A method of migrating a network file copy (NFC) operation from a first host computing device to a second host computing device includes the steps of: transmitting a first request to the first host computing device to execute the NFC operation, wherein the NFC operation comprises transferring data from a shared datastore to another datastore; after transmitting the first request, selecting the second host computing device to complete the NFC operation in place of the first host computing device, and transmitting a second request to the first host computing device to stop executing the NFC operation; after transmitting the second request, detecting a message indicating that the first host computing device completed the copying of a first portion of the data; and in response to the detection of the message, transmitting a third request to the second host computing device to perform the remainder of the NFC operation.

Network file copy (NFC) operations are used for transferring data between storage devices across a network. For example, through a "remote" NFC operation, a "source" host computing device reads data from a first datastore and transmits the data to a "destination" host, and the destination host stores the data in a second datastore. Similarly, through a "local" NFC operation in which a single host has access to first and second datastores, the host reads data from the first data store and stores the data in the second datastore. The data copied through an NFC operation may be, e.g., a virtual disk of a virtual machine (VM) or software to be run by a VM. Such NFC operations may be used to support various applications, including cloning a VM, migrating a VM while the VM is not executing (i.e., performing a "cold" migration of the VM), and backing up both VM and non-VM files.
In a cloud computing environment, there is often a separation between a virtual infrastructure (VI) administrator and a cloud administrator. The VI administrator performs regular maintenance of hosts, including upgrading virtual infrastructure therein. The cloud administrator performs operations such as NFC operations on hosts to optimize resource utilization across a datacenter. However, the performances of maintenance and NFC operations often conflict with each other. For example, NFC operations often take a long time to execute, e.g., several hours to transfer a virtual disk that is multiple terabytes in size. While a host is executing such a long NFC operation, the host is blocked from entering maintenance mode. If, for example, a VI administrator needs to perform a critical upgrade such as a security-related upgrade, the VI administrator currently has two options. Firstly, the VI administrator may wait for the NFC operation to complete, which may disrupt a host's maintenance schedule. Secondly, the VI administrator may disrupt the cloud administrator by "killing" the NFC operation, which results in a loss of work and requires the cloud administrator to restart the NFC operation. A solution to these conflicts that is non-disruptive to both the VI and cloud administrators is needed.

Migration of network file copy operations between host computing devices


A nailing machine includes a contact rod substantially in a straight shape and an operating dial. The contact rod is slidably and rotatably supported by a nose portion. The operating dial is slidably penetrated to be inserted by the contact rod, rotatably provided integrally with the contact rod and provided rotatably and by being restricted from being moved in an up and down direction with respect to the nose portion. A length of projecting the contact member in a direction of a front end of the nose portion is adjusted by rotating the contact rod by way of the operating dial.

There are a compressed air drive nailing machine for driving a piston at inside of a cylinder by introducing compressed air to inside of the cylinder containing the piston and striking a nail to a struck member of wood or the like by a driver coupled to the piston, and a combustion gas drive nailing machine formed with a combustion chamber at inside of a housing for generating a combustion gas at high pressure at inside of the combustion chamber by injecting a combustible gas to inside of the hermetically closed combustion chamber and combusting the combustible gas, impulsively driving the piston at inside of the cylinder by operating the combustion gas to the piston slidably contained at inside of the cylinder and striking a nail to a steel plate, concrete, wood or the like by a driver coupled to the piston.
In such power drive nailing machines, a lower side of the housing containing the cylinder is coupled with a nose portion formed with the injection port for striking and guiding a nail to a work member. The driver coupled to a lower face of the piston contained at inside of the cylinder is contained at inside of the injection port to be guided thereby. A rear side of the nose portion is continuously provided with a magazine containing a number of nails. The nail supplied from the magazine to inside of the injection port of the nose portion is struck from the injection port to the struck member arranged at a front end of the nose by the driver.
The power drive nailing machine for driving the piston by the compressed air or the combustion gas as described above is provided with a contact member slidably supported along an outer peripheral face of the nose portion. Ordinarily, the contact member is arranged to project in a direction of a front end of the injection port. An upper end of a contact arm connected to the contact member is connected to be engaged with an activation control apparatus for activating the power drive nailing machine. When the power drive nailing machine is positioned to a nail striking position by bringing the nose portion of the power drive nailing machine into contact with the struck member, by engaging the contact member with the struck member to operate to slide along the nose portion, the activation control apparatus is operated by way of the contact arm, and the power drive nailing machine is set to a startable state.
JP-B2-3527571 discloses a power drive nailing machine formed with a strike depth adjusting apparatus for arbitrarily adjusting a depth of striking a nail at inside of an injection port to a struck member by a driver connected to a piston impulsively driven by compressed air or a combustion gas. According to the power drive nailing machine, a length of projecting a contact member can variably be adjusted such that a front end face of the contact member in being slid to move up to an upper dead center along a nose portion is made to constitute an arbitrary projected length from a front end face of the injection port of the nose portion. Therefore, a front end of the injection port: of the nose portion can be made to be spaced apart from a struck face of a struck member by an arbitrary interval. The strike depth adjusting apparatus is constituted by a plate-like portion extended from the contact member to an upper side, and a lower end portion of a contact arm an upper end of which is connected to be engaged with an activation control apparatus and formed in a plate-like shape. By bringing recessed and projected faces of numbers of streaks formed at respective faces of two sheets of plate-like members opposed to each other in mesh with each other at arbitrary positions, the two plate-like members are fixed by a screw or the like.
According to the strike depth adjusting apparatus in which the recessed and projected faces formed at the respective faces of the plate-like members opposed to each other are brought in mesh with each other and fixed by a screw or the like, when a user adjusts a strike depth, the screw fastening the plate-like members is relaxed by using a tool of a wrench or the like. After shifting the respective recessed and projected faces of two sheets of the plate-like members to be brought in mesh with each other again, the user fastens the screw by using the tool again. Therefore, there is a case in which an adjusting operation cannot be carried out in an operation above an unstable foothold. Further, in order to connect the contact member and the contact arm by the screw or the like, a portion of connecting these is arranged at a side face of the nose portion. Therefore, the contact arm is arranged to be bent relative to a direction of operating the contact member and a direction of operating the activation control apparatus. As a result, when the contact member is operated to slide along the nose portion, there is a case in which the contact arm is deformed and the operation of sliding the contact member cannot firmly be transmitted to the activation control apparatus, the power drive nailing machine cannot be activated or operated erroneously.


There are many inventions described and illustrated herein. In one aspect, the present invention is directed to a MEMS device, and technique of fabricating or manufacturing a MEMS device, having mechanical structures encapsulated in a chamber prior to final packaging. An embodiment further includes location of a piezoelectric material as part of a semiconductor sensing structure. The semiconductor sensing structure, in conjunction with the piezoelectric material, can be used as a sensing device to provide an output signal associated with a sensed event.

This invention relates to electromechanical systems and techniques for fabricating microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems; and more particularly, in one aspect, to fabricating or manufacturing microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems with high performance integrated circuits on a common substrate. and accelerometers, utilize micromachining techniques (i.e., lithographic and other precision fabrication techniques) to reduce mechanical components to a scale that is generally comparable to microelectronics. MEMS typically include a mechanical structure fabricated from or on, for example, a silicon substrate using micromachining techniques.
The mechanical structures are typically sealed in a chamber. The delicate mechanical structure may be sealed in, for example, a hermetically sealed metal container (for example, a TO-8 "can", see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,307,815) or bonded to a semiconductor or glass-like substrate having a chamber to house, accommodate or cover the mechanical structure (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,146,917; 6,352,935; 6,477,901; and 6,507,082). In the context of the hermetically sealed metal container, the substrate on, or in which, the mechanical structure resides may be disposed in and affixed to the metal container. The hermetically sealed metal container also serves as a primary package as well.
In the context of the semiconductor or glass-like substrate packaging technique, the substrate of the mechanical structure may be bonded to another substrate whereby the bonded substrates form a chamber within which the mechanical structure resides. In this way, the operating environment of the mechanical structure may be controlled and the structure itself protected from, for example, inadvertent contact. The two bonded substrates may or may not be the primary package for the MEMS as well.
MEMS that employ a hermetically sealed metal container or a bonded semiconductor or glass-like substrate to protect the mechanical structures tend to be difficult to cost effectively integrate with high performance integrated circuitry on the same substrate. In this regard, the additional processing required to integrate the high performance integrated circuitry, tends to either damage or destroy the mechanical structures.
Another technique for forming the chamber that protects the delicate mechanical structure employs micromachining techniques. (See, for example, International Published Patent Applications Nos. WO 01/77008 A1 and WO 01/77009 A1). In this regard, the mechanical structure is encapsulated in a chamber using a conventional oxide (SiO2) deposited or formed using conventional techniques (i.e., oxidation using low temperature techniques (LTO), tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) or the like). (See, for example, WO 01/77008 A1, FIGS. 2-4). When implementing this technique, the mechanical structure is encapsulated prior to packaging and/or integration with integrated circuitry.
While employing a conventional oxide to encapsulate the mechanical structures of the MEMS may provide advantages relative to hermetically sealed metal container or a bonded semiconductor or glass-like substrate, a conventional oxide, deposited using conventional techniques, often exhibits high tensile stress at, for example, corners or steps (i.e., significant spatial transitions in the underlying surface(s)). Further, such an oxide is often formed or deposited in a manner that provides poor coverage of those areas where the underlying surface(s) exhibit significant spatial transitions. In addition, a conventional oxide (deposited using conventional techniques) often provides an insufficient vacuum where a vacuum is desired as the environment in which the mechanical structures are encapsulated and designed to operate. These shortcomings may impact the integrity and/or performance of the MEMS. Moreover, a conventional oxide, deposited using conventional techniques, may produce a film on the mechanical structures during the encapsulation process. This film may impact the integrity of the mechanical structures and, as such, the performance or operating characteristics of the MEMS (for example, the operating characteristics of a resonator).
Additionally, conventional MEMS applications are limited to a range of materials that are compatible with silicon based materials. That is, current MEMS applications are constrained by the inability to utilize certain materials, other than silicon based and silicon compatible materials, for various functional layers of a MEMS application. For example, use of non-silicon based materials for a MEMS structure may cause cross contamination during subsequent processing steps, such as during epitaxial deposition and/or encapsulation steps. Materials such as piezoelectric aluminum nitride and other piezoelectric materials may be useful for MEMS applications, but are not currently utilized due to the concern of cross contamination and other potential adverse effects when implementing non-silicon base materials.
There is a need for, among other things, MEMS (for example, gyroscopes, resonators, temperature sensors and/or accelerometers) that (1) overcome one, some or all of the shortcomings of the conventional materials and techniques and/or (2) may be efficiently integrated on a common substrate with high performance integrated circuits and/or additional MEMS.
There are many inventions described and illustrated herein. In a first principal aspect, the present invention is a method of sealing a chamber of an electromechanical device having a mechanical structure disposed within the chamber. The method includes depositing a sacrificial layer over at least a portion of the mechanical structure and depositing a first encapsulation layer (for example, a polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, germanium, silicon/germanium or gallium arsenide) over the sacrificial layer. At least one vent is formed through the first encapsulation layer, and at least a portion of the sacrificial layer is removed to form the chamber. Thereafter, a second encapsulation layer is deposited over or in the vent to seal the chamber wherein the second encapsulation layer is a semiconductor material (for example, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, silicon carbide, silicon/germanium, germanium, or gallium arsenide).
In one embodiment of this aspect of the invention, the first encapsulation layer is a semiconductor material that is doped with a first impurity to provide a first region of a first conductivity type, and the second encapsulation layer is doped with a second impurity to provide a second region with a second conductivity type. The first conductivity type is opposite the second conductivity type. In one embodiment, the first and second encapsulation layers are deposited using an epitaxial or a CVD reactor.
The method may also include planarizing an exposed surface of the second encapsulation layer and removing a sufficient amount of the second encapsulation layer to thereby expose the first encapsulation layer and provide junction isolation.
In one embodiment, a first portion of the first encapsulation layer is comprised of a monocrystalline silicon and a second portion is comprised of a polycrystalline silicon. In this embodiment, a surface of the second encapsulation layer may be planarized to expose the first portion of the first encapsulation. Thereafter, a monocrystalline silicon may be grown on the first portion of the first encapsulation.
In another principal aspect, the present invention is a method of manufacturing an electromechanical device having a mechanical structure that resides in a chamber. The chamber may include a fluid having a pressure that provides mechanical damping for the mechanical structure. The method comprises depositing a first encapsulation layer (comprised of a semiconductor material, for example, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, silicon carbide, silicon/germanium, germanium, or gallium arsenide) over the mechanical structure. At least one vent is then formed in the first encapsulation layer and the chamber is formed. Thereafter, a second encapsulation layer (comprised of a semiconductor material, for example, polycrystalline silicon, porous polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, silicon carbide, silicon/germanium, germanium, or gallium arsenide) is deposited over or in the vent to seal the chamber.
In one embodiment of this aspect of the invention, the first encapsulation layer is doped with a first impurity to provide a first region of a first conductivity type, and the second encapsulation layer is doped with a second impurity to provide a second region with a second conductivity type. The first conductivity type is opposite the second conductivity type. The first and second encapsulation layers may be deposited using an epitaxial or a CVD reactor.
In one embodiment, a first portion of the first encapsulation layer is comprised of a monocrystalline silicon and a second portion is comprised of a polycrystalline silicon. In this embodiment, a surface of the second encapsulation layer may be planarized to expose the first portion of the first encapsulation. Thereafter, a monocrystalline silicon may be grown on the first portion of the first encapsulation.
In another principal aspect, the present invention is an electromechanical device comprising a chamber including a first encapsulation layer (for example, polycrystalline silicon, porous polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, germanium, silicon/germanium, gallium arsenide, silicon nitride or silicon carbide), having at least one vent, and a mechanical structure having at least a portion disposed in the chamber. The electromechanical device also includes a second encapsulation layer comprised of a semiconductor material (for example, polycrystalline silicon, porous polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, silicon carbide, silicon/germanium, germanium, or gallium arsenide), deposited over or in the vent, to thereby seal the chamber.
In one embodiment, the first encapsulation layer is a semiconductor material that is doped with a first impurity to provide a first region of a first conductivity type. The second encapsulation layer is doped with a second impurity to provide a second region with a second conductivity type. The first conductivity type is opposite the second conductivity type.
The device may also include a contact (i.e., a conductive region, such as the contact area and/or contact via, that is partially or wholly disposed outside of the chamber) disposed outside the chamber. The contact may be a semiconductor that is doped with impurities to increase the conductivity of the area. The contact may be surrounded by the semiconductor of the first conductivity type and the semiconductor of the second conductivity type, which, in combination, forms a junction isolation.
The device of this aspect of the present invention may include a first portion of the first encapsulation layer that is comprised of a monocrystalline silicon and a second portion is comprised of a polycrystalline silicon. In addition, the present invention may include a field region disposed outside and above the chamber wherein the field region is comprised of a monocrystalline silicon.
In one embodiment, the first portion of the first encapsulation layer may be comprised of a monocrystalline silicon and a second portion comprised of a porous or amorphous silicon. In this embodiment, the second encapsulation layer overlying the second portion of the first encapsulation layer is a polycrystalline silicon.
In another principal aspect, the present invention is an electromechanical device including a piezoelectric material.

Microelectromechanical devices and fabrication methods


A thermoplastic resin containing a fluorene derivative. The thermoplastic resin contains 30 mole % or more of a recurring unit derived from 9,9-bis(4-(2-hydroxyethoxy)phenyl)fluorene and has a content of phenyl vinyl ether represented by the following formula (1) of 100 ppm or less

In recent years, resins produced from bisphenols, for example, epoxy resin, polyester resin, polycarbonate resin and polyester carbonate resin are widely used as materials having heat resistance, transparency, impact resistance and a high refractive index. Especially resins comprising a fluorene derivative such as 9,9-bis(4-(2-hydroxyethoxy)phenyl)fluorene are promising materials having high transparency and a high refractive index and are expected to be used as optical materials for auto head lamp lenses, CD's, CD-ROM's, pick-up lenses, Fresnel lenses, fθ lenses for laser printers, camera lenses and projection lenses for rear projection TVs.
Out of these, resins comprising an aromatic dicarboxylic acid and a fluorene derivative and resins comprising an aromatic diol and a fluorene derivative are proposed as materials for optical lenses having a high refractive index and little birefringence (Patent Documents 1 and 2). However, since these resins are colored during melt polymerization, products which are excellent in hue may not be obtained.
To solve this problem, there are reports concerning the hue of a resin comprising a fluorene derivative (Patent Documents 3 and 4). In these reports, the coloration of the resin can be suppressed by reducing the content of the residual sulfur at the time of producing a fluorene derivative and the contents of sulfur and diethylene glycol in the resin.
However, since there is a case where the resin is colored even in the above method, there is still room for the improvement of the resin. Therefore, these problems must be solved in order to widely use the resin as an optical material.
(Patent Document 1) U.S. Pat. No. 2,843,215
(Patent Document 2) JP-A 10-101786
(Patent Document 3) JP-A 2008-111047
(Patent Document 4) JP-A 2009-185299

Thermoplastic resin comprising a fluorene derivative


An unsupervised real to virtual domain unification model for highway driving, or DU-drive, employs a conditional generative adversarial network to transform driving images in a real domain to their canonical representations in the virtual domain, from which vehicle control commands are predicted. In the case where there are multiple real datasets, a real-to-virtual generator may be independently trained for each real domain and a global predictor could be trained with data from multiple real domains. Qualitative experiment results show this model can effectively transform real images to the virtual domain while only keeping the minimal sufficient information, and quantitative results verify that such canonical representation can eliminate domain shift and boost the performance of control command prediction task.

With reference to FIG. 1, various models have been proposed for vision-based autonomous driving. In vanilla end-to-end driving models, a single frontal camera image is mapped to vehicle control commands. These models, however, are not interpretable and are suboptimal in performance. Mediated perception models, such as those with scene parsing or with vehicle/lane detection, attempt to improve the performance of vanilla end-to-end models by taking advantage of intermediate representations. For example, some attempts use semantic segmentation as a side task to improve model performance, while other attempts train a detector to detect nearby vehicles before making driving decisions. However, the collection of driving data and the annotation of intermediate representation can be prohibitively expensive in a larger scale. Moreover, in these models, general images and intermediate representations of driving scenes are loaded with superfluous details due to the complexity of the real world. Many of those details are nuisance information that is neither relevant nor helpful to the prediction task. For example, a typical human driver driving on a highway will not change her behavior according to the brand of the car in front, or the view beyond the road boundaries.
Ideally, a vision-based autonomous driving model trained for a specific task should be able to generalize to new datasets collected for the same task. Research, however, has shown that model performance could seriously degrade when input distribution changes due to the inherent bias introduced in the data collection process. This phenomenon is known as domain shift or dataset bias. In the world of autonomous driving, it is even more critical to have a model that can generalize well to unseen scenarios.
Domain adaption methods attempt to battle domain shift by bridging the gap between the distribution of source data and target data. Various models involving generative adversarial network (GAN) based domain adaption, also known as adversarial adaption, have achieved acceptable results in the field of visual domain adaption. One such model frames adversarial adaption as training a generator that transforms data in the target domain to the source domain at a certain feature level trying to fool an adversarial discriminator, which in turn tries to distinguish the generated data from those sampled from the source domain. See E. Tzeng, J. Hoffman, K. Saenko, and T. Darrell. Adversarial discriminative domain adaptation. In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2017 IEEE Conference on, pages 7167-7176. IEEE, 2017.
One subarea of domain adaptation involves the adaption of virtual data to real data. As the collection of real-world data can be excessively expensive in certain cases, virtual data rendered with computer graphics technologies can be useful. One method proposes a GAN-based model that transforms data from virtual domain to the real domain in the pixel space in an unsupervised manner by utilizing a content-similarity loss to retain annotation. See K. Bousmalis, N. Silberman, D. Dohan, D. Erhan, and D. Krishnan. Unsupervised pixel-level domain adaptation with generative adversarial networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE conference on computer vision and pattern recognition, pages 3722-3731, 2017.
Another method uses adversarial training to improve the realism of synthetic or fake images with the help a self-regularization term, a local adversarial loss and a buffer of training images for the discriminator. See A. Shrivastava, T. Pfister, O. Tuzel, J. Susskind, W. Wang, and R. Webb. Learning from simulated and unsupervised images through adversarial training. In The IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), July 2017. Another method randomizes the texture of objects in the robot simulator and trains a visuomotor policy without using any real-world data. See J. Tobin, R. Fong, A. Ray, J. Schneider, W. Zaremba, and P. Abbeel. Domain randomization for transferring deep neural networks from simulation to the real world. arXiv preprint arXiv: 1703.06907, 2017. Another method trains a driving policy with reinforcement learning in a simulator by transforming virtual images to real images, retaining the scene structure with adversarial loss on the segmentation mask. See Y. You, X. Pan, Z. Wang, and C. Lu. Virtual to real reinforcement learning for autonomous driving. arXiv preprint arXiv: 1704.03952, 2017.
These GAN-based models, however, have issues that render them less than optimal. For example, with reference to FIG. 2, fake images generated by conditional GAN suffer from unstable training and mode collapse for both the background and the foreground. This is event in FIG. 2 by the disjointed and collapsed lane markings in the fake virtual images in the bottom row. With reference to FIG. 3, fake images generated by a GAN referred to as CycleGAN may include additional image details that are not critical to autonomous device command prediction. Moreover, since CycleGAN involves transformations from simple virtual images to realistic looking fake real images that are more complex than virtual images, image generation is resource intensive, and the generated fake real images often include undesired hallucinated details. This is event when comparing the bottom two rows of FIG. 3 to each other.

Unsupervised real-to-virtual domain unification for end-to-end highway driving


A method and unit for flexing a flat blank having preformed fold lines; the flat blank is fed by a seat on a conveyor along a path through a flexing station, where a rigid folding body is rolled over the seat to fold the blank against two fixed folding spindles of the seat and about the preformed fold lines; and, on leaving the flexing station, the blank is allowed to spring back to its flat shape.

A rigid, hinged-lid cigarette packet comprises a cup-shaped bottom shell or container and a top lid joined to each other by a hinge. When the lid is in a closed position closing the cup-shaped bottom container, the packet is parallelepiped-shaped and defined laterally by two parallel, opposite (respectively front and rear) major lateral walls, and by two parallel, opposite minor lateral walls; and, between the major lateral walls and the minor lateral walls, are defined four longitudinal edges, which may be square, bevelled, or rounded (as described, for example, in Patent EP-A-0205766).
A rigid, hinged-lid packet of the type described above is normally produced from a flat, substantially rectangular cardboard blank having a number of preformed longitudinal and transverse fold lines, along which the blank is folded to form the packet.
In some cases, the longitudinal edges of the finished rigid packets fall short of the desired shape, and the lateral walls (particularly the major lateral walls) are not perfectly flat, on account of the tendency of the folded blank to spring back to its original flat shape. Such defects are particularly evident when the longitudinal edges are other than square, i.e. are rounded or bevelled. To reduce springback of the blank, it has therefore been proposed to equip packing machines with flexing units, which perform a pre-folding operation to flex the blanks along the fold lines.
One example of a flexing unit is given in Patent EP-B1-0391118, which describes a packing machine comprising a linear conveyor for feeding the blanks to a folding wheel; and fixed flexing guides located on opposite sides of the linear conveyor to fold portions of, and so flex, each blank. At the end of the fixed guides, each blank springs back to a substantially flat shape, and is then fed to the folding wheel. The flexing guides, however, are fairly bulky, can make maintenance of the conveyor fairly difficult, fail to provide for precise flexing, and, above all, subject the blanks to damage by friction.
Another example of a flexing unit is given in Patent US-A1-4708704, which relates to a packing machine in which a blank is fed to a flexing station located upstream from a packing line and having movable folding members for folding portions of the blank along respective longitudinal fold lines and against respective contoured spindles. The blank is then allowed to spring back to the flat shape before being fed to the packing line. Apart from being fairly complicated and bulky, the flexing station described above has the major drawback of requiring that the blank remain stationary in the same position for a given length of time, and as such involves major complications for use on a continuous packing machine.
By way of an alternative to flexing the blank, it has been proposed, as for example in Patent EP-B1-0205894, to shape the blank in a die negatively reproducing the desired shape of the finished packet. More specifically, the blank is fed into alignment with the die, and is made to adhere to the inner walls of the die by a contoured mating die. Tests show, however, that flexing the blanks provides for better quality packets than die-shaping.

Method and unit for flexing a flat blank for producing a rigid package


A transfer device includes an image carrier, a transfer roller, and a moving unit. The moving unit moves the transfer roller between a nip formation state in which the transfer roller forms a transfer nipping portion in contact with the image carrier and a separated state in which the transfer roller is separated from the image carrier. In a contact operation of bringing the transfer roller into contact with the image carrier via the recording medium, the moving unit moves the transfer roller toward the image carrier at a moving velocity slower than that in a pressing operation of generating a predetermined nipping pressure by further moving the transfer roller toward the image carrier after the contact operation. The moving unit causes the recording medium to enter the transfer nipping portion in the contact operation.

1. Technical Field
Exemplary embodiments of this disclosure relate to a transfer device incorporated in an electrophotographic image forming apparatus such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, or a multi-functional device having at least one of the foregoing capabilities, and an electrophotographic image forming apparatus incorporating the transfer device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, among color electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, there have been widely used an apparatus including a transfer device that transfers, onto a recording medium, toner images carried on a plurality of photoconductors and image carriers such as intermediate transfer bodies, for the purpose of high image quality and high reliability.
In a configuration using an intermediate transfer member, the transfer device secondarily transfers a toner image carried on the intermediate transfer member onto a recording medium by applying a secondary transfer bias when the recording medium passes through between the intermediate transfer member and a secondary transfer roller, in a state of a predetermined nipping pressure being generated in a secondary transfer nipping portion formed by the intermediate transfer member and the secondary transfer roller. On the other hand, when a secondary transfer is not performed in a waiting time of the image forming apparatus and in an adjustment operation inside the image forming apparatus, the secondary transfer roller is moved to be separated from the intermediate transfer member in order to prevent deterioration of the transfer device having the intermediate transfer member and the secondary transfer roller. There has been conventionally known a transfer device having a moving unit which moves (contacts and separates) the secondary transfer roller to a state of the secondary transfer nipping portion being formed by abutting the secondary transfer roller against the intermediate transfer member and a state of the intermediate transfer member and the secondary transfer nipping portion being separated.
For example, an image forming apparatus includes a transfer device (secondary transfer device) having the following moving unit (contact-and-separation unit) that moves the secondary transfer roller so that an intermediate transfer belt as a belt-shaped intermediate transfer member and the secondary transfer roller are contacted and separated. The moving unit includes a biasing unit that biases the secondary transfer roller toward the intermediate transfer belt, and cams that move the secondary transfer roller so that the secondary transfer roller is separated from the intermediate transfer belt against the bias force of the biasing unit and that the secondary transfer roller is brought into contact with the intermediate transfer belt by the bias force of the biasing unit. The cams are plate cams provided in a rotary shaft that rotatably supports a secondary-transfer opposing roller that opposes the secondary transfer roller via the intermediate transfer belt. A distance between an outer circumferential surface of each cam at a position where the cam opposes or is in contact with a follower (roller) provided on the rotary shaft of the secondary transfer roller and a rotation center of the cam (hereinafter, referred to as a "cam radius") is changed by rotation so that a position of the follower in contact with the cam is moved. By moving the follower in this way, the secondary transfer roller is moved by changing an inter-axis distance between the secondary transfer roller and the secondary-transfer opposing roller.
On an outer circumferential surface of the cams, the following three kinds of regions are formed. A cam radius opposing the follower presses the follower against the bias force of the biasing unit, and is formed in a predetermined cam radius in which the intermediate transfer belt and the secondary transfer roller separate from each other, and the cam radius becomes in contact with the follower. This is a first region. The cam radius is formed in a predetermined cam radius in which the intermediate transfer belt and the secondary transfer roller are abutted against each other by the bias force of the biasing unit, and the cam radius is separated from the follower. This is a second region. The cam radius changes between the first region where the cam radius is in a state of being in contact with the follower and the second region where the cam radius is in a state of being separated from the follower. This is a third region. The moving unit changes the cam radius on the outer circumferential surface opposing the follower by rotating the cam configured as described above, moves the secondary transfer roller by changing the inter-axis distance between the secondary transfer roller and the secondary-transfer opposing roller, and contacts and separates the intermediate transfer belt and the secondary transfer roller.
Before a front end of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion formed by the intermediate transfer belt and the secondary transfer roller, rotation of the cam for changing the outer circumferential surface opposing the follower from the first region to the second region is started at a certain angular velocity (velocity). After rotation starts, the angular velocity of the cam is accelerated to a target angular velocity by the time when the front end of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion. Thereafter, the target angular velocity is maintained, and the front end of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion in a state that the outer circumferential surface of the cam opposing the follower is in a state of being in the first region. By the rotation at the target angular velocity of the cam that changes the outer circumferential surface opposing the follower from the first region to the second region, the outer circumferential surface opposing the follower reaches the change region. Then, the inter-axis distance between the secondary transfer roller and the secondary-transfer opposing roller starts becoming short. When the inter-axis distance becomes shorter in this way, the intermediate transfer belt and the secondary transfer roller are abutted against each other via the recording medium, and a nipping pressure starts being generated in the secondary transfer nipping portion. Thereafter, the rotation of the cam at the target angular velocity is continued, and the secondary transfer roller moves toward the intermediate transfer belt to a position of generating a nipping pressure at which clear aggravation of a secondary transfer is not observed (hereinafter, referred to as "necessary nipping-pressure position"). Thereafter, a front end of the image-forming region of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion.
In this way, the nipping pressure is generated in the secondary transfer nipping portion after the front end of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion. Therefore, a rapid increase in the nipping pressure generated when a cardboard enters can be reduced more than that in a transfer device that makes the recording medium enter secondary transfer nipping portion in a state of the nipping pressure being generated. Before the front end of the image-forming region of the recording medium enters the secondary transfer nipping portion, the secondary transfer roller can be moved toward the intermediate transfer belt to the necessary nipping-pressure position. Therefore, by reducing a rapid increase in the nipping pressure generated when a cardboard enters more than an increase in a transfer device that makes the recording medium enter the secondary transfer nipping portion in a state of the nipping pressure being generated, generation of shock jitter can be suppressed and image quality reduction attributable to a transfer pressure shortage can be suppressed.
In recent years, there has been a growing demand by users for higher image quality in the image forming apparatus. Therefore, the transfer device that secondarily transfers a toner image on the intermediate transfer member after performing the primary transfer, to the recording medium, is also required to further enhance the suppression effect of suppressing image quality reduction such as shock jitter when making a cardboard and the like enter the secondary transfer nipping portion.

Transfer device and image forming apparatus incorporating same


The secure mobile communication relay of the present invention may comprise: a baseband processing unit for the baseband modulation/demodulation of the mobile communication signal transmitted between a terminal and a mobile communication network base station so as to extract baseband data; a control unit for analyzing the baseband data and permitting or rejecting the relay of the baseband data based on the result of a determination of whether or not a set security policy has been violated; a storage unit for storing information for setting the security policy; and a firewall function unit for determining, based on the instructions of the control unit, whether or not the packet data included in the baseband data violates the security policy.

In the related art, a mobile communication relay, which is mostly used in an indoor environment, where a signal of an external base station cannot be easily received (or detected), in order to provide a mobile communication service in such shadow area, performs a function of emitting a signal of a legally authorized low output level after receiving a signal of a base station or performs a simple signal relaying function of receiving a signal of a mobile communication terminal (or device) and delivering the received signal to the base station.
However, the recent core of mobile communication services and technologies have been shifting from audio services to wireless digital data services, and, in case of data services, shifting is being made from 3G services to 4G services, thereby evolving to a state allowing transmission to be realized with stability and at a high rate.
Additionally, with the rapid and extensive supply of smart phones, which are constantly connected to a communication network, and which are capable of processing advanced work tasks, classified information may be instantaneously leaked through the smart phone and the mobile communication, and, conversely, the possibility of malicious codes infiltrating into corporate networks via smart phones cannot be ruled out.
In such wireless environment, security systems, which are built within a company (or corporate organization) only for office computers and hardware used in internal networks, are vulnerable to the leakage of classified corporate information or security breach and to the spreading of malicious codes through smart phones and mobile communication services.

Secure mobile communication relay having firewall function


A smart watch and a method for measuring a pulse information are provided in the present disclosure. The smart watch includes a dial, a watchband, a blood vessel information collecting apparatus, and a processing apparatus. The watchband is connected with the dial. The blood vessel information collecting apparatus is disposed in the watchband and is configured to collect a blood vessel information from an inner side of a wrist of a user. The processing apparatus is connected with the blood vessel information collecting apparatus and is configured to receive and process the blood vessel information to obtain the pulse information of the user.

With the increasing development of wireless technology, smart wearable devices are gradually being favored. The development of smart watches is relatively mature. One of the main functions of the smart watches is to measure a heart rate (pulse) and provide a real-time detection for human health.
Currently, the main structure of the smart watches in the related art includes a dial, a watchband, and a measuring apparatus for measuring the pulse. The measuring apparatus is disposed on the back surface of the dial, that is, on the surface of the dial in contact with a skin of a wrist, and the heart rate of a user is measured through blood vessels in the back of the wrist.
The actual use indicates that an accuracy of measuring the heart rate by the smart watches in the related art is relatively low.

Smart watch and method for measuring pulse information


A head lamp in which the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern is designed to control light from a discharge bulb by a plurality of reflective surface elements constituting the reflective surface of a reflector even in such a state that the reflector has been subjected to aiming adjustment. A reflective surface element (22As1) which is positioned in the outermost side portion out of a plurality of reflective surface elements (22As) constituting the horizontal cut-line forming area (22A) of a reflector reflective surface (22) has a concave horizontal sectional shape and rays of the light reflected from the reflective surface element (22As1) are made to horizontally cross each other so as to form a luminous intensity distribution pattern (PA1). Thus, the reflector is aimed to the left and with the luminous intensity distribution pattern (PA1) as a leftover luminous intensity distribution pattern on a oblique cut line side with respect to the original luminous intensity distribution pattern when the light reflected from the left-hand end portion of the reflective surface element (22As1) is shaded by an extension (28), part of the hot zone (HZ) of a sublamp luminous intensity distribution pattern (P) is formed therewith.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle head lamp having a discharge bulb and more particularly to a head lamp for forming a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern.
2. Background
Since discharge bulbs are capable of high luminance irradiation, they have increasingly been adopted as light sources for vehicle head lamps in recent years.
In a head lamp equipped with such a discharge bulb, a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern, which is excellent in remote visual recognizability and has a wide is angle of irradiation, is obtainable when the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern has an oblique and a horizontal cut line.
There has been proposed a head lamp which is constructed so that a reflector having a reflective surface constituting of a plurality of reflective surface elements is used for forming such a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern, and the light reflected from the discharge bulb is controlled by each of the reflective surface elements.
FIG. 6(c) is a horizontal sectional view of three reflective surface elements 22As1', 22As2', 22As3' out of a plurality of reflective surface elements constituting a horizontal cut-line forming area 22A on the reflective surface of a reflector 16 having the aforementioned luminous intensity distribution control function; and FIG. 6(a) is a diagram illustrating a screen luminous intensity distribution patterns PA1', PA2', PA3' formed by the respective reflective surface elements 22As1', 22As2', 22As3'.
As shown in FIG. 6(b), the luminous intensity distribution patterns PA1', PA2', PA3' are those formed along a horizontal cut line CL2 and the left-hand end portions of the patterns are formed so as to extend up to the lower position of an oblique cut line CL1, whereby part of the hot zone (what is irradiated the brightest) HZ of the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern P for leftward luminous intensity distribution is formed.
The problems associated with this arrangement are as follows. As shown in FIG. 6(c), each of the reflective surface elements 22As1', 22As2', 22As3', . . . constituting the horizontal cut-line forming area 22A has a convex horizontal sectional shape. This is because the luminous intensity distribution design becomes relatively easy to make and the convex reflective surface is slightly more attractive than a concave reflective surface when the reflective surface is formed into the convex shape as the light reflected from each of the convex reflective surface elements is irradiated from the left-hand end portion to the left and also irradiated from the right-hand end portion to the right.
However, the following problems are posed when horizontal sectional shapes of the reflective surface elements 22As1', 22As2', 22As3', . . . are evenly made convex.
In a case where an extension 28 and the like are provided along the outer peripheral edge of the reflector 16 in front of the reflector 16 as shown in FIG. 6(c), for example, the light reflected from the left-hand end portion of the reflective surface element 22As1' positioned in the outermost side portion of the horizontal cut-line forming area 22A is shaded by the extension 28 and the like and is, therefore, not irradiated in the forward direction of the light fixture. Consequently, the luminous intensity distribution pattern PA1' formed-by the light reflected from the reflective surface element 22As1' becomes the pattern shown by the solid line with the slight wane of its left-hand end portion.
When the reflector 16 is aimed to the left, moreover, the light reflected from the left-hand end portion of the reflective surface element 22As1' is more shaded by the extension 28 and the like as shown in FIG. 6(c) and the luminous intensity distribution pattern PA1' formed by the light reflected from the reflective surface element 22As1' becomes a luminous intensity distribution pattern with the absence of the left half portion, as shown in FIG. 6(b). Thus, this luminous intensity distribution pattern PA1' contributes nothing to the formation of the hot zone HZ of the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern P. Further, the pattern PA1' results in the formation of a relative dark portion between the luminous intensity distribution pattern PA1' and the hot zone. Therefore, there arises a problem in that the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern P becomes a luminous intensity distribution pattern which makes it hard to visually recognize the remote forward field of the vehicle.
There have existed the foregoing problems in conventional head lamps using a halogen bulb, for example, as a light source but they still remain relatively minor. However, when a discharge bulb is employed as a light source, the aforementioned problems tend to become conspicuous because the discharge bulb forms an image entirely different in luminous intensity distribution characteristics from the halogen bulb.
More specifically, FIGS. 7(a) and (b) are diagrams illustrating luminous intensity distribution in the longitudinal direction of an image at a light source when light from the light source is reflected from one point of a reflector reflective surface 22 and emitted onto a front screen. As shown in FIG. 7(a), the luminous intensity distribution in the longitudinal direction of an image I' at the light source exhibits such characteristics that the luminous intensity gradually lowers in both its side portions when the light source is (the filament 18a' of) a halogen bulb. On the other hand, when the light source is (the light emitting portion (arc) 18a of) a discharge bulb, the luminous intensity distribution in the longitudinal direction of an image I at the light source exhibits such characteristics that the luminous intensity sharply drops at both its side portions as shown in FIG. 7(b).
When the image I having the luminous intensity distribution characteristics causing the luminous intensity in both end portions in the longitudinal direction to sharply drop is deflected or diffused along the horizontal cut line CL2 shown in FIG. 6(a), each of the luminous intensity distribution patterns PA1', PA2', . . . thus formed becomes a luminous intensity distribution pattern of high luminous intensity up to both end portions. In cooperation with extremely high power of the discharge bulb itself, both horizontal end portions of each of the luminous intensity distribution patterns PA1', PA2', . . . becomes very bright.
For the reason above, the dark portion formed between the luminous intensity distribution pattern PA1' and the hot zone HZ in FIG. 6(b) noticeably appears in comparison with the prior art head lamp using a halogen bulb or the like as a light source.
An object of the present invention made in view of the situation above is to provide a vehicle head lamp for forming a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern which is arranged so as to control light from a discharge bulb by a plurality of reflective surface elements constituting a reflector reflective surface, the head lamp making obtainable a desired sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern while the reflector is being subjected to aiming adjustment.
In order to accomplish the above object of the present invention, a novel arrangement has been made for the arrangement of a reflective surface element which is positioned in the outermost side portion of a horizontal cut-line forming area.
According to the present invention, a vehicle head lamp comprising a discharge bulb and a reflector having a reflective surface constituting of a plurality of reflective surface elements for reflecting light from the discharge bulb forward so as to form a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern having an oblique and a horizontal cut line by controlling the light reflected from each of the reflective surface elements, is characterized in that (1) the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion out of the plurality of reflective surface elements constituting a horizontal cut-line forming area on the reflective surface has a concave horizontal sectional shape and that (2) the reflective surface element adjacent to the inside of the reflective surface element in the outermost side portion has a convex horizontal sectional shape.
On condition that the reflective surface element "adjacent to the inside of the reflective surface element" in the outermost side portion has a convex horizontal sectional shape, it is not always necessary for (another or a plurality of other) reflective surface elements, which are positioned further inward and constitute the horizontal cut-line forming area, to have the convex horizontal sectional shape.
Since the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion out of the plurality of reflective surface elements constituting the horizontal cut-line forming area of the reflector reflective surface has the concave horizontal sectional shape according to the present invention, rays of light incident on the reflective surface element from the discharge bulb are reflected forward in such a way as to cross each other.
Consequently, even though the light reflected from the outer end portion of the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion is shaded by the extension and the like when the reflector is aimed outward, the luminous intensity distribution pattern formed by the reflected light emitted from the other portion of the reflective surface element in the forward direction of the lighting fixture without being shaded by the extension and the like becomes a luminous intensity distribution pattern with the leftover portion on the oblique cut-line side with respect to the original luminous intensity distribution pattern, so that this luminous intensity distribution pattern forms part of the hot zone of the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern and prevents a dark portion from being formed between the luminous intensity distribution pattern and the hot zone. Therefore, there is no possibility of allowing the formation of the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern which makes it hard to visually recognize the remote forward field of the vehicle even at the time of aiming.
Thus, in the head lamp for forming the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern so arranged as to control light from the discharge bulb by the plurality of reflective surface elements constituting the reflector reflective surface according to the present invention applied for patent, a desired sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern is obtainable even in such a state that the reflector has been subjected to aiming adjustment.
With the arrangement above, the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion and the reflective surface element (the second reflective surface element) adjacent to the inside of the reflective surface element in the outermost side portion are set to have substantially the same horizontal diffusion angle of reflection, whereby luminous intensity distribution control is made possible in that the second reflective surface element is used to form a luminous intensity distribution pattern to be formed originally by the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion and with respect to the luminous intensity distribution pattern formed by the reflective surface element in the outermost side portion, it is utilized additionally for the hot-zone reinforcing purpose. Thus, a stable sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern is formable, irrespective of the aiming position.
Incidentally, with respect to the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion out of the plurality of reflective surface elements constituting the oblique cut-line forming area on the reflective surface, the luminous intensity distribution pattern formed by the light reflected from the reflective surface element generally forms part of the hot zone of the sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern. Even though the light reflected from the outer end portion is shaded by the extension and the like at the time of outward aiming of the reflector because the reflective surface element is allowed to have the convex horizontal sectional shape, no dark portion may be formed between the hot zone and the luminous intensity distribution pattern formed by the reflected light emitted from the other portion of the reflective surface element in the forward direction of the lighting fixture without being shaded by the extension and the like. However, according to the present invention, the concave horizontal sectional shape of the reflective surface element causes the portion on the horizontal cut line side to be left as a luminous intensity distribution pattern with respect to the original luminous intensity distribution pattern at the time of outward aiming of the reflector to ensure that a sub-lamp luminous intensity distribution pattern for making it easy to visually recognize the remote forward field of the vehicle is secured even at the time of aiming.
When the reflector is aimed outward, a body side wall portion, a rim and any other members other than the extension may be considered as an object which shades the light reflected from the outer end portion of the reflective surface element positioned in the outermost side portion of the horizontal or oblique cut-line forming area. However, the extension is often provided along the outer peripheral edge of the reflector and even in this case, the reflected light tends to be shaded at the time of outward aiming. Therefore, according to the present invention, the constitution of the present invention is particularly effective when such an extension is provided in front of and along the outer peripheral edge of the reflector.


An apparatus, method and system for contextually aware monitoring of a supply chain are disclosed. In some implementations, contextually aware monitoring can include monitoring of the supply chain tradelane with tracking devices including sensors for determining location, velocity, heading, vibration, acceleration (e.g., 3D acceleration), or any other sensor that can monitor the environment of the shipping container to provide contextual awareness. The contextual awareness can be enabled by geofencing and recursive algorithms, which allow dynamic modification of the tracking device behavior. Dynamic modification can reduce performance to save power (e.g., save battery usage) and lower costs. Dynamic modification can increase performance where it matters in the supply chain for improved reporting accuracy or frequency or recognition of supply chain events. Dynamic modification can adapt performance such as wireless communications to the region or location of the tracking device.

A wireless tracking device or "tag" can use various technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), to track and report movements of an asset (e.g., a shipping container) on which the device is mounted. Conventional wireless monitoring devices report locations to a tracking service on a set schedule, regardless of whether the location data is needed by users of the tracking service.


A transformer, a method for manufacturing the transformer and a chip are provided. The method includes: a first primary tuning capacitor and/or a first secondary tuning capacitor are/is arranged in an area enclosed by a primary coil and a secondary coil, wherein the first primary tuning capacitor includes more than one second primary tuning capacitor, and the first secondary tuning capacitor includes more than one second secondary tuning capacitor; the more than one second primary tuning capacitor are connected in parallel, and the more than one second secondary tuning capacitor are connected in parallel; and the more than one second primary tuning capacitor and the at least one wire between the more than one second primary tuning capacitor, and/or the more than one second secondary tuning capacitor and the at least one wire between the more than one second secondary tuning capacitor form a partially-shielded network or part of the partially-shielded network.

A differential circuit has a good immunization against electromagnetic interference, power supply noise and ground noise and has a good performance in suppressing even harmonic, therefore, a circuit of a differential structure becomes more and more popular in a radio-frequency circuit, such as a low-noise amplifier, a frequency mixer and a power amplifier. In an RF communication system, signals sent and received by an antenna are single-ended signals, so that a transformer or a transformer-type balun (balanced to unbalanced), as a module for conversion between a single-end signal and a differential signal, becomes essential in an existing RF circuit system. In a receiver, a transformer converts a single-end signal received by an antenna into a differential signal, and then transmits the differential signal to a low-noise amplifier of a differential structure for amplification; and in a transmitter, a transformer converts a differential signal output by a power amplifier of a differential structure into a single-end signal and then transmits the single-end signal to an antenna for transmission. In consideration of the cost and area of a chip and other aspects, the transformer is usually integrated on a same chip with a receiving/transmitting module.
One of the most important performances of an on-chip transformer, which serves as a passive power transmission module, is insertion loss. When the transformer is located at the front end of a low-noise amplifier of a receiver as a conversion module for a single-end signal and a differential signal, the insertion loss of the transformer is equal to a noise coefficient. If the insertion loss of the transformer is too much, the sensitivity of the whole receiver may be reduced greatly. When the transformer is located at the front end of the transmitter as a conversion module for a differential signal and a single-end signal, the insertion loss of the transformer is equal to the power loss of a transmitted signal. To meet the power requirement of the transmitted signal, the insertion loss is as small as possible.
The insertion loss of the transformer mainly depends on three factors: a coupling coefficient between coils, a quality factor (Q value) of a coil inductor and an input-output return loss, wherein the coupling coefficient can be improved greatly by optimizing the winding way of a transformer coil. For example, the coupling coefficient can be above 0.9 if a laminated structure is adopted; and the input-output return loss can be improved by a tuning capacitor and optimizing the turns ratio of the coil. Under the current process condition, the quality factor of the coil inductor causes the severest impact on the insertion loss of the transformer.
The quality factor of an on-chip coil inductor may be affected by a plurality of factors, one of which is the eddy current loss of the inductor. An eddy current is an induced ring current generated by a magnetic field of the inductor on a conductor, such as the induced ring current on a substrate, a metal wire and a component. Generally speaking, the distance between the conductor and the transformer coil is smaller, the loss of the induced eddy current is more serious. At present, to reduce the influence of the conductor on the self-inductance quality factor of the transformer coil, most of the metal wires and components on the chip keep far away from the coil; thus, the transformer and its surrounding blank area occupy a large area of the chip, and the utilization ratio of the area of the whole chip is very low.
A multi-mode multi-band system is the development trend of the current mobile communication system, transmitting and receiving modules in different frequency bands share one or more antennas, and the transmitting and receiving modules in each frequency band need correspond to one transformer. In consideration of the existing process condition, the cost of the chip and other aspects, the area of the on-chip transformer should not be too large and is usually below 400 um*400 um, so that the self-inductance value of the transformer coil is very small. When the transformer works in a low frequency band range, such as in a frequency band of hundreds of megahertz, its input and output ports need to be connected with a large tuning capacitor in parallel to enable the whole transformer to resonate in a low-frequency working frequency band.
In addition, if the receiving or transmitting module of each frequency band corresponds to one transformer-type balun, the area of the whole chip is very large, accordingly, the cost of the chip is increased greatly. At present, to reduce the number of the transformers on the chip, a common method is to connect a tuning capacitor with the input end and the output end of the transformer in parallel respectively, and a same transformer can work in different frequency bands by changing the value of the tuning capacitor, so as to implement the multiplexing of the same transformer in different frequency bands.
On the whole, the transformer and the tuning capacitor in the multi-mode multi-band system occupy a very large area of the chip, and the Q value of the coil inductor of the transformer is small, so, some measures are needed to be taken to reduce the area of the chip that the transformer and its tuning capacitor occupy and improve the Q value of the coil inductor of the transformer.

Transformer, method for manufacturing transformer and chip


A service request interrupt router having an interrupt controller mapped to an Interrupt Service Provider (ISP) having virtual ISPs; Service Request Nodes (SRNs) configured to convert respective interrupt signals to corresponding service requests, wherein each of the SRNs is configured to direct its service request to one of the virtual ISPs; and an arbitrator configured to arbitrate among the virtual ISPs in a time-sliced manner, and for each of the virtual ISPs, to arbitrate which of the service requests directed thereto has a highest priority.

A service request Interrupt Router (IR) is an interface between on-chip resources and Interrupt Service Providers (ISPs). During operation, the on-chip resources transmit to the IR service request interrupt signals. The IR converts the interrupt signals into service requests for the ISPs by adding control information, such as priority and ISP assignment, and for each ISP, arbitrates among pending service requests mapped thereto based on assigned priorities. The ISPs then respond to the service requests. An ISP may be, for example, a Central Processing Unit (CPU) or a Direct Memory Access (DMA).

Service request interrupt router for virtual interrupt service providers


Circuit feature casting for manufacture observation is disclosed herein. According to an aspect, a method includes applying a molding material to a feature of a circuit to substantially cover the feature with the molding material. The method also includes curing the molding material. Further, the method includes separating the molding material from the feature to reveal a cast of the feature of the circuit.

Through-hole technology is a commonly used mounting technique used for electronic components that involves the use of leads on the components that are inserted into holes formed in printed circuit boards (PCBs) and soldered to pads on the opposite side. Through-holes can be either plated or non-plated. A difference between non-plated through-hole and plated through-hole (PTH) is the presence of plated copper inside the hole barrel. PTHs provide a conductive path between circuits on the multi-layer board (MLB) and devices and connectors attached to the MLB by solder or mechanical pressfit insertion. The reliability and performance of this electrical path can be impacted by the quality (thickness and roughness) of the PTH.
Failure of a PTH constitutes an electrical discontinuity that can be caused by circumferential barrel cracks, land corner cracks, separation of lands from a multi-layer board surface, and/or shearing of internal traces. Such failures can result from the thermomechanical stresses caused by the large differences in the coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) between the PTH plating materials and the MLB in the thickness direction of the MLB. Some failure mechanisms include ductile fracture of the plating caused by thermal shock during soldering, fatigue fracture of the plating caused by cyclic temperature variations (operational and environmental loads), and interfacial de-adhesion between the plating and the surrounding MLB caused by low temperatures.
For PCB manufacturers, it can be useful to observe through holes prior to plating. It can also be useful to observe various other results of manufacture. A PCB may be flat or cross sectioned such that the through hole can be viewed for defects. As a result, the PCB is significantly damaged and thus cutting is undesirable. For at least this reason, improved techniques are needed for observing through holes and other circuit features.

Feature casting for manufacture observation

International Business Machines Corporation


A resolver includes an excitation signal generator which generates a sine wave and a cosine wave as an excitation signal, a rotor which receives the excitation signal, and a rotary transformer which detects an output signal of the rotor, the resolver being arranged to detect angle information of the rotor. The resolver further includes a controller which outputs angle information at a zero cross point of the output signal detected by the rotary transformer. The resolver can provide high detection accuracy and be low in cost.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an angle detection device to be used for detecting rotation angles of an output shaft of a vehicle motor.
2. Description of Related Art
A high-power brushless motor has heretofore been used in a hybrid electric vehicle and an electric vehicle. To control such brushless motor mounted in the hybrid electric vehicle, it is necessary to sense an exact rotation position (angle) of an output shaft of a motor. This is because the rotation position of a rotor has to be precisely sensed to control switching of energization to each coil of a stator.
Regarding a vehicle, particularly, cogging causes poor drivability and hence a reduction in the cogging is demanded. To this end, accurate switching of energization is strongly requested.
For detection of the angle of a vehicle motor shaft, a resolver is used because it has various functions such as high-temperature resistance, noise resistance, vibration resistance, and high-humidity resistance. The resolver is built in the motor and directly mounted to the output shaft of the motor.
One of resolvers of this type is a variable reluctance resolver (VR resolver). The VR resolver is a resolver adapted to utilize changes in efficiency of a transformer caused by variations in a gap provided in a magnetic path. By designing the shape of the rotor so that the gap periodically changes relative to the rotation angle, an angle output can be detected without windings on a rotator side.
The VR resolver includes a stator in which an excitation coil and a detection coil are arranged and a rotor placed with its outer periphery being close to both coils. The detection coil is constituted by two coils whose phases are shifted 90° from each other. The excitation coil is energized with a sine wave AC current of several KHz. Two coils of the detection coil output induction voltage through the outer periphery of the rotor. Based on output amplitudes of the two induction voltages, the angle can be detected.
On the other hand, in a resolver using a phase difference method for detecting a rotation angle based on a phase difference of detection signals, a phase difference time will change due to temperature change or the like of the resolver, which deteriorates angle detection accuracy.
To solve this problem, JP11 (1999)-118520A proposes a method of detecting a rotation angle based on an amplitude ratio between detection signals at a certain time. This resolver of amplitude conversion type can sense an exact rotation angle at arbitrary timing and therefore is adopted as a resolver used in a hybrid electric vehicle.


An apparatus using piezoelectric effect is provided for measuring an angle between a reference plane and a plane to be measured. Such an apparatus can be used to measure the inclination of a plane or for leveling purpose. The main characteristics of the apparatus are simple in structure, no limitation in the measurement range, and less limitation to the environment. The apparatus also has the following advantages: compact, quick and accurate measurement, easy for multiaxial measurement.

Inclination measurement is used to determine an inclination of a plane with respect to a known reference plane or a reference coordinate. Leveling is an inclination measurement method with the reference plane perpendicular to the earth's gravitational field, i.e., the horizontal plane. Such a quick and accurate method for measuring an inclination of a machine or an instrument is widely used among the low-cost consumers such as carpenters, and in large industries.
Most of the known inventions for inclination measurement are similar to a balance. When the balance is placed at different inclined planes, the angular difference of the equilibrium positions of the balance's arm under the gravity is the basis for measurement. It can be further classified as follows: (1) measurement of the position of a gas-liquid interface. The liquid acts as a balance's arm, and the gas-liquid interface acts as an indicator. Traditionally, the position of the interface is measured by naked eyes. Either optical reflection from the interface or a capacitance method is adopted in recent inventions. (2) measurement of the relative position of a fixed arm/plate and a mobile arm/plate. The indicator of the mobile arm is parallel to the gravitational field, and the fixed arm is parallel to the outer case of the inclinometer, i.e., parallel to the plane to be measured. The angle between the arms is measured directly by a mechanical means with linkage mechanism, or indirectly by means of capacitance change or optical path change.
The U.S. patents related to the inclination measurement having the above discussed principles are: Butler U.S. Pat. No. 4,912,662, Franklin U.S. Pat. No. 4,942,668, Scholian U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,162, Davis U.S. Pat. No. 5,170,567, Carlson U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,753, Yaniger U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,671, and Piske U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,951.
There are three major disadvantages in the conventional methods. First, the measuring range of the inclination is usually limited to .+-.45.degree., because the measuring arm is usually supported in the middle as a balance. Theoretically, the arm at a .+-.45.degree. position is a metastable point. Thus, an accurate measurement near .+-.45.degree. is difficult. Although by using an additional set of sensing unit parallel to the gravitational field, i.e., perpendicular to the original arm for measuring a higher angle can solve this problem partly, the inclinometer is either less accurate in measurement or complicated in structure. It is also difficult for overhead measurement. Second, fluid is used either directly as an arm, for increasing the differences in dielectric constant for capacitance measurement, or for increasing the differences in reflection index when measuring the optical path. The conventional methods limit the inclinometer to be used in a certain environment, and the inclinometer is not suitable to use at a high(low) temperature, at an overhead position or in vacuum. Third, only the inclined angle along one axis which is usually the balance's arm can be obtained by each measurement. The so-called multiaxial measurement cannot be performed directly.
It should be indicated that a piezoelectric resonator to transform and magnify the input signal via electromechanical coupling between the input end and the output end is disclosed in the patents, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,736,446. But the reference does not teach to use a piezoelectric resonator as an inclinometer to measure an inclined angle by measuring the vibrating amplitude as disclosed in the present invention.
The use of piezoelectric actuators for changing the angular position of a tilting mirror of a light deflection apparatus has been described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,660,941. But the angular position of the mirror plane in the reference is measured by a capacitance method, which is different from the present invention.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,843,887, a piezoelectric sensor is used as a strain gauge. A signal induced by the piezoelectric sensor under an applied stress is transformed into a strain value. The present invention uses the induced signal of a piezoelectric body under applied gravitational force to obtain a plane inclination. Accordingly, it is different from the reference.

Method and apparatus for inclination measurement using piezoelectric effect

Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology


A process for manufacturing a composition useful as a soap or cosmetic comprising: pulverizing sillimanite of about 50 weight percent, zeolite of about 5 weight percent, topaz of about 20 weight percent, trona of about 5 weight percent and hematite of about 20 weight percent as the first step to about 325 mesh; putting the pulverized ingredients of the composition into an internal furnace of zeolite; placing kaolinite between the inner surface of the electric heating plate and the outer surface of the internal furnace; heating for about nine days at about 1500.degree. C. by means of the electric heating plate; pulverizing again the ingredients of the composition having had thermal deformation from the internal furnace to at least 900 mesh; filtering the ingredients of the composition with water through a sieve of 900 mesh; precipitating for about three days said filtered solution; and drying the precipitate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for manufacturing a composition useful as soap or cosmetic that emits lots of far infrared rays and negative ion.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nowadays, the industry of cosmetics has been highly developed and cosmetics for a man, woman and special purpose were produced. The cosmetics are applied not only to face but also to each region of the human body so that various nutrients and pharmacological ingredients contained in the cosmetics can be absorbed through the skin. Namely, the cosmetics are used to achieve useful effects for the human body.
The cosmetics intend to maintain the elastic skin and add to the beauty. Also, the cosmetics are used to achieve the user's incidental effects for emitting fragrance by mixing various perfumeries to the cosmetics. However, there were no cosmetics that could be health promoting for the human body. It is customary for women not to use the cosmetics when they are in poor condition.

Process for manufacturing a composition useful as soap or cosmetic


A method and device for determining whether to send a measurement report to a serving cell and determining when an inter-cell coordination procedure is likely to achieve coordination gain are disclosed. According to one aspect, a method includes performing received signal quality measurements of the serving cell and a plurality of neighboring cells. The method also includes calculating a UE metric based on the received signal quality measurements of a plurality of interfering cells and based on a scaling parameter. The method further includes comparing the calculated UE metric to a threshold to determine whether to send the measurement report to the serving cell.

In a typical wireless cellular network, such as 3rd generation partnership project long term evolution (3GPP LTE), when deployed as a single frequency network (SFN), the transmissions from various cells and user equipment (UE) should be properly coordinated to maximize the overall system capacity and coverage. A cell may be defined as a coverage area provided by one or more antennas of a base station. Each base station may provide coverage for a plurality of cells via individual cell-site equipment with a common interface to an evolved packet core (EPC). For example, a base station may have antennas affixed to a tower, each of one or more antennas providing coverage for a different geographic area or cells accessible from the tower. A cell may be a serving cell or a neighboring cell. The serving cell is the cell for which the UE is radio resource controlled (RRC) or currently camped, whereas neighboring cells are nearby cells. Note that some cells may overlap and the signals transmitted in one cell may interfere with signals transmitted in another cell. The interfering cells may belong to the same base station or different base stations. Thus, in cases of cell overlap, UEs may receive signals from a plurality of cells and these signals may interfere, especially if the signals of the different cells are transmitted on the same frequency, which is the case for SFNs.
Inter-cell coordination procedures may be employed to improve signal quality experienced by a UE. Examples of inter-cell coordination procedures include inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC), down link (DL) and up link (UL) coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission and communication through dual-connectivity. These procedures have been studied extensively as part of the third generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) advanced standardization activity. Such procedures shall be referred to herein collectively as inter-cell coordination procedures. It is known that system capacity on the down link (DL) can be improved by these procedures by constraining the inter-cell interference experienced by the UE or by increasing the useful signal content of the signal received by the UE.
For ICIC, the radio resources are coordinated between the neighboring cells such that the inter-cell interference experienced by the mobile station or UE is minimized. The coordination may include reducing the transmit power or muting specified radio resources on an interfering cell. Similarly on the up link (UL), the transmissions from the UEs can be scheduled on specific resources such that the interference at a serving cell can be reduced.
For CoMP, the transmissions from the cells can be coordinated such that the combined signal from these cells provides better signal quality at the UE. Similarly, a UE transmission can be scheduled to be received at multiple network nodes such that the received signals can be combined coherently to improve the received signal quality.
For dual connectivity, where a UE is allowed active association with multiple cells at the same time, the serving cell can dynamically select one of the cells as the serving cell to efficiently offload the data and control signaling. In this case the mobility between the coordinating cells will be very efficient.
In each of these cases, the UEs and cells which may benefit from inter-cell coordination should be identified. UEs which are at the cell edge can typically obtain gains from inter-cell coordination, thus improving cell coverage. UEs near a center of a cell may also obtain gains, thus improving cell capacity. In a cellular deployment, the area over which a UE can be served with acceptable signal quality without triggering a handoff is referred to as the coverage. System capacity is another metric can be used to measure the efficiency of a cellular deployment and is defined as the throughput in bits per second that can be achieved over a carrier. For example, the coverage can be specified by a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR), Γ5, where Γ5 is determined such that 5% of connected UEs experience a received SINR of less than or equal to Γ5, whereas system throughput can be specified by a SINR, Γ50, where Γ50 is determined such that 50% of connected UEs experience a received signal to noise ratio of less than Γ50. The identification of UEs that may benefit from inter-cell coordination may be based on measurement reports sent to a base station by a UE. Generation and transmission of a measurement report from a UE may be based on measured signal quality received by the UE from neighboring cells.
Ideally, the number of measurement reports from a UE should be triggered by an event such that bandwidth consumption on the uplink from the UE to a serving cell is minimized. Further, the event that triggers transmission of a measurement report should be such that transmission of the measurement report occurs only if the UE can benefit from an inter-cell coordination technique.
In existing long term evolution (LTE) standards, the user equipment (UE) makes measurements of signal quality of signals received from a plurality of neighboring cells. The measurements are triggered based on network defined events. A list of such events is predefined in the standards, using reference signal received power (RSRP) and reference signal received quality (RSRQ). For example, the following RSRP-based metric can be used to trigger a measurement report:Γ=(Rl−R0)>η  (1)where Ro is the RSRP of the serving cell and R1 is the RSRP of the strongest interfering cell, as these two parameters are measured at the UE. The threshold, η, is set to regulate the number of reports sent by a UE. When the difference between R1 and Ro is below the threshold, η, the UE reports the RSRP measurements of Ro and an ordered list of RSRPs of a predetermined number of neighbor cells to the serving cell. The number of RSRPs of the neighbor cells is configured by the serving cell. The RSRPs of the neighbor cells are ordered in decreasing order of RSRP. The UE may also report RSRQs of the serving and neighbor cells, as specified in the serving cell's measurement report configuration. For inter-cell coordination, the threshold, η, may be set to a negative value to ensure that the decision to perform inter-cell coordination does not interfere with a handover decision. Note that the above metric may be modified using RSRQ instead of RSRP. However, the performance results follow the same trend since RSRQ can be interpreted as a scaled version of the RSRP. Herein, RSRP measurements and RSRQ measurements will be referred to as signal quality measurements. As specified in the 3GPP TS 36.331: Radio Resource Control specification, other parameters such as hysteresis, frequency and neighbor cell specific offsets can also be included in the metric computed at the UE.
As depicted in FIG. 1, the inter-cell coordination region 2 may be triggered whenever the RSRP with respect to the neighbor cell is within η deci-Bels (dB) of the RSRP with respect to the serving cell. The margin, η, determines the number of measurement events reported by the UEs to the serving cell. The inter-cell coordination can be extended until the handover is triggered, i.e., inter-cell coordination can be operational when the RSRP of a neighbor cell is within [R0−ηH, R0+η], where ηH represents the RSRP threshold for handover. FIG. 2 shows results of gain in geometry that can be obtained at the UE by enabling an inter-cell coordination process, e.g., muting the radio resources from the dominant interfering cells. The term "geometry" is a term of art that relates to long term signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) when all cells are transmitting at a constant power level. A gain in geometry is related to a gain in SINR.
The cumulative distribution functions (CDF) shown in FIG. 2 expectedly demonstrate that there is significant gain by muting the dominant interfering cells. Curve number 4 is the CDF when there is no ICIC, solid curves numbered 6 are the CDF for one, two and three interferers using limited feedback, i.e., when the threshold, η, is used to limit measurement reports from the UEs. The dashed curves numbered 8 are the CDF for one, two and three interferers suppressed using 100% feedback, i.e., when the measurements reports are sent periodically from all UEs without restriction. Note that the gains obtained by limited measurement feedback (curves numbered 6) are confined to the lower geometry region. In the simulation results of FIG. 2, η is set to 4 dB, which corresponds to 25-30% UE measurement feedback. Therefore, it is evident that the currently defined triggering event of equation 1, may be ideally suited for handoff decisions—such as identifying UEs experiencing inferior channel conditions—but is less desirable for triggering inter-cell coordination. Thus, events defined by current LTE standards may generate unnecessary measurement reports and/or the reported measurements may not be useful to exploit the full benefits of inter-cell coordination.

Measurement report triggering for inter-cell coordination in cellular deployment