shaft is easier and more cost effective to manufacture.
The advantages accomplished by the invention consist mainly in that the active elements of the angular rotation sensor are contained in a cap element. In addition, depending on the requirements, a motor may also be installed in the cap element as a control unit. The control unit and the rotor element of the angular rotation sensor are connected via a transmission. In an exemplary embodiment, the chosen gear ratio is 1:200. This ratio makes sure that even the smallest movements of the throttle valve are registered precisely. Due to the slip-free transmission, the precision of the registered values is extremely high. It is a particular advantage of the present invention that the cap element and the parts contained in it can be manufactured separately in large quantities. This reduces manufacturing costs significantly. The cap element itself may be adapted to the individual throttle valve housings. If necessary, an adapter may be used. Since it is rather easy to put the cap element on the throttle valve housing element, assembly costs are also reduced. Once the throttle valve housing element has been closed with the cap element, a unit is formed that, when viewed from the outside, is visibly finished.
In a broad aspect, the present invention also comprises an adjusting device including: a throttle unit comprising a throttle valve that is positioned adjustably with a throttle shaft in a throttle housing element; and an angular rotation sensor unit that can be connected with the throttle unit and that comprises a stationary unit, a mobile unit that is mobile in relation to the stationary unit, a motor element, a transmission element that is positioned between the mobile unit and the motor element, and a sensor housing unit that at least partially encloses at least the stationary unit, the mobile unit, the motor element, and the transmission unit.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an adjusting device which is easy to assemble and to attach to a throttle unit.
The advantages resulting from the invention consist mainly in that the mobile unit can be moved into a defined end position by a spring element. This end position assists both in assembly and in positioning. Installing the mobile unit in a sprocket wheel that is part of the transmission unit saves space and simplifies assembly. Assembly is further simplified by positioning certain components inside the sensor cap element and inside the sensor housing element. By putting the sensor cap element on the sensor housing element simultaneously, the mobile unit is fixed and assembled on the stationary unit. In addition, the angular rotation sensor unit with the transmission may be plugged onto any throttle unit in a simple manner.
The stationary unit and the mobile unit may be part of a potentiometer angular rotation sensor or of an angular rotation sensor unit that functions based on a magneto-electrical principle: which of the principles is applied depends on the deployment conditions and on the requirements of the customer.
In the angular rotation sensor unit, the stationary unit may be a stator element with at least one Hall probe and one correlated circuit board. The mobile unit may be a rotor element with at least one ring magnet element that is retained by a ring magnet retaining element and that may be moved in relation to the stator element. This makes it possible to measure the rotation angle with utmost precision.
The stator element comprises at least two partial stator elements between which a distancing gap exists, so that the elements may be inserted into a stator-retaining recess of the sensor cap element. This permits assembly of the stator element in the proper position.
Two Hall probes may be positioned on the circuit board. There are two Hall probes for reasons of redundancy. This significantly increases the reliability of the angular rotation sensor unit. The circuit board may be attached inside the sensor cap element in such a manner that the two Hall probes are located in the distancing gap. This measure reduces to a minimum the adjusting effort for the precise fixing of the two Hall probes in the distancing gap.
The transmission unit may comprise: a rotor sprocket wheel into which the ring magnet retaining element with the ring magnet element of the rotor element is embedded as a rotating unit, and to which a sensor shaft element may be connected; an adjustable sprocket wheel into which the rotor sprocket wheel engages, and with which an intermediate sprocket wheel interfaces; and a motor sprocket wheel that may be connected to a shaft of the motor element.
Through the gear ratio of the individual rotations of the motor element and, above all, of the rotating unit, minute changes caused by these parts are effectively registered and precisely transferred.
The sensor shaft element may be at least partially slotted. The provisioned slot in the sensor shaft element guarantees that the entire angular rotation sensor unit is correctly plugged onto differing throttle units. In this way, special adjustments or complicated assembly are avoided.
The rotor sprocket wheel may contain a stop recess into which a stop element can be positioned. In this manner, it is guaranteed that the rotor element is always rotated back by the spring element into a defined position. The spring element may be a torsion spring.
A peripheral cap gasket element may be located between the sensor cap element and the sensor housing element. The cap gasket element may be made from a flexible gasket material such as rubber, soft plastic material, or a similar material. The gasket ensures that the interior of the thus created sensor housing unit is effectively protected from dust, humidity, and the like.


Methods and systems are provided for computing IR drop, i.e., voltage drop, in a semiconductor device. The method includes generating a modeling element corresponding to the plurality of transistors. At least one of the transistors in the modeling element is replaced with a current source. The method also includes performing an IR drop analysis of the modeling element utilizing a software program to calculate the IR drop in the semiconductor device.

Computer modeling of semiconductor devices, e.g., integrated circuits, is commonly used in various development stages of such devices. Determining voltage drops, commonly referred to as IR drops, in semiconductor devices is one analysis that may be performed.
Unfortunately, in large and/or complex semiconductor devices, the voltage drop analysis may be overly cumbersome and time consuming. For example, a 64-megabit ("Mbit") static random access memory ("SRAM") module may include more than 300 million sinks, e.g., transistors, resistors, or other primitive devices. The voltage drop analysis of such a module may take over 512 gigabytes ("GB") of computer memory and several days of run time to process.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide systems and methods of providing voltage drop analysis of semiconductor devices that are expedient and consume fewer computer resources. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.

Systems and methods for semiconductor voltage drop analysis


A method of forming an integrated circuit structure includes forming a first recess in the semiconductor substrate; and forming a dislocation-blocking layer in the first recess. The dislocation-blocking layer includes a semiconductor material. Shallow trench isolation (STI) regions are formed, wherein inner portions of the STI regions are directly over portions of the dislocation-blocking layer, and wherein inner sidewalls of the STI regions contact the dislocation-blocking layer. A second recess is formed by removing a portion of the dislocation-blocking layer between two of the inner sidewalls of the STI regions, with the two inner sidewalls facing each other. A semiconductor region is epitaxially grown in the second recess.

The scaling of integrated circuits is a constant effort. With circuits becoming smaller and faster, improvement in the device drive current of metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices becomes more important. The device drive current is closely related to the ratio of gate width to gate length and to carrier mobility. Shortening poly-gate length and increasing carrier mobility can improve the device drive current. Gate length reduction is an on-going effort in order to shrink circuit size. However, due to the short channel effect, the gate-width to gate-length ratio, which directly affects the device drive current, is hard to increase. In order to further improve device drive current, enhancing carrier mobility has also been explored.
Germanium and the compound materials of group III and group V elements (such as GaAs, InP, GaN, also known as III-V compound materials) are among the materials that can provide improved carrier mobility. Germanium is a commonly known semiconductor material. The electron mobility and hole mobility of germanium are greater than that of silicon, hence making germanium an excellent material in the formation of integrated circuits, particularly for forming PMOS devices. However, in the past, silicon gained more popularity since its oxide (silicon oxide) is readily usable in the gate dielectric of MOS devices. The gate dielectrics of the MOS devices can be conveniently formed by thermal oxidation of silicon substrates. The oxide of germanium, on the other hand, is soluble in water, and hence is not suitable for the formation of gate dielectrics. With the use of high-k dielectric materials in the gate dielectrics of MOS transistors, the convenience provided by the silicon oxide is no longer a big advantage, and hence germanium is re-examined for use in integrated circuits. On the other hand, III-V compound materials have high electron mobility, and hence are suitable for forming NMOS devices.
The integration of III-V compound materials and/or germanium with silicon substrates, however, has resulted in difficulties. These materials have significant lattice mismatch with silicon substrates, and hence when formed on the silicon substrates, will have a high amount of crystal defects such as dislocations. Conventionally, buffer layers are used to reduce the dislocations. For example, in order to provide an InGaAs quantum well channel for NMOS devices, a GaAs buffer layer having a thickness of 2 μm is grown on a silicon substrate. An InAlAs buffer layer having a thickness of 1.2 μm is further grown on the GaAs buffer layer, followed by the growth of the InGaAs layer. However, this scheme suffers from drawbacks. First, the buffer layers that have a combined thickness of 3.2 μm are too thick for the integration of NMOS and PMOS devices. The PMOS devices may be lower than the NMOS devices by 3.2 μm, resulting in process difficulties. Second, the InGaAs layer is not suitable for forming PMOS devices, and hence an additional layer may need to be formed on the InGaAs layer for forming the PMOS devices. This results in further increases in the manufacturing cost. New methods are thus needed to solve the above-discussed problems.

Method of forming high-mobility devices including epitaxially growing a semiconductor layer on a dislocation-blocking layer in a recess formed in a semiconductor substrate

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.


An objective of the present invention is to prevent a prewetting liquid from remaining in an edge portion of a substrate. A plating method for subjecting a substrate to a plating treatment is provided, the substrate including a part to be plated that is exposed to a plating solution and an edge portion that is an outer region of the part to be plated. The plating method includes a first sealing step of bringing a first seal body into contact with the substrate to seal the edge portion of the substrate, a prewetting step of subjecting the sealed substrate to a prewetting treatment, a first seal removing step of removing the first seal body from the prewetted substrate, a substrate holding step of holding the substrate with a substrate holder including a second seal body, and a plating step of applying the plating solution to the substrate held by the substrate holder.

As a plating module for subjecting a substrate to a plating treatment, a cup type electroplating module is known. The cup type electroplating module includes a substrate holder that holds a substrate (e.g., a semiconductor wafer) with a surface to be plated being oriented downward. The substrate holder includes an electrical contact point for applying a voltage to the substrate, and a sealing member that seals the substrate so that a plating solution does not act on this electrical contact point. In the cup type electroplating module, the substrate is immersed into the plating solution with the surface to be plated being oriented downward, and the voltage is applied between the substrate and an anode, thereby precipitating a conductive film on a substrate surface.
A plating apparatus for treating a plurality of substrates may include a plurality of such cup type electroplating modules. In this example, each of the plurality of cup type electroplating modules may include a substrate holder and a plating tank that are integrated. The plating tank and the substrate holder are integrally configured, and accordingly size reduction of the apparatus can be achieved.


A seat plate assembly that is secured without the use of tools or special skill to the bottom of a seat of a home or office chair that is sold disassembled. The no-tools seat plate assembly includes a seat plate housing that is connected to and slidable along the seat relative to a catch and a cam lock that is pivotally connected to and rotatable relative to the seat plate housing. The seat plate housing has a gas cylinder receiver in which to receive a gas lift cylinder. When the seat plate housing is first connected to the seat, the cam lock is rotated over top the gas cylinder receiver to block receipt of the gas cylinder. During installation, the seat plate housing slides axially along the seat, and the cam lock is rotated into locking engagement with the catch. The gas cylinder receiver is now unblocked to accept the gas cylinder therewithin.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a seat plate assembly that can be connected, without the use of tools, to the bottom of a seat during the assembly of a chair that is shipped disassembled from the manufacturer. The no-tools seat plate assembly includes a gas cylinder receiver that is initially blocked to prevent a premature attachment of a seat lift gas cylinder until the seat plate assembly has first been securely connected to the seat.
2. Background Art
To conserve shipping space and reduce shipping costs, it is known to ship articles of furniture in a disassembled condition. Thus, the furniture can be shipped from the manufacturer to the retailer and carried to a home or office by the purchaser in a compact shipping container. One such piece of furniture that is suitable to be shipped disassembled is a chair of the kind having wheels, a base, a seat and a backrest. The elevation of the seat relative to the base can be selectively adjusted by the user. To accomplish the foregoing, a lever arm is manually manipulated by the user to control the operation of a seat lift gas cylinder that is typically mounted at the bottom of the seat.
Following purchase of the chair just described, the purchaser is often required to use tools (e.g., wrenches) and special skill to complete the assembly process prior to use. The assembly process may prove to be difficult and time consuming which can lead to frustration on the part of the purchaser. Moreover, it is desirable that the seat lift gas cylinder be interfaced with the seat at a particular time during assembly to avoid an early and inadvertent operation of the cylinder.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a seat plate assembly that includes a gas cylinder receiver and a gas cylinder operating lever arm and which is capable of being reliably connected to the bottom of a seat during the assembly of a chair sold disassembled without the use of tools or special skill. It would also be advantageous to be able to prevent attachment of the seat lift gas cylinder to the gas cylinder receiver until such a time as the seat plate assembly has first been securely connected to the seat.

No-tools seat plate assembly with seat lift gas cylinder receiver


A lateral is gravel packed without a junction in place in a single trip into the wellbore. A disconnect is provided between the isolation packer in the lateral and a main bore packer. The inner string assembly in the gravel packing completion releases a disconnect with a shift tool and then releases the main bore packer so that the inner string assembly takes out the main bore packer and the upper portion of the disconnect when pulling out of the hole. A junction is then placed into the main and lateral legs with a packer having a seal bore into which the production string is sealingly stabbed to produce out of the main bore and/or the just completed lateral.

Multilateral wells are used to continue or enhance production from a well into a given formation or into several formations. Typically a whipstock in placed in the main bore and properly oriented and a series of mills form a window or opening in the cased hole to initiate the lateral. The window mills can then be removed, a junction placed at the lateral to connect the main bore and the lateral window just opened and the lateral fully drilled. Subsequently, the lateral is completed with a gravel packing assembly that includes sections of screen supported by an isolation packer that is run in with an inner assembly that includes a wash pipe, a crossover and a shifting tool. After the gravel packing is completed, the inner string is removed and a production string is tagged into the isolation packer and production commences.
One of the problems with this order of events in placing the junction in position and running the bottom hole assembly for gravel packing through the junction is that the presence of the junction limits the size of the completion equipment, which then can limit the rate of subsequent production from the lateral. The present inventions overcomes this problem by running in a bottom hole assembly into the lateral and performing the gravel packing without the junction in position. Instead a main bore packer is provided in the string above the isolation packer that prevents getting gravel in the main bore. A disconnect is placed between the main bore packer and the isolation packer in the lateral. The gravel packing of the lateral without the junction in position can also be accomplished in a single trip because the main bore packer can be brought out with the inner string in the lateral to save rig time. These and other aspects of the present invention will be more apparent to those skilled in the art from a review of the specification and associated drawings while recognizing that the full scope of the invention is to be determined from the appended claims.
Locking tools are sold by Baker Hughes Incorporated under the names AF and HF Sur-Set Top No-Go Lock Assembly. Baker Hughes also sells Liner Setting Tools with a release feature such as the HRD-E model.
A combination whipstock and seal bore tool that is installed in a single trip is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,905,279.

Gravel packing method for multilateral well prior to locating a junction


A target substance can be efficiently produced by culturing, in a medium, a coryneform bacterium in which the activity of a PTS protein relating to fructose uptake is reduced or lost as compared with a parent strain and the bacterium can produce the target substance, allowing the target substance to form and accumulate in a culture; and collecting the target substance from the culture.

One of the methods for improving the productivity in a method for producing a target substance by a fermentation process includes a method for modifying the ability of uptake of a sugar which is a starting material.
A research on the mechanisms of uptake of a carbohydrate such as a sugar by a microorganism has been advanced, and the mechanisms are known to be classified into several types. These include, in particular, a phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system (hereinafter also referred to as PTS or phosphotransferase system), which is a transporter which phosphorylate and thereby take up a major sugar (Non-Patent Document 1).
The PTS system is composed of a substrate-independent common system EI (encoded by ptsI), HPr (encoded by ptsH), and a substrate-specific component EII (Non-Patent Documents 2 to 4).
The substrate-specific component EII varies in type depending on organisms, however, with respect to enteric bacteria and coryneform bacteria, with which a research has been advanced, major EII enzymes are being identified, and among these, a fructose-specific EII is known to be encoded by FruA (PtsF) (Non-Patent Document 5).
It is known that the fructose uptake by the PTS system requires FruA which externally take up fructose and converts it into fructose 1-phosphate as well as FruK (PfkB) which converts fructose 1-phosphate into fructose 1,6-bisphosphate serving as an important intermediate in glycolysis (Non-Patent Documents 6 and 7).
With respect to the production of a substance, several reports in which the productivity is improved by modifying the PTS system have been known. For example, a process for producing an amino acid using a bacterium of the genus Escherichia with enhanced ptsG gene (Patent Document 1), and a process for producing an amino acid using a bacterium of the genus Escherichia with enhanced crr gene which functions in the same manner as ptsH, ptsI, and, ptsG (Patent Document 2) are known.
Further, a method for accelerating uptake and metabolism of a sugar which does not go through the PTS system, such as pentose or the like, by disrupting the PTS system which is the uptake system of the major sugar, glucose or the like, is known (Patent Document 3).
Further, it is known that the productivity of a target substance can be increased by disrupting the PTS system, which is the glucose uptake system, to lead to uptake via another pathway and thereby changing the metabolic pathway of the sugar (Patent Document 4). It is also known that the productivity can be increased by disrupting the fructose uptake system and introducing a foreign fructokinase and thereby changing the metabolic pathway of the sugar (Non-Patent Document 5).
However, it has not been known that a target substance can be efficiently produced by disrupting the PTS uptake system of a specific sugar to improve the ability of uptake of another sugar by the PTS system. Further, it has not been known that the ability of uptake of another sugar is increased when the PTS uptake system and a metabolic pathway after uptake are disrupted simultaneously. In particular, since glucose plays a central role in controlling sugar uptake, even if the uptake system is simply enhanced, there arises a problem that the uptake rate decreases as the intracellular glucose concentration increases, and therefore, it has been predicted that it is difficult to improve a glucose consumption rate (Non-Patent Document 8).

Process for producing target substance by fermentation


A battery includes a roll-up unit provided by winding a sheet unit around an axis, the sheet unit including an electrode sheet having an active material and a separator, the roll-up unit having an exposed portion on which the active material is not placed at an end of the electrode sheet in a direction of the axis; an outer case housing the roll-up unit and having an electrode terminal; an intermediate terminal inside the roll-up unit and having a pair of arm portions resistance-welded to the exposed portion, a first connecting portion connecting the arm portions, and a hole portion formed in the first connecting portion and located between welding points formed in the arm portions; and a collector terminal outside the roll-up unit and resistance-welded to a position opposite to the arm portion in the exposed portion to provide electrical continuity between the roll-up unit and the electrode terminal.

A nonaqueous electrolyte secondary battery such as a nickel-hydride secondary battery and a lithium-ion secondary battery includes an outer case and a power-generating element housed in the outer case (see, for example Patent Document 1). A known power-generating element is a roll-up unit provided by winding, around an axis, a sheet unit including a positive electrode sheet and a negative electrode sheet placed one on another with a separator interposed between them. The roll-up unit of this type is housed within the outer case together with an electrolytic solution in such a state that the roll-up unit is pressed in a diameter direction into a flat shape. The roll-up unit has an exposed portion having no active material applied thereto formed at an end in the axis direction. The exposed portion is pressed in the diameter direction of the roll-up unit into a sheet shape, and is welded to a collector terminal in that pressed state.
Improvements in battery output have been required in recent years, and especially, a higher battery output has been needed in a secondary battery which stores an electric power to be supplied to a motor for running of a vehicle. A possible method of increasing the battery output is to increase the number of turns of the roll-up unit. This method, however, involves an increase in thickness of the roll-up unit, so that it is difficult to press the exposed portion into a sheet shape.
Another possible method is to place an intermediate terminal inside the roll-up unit and to place a collector terminal outside the roll-up unit. The intermediate terminal has a pair of arm portions resistant-welded to an inner face of the exposed portion and a connecting portion connecting the arm portions. The collector terminal is resistance-welded to an outer face of the exposed portion opposite to the arm portion. The resistance welding is performed by pressing electrodes against the arm portion and the collector terminal opposite to each other through the exposed portion and passing an electric current through the electrodes.


The present invention provides a novel cellular solid structure which can be used to structure an oil-water mixture into a semi-solid state. The invention is particularly useful in the manufacture of food products, such as margarine-like spreads, other spreads and dips and dairy-like products such as whipped toppings and creamy fillings.

Triacylglycerols (TAGs) are the main constituent of edible fats and oils. TAGs are composed of three fatty acids esterified onto a glycerol backbone. Fatty acids are usually linear molecules composed of long aliphatic carbon chains that can range from four to twenty-two carbons in length. Fatty acids can be saturated or unsaturated. When a fatty acid is saturated, it means each carbon atom is attached to another carbon atom via a single covalent bond. Fats and oils containing predominantly saturated fatty acid will be solid at room temperature. Examples of saturated fats include animal fat such as milk fat or lard and tropical oils such as palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil. A fatty acid is unsaturated when carbon-carbon double bonds are present within the chain of carbon atoms. A carbon-carbon double bond can adopt one of two conformations, namely cis and trans. Fats and oils containing unsaturated fatty acids with cis double bonds are usually liquid at room temperature. Examples of unsaturated fats include vegetable oils such as soybean, canola and cottonseed oils. Fats and oils containing unsaturated fatty acids with trans double bonds, on the other hand, are solid at room temperature. The difference between a fat and an oil is subtle. Generally, if the melting point of the TAGs is higher than about 30° C., the material is solid at room temperature, and is therefore referred to as a 'fat'. On the other hand, if the melting point of the TAGs is lower than about 15° C., the material will appear liquid at room temperature, and will thus be referred to as an 'oil'. Natural fats and oils are complex mixtures of TAGs with extremely varied chemical compositions.
Unsaturated fatty acids are generally in the cis conformation. However, when an oil is partially hydrogenated, various amounts of the cis form are converted to a more stable trans configuration, and are thus called trans fatty acids. Hydrogenation is a process by which a hydrogen molecule is added to an unsaturated double bond. Hydrogenation is a way of making vegetable oils harden at room temperature. Small particles of nickel or copper catalyst are added and the mix is heated to high temperatures under pressure and agitation for up to eight hours while hydrogen gas is injected. From the time the British patent on liquid phase hydrogenation was issued to Norman in 1903, and its introduction in the U.S. in 1911, few chemical processes have made as great an economic impact on any industry. Hydrogenation opened new markets for vegetable oil based on specialty products. Three reactions take place during hydrogenation—the saturation of carbon-carbon double bonds, the conversion of cis geometric isomers into more stable trans isomers, as well as the creation of new positional isomers, where double bonds are shifted to new positions along the fatty acid chain. Both the saturation of double bonds as well as the cis to trans isomerization of double bonds will result in an increase in the melting point of a fat. Thus, cooling of this hydrogenated fat below the melting point of the newly created triacylglycerol species containing saturated and trans fatty acids, will lead to the partial crystallization of the material. This semisolid fat matrix will therefore be structured as a network of fat crystal aggregates with liquid oil trapped within. The solid-like characteristics of this material are due to this underlying fat crystal network. Without this network of crystallized fat, the material would be an oil.
Manufacturers use the hydrogenation process to convert vegetable oil into a solid form for the manufacture of margarine, shortening and spreads. The process is also used to increase the shelf life and flavor stability of food products containing vegetable oils. During hydrogenation, anywhere from eight to seventy percent of the fatty acid content will be converted to trans fatty acids. The amount of conversion depends on the process and the desired product.
Trans fatty acids also occur naturally. When unsaturated fatty acids are ingested by ruminants (i.e., cows) the fatty acids can be partially hydrogenated by bacteria in the rumen of the animal (stomach) and thus trans fatty acids can be found in milk fat, dairy products, beef and mutton fat. Trans fatty acids usually make up about two to nine percent of the fat in these products. Ruminant animals are not the only animals in which this process occurs. Chicken and pigs often ingest trans fatty acids through the feed they are given and the trans fatty acids make their way into pork and poultry products.
Over the past 50 years hydrogenated oils have become a prevalent part of the diet in developed countries. Margarine is an example of a product that contains hydrogenated oils and it is one of the most common sources of hydrogenated oil in our diets. These hydrogenated oils have become so commonplace in prepared foods that it is a major feat to avoid them. Margarine is sometimes marketed as a healthy alternative to saturated fats like butter and lard. However while these products start out as unsaturated oils, the final product includes trans fatty acids that are increasingly under attack as major contributors to cardiovascular disease.
New research into the role fats and oils play in human health has indicated that consumption of trans fatty acids is associated with increased incidences of cancer, heart disease, elevated cholesterol levels and a host of other health problems. Over ten years of clinical and epidemiological research suggest that there is a positive linear relationship between trans fatty acid intake and a decrease in serum HDL ('good' cholesterol) combined with an increase in serum LDL ('bad' cholesterol). These combined effects increase the risk of coronary heart disease. Both the Institute of Medicine and the American Heart Association recommend a reduction in the intake of trans fatty acids, and to preferably eliminate them altogether from the diet. This is difficult to achieve without proper labeling of foods. Prompted originally by the Center for Science in the Public Interest back in 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decreed that, as of January of 2006, food manufacturers must include the trans fatty acid content in product labels.
Long before the health risks associated with trans fatty acids were realized, it was known that consumption of animal fats and tropical oils had a negative effect on cardiovascular health. The American Heart Association (AHA) discourages the consumption of animal fats such as butter (milk fat), lard (pig fat), tallow (beef fat) due to their relatively high content of cholesterol and saturated fatty acids, which makes them highly atherogenic—they contribute to the build up of cholesterol and other substances in artery walls. The AHA also discourages the consumption of trans fats. Moreover, the AHA also discourages the consumption of tropical oils such as palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil due to their high saturated fatty acid content.
The need for a healthy alternative to trans fatty acids and saturated fats creates technological hurdles for the food manufacturing industry. It is difficult to eliminate trans fats from a food formulation where the goal is to transform an oil, which is liquid at room temperature to a fat, which is 'solid' at room temperature to enhance texture and appearance of a food product.
There have been various attempts in the food industry to provide an edible oil product that is solid at room temperature and that contains little or no trans fatty acids or saturated fats. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,569,478 discloses a food composition comprising at least one food ingredient in a monoglyceride mix in an amount sufficient to form a mesomorphic structure which substantially encapsulates the food ingredient and water.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,156,369 discloses a food spread comprising a non-aqueous mixture of an edible oil and a monoglyceride in an amount of from about 85% to about 98% edible oil and from about 2% to about 15% monoglyceride.
Canadian Patent No. 2,096,429 discloses a finished foodstuff comprising bulk regions of a mesomorphic phase of edible surfactant and less than 80 wt % edible oil, and wherein the mesomorphic phase is a continuous phase and/or contains 80 wt % or more of water as well as methods of making and using the foodstuff.
Much of the effort to create low-trans and saturate fat alternatives has focused on the use of monoglyceride gels. The early work on monoglyceride gels focused on aqueous lyotropic systems only. When heated above their 'Kraft' temperature, monoglycerides and other amphiphillic molecules, can form lamellar phases structured as alternating layers of monoglyceride bilayers and water. Upon cooling, monoglycerides will crystallize into kinetically favored, but thermodynamically metastable forms, yielding an alpha-gel. This alpha-gel is structured in a similar fashion as the lamellar phase—water layers sandwiched between monoglyceride bilayers. Upon ageing, alpha-gels tend to rearrange into beta-gels, or coagels, upon transformation of monoglyceride crystals into more thermodynamically stable crystal forms. In these coagels, however, water layers are squeezed out of the gel structure, leaving behind stacked monoglyceride bilayers.
These mesophases (alpha-gels and coagels) were the subject of a flurry of research activity and several patents by Unilever R&D. In all of this work, aqueous mesophase gels—, usually of water contents greater than 80%—were mixed with a variety of materials for structuring purposes. Under vigorous mixing (high shear), aqueous mesophase gel material was dispersed within other phases until some kind of stabilization was achieved. This method of making monoglyceride gels limited this technology to the manufacture of low-fat edible spreads. Monoglycerides can also be used to structure pure oil, but in that case, monoglycerides are used as a conventional hardstock, and not as a mesophase gel.
Using standard techniques of blending, interesterification (chemical and enzymatic) and fractionation, it is virtually impossible to produce a spread having the texture of a tub-type margarine without incorporating saturated fats and/or trans fatty acids. Thus, there has long been an unmet need for alternative technologies to provide a product that has the consumer desired features of texture and spreadability without harmful trans fats, animal fats and tropical oils.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.