A method and/or system and/or apparatus for a dual gate, capacitor less circuit that can act as a state storage device. Further embodiments describe fabrication methods and methods of operation of such a device.

The discussion of any work, publications, sales, or activity anywhere in this submission, including in any documents submitted with or during examination of this application, shall not be taken as an admission by the inventors that any such work constitutes prior art. The discussion of any activity, work, or publication herein is not an admission that such activity, work, or publication was known in any particular jurisdiction.
The great majority of electronic devices in use today employ solid-state transistors as a chief building block. Dynamic random access memories (DRAM), in particular, play an increasingly important part in determining the performance of microelectronic products. Their role has raised the demand for reliable, high density memories with fast data access and low power consumption.
A typical and very well known DRAM design employs one transistor and one storage capacitor (1T/1C) per memory cell (or bit storage location) as well as other components to provide reference cells, sense amplification, refresh, redundancy, etc. However, the basic 1T/1C memory cell design has difficulties when shrunk, particularly below about 100 nm×100 nm cell size. Reducing the transistor's off-state leakage, for example, can require high substrate doping to sustain a large threshold voltage. Unfortunately, this approach often enhances trap-assisted tunneling and can lead to tail bits with small retention times. Another difficulty is fabrication of the small storage capacitor used in traditional DRAM designs.
There is substantial interest in developing the next generation DRAM. In some proposals for capacitorless DRAM going back as far as 1993, the conventional storage capacitor is replaced by the body capacitance of a SOI MOSFET (Silicon-On-Insulator Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor). In some of these proposals, the number of majority carriers stored in the body can affect channel conductivity. It has been proposed that this change in channel conductivity can be used to distinguish two states in a memory device. However, previous capacitorless cell designs may be impractical for manufacturing because of their doping profiles. (See, for example, H.-J. Wann and C. Hu, "A Capacitorless DRAM Cell on SOI Substrate", IEDM, 1993, pp. 635-8.) Other publications have discussed partially depleted SOI (PD-SOI) MOSFET as a possible successor to conventional 1T/1C DRAMs. In October 2001, Okhonin et al. reported experimental measurements using a PD-SOI MOSFET as a capacitorless DRAM cell. In February 2002, Ohsawa et al. presented the results of a working 512 kb DRAM array with capacitorless PD-SOI cells. However, PD-SOI-based capacitorless DRAMs are also generally less practical in sub-100 nm technologies because the heavy doping levels required to sustain an undepleted body incur dopant fluctuations across many cells in an array that can result in significant threshold voltage (Vt) variations for high density memory arrays.
Furthermore, as the device is scaled, capacitorless DRAM technologies using a partially-depleted film generally require increasingly larger amounts of body doping. Heavy doping limits depletion into the body from the gate, drain, and source for sub-100 nm devices. This presents additional challenges since a large body doping can result in trap-assisted tunneling and Vt fluctuations. While dopant fluctuations may be tolerable for wider logic devices, substantial variations in threshold voltage are generally significant for high density arrays using small-geometry cells. This can be especially true for capacitorless DRAM arrays in which the difference in threshold voltages between two states can be only a few hundred millivolts.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,260 discusses a capacitorless memory with a relatively thicker silicon body to accommodate a source/drain junction that is not contacted with the buried oxide layer and wherein a purging region is needed to serve as a body contact, which may limit the ability to achieve very small cell sizes. The body in this structure is not truly floating as there is a contact to the body through the purge region.

Method and apparatus for capacitorless double-gate storage

The Regents of the University of California


A method and system for automatic pelvis unfolding from 3D computed tomography (CT) images is disclosed. A 3D medical image, such as a 3D CT image, is received. Pelvis anatomy is segmented in the 3D medical image. The 3D medical image is reformatted to visualize an unfolded pelvis based on the segmented pelvis anatomy.

The present invention relates to pelvic bone visualization, and more particularly, to automatically reformatting 3D medical image data to visualize the pelvic bone.
High resolution computed tomography (CT) volumes of the abdomen are typically used to diagnose abnormalities in the pelvic bone, such as bone lesions or fractures. Current technology provides CT volumes with hundreds of axial slices and through evaluation of the pelvis can be a tedious and error prone task due to the complex structure of the pelvis which usually occupies multiple slices in the volume data. In order to examine the pelvis in the CT scan, a radiologist must scroll through all of the axial slices in a CT volume in order to look for abnormalities in the pelvis. In typically takes about 14 minutes on average for a radiologist to examine a pelvis image through axial slices.

Method and system for automatic pelvis unfolding from 3D computed tomography images


Disclosed is a bag arrangement and packaging method for packaging bone-in cuts of meat using two bags to provide a double wall of film surrounding the cut of meat for bone puncture resistance. Both bags are bottom sealed bags formed of a heat shrink film, the inner bag has an interrupted bottom seal to provide an opening for venting air between the bags and the outer bag has a continuous bottom seal. The outer bag is longer than the inner bag so the outer bag can be closed without involving any portion of the inner bag in the closure. The bone-in cut of meat is inserted first into the first bag and then the first bag and its contents are inserted into the second bag, the bags are evacuated and then the outer bag is closed.

The use of bags formed of a heat-shrinkable thermoplastic film for packaging primal and sub-primal cuts of meat is well known in the art. In use, the cut of meat is loaded into the bag. The bag is evacuated to remove air so the bag collapses against the cut of meat and then it is heat sealed to maintain the evacuation. Next the bag is exposed to warm water at about 90.degree. C. or other heating means causing the bag to shrink and form fit the cut of meat. Packaging in this fashion excludes air from the package to prolong shelf life and reduces weight loss due to drying of the meat.
The bag film is relatively thin and usually not more than about 3 to 4 mils (0.076 to 0.10 mm) thick. Accordingly, these bags generally are not suitable for packaging cuts of meat which contain bones. For example, the ribs or other sharp bone protrusions as contained by rib beef cuts or pork loins and other meat cuts may puncture the bag during the evacuation of air or during heat shrinking as the bag draws tightly about the bone-in meat cut. Any puncture in the bag is undesirable as it allows the meat cut in the bag and especially in the area of the puncture to be exposed to the air. The puncture also is a possible source of contamination. The problem of bone punctures is compounded by abrasion during movement of the package along a conveyer and as it is loaded into corrugated boxes and by abrasion between adjacent packages caused by vibration and movement of the meat packages one against another during transport and handling.
One technique for preventing bone puncture is to overlay the protruding bones of the cut of meat with paper, cloth or a wax impregnated cloth prior to insertion into the bag. This is shown for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,891,870 and 4,136,205. Another common solution is to improve the puncture and abrasion resistance of the bag film by adhering a patch to the outer surface of the heat-shrinkable bag. U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,403 discloses use of an oriented heat-shrinkable patch affixed by an adhesive to the surface of a heat-shrinkable bag and U.S. Pat. No. 5,302,402 discloses a non oriented patch adhered to the bag surface by corona treatment. In order to provide the bag with greater protection, U.S. Pat. No. 5,545,419 discloses adhering two heat shrinkable patches to the bag, one to each outer surface of the flattened bag. The patches even may extend over the side edges to insure that coverage extends the full width of the bag.
Neither the cloth nor paper overlay nor a patch adhered to the outer surface of the bag are entirely acceptable solutions to the problem of preventing bone punctures and providing abrasion resistance. One reason for this is that the overlay may be dislocated from its laid-on position as the bone-in cut of meat is inserted into a bag. Patch-bags with one patch require some manipulation of the heavy cut of meat to insure that the patch is properly oriented over the protruding bones. Another drawback of patch bags is the cost of manufacturing the patch material and the added cost of having to laminate one or more patches to the bag. Also, the patch material generally is thicker than the bag. As a result the patch bag tends to be relatively stiff due to its thickness and this stiffness further adds to the difficulty of handling the bag during a packaging operation.
Attempts to avoid applying a patch to the bag have included manufacturing the bag with multiple plies along one side to provide bone puncture resistance. For example U.S. Pat. No. 4,704,101 and 5,020,922 disclose heat sealing a wide area of a laid flat tubing to itself to form a double thickness, corona treating one flattened side and then folding the tubing so that the double thickness overlays one of the flatted sides. This forms a triple ply along one side of the bag and a single ply along an opposite side wherein all the adjacent surfaces of the three ply side are interfacially bonded. U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,669 discloses inserting a narrow longitudinally folded web into a wider longitudinally folded web and then heat sealing across the webs to form side sealed bags which have a single thickness adjacent the bag mouth while the rest of the bag has a double thickness. Further, the webs are corona treated so that the plies of the bag adhere one to the other. It is believed that due to the complex nature of the manufacturing process, neither of these bags has a commercial embodiment.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved heat shrinkable bag structure and method for packaging bone-in cuts of meat.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a bag for packaging bone-in cuts of meat that has a wall structure which is two plies thick for bone puncture resistance.
A further object is to provide a bag structure for packaging bone-in cuts of meat which locates a double thickness of bag film around the entire cut of meat for puncture resistance and yet has only a single thickness in the region of the bag closure.
Still further object is to provide a bag-in-a-bag structure for packaging bone-in meat cuts wherein the inner bag includes at least one opening remote from the bag mouth to facilitate evacuation of air from between the bags.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide an improved method for packaging bone-in cuts of meat wherein double-bagging is used to provide bone puncture resistance.


A gas inflation/evacuation system and sealing system for use with occlusive devices in vascular procedures. The gas inflation/evacuation system is removably connectable via the sealing system to a proximal portion of a guidewire assembly having a guidewire that defines a lumen and includes a first syringe system for evacuating the lumen and a second syringe system for introducing a biocompatible gas into the lumen to inflate an occlusive balloon that is in fluid communication with the lumen a plurality of times. The sealing system selectively seals the proximal portion of the guidewire and includes a crimping mechanism and a compression sealing mechanism having a resilient seal for sealing around the proximal portion of the guidewire when it is passed therethrough.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of vascular medical devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to a gas inflation/evacuation system and sealing system incorporating a compression sealing mechanism and a crimping mechanism for selectively and repeatedly inflating an occlusive balloon and for sealing and crimping an extended sealable section at the proximal end of a guidewire during an occlusion procedure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Arterial disease involves damage that happens to the arteries in the body. Diseased arteries can become plugged with thrombus, plaque, or grumous material that may ultimately lead to a condition known as ischemia. Ischemia refers to a substantial reduction or loss of blood flow to the heart muscle or any other tissue that is being supplied by the artery and can lead to permanent damage of the affected region. While arterial disease is most commonly associated with the formation of hard plaque and coronary artery disease in the heart, similar damage can happen to many other vessels in the body, such as the peripheral vessels, cerebral vessels, due to the buildup of hard plaque or softer thrombus or grumous material within the lumen of an artery or vein.
A variety of vascular medical devices and procedures have been developed to treat diseased vessels. The current standard procedures include bypass surgery (where a new blood vessel is grafted around a narrowed or blocked artery) and several different types of non-surgical interventional vascular medical procedures, including angioplasty (where a balloon on a catheter is inflated inside a narrowed or blocked portion of an artery in an attempt to push back plaque or thrombotic material), stenting (where a metal mesh tube is expanded against a narrowed or blocked portion of an artery to hold back plaque or thrombotic material), and debulking techniques in the form of atherectomy (where some type of high speed or high power mechanism is used to dislodge hardened plaque) or thrombectomy (where some type of mechanism or infused fluid is used to dislodge grumous or thrombotic material). In each of these interventional vascular medical procedures, a very flexible guidewire is routed through the patient's vascular system to a desired treatment location and then a catheter that includes a device on the distal end appropriate for the given procedure is tracked along the guidewire to the treatment location.
Although interventional vascular procedures avoid many of the complications involved in surgery, there is a possibility of complications if some of the plaque, thrombus or other material breaks free and flows downstream in the artery or other vessel, potentially causing a stroke, a myocardial infarction (heart attack), or other tissue death. One solution to this potential complication is to use some kind of occlusive device to block or screen the blood flowing downstream of the treatment location. Examples of catheter arrangements that use a pair of balloons as occlusive devices to create an isolated space in the blood vessel are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,573,966, 4,636,195, 5,059,178, 5,320,604, 5,833,644, 5,925,016, 6,022,336 and 6,176,844. Examples of catheter arrangements that use a single balloon as an occlusive device either upstream or downstream of the treatment location are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,171,221, 5,195,955, 5,135,482, 5,380,284, 5,688,234, 5,713,917, 5,775,327, 5,792,179, 5,807,330, 5,833,650, 5,843,022, 6,021,340, 6,159,195 and 6,248,121. An example of a catheter arrangement that uses a mechanically-expanded occlusive device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,231,588. Occlusive balloons also have been used on non-over-the-wire catheters without any guidewire internal to the catheter as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,838,268 and 5,209,727.
The use of an occlusive device as part of a vascular procedure is becoming more common in debulking procedures performed on heart bypass vessels. Most heart bypass vessels are harvested and transplanted from the saphenous vein located along the inside of the patient's leg. The saphenous vein is a long, straight vein that has a capacity more than adequate to support the blood flow needs of the heart. Once transplanted, the saphenous vein is subject to a buildup of plaque or thrombotic materials in the grafted arterial lumen. Unfortunately, the standard interventional vascular treatments for debulking are only moderately successful when employed to treat saphenous vein coronary bypass grafts. The complication rate for a standard balloon angioplasty procedure in a saphenous vein coronary bypass graft is higher than in a native vessel with the complications including embolization, "no-reflow" phenomena, and procedural related myocardial infarction. Atherectomy methods including directional, rotational, and laser devices are also associated with a high degree of embolization resulting in a greater likelihood of infarction. The use of stents for saphenous vein coronary bypass grafts has produced mixed results. Stents provide for less restenosis, but they do not eliminate the risk of embolization and infarction incurred by standard balloon angioplasty.
In order to overcome the shortcomings of these standard non-surgical interventional treatments in treating saphenous vein coronary bypass graft occlusion, embolic protection methods utilizing a protective device distal to the lesion have been developed. The protective device is typically a filter or a balloon. Use of a protective device in conjunction with an atherectomy or thrombectomy device is intended to prevent emboli from migrating beyond the protective device and to allow the embolic particles to be removed, thereby subsequently reducing the risk of myocardial infarction. When the occlusive device is a balloon, the balloon is inserted and inflated at a point distal to the treatment site or lesion site. Therapy is then performed at the treatment site and the balloon acts to block all blood flow which prevents emboli from traveling beyond the balloon. Following treatment, some form of particle removal device must be used to remove the dislodged emboli prior to balloon deflation. U.S. Pat. No. 5,843,022 uses a balloon to occlude the vessel distal to a lesion or blockage site. The occlusion is treated with a high pressure water jet, and the fluid and entrained emboli are subsequently removed via an extraction tube. U.S. Pat. No. 6,135,991 describes the use of a balloon to occlude the vessel allowing blood flow and pressure to prevent the migration of emboli proximally from the treatment device.
There are various designs that have included an occlusive balloon on the end of a guidewire. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,520,645, 5,779,688 and 5,908,405 describe guidewires having removable occlusive balloons on a distal end. U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,470 describes a guidewire having an occlusive balloon where the guidewire is bonded inside the catheter as an integral unit. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,059,176, 5,167,239, 5,520,645, 5,779,688 and 6,050,972 describe various guidewires with balloons at the distal end in which a valve arrangement is used to inflate and/or deflate the balloon. U.S. Pat. No. 5,908,405 describes an arrangement with a removable balloon member that can be repeatedly inserted into and withdrawn from a guidewire. U.S. Pat. No. 5,776,100 describes a guidewire with an occlusive balloon adhesively bonded to the distal end with an adapter on the proximal end to provide inflation fluid for the occlusive balloon.
Except in the case of the normal cerebral anatomy where there are redundant arteries supplying blood to the same tissue, one of the problems with using an occlusive device in the arteries is that tissue downstream of the occlusive device can be damaged due to the lack of blood flow. Consequently, an occlusive device that completely blocks the artery can only be deployed for a relatively short period of time. To overcome this disadvantage, most of the recent development in relation to occlusive devices has focused on devices that screen the blood through a filter arrangement. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,827,324, 5,938,672, 5,997,558, 6,080,170, 6,171,328, 6,203,561 and 6,245,089 describe various examples of filter arrangements that are to be deployed on the distal end of a catheter system. While a filter arrangement is theoretically a better solution than an occlusive device, in practice such filter arrangements often become plugged, effectively turning the filter into an occlusive device. The filter arrangements also are mechanically and operationally more complicated than an occlusive balloon device in terms of deployment and extraction.
As is the case in almost all angioplasty devices or stenting catheter devices where a balloon is used to expand the blood vessel or stent, most catheter occlusive balloons as well as most guidewire occlusive balloons utilize a liquid fluid such as saline or saline mixed with a radiopaque marker for fluoroscopic visualization (i.e., contrast) as the inflation medium. Generally, a liquid fluid medium for expanding vascular balloons has been preferred because the expansion characteristics of a liquid are more uniform and predictable, and because a liquid medium is easier to work with and more familiar to the doctors. In the case of angioplasty balloons, for example, high-pressure requirements (up to 20 atmospheres) necessitate that the inflation fluid be an incompressible fluid for safety reasons. While having numerous advantages, liquid fluids do not lend themselves to rapid deflation of an occlusive balloon because of the high resistance to movement of the liquid in a long small diameter tube. In the context of angioplasty procedures, the balloon catheter has a much larger lumen than a guidewire. Consequently, rapid deflation is possible. In the context of a guidewire, however, liquid filled occlusive balloons typically cannot be deflated in less than a minute and, depending upon the length of the guidewire, can take up to several minutes to deflate. Consequently, it is not practical to shorten the period of total blockage of a vessel by repeatedly deflating and then re-inflating a liquid filled occlusive balloon at the end of a guidewire.
Gas-filled balloons have been used for intra-aortic occlusive devices where rapid inflation and deflation of the occlusive device is required. Examples of such intra-aortic occlusive devices are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,646,719, 4,733,652, 5,865,721, 6,146,372, 6,245,008 and 6,241,706. While effective for use as an intra-aortic occlusive device, these occlusive devices are not designed for use as a guidewire as there is no ability to track a catheter over the intra-aortic occlusive device.
An early catheter balloon device that utilized a gas as an inflation medium and provided a volume limited syringe injection system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,587. More recently, a gas-filled occlusive balloon on a guidewire is described as one of the alternate embodiments in U.S. Pat. No. 6,217,567. The only suggestion for how the guidewire of the alternate embodiment is sealed is a valve type arrangement similar to the valve arrangement used in a liquid fluid embodiment. A similar gas-filled occlusive balloon has been described with respect to the Aegis Vortex™ system developed by Kensey Nash Corporation. In both U.S. Pat. No. 6,217,567 and the Aegis Vortex™ system, the gas-filled occlusive balloon is used for distal protection to minimize the risk of embolization while treating a blocked saphenous vein coronary bypass graft. Once deployed, the occlusive balloon retains emboli dislodged by the atherectomy treatment process until such time as the emboli can be aspirated from the vessel. No specific apparatus are shown or described for how the gas is to be introduced into the device or how the occlusive balloon is deflated.
Although the use of occlusive devices has become more common for distal embolization protection in vascular procedures, particularly for treating a blocked saphenous vein coronary bypass graft, all of the existing approaches have significant drawbacks that can limit their effectiveness. Liquid filled occlusive balloons can remain in place too long and take too long to deflate, increasing the risk of damages downstream of the occlusion. Occlusive filters are designed to address this problem, but suffer from blockage problems and can be complicated to deploy and retrieve and may allow small embolic particles to migrate downstream. Existing gas-filled occlusive balloons solve some of the problems of liquid filled occlusive balloons, but typically have utilized complicated valve and connection arrangements. It would be desirable to provide for an occlusive device that was effective, simple, quick to deploy and deflate, and that could overcome the limitations of the existing approaches.
Some of these problems have been previously addressed in three commonly owned and assigned co-pending applications, which are hereby incorporated by reference herein: "Guidewire Occlusion System Utilizing Repeatably Inflatable Gas-Filled Occlusive Device," application Ser. No. 10/012,903, filed Nov. 6, 2001; "Guidewire Assembly Having Occlusive Device and Repeatably Crimpable Proximal End," application Ser. No. 10/012,891, filed Nov. 6, 2001; and "Gas Inflation/Evacuation System and Sealing System for Guidewire Assembly Having Occlusive Device," application Ser. No. 10/007,788, filed Nov. 6, 2001.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Gas inflation/evacuation system and sealing system incorporating a compression sealing mechanism for guidewire assembly having occlusive device


In one or more embodiments, an architecture is provided that may intercept a route update message and compare AS numbers of an AS path with a list of AS numbers known or inferred to be problematic. In one or more embodiments, the problematic AS numbers can be substituted with a local AS number such that loop detection checks enforced automatically on many networks do not discard the message and/or prevent connectivity between two disparate networks.

Many businesses (e.g., customers) often employ a single service provider to handle Internet Protocol (IP) services for all of the customer networks. For example, a customer can organize and maintain multiple Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) at disparate locations around the globe with a single service provider managing services such as Internet connectivity (e.g. by way of the service provider's backbone) for all of the individual VPNs. In some cases, there will exist varying levels of security between these VPNs. Thus, all traffic between VPNs must first traverse a firewall or De-Militarization Zone (DMZ). In other cases, public access (e.g., non-secure access) can also require a firewall or DMZ before entering any of the disparate VPNs. Some customers, especially large businesses maintain a central DMZ through which all traffic must traverse before reaching any of the VPNs.
Conventionally, establishing connectivity between VPNs has been difficult, if not impossible due to loop detection checks necessarily enforced by standard Border Gateway Protocol. Thus, in some cases, BGP standards have been relaxed by various functions to mitigate this difficulty. As one example, the AS-override function can be employed, however, this function can only be employed between neighboring autonomous systems (peers). Another example is the allowAS-in function, but this function is not implemented by many service providers. In other cases, BGP can be redistributed to Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), but this scheme is very labor intensive and inefficient.


Management of web conference assets in a content management system. At the conclusion of a web conferencing session, an event is raised at the content management system. Various web conference assets (e.g., recordings) and web conference parameters are analyzed in conjunction with content management system metadata. Based on the analysis, one or more actions to perform on the web conference assets are determined. The content management system metadata may include user profile information of at least one web conference participant. Rules and/or a classification model that considers then-current conditions at the content management system are used singly, or in combination, to determine action characteristics and/or labels such as a retention period or security classifications to apply to the web conference assets. The web conference assets are stored in a hierarchical directory at the content management system. The hierarchy of the directory is derived from aspects of the web conferencing facility.

In today's modern world of digitally-captured and widely distributed digital data, certain data needs to be handled with great particularity, and sometimes under regulatory control. In fact some of such data might be subject to jurisdictional regulation (e.g., handling of information pertaining to national security, handing of patient information, handling of personally-identifiable information, etc.). In some situations such data might be shown (e.g., via web conference sharing) and/or discussed (e.g., in a voiceover narration) during the course of a web conference and, as such, the web conferencing materials (e.g., video recording of the web conference) need to be handled specially (e.g., marked or labeled as being sensitive, retained for a specified period, deleted, etc.). As examples, the materials (e.g., the recording and/or chat stream) from a web conference in which someone's personally identifiable information was shared should be labeled as such, and should thereafter be handled in the same manner as other documents that contain personally identifiable information. As another example, consider the case when a participant in the web conference showed a document on the screen that was designated as "Top Secret." In that case, the web conference assets should be labeled as "Top Secret", and should thereafter be handled in the same manner as other documents that are labeled as "Top Secret."
Unfortunately, there are no known techniques for determining whether or not conferencing materials need to be handled specially.


A method for manufacturing a negative electrode active material for a secondary battery that uses a non-aqueous electrolyte, including the steps of: depositing silicon according to an electron beam vapor-deposition method with metallic silicon as a raw material on a substrate of which temperature is controlled from 800 to 1100° C. at a vapor deposition rate exceeding 1 kg/hr in the range of film thickness of 2 to 30 mm; and pulverizing and classifying the deposited silicon to obtain the negative electrode active material. As a result, there is provided a method for manufacturing a negative electrode active material of silicon particles as an active material useful for a negative electrode of a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery that is, while maintaining high initial efficiency and battery capacity of silicon, excellent in the cycle characteristics and has a reduced volume change during charge/discharge.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an active material that is used as a negative electrode material for a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery such as a lithium ion secondary battery, in particular, silicon particles very useful as a negative electrode active material, and a method for manufacturing the same. Further, the present invention relates to a negative electrode for a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery that uses the negative electrode material and a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery that uses the negative electrode material.
Description of the Related Art
With the remarkable development of portable electronic devices and communication devices in recent years, there is a strong demand for a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery having higher energy density from the viewpoint of economic efficiency and reduction in size and weight of devices.
Since silicon has a theoretical capacity of 4200 mAh/g far higher than a theoretical capacity of 372 mAh/g of a carbon material that is put in practical use at the present time, it is a material most expected in miniaturization and higher capacity of a battery.
Silicon is known in various forms different in a crystal structure according to a manufacturing method thereof. For example, patent document 1 discloses a lithium ion secondary battery that uses single crystal silicon as a support of a negative electrode active material. Patent document 2 discloses a lithium ion secondary battery that uses a lithium alloy LixSi (x: 0 to 5) of single crystal silicon, polycrystalline silicon and amorphous silicon, LixSi that uses amorphous silicon is particularly preferred, and pulverized crystalline silicon covered with amorphous silicon obtained by plasma decomposition of monosilane is illustrated. However, in this case, as shown in Example, 30 parts by weight of silicon and 55 parts by weight of graphite as a conductive agent were used; accordingly, battery capacity of silicon could not be fully exerted.
Further, patent documents 3 to 5 disclose a method where an amorphous silicon thin film is deposited on an electrode current collector by vapor deposition and this is used as a negative electrode. There is also disclosed a method where in the method where silicon is directly vapor grown on the current collector, when a direction of growth is controlled, the cycle characteristics can be prevented from deteriorating due to volume expansion (see patent document 6). According to this method, it is said that an electrode having high capacity and excellent cycle characteristics can be manufactured. However, there were problems that due to limited production speed, the cost is high, a silicon thin film is difficult to make thicker, and copper that is a negative electrode current collector diffuses into silicon.
Accordingly, in recent years, a method where while using silicon particles, a usage rate of silicon in battery capacity is restricted to suppress volume expansion (patent documents 7 to 9), a method where as a method where a grain boundary of polycrystalline particles is used as a buffering region of the volume change, a method where a silicon melt in which alumina is added is quenched (see patent document 10), polycrystalline particles configured of mixed phase polycrystals of α, β-FeSi2 (see patent document 11), and a high-temperature plastic forming process of a single crystal silicon ingot (see patent document 12) are disclosed.
As was described above, in order to use silicon as an active material, metallic silicon and silicon alloys, which have various kinds of crystal structures, have been proposed. However, all of these are disadvantageous from the viewpoint of the cost. That is, a method that allows to mass produce at low cost has not been proposed.

Negative electrode active material for non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery and method for manufacturing the same


A work station for assisting a worker in applying the trim components to a partially assembled seating unit consisting of a seat frame and both seat and backrest cushions. The work station comprises a pedestal for receiving and supporting the seating unit in an inverted position. A vertical compressor is operable to compress the seat bottom cushion while, at the same time, permitting rotation of the compressor and the pedestal about a common vertical axis. This facilitates final installation of the seat bottom cushion trim. In addition, a second essentially horizontal compressor and a pair of manually operable seat back rest trim cover stretchers are provided for assisting the worker in the final assembly of the seat back rest trim to the seating unit. All power assist mechanisms are preferably pneumatically operated.

The mass production of vehicle seating units is commonly carried out by welding together the bottom and back rest portions of a seat frame, mounting contoured foam cushions, typically open cell plastic, on the frame and thereafter fitting trim components to the cushions. Such trim components may, in the illustrative case of a single occupant bucket seat, involve a bag-like seat back cover and a seat cushion cover. Both may be fabricated of vinyl, leather, woven fabric, synthetic fabric, or a combination. The application of the trim components unifies the seating unit by securing the foam cushions to the seat frame. Such cushions may also be partly or fully secured to the seal frame by other means such as the use of adhesives.
The step of securing the trim components to the seal frame is often a strenuous one for the assembly worker. To produce an attractive, well-made seat the trim must be stretched taut over the cushions and held in place while hog rings or staples are applied with the use of an automatic, commercially-available gun. This operation is usually performed with the seat in an inverted position. The seat must be reoriented several times during the operation. These operations, while manageable, are repetitive and can result in worker fatigue and physiological ailments associated with repetitive stress to the muscles, tendons and ligaments of the arms and hands. A machine which partially assists in the application of a seat back cover to a preassembled seat frame/back cushion assembly is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,385,427 "Machine for Installing Upholstery Covers," issued May 31, 1983 to Frederick F. Fraiser. The disclosure of that patent is incorporated herein by reference.

Seat assembly work station and method of operation of same


A method for determining, from a document, an answer to a query using a query answering system, comprising: (i) encoding, using an encoder, one or more documents; (ii) encoding a received query; (iii) generating, using an attention mechanism, a query-aware document representation comprising alignment between one or more words in one of the plurality of documents and one or more words in the query; (iv) generating, using a hierarchical self-attention mechanism, a word-to-sentence alignment of the query-aware document representation; (v) labeling, using a conditional random field classifier, each of a plurality of words in the word-to-sentence alignment with one of a one of a plurality of different sequence identifiers, resulting in possible labeled answering spans; and (vi) generating, from the one or more possible labeled answering spans, a response to the query.

Machine comprehension (MC) is one of the most important tasks in natural language processing (NLP). The goal is to provide the best possible answer to a query based on the underlying context such as a paragraph or document. The query refers to a question posed over the information expressed in the paragraph or a document. And the answer refers to a piece of text present in the document. This is a challenging task as it requires the machine to understand and reason in natural language. As such, machine comprehension can be considered as one of the building blocks of various real-world applications such as search engine functioning, customer support, question answering, recommendation, summarization, chatbots, and many other applications.
The goal of span-based machine comprehension is to identify a consecutive span of text from a given document to answer a question. Traditional classifiers such as span-based machine comprehension attempt to locate the starting and the ending word positions within the document, such that the words between these words form the answer to the query. However, traditional classifiers suffer many different problems. For example, while traditional classifiers are good at approximating the location of the answer within a long sequence of text such as a document, they have difficulty precisely locating the answer within the text. As another example, traditional classifiers are unable to properly analyze or deal with the words between the identified starting and the ending word positions.

CRF-based span prediction for fine machine learning comprehension


The present invention provides an optical switch in which a switching operation is not affected even when the polarization state of a control light varies. The optical switch includes a loop-form optical waveguide loop circuit formed from an optical nonlinear medium, a control light input arrangement for inputting the control light into the optical waveguide loop circuit and serving as a phase control arrangement, a wavelength demultiplexing/multiplexing circuit, and a phase bias circuit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical switch used in long-distance, large capacity optical fiber communication and the like for switching a controlled light using a control light.
2. Description of Related Art
To realize large capacity optical fiber communication using limited communication line resources effectively, means for increasing the number of channels capable of transmission and reception and means for increasing the communication speed must be provided.
In optical fiber communication, communication is performed by propagating binary digital optical pulse signals, obtained by modulating an optical pulse array in which optical pulses are arranged in series, along an optical fiber serving as a transmission line at regular fixed time intervals. The term "regular fixed time intervals" denotes time intervals corresponding to the inverse of a frequency that corresponds to the bit rate.
Multiplex communication methods such as time division multiplexing (TDM) are under investigation as such means for increasing the number of channels. TDM is a communication method in which a plurality of channels (tributary channels) is time-multiplexed and transmitted as a time division multiplex signal, and the time division multiplex signal is divided into the individual channels (tributary channels) on the reception side by a gate signal generated from a clock signal, whereby the information in the individual channels is extracted and received individually.
To increase the communication speed of the TDM described above and so on, it is desirable that all of the multiplexing/demultiplexing means be realized by optical means. In other words, it is desirable to realize an optical switch which is capable of executing a switching operation using only optical control signals rather than electrical means.
The optical Kerr effect that occurs in optical fiber is a nonlinear optical effect in which the refractive index of an optical fiber is altered when light of high intensity propagates through the optical fiber. The reaction rate of the optical Kerr effect is several femto-seconds (fs). In other words, if an optical switch is constituted using the optical Kerr effect, an optical switch that is capable of performing a switching operation at several hundred Gbit/s or more can be realized. By comparison, a conventional switch, in which an optical pulse signal is first converted into an electric pulse signal serving as an electrical signal, whereupon the electric pulse signal is switched by an electronic device and then returned to an optical pulse, is capable of switching an optical pulse signal at a maximum bit rate of approximately 40 Gbit/s.
As an optical pulse signal transmitted over an optical fiber propagates along the optical fiber transmission line, loss (so-called propagation loss) is generated in the energy of the signal. This propagation loss increases steadily as the transmission distance increases. Moreover, the chromatic dispersion of an optical fiber causes reductions in the signal to noise ratio (S/N) of the optical pulse signal and waveform distortion of the optical pulse signal, i.e. so-called waveform degradation of the optical pulse signal. Hereafter, an optical pulse signal suffering energy loss or waveform degradation will also be referred to as an optical pulse signal with deteriorated quality.
Hence, in order to lengthen the transmission distance in an optical communication device, an optical repeater is required to regenerate an optical pulse signal with deteriorated quality by performing recognition and regeneration processing on the optical pulse signal. In an optical repeater, first a regeneration step is performed to extract, from an optical pulse signal suffering from waveform degradation due to being propagated over a long-distance optical fiber transmission line, an optical clock signal having a frequency that corresponds to the bit rate of the optical pulse signal. This step is known as re-timing. Next, a step is performed to re-shape and re-generate the optical pulse signal on the basis of the optical clock signal.
A function which is capable of executing all of these three functions (re-timing, re-shaping, and re-generating) directly in an optical state, rather than by first converting the optical pulse signal into an electrical signal, is known as 3R regeneration, and a regenerator having this function is sometimes referred to as a 3R optical repeater. More specifically, a 3R optical repeater comprises a function for regenerating an optical pulse signal having an identical waveform and an identical intensity to an optical pulse signal at the time of transmission from a transmission terminal by means of optical signal processing, rather than converting the optical pulse signal into an electrical signal, and then relaying the optical pulse signal. Hereafter, a 3R optical repeater will also be referred to as an optical signal regenerating device.
With a 3R optical repeater, an optical pulse signal is regenerated by extracting an optical clock from the optical pulse signal and performing AND processing (also known as "gating") on the optical pulse signal and optical clock using an optical gate circuit. More specifically, distortion of the optical pulse waveform of the optical pulse signal is corrected using an effect whereby, from among the optical pulses respectively constituting the optical pulse signal and optical clock, only the energy component of optical pulses superposed within the optical gate simultaneously is output from the optical gate. In this manner, the optical pulse signal is regenerated.
Hence, a 3R optical repeater performs similar signal processing to a conventional device, in which signal regeneration is performed by converting an optical pulse signal into an electric pulse signal, at a high speed and using optical signal processing technology employing only optical elements.
A conventional example of a 3R optical repeater is constituted using a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) (see "ALL-OPTICAL REGENERATION" J. C. Simon et al., ECOC'98, pp. 467-469, September 1998, for example). A NOLM comprises an optical demultiplexer/multiplexer, an optical coupler, and an optical fiber loop. An outline of the basic operations of a NOLM will now be provided.
The optical intensity of a signal light subject to switching is divided into two equal parts by the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer. The divided signal lights are propagated through the optical fiber loop in a clockwise direction (also known as CW direction) and a counter-clockwise direction (also known as CCW direction) respectively, and then re-input into the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer to be multiplexed.
If no control light is input from the optical coupler at this time, the signal light that is propagated clockwise through the optical fiber loop and the signal light that is propagated counterclockwise through the optical fiber loop are multiplexed in the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer in phase. As a result, the signal light input into the NOLM is output to the same input/output terminal as the input/output terminal from which the signal light was input into the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer. The signal light output to this input/output terminal will also be referred to as loop reflection light.
On the other hand, if a control light is input from the optical coupler, the optical Kerr effect occurs in the optical fiber loop, thereby altering the refractive index. As a result, when the divided signal lights are respectively propagated clockwise and counterclockwise through the optical fiber loop, re-input into the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer, and multiplexed, the phase of the two signal lights is offset. By adjusting the length of the optical fiber loop and the intensity of the control light such that the phase shift amount equals π, the signal light input into the NOLM is output to another input/output terminal which forms a pair with the input/output terminal from which the signal light was input into the demultiplexer/multiplexer. The signal light that is output to this other input/output terminal will also be referred to as loop transmission light.
As described above, a switching operation in which a signal light serving as a controlled light is output to the same input/output terminal as the input/output terminal from which the signal light is input into the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer, or in which the signal light is output to another input/output terminal forming a pair with the input/output terminal from which the signal light is input into the optical multiplexer/demultiplexer, is realized using a control light.
Furthermore, in a NOLM the polarization directions of the signal light propagated through the optical fiber loop clockwise and the signal light propagated through the optical fiber loop counterclockwise must be matched in order to multiplex the two signal lights in the optical demultiplexer/multiplexer. A method of constituting the optical fiber loop described above using polarization-maintaining single-mode fiber is being researched as a method for achieving this (see "Ultrafast polarisation-independent all-optical switching using a polarisation diversity scheme in the nonlinear optical loop mirror", K. Uchiyama, H. Takara, S. Kawanishi, T. Morioka, and M. Saruwatari, Electronics Letters, vol. 28, No. 20, pp. 1864-1866, September 1992, for example).
The optical Kerr effect occurring in an optical fiber loop constituting an optical switch is dependent on the polarization state of both the control light and the signal light. More specifically, when a signal light and a control light propagate in parallel through an optical fiber loop, if both the signal light and control light are linearly polarized and the polarization planes thereof are parallel to each other, the magnitude of the refractive index change caused by the optical Kerr effect reaches a maximum. If, on the other hand, the polarization planes of the signal light and control light are orthogonal, the magnitude of the refractive index change caused by the optical Kerr effect falls to a minimum.
In an optical switch which uses the phenomenon of refractive index change caused by the optical Kerr effect, the fact that the amount of change in the refractive index depends on the relationship between the respective polarization directions of the signal light and control light leads to instability in the switching operation. It is therefore necessary to incorporate into the constitution of the optical switch a mechanism that is capable of realizing a stable switching operation at all times, independent of the polarization state of the signal light and control light input into the optical fiber loop. Here, a stable switching operation indicates a guarantee that when an optical pulse constituting a control light is input into the optical fiber loop, the signal light is invariably output from the optical switch as loop transmission light, and when an optical pulse constituting a control light is not input, the signal light is invariably output from the optical switch as loop reflection light. If a stable switching operation is not realized, the optical fiber loop cannot be used as an optical switch in a 3R optical repeater or the like.
In an optical switch used in a 3R optical repeater, the signal light described above corresponds to an optical clock signal extracted from a time-multiplexed optical pulse signal that is input into the 3R optical repeater. The optical clock signal is output from a mode-locked semiconductor laser or the like, for example. Hence, the clock signal can be set as linearly polarized light, and therefore the direction of the polarization plane thereof can be fixed and set in a desired direction as needed.
Meanwhile, in an optical switch used in a 3R optical repeater, the control light described above corresponds to an optical pulse signal, which is a time division multiplex signal input into the 3R optical repeater, or an optical pulse signal generated by amplifying and processing such an optical pulse signal using an optical amplifier or a wavelength filter. The optical pulse signal input into the 3R optical repeater is propagated through an optical fiber, which is a long-distance (approximately several tens of kilometers) transmission line. Optical fiber transmission lines, which are used widely in optical communication and the like, are constituted by optical fiber which is not capable of maintaining the polarization state of the optical pulse signal that is propagated therethrough. Hence, unless special means are provided, it is impossible to transmit an optical signal pulse over this transmission line while maintaining the polarization state of the optical pulse signal in a fixed state.
It is therefore necessary to provide an optical switch used in a 3R optical repeater with a characteristic whereby the switching operation is not dependent on variation in the polarization state of the input optical pulse signal. With a conventional optical switch using a NOLM, variation in the polarization state of the input optical pulse signal affects the switching operation such that a stable switching operation cannot be guaranteed.


A circuit for transferring a logic value from a content addressable memory (CAM) having a plurality of match lines to a random access memory (RAM) having a plurality of word lines. A first logic gate has an input coupled to a first match line of the plurality of match lines, and a second logic gate has an input coupled to a second match line of the plurality of match lines. A first switch is coupled between an output of the first logic gate and a first word line, and a second switch is coupled between an output of the second logic gate and a second word line. The first switch is controlled by the output of the second logic gate such that the first switch is opened when the second match line has a second logic value and closed when the second match line has a first logic value. The second switch is controlled by the output of the first logic gate such that the second switch is opened when the first match line has the second logic value and closed when the first match line has the first logic value.

Data in computer systems is stored in memory (the term "data" is used herein to refer to both data and instructions). Memory may comprise a variety of memory devices, such as read-only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM) and disk storage. Computer system designers and users continue to require increased memory capacity. Various methods have been developed in attempts to maximize the utilization of existing memory and to make memory access faster. One of these methods includes dividing memory into a hierarchical structure including levels with faster and slower access times. For example, faster, cache memory is used to store data used by the CPU. When the CPU accesses data using an address, the cache is first checked for the data using the address. If the data is not in the cache, the data is fetched from physical memory and stored in the cache for later use.
Another method of maximizing memory utilization includes the creation and use of virtual memory. Virtual memory was developed to allow programmers to use more physical memory than actually existed by automatically managing levels of memory hierarchy. In virtual memory systems, several programs may simultaneously operate as if each had sole access to physical memory, even though the combined memory requirements of the programs exceed available physical memory.
In typical virtual memory systems, each of several programs operating with a single CPU "thinks" it has access to the entire address range of physical memory. Because that is not really the case, any address a program addresses must be relative to local memory. These relative addresses are called virtual addresses.
In a typical virtual memory system, the processor, for example a central processing unit (CPU), generates a virtual address. In most virtual memory systems, some address translation is needed to convert the virtual address to a physical address. This translation takes CPU time. To decrease the time spent performing address translations, prior computer systems using virtual addressing employ a dedicated cache called a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) to store translated addresses. The TLB is searched for the required address before translation is initiated. If the address is found in the TLB, the translation process is skipped, thereby saving CPU time.
Typical TLBs include a content addressable memory (CAM) storing virtual address tags and a RAM storing corresponding physical addresses. As many as 128 or more virtual address tag-physical address pairs are typically stored in a TLB. A TLB search involves comparing a supplied virtual address tag to the virtual address tags in the CAM. It is possible for only one match or no matches in the CAM to occur. If the supplied virtual address tag is found in the CAM, a match occurs. On a match, a CAM match line associated with the location in which the virtual address is found indicates a hit. A hit in the CAM causes a corresponding RAM location, or word line, to output the physical address corresponding to the virtual address tag.
In view of design considerations, CAM and RAM are usually precharged to opposite states. A CAM hit is signified by a high logic level on the appropriate match line. All CAM match lines except the match line actually matched are pulled low. In the RAM, conversely, all word lines are precharged low and a hit in the CAM results in the high CAM match line causing only one word line to transition high in the RAM, that is, the word line containing the proper physical address.
The CAM and the RAM in the TLB operate with a common clock. On the high half-cycle of the clock CAM is precharging while RAM is evaluating. Similarly, on the low half-cycle of the clock, CAM is evaluating while RAM is precharging. For optimal system speed a TLB access should be completed in a single clock cycle. A TLB access can be completed in a single clock cycle when the CAM evaluating a possible match on a low half-cycle and the RAM outputting an address on the following high half-cycle. In prior TLBs, however, it is not possible to guarantee that a TLB access will be complete in one clock cycle.
In typical prior art systems using TLBs, a virtual address tag is resolved in a unit referred to as a table walker before it is passed to the CAM. The virtual address is passed to the CAM upon a clock edge of the table walker clock. Transfer of information, from results of CAM comparison to eventual output of an address from the RAM, is controlled by multiple clocks which must each meet timing requirements. Each clock event must be delayed if information to be passed is not properly set up. For example, usually the CAM is too slow to complete evaluation in one half-cycle of the clock because evaluation time is dictated by transistor response time. Therefore, clock cycles are wasted.
A possible solution is to increase the CAM transistor sizing to make the CAM faster, but the cost in integrated circuit area would be too great. Another possibility is to use a timer to control the interaction of CAM and RAM. As clock rates increase, however, allowances for process, temperature and power variations take up larger and larger percentages of the clock cycle, making it more difficult to guarantee that a timer will reach both ends of the TLB at about the same time.
What is needed then is a TLB providing faster access. As will be seen, the present invention provides a novel TLB circuit which permits TLB access to be completed in one clock cycle and reduces dependence on multiple clocks. The invention is characterized by the use of NMOS transistors and occupies a minimum of integrated circuit area.

Mutually controlled match-line-to-word-line transfer circuit


Masks are produced which disguise or counteract strong odors that would ordinarily make the environment unpleasant. Masks are treated with a fixate carrier and at least one odor-masking or counteracting agent in a volatile solvent. In a preferred embodiment, both the inner and outer mask surfaces are essentially a continuous, homogeneous layer.

In caring for patients, the care-giver is often exposed to unpleasant odors which make the work environment unpleasant. The use of medications that have a strong odor or which cause the patient to exude an odor presents a real problem for health care workers, since it is not possible, by cleaning the environment, to avoid effects of such odors. One such medication is dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), which is presently being used to treat a number of conditions, including closed head injuries. Health care workers required to work in the environment where these patients are treated find the odor quite objectionable and often intolerable.
In other instances, patients, because of their disease condition, exude an odor that is objectionable. It is difficult for both the health care worker and for the patient in such instances, since the worker who would like to give supportive care has difficulty disregarding the odor which may actually be sufficiently objectionable to make to worker feel ill.
There are, additionally, many industrial and law-enforcement environments where workers are exposed to such strong odors that the workers may become ill. Such workers include morticians, pathologists, tannery workers, slaughter house workers, etc. The use of masks that would mitigate some of the unpleasantness in such work situations can greatly increase comfort and productivity of workers. Masks are made of several materials. However, protective masks are usually divided into two types: molded masks (which may be rigid or semirigid) and flexible masks. The masks may be made of woven or non-woven material which allows the ready passage of air. For purposes of the invention, either mask may be used.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,799 discloses a transparent odor-free face mask which has been treated with an odor-masking material. The odor-masking material is not mixed with a fixative and placed on an absorbent layer of material which acts as a support in the manner taught herein. While the structure of the mask is suggested, no particular odor-masking material is suggested or exemplified.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,503,851 discloses a mask which requires a sealed envelop impervious to volatile substances. The envelop which is sealed before use contains an odor-masking substance. When the seal of the envelop is removed and the mask is in use, the volatile substances mix with the air that is inhaled. In one instance, the mask has an aperture in the mask containing an envelop which is sealed on both outer and inner mask surfaces. When at least one seal on the envelop is broken, the volatile material in the envelop mixes with the air being inhaled when the face mask is in use. In another embodiment disclosed therein a mask having a woven cover has an envelop attached to the inside. That envelop has an absorbent layer that has been impregnated with a fragrance. The envelop has a layer that is perforated to allow the volatile material to evaporate. No use of any particular odor masking material is suggested therein. Only the structure of the mask itself is addressed in the patent.
Cain and Drexler (Ann. NY Acad. Sci, (1974) pp. 427-439) discuss the use of odors to counteract and mask odors, including additive effects and synergism.

Mask for disguising or counteracting odors


Tar is contacted with stripping agent, such as steam or tail gas, in a stripping tower. A product comprising deasphalted tar is recovered as overheads and a product comprising heavy tar is recovered as bottoms from the stripping tower.

Steam cracking, also referred to as pyrolysis, has long been used to crack various hydrocarbon feedstocks into olefins, preferably light olefins such as ethylene, propylene, and butenes. Conventional steam cracking utilizes a pyrolysis furnace wherein the feedstock, typically comprising crude or a fraction thereof optionally desalted, is heated sufficiently to cause thermal decomposition of the larger molecules. Among the valuable and desirable products include light olefins such as ethylene, propylene, and butylenes. The pyrolysis process, however, also produces molecules that tend to combine to form high molecular weight materials known as steam cracked tar or steam cracker tar, hereinafter referred to as "SCT". These are among the least valuable products obtained from the effluent of a pyrolysis furnace. In general, feedstocks containing higher boiling materials ("heavy feeds") tend to produce greater quantities of SCT.
SCT is among the least desirable of the products of pyrolysis since it finds few uses. SCT tends to be incompatible with other "virgin" (meaning it has not undergone any hydrocarbon conversion process such as FCC or steam cracking) products of the refinery pipestill upstream from the steam cracker. At least one reason for such incompatibility is the presence of asphaltenes. Asphaltenes are very high in molecular weight and precipitate out when blended in even insignificant amounts into other materials, such as fuel oil streams.
One way to avoid production of SCT is to limit conversion of the pyrolysis feed, but this also reduces the amount of valuable products such as light olefins. Another solution is to "flux" or dilute SCT with stocks that do not contain asphaltenes, but this also requires the use of products that find higher economic value in other uses.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,446,002, the precipitation of sediment in unconverted residuum obtained from a virgin residuum conversion process is taught to be suppressed by blending the unconverted residuum with an effective amount of a virgin residuum having an asphaltene content of at least about 8 wt % of the virgin residuum at a temperature sufficient to maintain both residuum components at a viscosity of no greater than about 100 cSt (centistokes) during blending. Virgin residuum is the bottoms product of the atmospheric distillation of petroleum crude oil at temperatures of about 357 to 385° C.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,443,715, steam cracked tar is upgraded by mixing with a "hydrogen donor", preferably hydrotreated steam cracked tar, at or downstream of quenching of the effluent of a gas oil steam cracker furnace. In this regard, see also U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,215,649; and 3,707,459; and WO 9117230.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,312,371 discloses a process for cracking a heavy hydrocarbon feedstock containing non-volatile components and/or coke precursors, wherein a stripping agent is added to the feedstock to form a blend which is thereafter separated into a vapor phase and a liquid phase by flashing in a flash/separation vessel, and subsequently cracking the vapor phase.
Other references of interest include U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,622,502; 3,691,058; 4,207,168; 4,264,334; WO 91/13951; DE 4308507; and JP 58-149991.
The present inventor has surprisingly discovered that processing tar through a stripping tower produces an upgraded, deasphalted tar that is compatible with refinery fuel oil pools


The invention relates to a conveyor provided with a frame and with an endless conveying element, which can be moved in a longitudinal direction by a drive mechanism during operation. The conveying element furthermore includes interconnected carriers, which are pivotable with respect to each other about upwardly extending pivot pins. The carriers are guided by guide wheels coupled to the carriers, which during operation roll on guide rails connected to the frame, and which are near end portion thereof provided with guide wheels, which are rotatable about axes of rotation extending parallel to the pivot pins. A pivot pin, about which a carrier is pivotable with respect to the adjacent carrier, lies in one plane with the axes of rotation extending parallel to the pivot pin of the guide wheels provided on the adjacent carrier.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a conveyor provided with a frame and with an endless conveying element, which can be moved in its longitudinal direction by driving means during operation and which is provided with interconnected carriers, which are pivotable with respect to each other about upwardly extending pivot axes, while the carriers are guided by means of guide wheels coupled to said carriers, which during operation roll on guide rails connected to the frame.
2. Discussion of the Background
A conveyor of this type is for example known from European Patent Applications Nos. 0 626 324 and 0 628 502. These known conveyors are satisfactory per se in practice, but in certain cases a better guidance and support of the carriers may be desirable.
According to the invention this may be accomplished in that said carriers are near their ends provided with guide wheels, which are rotatable about axes of rotation extending parallel to said pivot axes, while a pivot axis, about which a carrier is pivotable with respect to the adjacent carrier, lies at least substantially in one plane with the axes of rotation extending parallel to said pivot axis of the guide wheels provided on said adjacent carrier.
By arranging the pivot axis about which a carrier is pivotable with respect to the adjacent carrier in one plane with the axes of rotation of the guide wheels guiding said adjacent carrier and rolling on guide rails, movement of the pivot axis in question in a direction transverse to the longitudinal direction of the guide rails is prevented. In fact the position of the pivot axis of a carrier as well as the position of the guide wheels connected to said carrier, which guide wheels are rotatable about axes of rotation extending parallel to said pivot axis, with respect to the rails co-operating with the respective guide wheels are fixed. Therefore, undesirable oscillating movements of a carrier about an upwardly extending axis are prevented.
When, according to another aspect of the invention, guide rollers being rotatable about axes of rotation crossing the pivot axes at least substantially perpendicularly are provided near the sides of a carrier, near the guide wheels provided on the carrier in question, which guide wheels are provided in such a manner as to be rotatable about axes of rotation extending parallel to said pivot axes, oscillating movement of a carrier about an axis extending transversely to the longitudinal direction of the endless conveying element is also prevented in an effective manner.
All this leads to a stable support of the carriers and also to a steady movement of the carriers, which is conducive to a controlled transport of the goods to be conveyed by the conveyor.

Conveyor with endless conveyor element having interconnected carriers


Disclosed herein is method and fault detection system for detecting faults in one or more products. In an embodiment, method comprises generating plurality of wavelet coefficients corresponding to transformed images of each of the one or more products and determining a set of invariant features from the plurality of wavelet coefficients. Further, a dynamic set of invariant features is generated by grouping invariant features into a set of groups based on type of the one or more products. Subsequently, the dynamic set of invariant features is quantized based on a predetermined quantization threshold and a representative coefficient signature is associated for each group in the dynamic set of invariant features. Finally, faults in the one or more products are detected by comparing coefficient signatures associated with the one or more products with the representative coefficient signature of each group in the dynamic set of invariant features. In an embodiment, the present disclosure helps in accurate detection of faults in one or more products irrespective of type and characteristics of one or more products.

Generally, in product plant or a manufacturing plant, it is estimated that around 15% of all the products manufactured may have at least one defect. Defective products not only bring down the productivity, but also increase expenditures in terms of reworking the defective products. Time and manual efforts required for identifying the defective products and reworking or replacing them also increases expenditures. Therefore, efficient handling of the defective products becomes crucial for enhancing overall productivity of the production or manufacturing process.
The existing mechanisms for detecting the faults and/or defects in the products across manufacturing industry are costly, time consuming and use complex mechanisms. That is, the existing fault detection mechanisms use complex techniques, require intense manual efforts and consume more time for accurate detection of the faults. Further, certain other fault detection mechanisms, which use Artificial Intelligence (AI) based deep learning models for fault detection, require huge datasets comprising information of all types of faults for training the model. Also, once trained, these models are capable of detecting only those faults which are already pre-stored in the datasets and used during the training. In addition, these models consume great deal of computational resources both during training and run-time of the model.
Essentially, the existing AI based fault detection mechanisms work well only for products of a fixed size and specific orientation of the products where the faults can generally occur. Since the template of the faults are fixed for these models, there is a practical limit on the range of faults that may be successfully detected by these models. Therefore, it may be desirable to have a universal fault detection mechanism, which detects all types of faults in the products, irrespective of product characteristics and nature of the fault.
The information disclosed in this background of the disclosure section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.

System and method for detecting product defects across manufacturing process


In a zoom lens comprising first to fourth lens groups, the second lens group comprises two meniscus lenses and an achromatic lens. The achromatic lens comprises a cemented lens having a negative refracting power as a whole, and a lens having a positive refracting power with a convex surface directed onto the object side. The cemented lens comprises a meniscus lens or plane-convex lens having a positive refracting power with a concave surface or plane directed onto the object side, and a lens having a negative refracting power.

This application claims the priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 2000-037881 filed on Feb. 16, 2000, which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a high-ratio zoom lens mountable to a handy-type TV camera; and, in particular, to a zoom lens using a three-element achromatic lens as a variator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, four-group type zoom lenses having a high power variation have come into use as being mounted to handy-type TV cameras.
For making the TV cameras smaller, demands for reducing the size of such four-group type zoom lenses have been increasing year by year. If those having a high power variation are to be made smaller, then their various kinds of aberration become greater, against which measures are necessary.
Among them, it is not always easy to correct chromatic aberration occurring upon zooming or focusing, such as lateral chromatic aberration in particular. For correcting such chromatic aberration, so-called counter achromatization technique has been known, in which, when the variator has a negative refracting power, the dispersion of a positive lens among lenses constituting the variator is made greater, whereas the dispersion of a negative lens among these lenses is made smaller. A cemented lens of such a combination may be used so as to correct the lateral chromatic aberration.
As the achromatic lens, those comprising three elements such as one shown in FIG. 14 in which another lens is combined with the cemented lens in order to increase the number of lens surfaces in view of the freedom of design have conventionally been known.
When such a three-element achromatic lens is used, however, the total length of lens system further increases, which contradicts the demand for compactness. This point will now be explained specifically with reference to FIG. 13.
FIG. 13 schematically shows a principal ray of a luminous flux corresponding to a marginal portion of a picture when a second lens group, which is a variator contributing to power variation, is positioned at a wide-angle end (closest to the object). The solid line and dotted line indicate the principal ray in the case where the achromatic lens of the second lens group is constituted by two elements and by three elements, respectively. Here, xe2x80x9c2xe2x80x9d is a stop, which is configured such that a third lens group G3, i.e., a compensator, is positioned upstream thereof. According to FIG. 13, the lens thickness in the case of a second lens group Gxe2x80x22 whose achromatic lens is constituted by three elements becomes greater than that in a second lens group G2 whose achromatic lens is constituted by two elements, whereby the lens diameter of a first lens group Gxe2x80x21 positioned upstream the second lens group Gxe2x80x22 becomes greater than that of a first lens group G1 positioned upstream the second lens group G2.
In view of such circumstances, it is an object of the present invention to provide an achromatic lens exhibiting a counter achromatization effect, which can satisfy the demand for compactness while fully securing the freedom of design by increasing the number of lens surfaces; and a zoom lens using the same.
The zoom lens in accordance with the present invention comprises, successively from an object side, a first lens group, fixed upon zooming, having a positive refracting power; a second lens group, movable upon zooming, having a negative refracting power; a third lens group, having a negative refracting power, for correcting a fluctuation of an image surface upon zooming; and a fourth lens group, fixed upon zooming, having a positive refracting power;
wherein the second lens group comprises, successively from the object side,
two meniscus lenses each having a negative refracting power with a convex surface directed onto the object side; and
An achromatic lens comprising, successively from the object side, a cemented lens having a negative refracting power as a whole, and a lens having a positive refracting power with a convex surface directed onto the object side; the cemented lens comprising, successively from the object side, a meniscus lens or plane-convex lens having a positive refracting power with a concave surface or plane directed onto the object side, and a lens having a negative refracting power.
Preferably, the first lens group comprises, successively from the object side, a first-a lens group, fixed upon a focusing operation, having a positive refracting power; and a first-b lens group, movable to the object side upon a focusing operation from an object at infinity into an object at a shorter distance, having a positive refracting power.
Preferably, the zoom lens of the present invention satisfies both of the following conditional expressions (1) and (2):
xcexd23 less than 25.0xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(1)
xcexd25 less than 25.0xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(2)
where
xcexd23 is the Abbe number xcexdd of the lens having a positive refracting power constituting the cemented lens in the second lens group; and
xcexd25 is the Abbe number xcexdd of the lens having a positive refracting power with a convex surface directed onto the object side constituting the cemented lens in the second lens group.
Preferably, the zoom lens of the present invention satisfies the following conditional expression (3):
0.30 less than f2/f2a less than 0.60xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(3)
where
f2 is the focal length of the second lens group; and
f2a is the focal length of the cemented lens in the second lens group.
Preferably, the zoom lens of the present invention satisfies the following conditional expression (4):
|N23xe2x88x92N24| less than 0.02xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(4)
where
N23 is the refractive index Ne of the lens having a positive refracting power constituting the cemented lens in the second lens group; and
N24 is the refractive index Ne of the lens having a negative refracting power constituting the cemented lens in the second lens group.
The achromatic lens in accordance with the present invention comprises, successively from the object side, a cemented lens having a negative refracting power as a whole, and a lens having a positive refracting power with a convex surface directed onto the object side; the cemented lens comprising, successively from the object side, a meniscus lens or a plane-convex lens having a positive refracting power with a concave surface or plane directed onto the object side, and a lens having a negative refracting power.
In this case, a lens group including the achromatic lens may be movable upon zooming.

Achromatic lens and zoom lens using the same


Requests are received for handling by a cloud computing environment which are then executed by the cloud computing environment. While each request is executing, performance metrics associated with the request are monitored. A vector is subsequently generated that encapsulates information associated with the request including the text within the request and the corresponding monitored performance metrics. Each request is then assigned (after it has been executed) to either a normal request cluster or an abnormal request cluster based on which cluster has a nearest mean relative to the corresponding vector. In addition, data can be provided that characterizes requests assigned to the abnormal request cluster. Related apparatus, systems, techniques and articles are also described.

Large scale cloud computing environments receive large numbers of requests originating from various clients. In typical scenarios, the requests are handled by the cloud computing environment and responses are sent to the clients. In some cases, the requests result in various errors including server-side errors which can result in the requests being re-sent to the cloud computing environment which can negatively affect system performance. Early identification of anomalous requests can allow engineering teams to take measures to avoid any future performance issues by the cloud computing environment.

Anomaly detection for cloud applications


A multi-cylinder reciprocating compressor has a plurality of compression chambers and a plurality of discharge valve devices associated with the respective compression chambers. Each discharge valve device includes a valve reed for opening and closing a corresponding discharge hole formed through a valve plate, and a retainer for regulating the lift of the valve reed. The retainer includes a stopper surface inclined with respect to the valve plate as viewed in cross section of the retainer, and the stopper surface has one side edge and the other side edge located remoter from the valve plate than the one side edge. The discharge hole is positioned such that the center of gravity of the cross section thereof is shifted from the center of the valve reed in the width direction thereof toward the other side edge of the stopper surface.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-cylinder reciprocating compressor, and more particularly, to a multi-cylinder reciprocating compressor suitable for use in a refrigeration circuit of an automotive air conditioning system.
2. Description of the Related Art
This type of multi-cylinder reciprocating compressor is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. H06-25576. The compressor disclosed in this publication has a plurality of compression chambers, a discharge chamber, and discharge valves associated with the respective compression chambers to allow refrigerant compressed in the respective compression chambers to be discharged into the discharge chamber.
More specifically, each discharge valve has a valve reed attached to a valve plate located between the compression chambers and the discharge chamber. The valve reed opens and closes a discharge hole formed through the valve plate. The discharge valve further includes a retainer for regulating the opening of the valve reed, and the retainer has a stopper surface facing the valve plate.
When the pressure of the refrigerant in the compression chamber surpasses the valve closing force of the valve reed, the refrigerant causes the free end of the valve reed to lift from the valve plate toward the retainer. As a result, the discharge hole opens, allowing the refrigerant in the compression chamber to be discharged into the discharge chamber through the discharge hole. When the refrigerant is discharged in this manner, the valve reed abuts against the stopper surface of the retainer. Thus, the stopper surface serves to regulate the lift of the free end of the valve reed, that is, the opening of the valve reed.
The stopper surface of the retainer is inclined with respect to the valve plate, as viewed in cross section of the valve reed. Accordingly, when the valve reed is lifted, the valve reed comes into close contact with the stopper surface while being twisted about a longitudinal axis thereof, so that the lift of the valve reed, that is, the distance between the free end of the valve reed and the valve plate, varies along the width direction of the valve reed. Specifically, the lift of the valve reed increases from one side edge thereof toward the other. Thus, the refrigerant discharged from the discharge hole flows mainly toward the other side edge of the valve reed, whereby directivity is imparted to the discharge of the refrigerant.
In the aforementioned discharge valve, therefore, stable opening/closing operation of the valve reed can presumably be ensured by directing the discharge direction of the refrigerant such that the refrigerant discharged from the discharge hole exerts no adverse influence on the opening/closing of the valve reeds of the adjacent discharge valves.
Since the valve reed has relatively high rigidity against twisting, however, the valve reed is insufficiently twisted when lifted, and it is difficult to bring the valve reed into satisfactorily close contact with the stopper surface of the retainer.
Consequently, the valve reed repeatedly strikes on the stopper surface when lifted, causing vibrations. Such vibrations not only produce unpleasant noise but impede smooth discharging of the refrigerant from the compression chamber, which lowers the compression efficiency of the compressor.


An improved, air cleaner is provided to eliminate the detriment caused by air pollution and cigarette smoke. The air cleaner includes a removable build-in ashtray which is mounted in front of the housing of the air cleaner. At smoking, the ashtray would be opened by removing its cover. When the ashtray is full of ash, it would be removed for emptying and cleaning. The air cleaner is provided with a disposable filter pack inserted into an open slot of the cleaner housing. The filter pack contains an active carbon layer and chemical catalyst and perfume therein.

The present invention relates to an improved air cleaner, and more particularly to an air cleaner with a build-in ashtray. The ashtray is removable from the air cleaner, and a disposable filter may be inserted between the air cleaner and the ashtray for refreshing air.
Many people in Taiwan die of liver cancer each year. Liver cancer has ranked the first and second place respectively in female and male ten main death causes. Undoubtedly, air pollution and cigarette smoke cause liver cancer and should be eliminated.
The well-known air cleaner or air refresher is merely a simple refresh device for refreshing air. Typically, the air cleaner have to be placed in a closed space, such as a room or car. It is found that visible vapor with particles of carbon normally so called secondhand smoke, coming from a burning cigarette, is quite a bother to most people. However, the well-known air cleaner is not effective to eliminate the cigarette smoke when it is used in a smoking environment.


A display apparatus including a communication line connected to a network, an information acquisition device for acquiring in real time at least information relating to a predetermined site on the network via the communication line, the communication line being held by a communication line holding device. The display apparatus includes a display control device for displaying in real time information relating to a plurality of sites acquired by the information acquisition device, and forming symbols corresponding to the plurality of sites, displaying the symbols three-dimensionally in a contrastable state from each other. The information acquired by the information acquisition device is displayed will a symbol, which corresponds to the site, and the information acquisition device acquires at least one of or a plurality of pieces of information indicating congestion status, update status, response, type, popularity, cost, and links of each site, and congestion status of the network.

Presently, diverse Web sites for movies, music, sports, hobbies, news and the like, for example, exist on a network such as the Internet. Through searching and accessing a Web site in accordance with one's own hobbies and desires by initiating a WWW browser (WWW: World Wide Web) of a client terminal apparatus such as a personal computer apparatus, the user gathers information through the use of each of these Web sites in place of a television receiver, radio receiver, or dictionaries or the like.
Here, there is a tendency for accessing times to increase for one's favorite Web site. However, to re-search that Web site for every access and perform input of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) are a hassle.
Consequently, a bookmarking function is provided to the WWW browser, and saving a Web site name and URL of the favorite Web site using this bookmarking function allows the user to easily access that Web site thereafter.
More specifically, FIG. 23 is a diagram illustrating a WWW browser display screen, however, as can be understood from FIG. 23, Web site names such as, for example, "Freeware", "Graphics", "Glossary of Transmission/Communication Terms", which are saved by the user, are displayed in list form upon the display screen.
The user performs click operation (or double click operation) on the Web site name portion of the display screen using an input device such as, for example, a mouse device, to thereby select a desired Web site from the Web sites, which are displayed in list form.
When detecting this click operation, the personal computer apparatus reads from a storage unit such as a hard disc drive the URL, which corresponds to that click operated Web site, allowing an access to this URL Web site through the WWW browser.
Since the URL of this favorite Web site saved by this bookmarking function remains saved in the storage unit as long as it is not deleted by the user, the user may easily access the favorite Web site any number of times merely by performing the aforementioned click operation.
Here, performing access to the Web site that is saved by the bookmarking function signifies that the access is at least the second time or later, which is often performed for gathering information that could not be gathered during the previous access, or for gathering newly updated information (newly arrived information and the like). However, since a conventional WWW browser only displays in list form the Web site names of the user's favorite Web sites, which are saved by the bookmarking function, there is a problem where access after acquaintance of Web site current conditions such as update status is not possible.
The present invention has come about in consideration of such issues, and the objective thereof is to provide a display apparatus and a displaying method, which allow access to a desired Web site after prior visual perception of network or Web site current conditions.

Display apparatus for accessing desired web site


An energy storage device includes: a flattened electrode assembly formed by winding electrodes such that a hollow portion is formed, the electrode assembly including a pair of curved portions opposed manner in a major axis direction and a pair of flat portions opposed in a minor axis direction; and a case storing the electrode assembly therein, wherein assuming a thickness of the flat portion in the minor axis direction as A, a thickness of the curved portion in a radial direction as B, and a thickness of the hollow portion in the minor axis direction as W, the electrode assembly satisfies A+(W/2)≤B in a state where the electrode assembly is discharged.

Conventionally, there has been known a secondary battery which includes: a winding-type electrode assembly formed by winding a strip-like electrodes; and a case which stores the electrode assembly therein (see JP-A-2013-214456 (PTL 1)). The electrode assembly has a flattened cylindrical shape. To be more specific, the electrode assembly has a minor axis and major axis which are orthogonal to each other, and includes: a pair of curved portions which face each other in an opposed manner in a major axis direction; and a pair of flat portions which connects corresponding end portions of the pair of curved portions to each other and faces each other in an opposed manner in a minor axis direction.
In the secondary battery, the electrode assembly expands or shrinks due to charging and discharging. In the secondary battery, electrodes are deteriorated due to the repetition of charging and discharging, and the electrode assembly expands due to the deposition of a reaction byproduct (a film, a gas or the like) generated attributed to the deterioration on surfaces of the electrodes.
In the secondary battery, there is a case where a wrinkle is formed on a surface of an electrode in a direction orthogonal to a winding direction (minor axis direction of the electrode) due to expansion or shrinkage of the electrode assembly. To be more specific, in the flat portion of the electrode assembly, the expanded electrode is, e.g., curved such that the electrode expands toward a hollow portion so that the expansion is absorbed whereby a stress attributed to the expansion minimally occurs in the electrode. Accordingly, a wrinkle is minimally formed on the electrode at the flat portion. However, in the curved portion of the electrode assembly, electrodes are densely wound around and hence, the expanded electrode cannot move in the radial direction and intends to move in the winding direction. Accordingly, a stress attributed to the expansion is liable to be concentrated on a boundary portion between the curved portion and the flat portion in the electrode assembly and hence, a wrinkle is liable to be formed on the electrode at the boundary portion in the direction orthogonal to the winding direction.
When the wrinkle is formed in the electrode in this manner, a resistance in a portion where the wrinkle is formed is increased and hence, lowering of capacity, an electrodeposition or the like is liable to occur in the electrode assembly.