An electronic stethoscope having several modes of operation to process acoustic signals to provide filtered signals useful for diagnosis. In one mode of operation the stethoscope substantially provides only acoustic signals generated by biological activity of the heart. In another mode of operation, the acoustic stethoscope substantially provides only acoustic signals generated by biological activity of the lungs. In another mode of operation, the electronic stethoscope disproportionately amplifies abnormal heart sounds and normal heart sounds to enhance diagnosis of heart abnormalities. The electronic stethoscope is operated in a manner similar to a conventional acoustic stethoscope and has similar spectral characteristics, thus allowing a user with acoustic stethoscope experience to easily use the electronic stethoscope.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to stethoscopes used for diagnostic purposes. More particularly, the present invention relates to electronic stethoscopes and methods for processing signals in electronic stethoscopes for diagnostic purposes.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Electronic stethoscopes are known in the art. Examples of electronic stethoscopes may be seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,247,324, 4,071,694, 4,170,717, 4,254,302, 4,438,772, 4,528,690, 4,534,058, and 4,618,986.
Despite the availability of electronic stethoscopes, they do not appear to be widely used by medical personnel, such as doctors, nurses, and emergency medical technicians. Although the reasons for this lack of acceptance are not completely clear, one problem with some presently available electronic stethoscopes may be that they do not reproduce acoustic signals resulting from the operation of various body organs in a manner that is familiar to a trained user. Other problems with some presently available electronic stethoscopes are that they consume too much power, weigh too much, are too large, or require a user to change the manner in which the stethoscope is used as compared to a conventional acoustic stethoscope.
Medical personnel learn the art of auscultation primarily through the use of an acoustic stethoscope and are trained to hear normal and abnormal heart and lung sounds based on their specific acoustic qualities and their timing relative to other biological sounds. Acoustic stethoscopes thus have particular characteristics whose effect upon the acoustic signals heard by the medical personnel become familiar and are relied upon for diagnosis. Some conventional electronic stethoscopes do not reproduce heart and lung sounds with the same spectral characteristics as acoustic stethoscopes.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide an electronic stethoscope that overcomes at least the above-discussed disadvantages.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for processing acoustic signals generated by biological activity to provide enhanced diagnostic information.


A method of cleaning a media preheater that is positioned in the media path of a printer is disclosed. The media preheater has a fixed heater and a movable plate array biased toward the heater such that printer media passing between the plate array and the heater is compressed therebetween and heated. The preheater may be positioned upstream of a print head and downstream of a media advancing mechanism in the media path. More than one plate may be provided in the plate array to accommodate non-planarity of the heater or the printing media. The method elevates the temperature of the contact surface of the preheater to a cleaning temperature that is greater than the operating temperature and then passes a chase sheet over the surface to remove contamination from the preheater surface.

Some conventional printer systems require printing media to be uniformly preheated prior to printing to provide an aesthetic and durable output. Typical heaters employ radiant or convective heat sources adjacent to the paper path and "upstream" of the print head. These existing heaters have several disadvantages. A lack of uniformity in heating can cause non uniform printer output, and media warping or cockle. Warping can further aggravate non uniformity by bringing some portions of the medium closer to the heat source than other portions.
Existing heaters are less thermally efficient than is desirable, requiring high power consumption to preheat a sheet to a given temperature, and generating excess heat that must be dissipated. The excess heat increases the environmental temperature of other components in the printer housing, thereby threatening component reliability and operating life. Excess heat can require additional time for the temperature to stabilize in the printer to obtain uniform print output. In addition, excess heat is unwelcome in an office environment, and may pose a safety hazard or require cool-down delays for internal servicing of a printer.
These problems are solved in the design of the present invention by providing a media preheater having at least one movable platelet cooperative with a fixed heater plate.

Method of cleaning a printer media preheater


An improved injection molding system having gas injected through an injection pin associated with an ejector pin. The injection pin is movable between a retracted position at which it is sealed from the mold cavity, to an extended position where it delivers gas into the cavity. In a first embodiment, the injection pin is powered by a cylinder to move between the extended and retracted positions. In a second embodiment, the injection pin is actuated by the pressurized gas. The improved system injects gas into a mold cavity without the requirement of a separate injection aperture. Further, the inventive injection pins have outlet ports sealed from the flow of plastic until the injection pin is extended to deliver the gas.

This application in general relates to a unique system for injecting pressurized gas or fluid into a mold cavity in a plastic injection molding system.
Various methods are known to inject gas into a plastic injection molding system to form hollow portions within a part. Typically, gas is injected through an injection pin extending through an opening in the mold. The prior art injection pin sometimes extended through a separate gas aperture, which required another opening in the mold. This complicated the structure of the mold. One alternative in the prior art was to inject the gas through the plastic injection opening, or sprue. This complicated both the structure of the plastic injection opening and the flow of plastic into the system. Further, such structure often resulted in the injection pin gas passages becoming clogged. It would be desirable to reduce the number of openings in the mold body to reduce the complexity of the mold, and further to result in a smoother surface for the parts formed within the mold.
Prior art injection pins typically have a small gas passage leading into the mold. Molten plastic may enter and clog this passage. The gas passage may have a check valve disposed in it to prevent back flow. This complicates the structure of the injection pin and does not prevent plastic from entering and clogging the tip of the gas passage.
It is known to mount a movable injection pin within a mold that moves from a retracted position outside of the mold cavity, to an extended position within the cavity to inject the pressurized gas. With such systems, the injection pin typically moves through a separate aperture in the mold, thus requiring an additional mold opening. Further, such injection pins typically have a gas outlet at an axial end of the pin which faces the mold cavity. The fluent plastic entering the cavity may clog this open end of the injection pin.

Retractable gas injection pin for an injection mold


A first distribution of cases over a first group of categories is received. A categorizer trained using a search-and-confirm technique classifies the cases into a second group of categories. A second distribution of the cases over the second group of categories is generated using results of the classifying. The first and second distributions are compared to identify differences between the first and second distributions.

An organization (such as a business organization, educational organization, or government organization) involved in providing services or products to customers or other users usually experience various customer support issues. For example, whenever a new product is introduced into a market, some users will encounter difficulties due to actual defects of the product or due to users being unable to figure out how to properly use the product. There are numerous other examples of problems that can be encountered with respect to products or services provided by an organization.
In the customer service call center context, customer support representatives (or call agents) are asked to choose categories, from a set of predefined categories (referred to as "issue paths"), to associate with a customer call at the time that the call occurs. Typically, the customer support representative is asked to label each case from a selection of menu choices (that correspond to the issue paths).
The issue paths available to the customer support representatives may either be inaccurate or incomplete, which may lead to improper categorizations of calls received by the customer support representatives. Also, customer support representatives themselves may be improperly trained or incented to make the right choices with respect to which issue paths should be selected for received calls.

Comparing distributions of cases over groups of categories

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A compressed air safety gun for use underwater, having a handle and an elongate barrel extending therefrom, the handle including a valve therein being operable between open and closed position, by a trigger on the handle. A substantially flexible pneumatic hose connects at opposite ends between the handle and a pressurized air supply source for directing pressurized air flow to the valve in the handle, wherein operation of the trigger to open valve serves to direct the flow of pressurized air through the gun barrel and out from a distal end thereof. A coupling connectable to the distal end of the barrel is structured and disposed for attachment of various tools thereto, such as a nozzle for directing the flow of air from the barrel end.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an underwater compressed air safety gun for use by scuba divers or others swimming underwater. Since scuba divers or other underwater swimmers carry their own source of compressed air for breathing, it is convenient for an underwater air safety gun to operate directly from such source of compressed air, connecting the air gun to the first stage of a regulator extending from a compressed air tank. The underwater air gun is provided with a coupling device at its distal end for the attachment of various tools, such as a nozzle to direct the flow of the pressurized air. A diver can use the underwater air safety gun, for example, to assist with harvesting lobsters; by inserting its distal end and a portion of its barrel into a lobster's hiding place, by releasing some pressurized air therein and by thus frightening the lobster out of hiding.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It has long been known that in tropical waters, divers have a difficult time catching lobsters, which swim into and under large corals for hiding and protection. It currently is a common practice for scuba divers, in an attempt to startle the lobster out of hiding, to remove from their mouths, the mouth piece and regulator of the scuba diving gear attached to the diver's air supply and while holding the regulator, to insert the mouth piece into the hiding spot and release pressurized air, thereby creating noise and turbulence. Often, the lobster is scared by the noise and the bubbles and as a result, will move out of its hole; it can then be more easily caught by the diver. However, such activity can be dangerous. First, it is possible for the mouth piece to become lodged inside the rocky surfaces of some lobster holes, which would thereby leave the diver underwater without any air supply source. Second, the diver, by inserting his hand and the mouth piece into the hiding spot to release the air, could be cut by a rocky surface or bitten by an organism living therein such as eel, resulting in injury to the diver. Alternatively, it is also common for some divers to apply sodium hypochlorite or chlorine bleach to some lobster holes in order to drive the lobster out of hiding. However, this practice causes irreparable damage to coral reefs and severe injury if not death to fish and other organisms living in the coral or among the reefs.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of this invention to present an underwater air safety gun which is connected to a compressed air supply such as carried by a scuba diver which can be easily carried and further, which can be used to assist the diver with harvesting lobster more safely and less harmful than which is common practice.
A further object of the invention is to provide for a coupling device at the distal end of the underwater compressed air safety gun so that other types of attachments, aside from a device that releases and directs pressurized air, can also be used. For example, a device which can be used by a diver to inflate an object such as an emergency buoy which once inflated could rise to the surface to alert or warn someone that the diver is in danger. Additionally, other tools such as a knife, screwdriver, fish prongs, and the like can be attached to the end of the gun barrel.
A further object of the invention is to present an underwater air safety gun which is of simple and lightweight construction but which is also durable and dependable and yet which may be produced at a moderate cost.
These and other objects of the present invention are accomplished by an underwater air safety gun which has a long gun barrel having at one of its ends, handle means attached thereto, and where the distal end of the handle means is provided with means to be pneumatically attached to a hose that also attaches pneumatically to the diver's tank, through which the supply of pressurized air must pass into the underwater air safety gun. The handle means also provides for valve means, operable by hand, to allow the pressurized air to pass through the valve and through the gun barrel. The distal end of the gun barrel is provided with a coupling device to which a nozzle can be attached to release the pressurized air and direct the path of its flow.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention shall be apparent as the description hereof proceeds and when considered in connection with the accompanying illustrative drawings.

Underwater air discharge lobster tickler and method


A method, computer program product, and system are disclosed for dynamically provisioning clusters of middleware appliances. In one embodiment, the method includes referencing a resource measurement from a plurality of middleware appliances. The middleware appliances process one or more service domains and the resource measurement includes processing resources consumed by each middleware appliance for each of the one or more service domains. The method may also include determining an implementation plan based on a performance goal and one or more resource calculations. The implementation plan specifies service domain instances to activate and service domain instances to deactivate on the plurality of middleware appliances. The method may also include dynamically enabling and disabling the service domain instances on the plurality of middleware appliances based on the implementation plan.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to middleware appliances and more particularly relates to dynamically provisioning clusters of middleware appliances.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) middleware appliances such as WebSphere® DataPower® appliances from International Business Machines (IBM) are functionally purposed hardware appliances that perform traditional middleware intermediary functions such as protocol bridging and deep-content routing. The emergence of middleware-purposed hardware and lightweight middleware stacks has overcome the performance burden stemming from the increased processing requirements of SOA-based and middleware payloads.
Unfortunately, these advances have not come without challenges. For simplicity, SOA appliances are stand-alone hardware entities with minimal support for clustering or grouping of like-purposed appliances. However, SOA appliances are generally deployed in multiples of two or more to provide sufficient processing power and to meet high availability requirements. The end result is an administrative burden where a user must properly manage the SOA clusters together as a collective whole.
From a configuration point of view, protocols and management frameworks such as the Appliance Management Protocol (AMP) and IBM Tivoli® Composite Application Manager System Edition for WebSphere DataPower (ITCAMSE4WDP), have helped to reduce this burden by providing a mechanism for dynamically synchronizing configuration across like-purposed appliances via a container object referred to as a service domain. These service domains consist of one or more service objects that indicate how the appliance will function. At a high-level, a service domain corresponds to a deployed application or related applications.
However, provisioning service domains among appliances still proves difficult. At present, appliance owners over-provision their appliance clusters and use manual, ad-hoc strategies to provision their appliance clusters among competing services. A typical provisioning objective, known as service differentiation, is to allocate a percentage of Central Processing Unit (CPU) cycles in the entire appliance cluster to a given service domain; this percentage may change, based on whether the system is under- or over-loaded. For example, an administrator may wish to allocate up to 50% of total CPU cycles to a particular service domain in underloaded conditions and 70% in overloaded conditions.
Two known solutions exist for providing differentiated services. Both approaches assume the existence of an HTTP router/IP sprayer (sprouter) to distribute service load to the appliance cluster. The sprouter is a device without deep-content inspection intelligence that simply routes on, for example, a URL, and uses IP spraying to send traffic to appliance replicas.
In a first approach, a system administrator groups all middleware appliances in a single group and enables them all to process service requests for any given service. The appliances are manually configured with all service objects and their corresponding service domains enabled (ITCAMSE4WDP could dynamically copy this manual configuration from one device to the rest). The fronting IP sprayer forwards a service request to each of the middleware appliances, routing the request to the appropriate service port for service-specific processing. The service flow would then load-balance the requests to backing service replicas. This approach suffers from a number of drawbacks. First, in enabling all service domains on every appliance, it is very difficult to manually implement differentiated services across service domains competing for the same appliance resources.
While an IP sprayer can effectively spread the load amongst the different appliances, the IP sprayer cannot gauge the effect of a specific service request on CPU and thus cannot provide differentiated service amongst the competing service domains. For example, assuming that three middleware appliances are in use, if the administrator wishes to allocate up to 50% of total CPU to a particular service domain, the system as whole can only hope to evenly spread across the appliances, which, under overload conditions, leads to each service domain receiving ⅓ (33%) of the total CPU cycles. So rather than getting 50% CPU utilization for a service domain in a particular SOA appliance the maximum is 33%. A secondary problem is that it becomes nearly impossible to effect any spatial locality with this solution. Spatial locality involves focusing a service domain on specific middleware appliances to increase the likelihood that similar memory locations will be accessed repeatedly. In many realistic cases, performance can be improved by concentrating requests for a specific service domain together, for example, to increase cache hit rates.
In a second approach, the administrator statically allocates a portion of the appliances to each of the service domains. In this case, each middleware appliance is assigned one or more specific service domains that it will serve as opposed to each appliance receiving service assignments dynamically. In this way, service requests for a specific service domain are concentrated on specific appliances, thus achieving spatial locality. Further, the administrator can allocate appliances for service domains proportional to the intended capacity (and to some extent priority) for each individual service, thus achieving some level of differentiated service. However, this approach also has drawbacks. First, it is difficult to leverage unused resources of appliances serving one service for satisfying requests intended for overloaded appliance and its service. Therefore, under certain conditions, many of the overall system resources may be under-utilized. Second, the allocation process is manual and cannot adapt to changing request rates and prevailing conditions. This could lead to inefficient resource partitioning and ultimately violate intended differentiated service goals.
In summary, both known conventional solutions to the appliance provisioning problem result in (a) inefficient use of appliance resources, and, (b) the inability to provide actual service differentiation.

Dynamically provisioning clusters of middleware appliances

International Business Machines Corporation


A process for preparing poly(arylene sulfide) with reduced metal contamination is produced by contacting a dihaloaromatic compound, a sulfur source, a polar organic compound, and an alkali metal carboxylate in a reaction vessel wherein at least the liquid contacting parts of the vessel are constructed of titanium. In another aspect of the invention a polymer produced by the above described process is provided.

Poly(arylene sulfide)s have become commercially important resins. The products prepared therefrom are finding increasing utility because of their outstanding durability, toughness, chemical inertness, high temperature resistance, and versatility.
In addition, industries such as the electronics industry and the magnetic storage industry require an exceptionally clean polymer, containing very low metal impurities. The use of titanium reactors to reduce metal contamination to moderately low amounts in poly(arylene sulfide) is known. Although metal contamination is reduced in this manner, appreciable amounts of metals remain in the produced polymer, especially titanium, due to corrosion of the titanium reactor.

Process for the preparation of poly(arylene sulfide) with low metal contamination and polymer produced


The exemplary embodiments of the present invention providing new slurry compositions suitable for use in processes involving the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) of a polysilicon layer. The slurry compositions include one or more non-ionic polymeric surfactants that will selectively form a passivation layer on an exposed polysilicon surface in order to suppress the polysilicon removal rate relative to silicon oxide and silicon nitride and improve the planarity of the polished substrate. Exemplary surfactants include alkyl and aryl alcohols of ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) block copolymers and may be present in the slurry compositions in an amount of up to about 5 wt %, although much smaller concentrations may be effective. Other slurry additives may include viscosity modifiers, pH modifiers, dispersion agents, chelating agents, and amine or imine surfactants suitable for modifying the relative removal rates of silicon nitride and silicon oxide.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to slurry compositions and methods using such slurry compositions for the chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) of material layers deposited during the manufacture of semiconductor devices, more particularly to slurry compositions including one or more additives for adjusting the relative removal rates of different materials, and most particularly to slurry compositions including one or more additives for reducing the removal rate of polysilicon relative to other materials present on a semiconductor substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
The increasing demand for high performance semiconductor devices and the corresponding demand for increased degrees of integration for modern semiconductor devices require the use of fine pitch multilayer interconnection structures. These multilayer interconnection structures are typically formed by processes that involve sequential insulator deposition, patterning, etching, conductor deposition and planarization steps. The planarization steps are particularly important for providing a substantially planar surface for subsequent deposition and patterning processes that can consistently produce patterns having critical dimensions falling within narrow sizing ranges.
A variety of planarization methods have been utilized depending on the particular semiconductor fabrication process and the specific patterns and material layers being used at a particular step within the fabrication process. Planarization techniques have included forming a layer or a coating of an insulator, such as silicon dioxide, a conductor, such as copper, a resin, such as polyimide, a spin-on-glass (SOG), or a doped glass, such as borophosphosilicate glass (BPSG), followed by one or more processes such as etch-back, reflow, and/or CMP steps to obtain a more planar surface for subsequent processing.
In CMP processes, the semiconductor substrate is typically mounted on a rotating plate or other holder, and the surface of the substrate is then brought into contact with a polishing surface of a polishing pad. Portions of the material layers and/or patterns formed on the substrate are then removed by causing relative motion between the substrate and the polishing pad while providing a supply of one or more slurry compositions to the polishing surface of the polishing pad. Depending on the materials being removed, a CMP process may be primarily mechanical, wherein the material is removed by an abrasive, or a combination of chemical action between one or more components of the slurry and the one or more of the materials being removed and the mechanical action of the polisher.
During the planarizing process, the polishing surface of the polishing pad will typically be continuously wetted with an abrasive slurry and/or a planarizing liquid to produce the desired planarizing surface. The substrate and/or the planarizing surface of the pad are then urged into contact to establish a planarizing load or pressure and moved relative to one another to cause the planarizing surface to begin removing an upper portion of the material layer. The relative motion of the substrate and the polishing surface can be simple or complex and may include one or more lateral, rotational, revolving or orbital movements by the planarizing pad and/or the substrate in order to produce generally uniform removal of the material layer across the surface of the substrate.
As used herein, lateral movement is movement in a single direction, rotational movement is rotation about an axis through the center point of the rotating object, revolving movement is rotation of the revolving object about a non-centered axis and orbital movement is rotational or revolving movement combined with an oscillation. Although, as noted above, the relative motion of the substrate and the planarizing pad may incorporate different types of movement, the motion must typically be confined to a plane substantially parallel to the surface of substrate in order to achieve a planarized substrate surface.
The particular slurry composition, as well as the parameters under which the CMP are conducted will typically be a function of the particular characteristics of the various primary and secondary materials to be removed from the substrate surface. In particular, in a case where a polysilicon layer and a silicon oxide layer are being polished using a silica-based slurry using silica (SiO2) as primary abrasive, the removal rate of the polysilicon will tend to be higher than the removal rate of the silicon oxide. These differing removal rates for different materials under substantially identical polishing conditions are typically expressed as a selectivity ratio. CMP processes are commonly arranged to take advantage of these differences in removal rate by providing a polishing stopping layer, e.g., a material with a much lower removal rate, below the primary layer of material being removed to allow sufficient overpolishing to account for variations in layer thicknesses and wafer planarity. This overpolishing increases the likelihood that substantially all of the intended material layer can be removed without damaging the underlying patterns. In certain instances, however, it may not be possible or practical to utilize a polishing stopping layer, or the relative characteristics of the materials being removed can tend to result in "dishing" or "cupping" of the more easily removed material and produces a more non-planar surface than desired and may compromise subsequent processing.
For example, as illustrated in FIGS. 1A-D, the removal of the upper portion of a polysilicon layer deposited over a silicon nitride pattern can result in a substantially non-planar surface. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, a substrate 100 has an active region 102 separated by isolation regions 104. The active region 102, will also typically include one or more doped regions (not shown) to which electrical contact must be made in order for the final semiconductor device to operate properly. A pattern of gate electrodes 106 or other structures are then formed on the substrate. The gate electrodes 106, which may have a stacked structure including polysilicon 108 and a metal silicide 110, formed by reacting a metal, such as tungsten, cobalt or nickel, or a metal alloy with a portion of the polysilicon, are protected by an insulating spacer structure 112, typically including silicon dioxide and/or silicon nitride. Between the spacer structures 112, contact portions of the surface of the semiconductor substrate will be exposed and a polysilicon layer 114 will be deposited on the structure as a means of establishing electrical contact to the substrate.
As illustrated in FIG. 1B, the upper portion of the polysilicon layer 114 is then removed to form polysilicon plugs 114a between the spacer structures 112. However, because polysilicon may be removed at a rate greater than the rate at which silicon oxide or silicon nitride are removed, in some instances as much as 50 to 100 times greater, there is a tendency for excessive polysilicon to be removed, forming depressions 116 between the spacer structures and produce a non-planar surface. As illustrated in FIG. 1C, once the CMP process has been completed, an interlayer dielectric layer (ILD) 118, may be deposited on the substrate. A photoresist contact pattern (not shown) will then be formed on the ILD 118 and the ILD material etched to form contact openings 120 that extend through the ILD to expose a surface of the polysilicon pads or plugs 114a.
However, as a result of the excessive polysilicon removal, the surface of the polysilicon plugs 114a is recessed relative to the upper surfaces of the spacer structures 112, increasing the thickness of the ILD 118 that must be removed to open the contacts. This increased thickness can result in problems such as the underetch condition illustrated in FIG. 1E wherein the etch is not sufficient to open some or all of the contact openings, leaving regions of residual ILD 118a in the bottom of the contact openings. Similarly, as illustrated in FIG. 1F, in those instances in which the depth of the etch is sufficient to reach the polysilicon, but the contact pattern is misaligned, the contacts openings can expose the gate electrodes 106 or other conductive structures, causing shorts in region S. Both opens and shorts will reduce the process yield and/or reduce the reliability of the final semiconductor devices.

Slurry compositions and CMP methods using the same


The present invention provides an economically advantageous and efficient process for producing an optically active homophenylalanine derivative of the general formula (IV), and an intermediate therefor and a process for producing it. The present invention relates to a process for producing homophenylalanine derivative of the general formula (IV) which comprises reacting a .beta.-benzoylacrylic acid derivative of the general formula (II) with a 1-arylethylamine derivative of the general formula (III) and reducing the resultant .gamma.-oxo-homophenylalanine derivative of the general formula (I). ##STR1##

Among the so-far known processes for producing the above-mentioned optically active homophenylalanine derivative (IV), there is a process using a biocatalyst such as an enzyme, and the process employing the so-called asymmetric synthesis without using any biocatalyst such as an enzyme.
As the above-mentioned process using a biocatalyst, Japanese Kokai Publication Hei-01-79134, for instance, discloses a process involving asymmetric decomposition of a corresponding hydantoin with hydantoinase, and Japanese Kokai Publication Hei-02-31694 discloses a process comprising asymmetrically hydrolyzing a corresponding aminonitrile with nitrile hydrolase. These processes, however, require the use of a toxic hydrocyanic acid compound in raw material synthesis.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,316,943 discloses a process comprising trans-amination of a corresponding keto acid with transaminase and, in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, vol. 55, page 5567 (1990), there is disclosed a process comprising reductively aminating a corresponding keto acid using phenylalanine dehydrogenase. These processes, however, require the use of an expensive keto acid as a material.
In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 112, page 945 (1990), there is disclosed a process which comprises asymmetrically hydrolyzing a corresponding ester using an enzyme and, in the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Japan, vol. 55, page 918 (1982), there is disclosed a process comprising asymmetrically hydrolyzing a corresponding acetyl derivative using acylase. These processes, however, are processes for racemic resolution, hence, theoretically, the desired compounds can be obtained only in half amounts relative to the total amounts of starting racemates. Another disadvantage lies, for example, in the complexity of operational procedure.
As the above-mentioned process comprising asymmetric synthesis, there may be mentioned the process in which a chloroacetyl containing compound is reduced with an asymmetric boron complex followed by rearrangement (the Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 114, page 1906 (1992)), the process comprising hydrogenating a 4-phenyl-2-aminocrotonic acid derivative with an asymmetric rhodium complex (the Journal of Organic Chemistry, vol. 52, page 5142 (1987)) and the process comprising reacting an optically active glycine derivative with phenylpropyl bromide (the Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 108, page 1103 (1986)), among others. These processes for asymmetric synthesis, however, require the use of an expensive catalyst or an organometallic compound difficult to handle.
As the above-mentioned process comprising optical resolution of the optically active homophenylalanine derivative (IV), there may be mentioned, for example, the process comprising resolving a corresponding N-formyl derivative using phenethylamine (Japanese Kokai Publication Sho-63-63646), the process comprising resolving a corresponding methyl ester using mandelic acid (Japanese Kokai Publication Sho-63-145256) and the process comprising resolving a corresponding N-acetyl compound using brucine (the Journal of Biological Chemistry, vol. 122, page 348 (1937 to 1938)), among others. Theoretically, however, these processes can give the desired compounds only in half of the total amounts of starting racemic mixture and are also disadvantageous in that their operational procedures are complicated.
The so-far known processes thus cannot necessarily be said to be satisfactory.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide an economically advantageous and efficient process for producing the above-mentioned optically active homophenylalanine derivative (IV), and an intermediate therefor and a process for producing it.

.gamma.-oxo-homophenylalanine derivatives and process for producing homophenylalanine derivatives by reducing the same


The invention relates to a method for preparing acrylic acid by oxidizing propylene and then acrolein, involving the recycling of gases that had not reacted by means of a partial oxidation of the propane, in parallel, at the end of the acrylic acid recovery step, then returning, to the propylene-converting reactor, a gas rich in both propane and propylene having been subjected to a second passage in the acrylic acid recovery column.

The production of acrylic acid generally consists of oxidation in 2 stages, on the one hand a first stage of oxidation of propylene to acrolein and on the other hand a second stage of oxidation of acrolein to acrylic acid.
However, productivity is limited by significant constraints, such as inflammability and the dangers of explosion of the propylene/air/nitrogen/steam mixture, removal of the quantity of heat produced from the reactor, as well as the sensitivity of the catalyst to the high propylene levels. It is thus advantageous to introduce propane into the gas flow comprising the propylene, which allows partial elimination of the heat of reaction and consequently an increase in the propylene content.
European Patent Application EP 293 224 describes the oxidation in 2 stages of propylene to acrylic acid and in particular, the oxidation reaction of propylene to acrolein in the presence of 5 to 70% by volume of a saturated aliphatic hydrocarbon (1 to 5C) such as propane for example and 3 to 50% by volume of carbon dioxide, used as inert gases. The saturated aliphatic hydrocarbons implemented have a specific heat of approximately 300° C. at constant pressure, higher than that of nitrogen or air. Thus, the gas added is capable of partially absorbing the heat produced by the oxidation reaction. Therefore, it is possible to increase the propylene content in the reaction gas and to produce a larger quantity of acrylic acid. Commercially speaking, it is possible to envisage preparation of the starting gases by using the gases recovered after the 1st stage of the reaction. However, it is not specified whether a conversion of the propane introduced is in fact implemented. Moreover, it was not easy to convert propane to propylene on an industrial scale while avoiding the formation of numerous reaction by-products which could adversely affect subsequent operations.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,492,548 describes the conversion of propane to propylene, then to acrolein and to acrylic acid. The presence of propane in the oxidation of propylene to acrolein phase improves the efficiency of this reaction phase. At the end of the acrolein preparation reaction, it is advantageous to recycle the propane into a reactor intended for its oxidation to propylene, preferably producing low rates of propane conversion and high propylene selectivities. The oxidation of propane to propylene is carried out in the presence of a catalyst such as for example a mixed metal oxide comprising molybdenum, vanadium, tellurium and at least one other element chosen from niobium, tungsten, titanium, etc. or antimony as essential elements. The propane oxidation reaction is generally carried out at a temperature comprised between 200 and 550° C. The conversion reaction of propylene to acrolein is carried out in a catalytic medium at a high temperature. Numerous by-products formed during the course of the reaction must be separated. According to the teaching of FIG. 2, at the outlet from the acrylic acid recovery unit, the stream of unreacted gases, comprising propane, propylene, oxygen, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide (and optionally nitrogen) is routed into a recycling stream, then compressed and reintroduced continuously, into the propane→propylene→acrolein→acrylic acid conversion process. However, it is known that catalysts used for the conversion of propane to propylene (MoVNb oxides) result in the formation of acrylic acid in addition to propylene. Acrylic acid formed at this stage is routed to the reactor for propylene to acrolein conversion, where it can have a negative effect on the reaction.
It is known that the catalytic oxidation of propane can result in a high number of reaction products, depending on the operating conditions used. L. Luo, J. A. Labinger and M. E. Davis, J. of Catalysis, 200, 222-231 (2001) have described the different routes for the of partial catalytic oxidation of propane in the presence of metal oxides, which can be summarised by the diagram shown in FIG. 1, comprising 3 major reaction routes:
The specific orientation towards one or other of the oxidation products, with industrial performance yields, requires the parameters for implementation of said oxidation to be set very accurately. It is easily understood that numerous reaction by-products can form, which can prove to be a handicap in the behaviour of the reaction or in the isolation of the desired product.
It has been shown that the presence of acrylic acid can significantly interfere with the stage of propylene to acrolein conversion. Thus, in the industrial preparation of acrylic acid, unreacted gas recycling operations can prove to be no longer a real advantage but a significant drawback, due to the quantities of acrylic acid which are poorly separated from the gas flow, and which are present during the propylene to acrolein conversion.

Process for the preparation of acrylic acid comprising a partial oxidation of propane to propylene


A monolithic type active matrix semiconductor device comprises a substrate having an insulating surface, a first plurality of thin film transistors formed on the substrate, each having a first channel region comprising an amorphous silicon semiconductor film, and a second plurality of thin film transistors, each having a second channel region comprising a crystalline semiconductor film. The crystalline semiconductor film of the second plurality of thin film transistors has a substantially single crystalline structure (mono-domain structure) and is doped with a recombination center neutralizer at a concentration of 1.times.10.sup.16 to 1.times.10.sup.20 atoms/cm.sup.3. The crystalline semiconductor film of the second plurality of thin film transistors contains a catalyst element which is capable of promoting crystallization of silicon.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thin film type monolithic semiconductor device which has a plurality of thin film transistors (TFTs). The TFTs fabricated in the present invention are formed both on insulating substrates such as glass or the like and on semiconductor substrates such as single crystal silicon or the like. More particularly, the present invention relates to a semiconductor circuit which has a low speed operating matrix circuit such as a monolithic active matrix type circuit (which is used in a liquid crystal display or the like) and a high speed operating peripheral circuit to drive the matrix circuit.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, research has been made on semiconductor devices of insulated gate type, the devices having a thin film-like active layer (which is referred to as an active layer) on an insulating substrate. In particular, efforts are concentrated on studying thin film gate type transistors, or so-called thin film transistors (TFTs). The TFTs are formed on a transparent insulating film, and are used for the control of each pixel and in a driving circuit in a display which is formed of a liquid crystal or the like and which has a matrix structure.
Examples of thin film semiconductors which constitute TFTs include amorphous silicon semiconductors and crystalline semiconductors which are crystallized by heating or laser light irradiation of the amorphous silicon semiconductors. The TFTs using these amorphous silicon thin film and crystalline silicon thin film are referred to as amorphous silicon TFTs and crystalline TFTs.
Generally, the field mobility of semiconductors in an amorphous state is small, and therefore cannot be used in TFTs which are required to be operated at a high speed. Therefore, research and development has been carried out in recent years on crystalline TFTs for the fabrication of circuits which have higher performance.
Crystalline semiconductors have large field mobilities, and therefore can be operated at high speed. Since NMOS TFTs and PMOS TFTs are obtained with the crystalline silicon in the same manner, a CMOS circuit can be formed. For example, in an active matrix type liquid crystal display device, display devices with a monolithic structure in which both an active matrix type part and a peripheral circuit (drivers or the like) are constituted with a CMOS crystalline TFTs are known.
FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a monolithic active matrix circuit used in a liquid crystal display. In a structure shown in FIG. 3, a column decoder 1 and a line decoder 2 are provided on a substrate 7 as a peripheral driver circuit. Further, in a matrix area 3 in which a plurality of pixels are arranged in a matrix configuration, a plurality of pixel circuits 4 which comprise transistors and capacitors are formed so that the matrix area and the peripheral circuit are connected with wires 5 and 6. The TFTs used in the peripheral circuit are required to be operated at a high speed while the TFTs used in the pixel circuit are required to have low current characteristics. These two characteristics are inconsistent to each other in terms of physics. However, the TFTs used in the peripheral circuit and the TFTs used in the pixel circuit are demanded to be formed on the same substrate at the same time.
However, the TFTs fabricated in the same process all exhibit the same characteristics. For example, means of crystallization (so-called laser anneal) can be used to obtain a crystalline silicon. However, in a silicon which has been crystallized by laser crystallization, the TFTs in the matrix area and TFTs in the peripheral driving circuit area exhibit the same characteristics. Therefore, the low leak current characteristics demanded of the pixel circuit and the high field mobility characteristics demanded of the peripheral circuit can coexist with great difficulty. The present invention is intended to solve such a difficult problem.

Thin film type monolithic semiconductor device

Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd.


An explosive, in particular a water-in-oil emulsion explosive, comprising a water-based explosive composition and a gas, wherein the gas is infused with two different ranges of sizes of nanobubbles, to provide controlled hotspots for detonation to improve emulsion stability and detonation sensitivity. Into the Nano Bubble tank (31) are fed the pressurised gas in water through valve (26) and also a sample is fed into the Nano Bubble tank (31). This then provides the NanoBubble Input NBIbp1 to be fed by NB Feed Pump (33) into static mixer (51). Also fed to the Static Mixer (51) by matrix pump (41) is the explosives containing PIBSA (Poly-Iso-Butylene Succinic Anhydride) in emulsion form as Emulsion Input EInp1 from Emulsion Matrix truck. The static mixer allows for the gas to be infused into the water-based explosive composition in at least a substantial part in the form of nanobubbles (NB) which then forms a controlled explosive output for use in the blast hole (61) by the bubbles acting as a sensitiser as so called “hot spots” which transfer the energy throughout the explosive charge once initiated. This allows the thermal “hot spot” detonation wave to travel through and carries the explosive to a full and controlled detonation.

Water-in-oil emulsions are well known and widely accepted in the explosives industry. These types of explosives are generally understood to include explosive compositions comprised of multiple, immiscible liquids.
It is further known that emulsion explosive performance may be enhanced by the addition of a gaseous phase of voids/bubbles, preferably spherical in shape, to facilitate detonation. Referring to FIG. 1 it can be seen that normal bubbles such as used in prior art gassing techniques are of the order of millimetres.
As shown in FIG. 2 the use of gaseous phase of voids/bubbles is such that during detonation, a shock wave travels through the explosive charge which compresses the voids/bubbles contained therein. When the void/bubble rapidly compresses to higher pressures, a large amount of heat is generated. The heat created by compressing and collapsing a void/bubble can generate sufficient temperatures to cause the subsequent detonation of the surrounding explosive.
Voids/bubbles used in emulsion explosives are commonly comprised of nitrogen (N2), oxygen (O2), or a mixture including both. The effectiveness and control of detonation is limited using bubbles in this category.
Voids/bubbles are generally added to emulsions by various methods such as by cavitation, the addition of pre-manufactured closed celled micro-spheres, or chemical gassing. In recent years, chemical gassing has become the preferred method because of its low cost, excellent dispersion, and ease of storage and transport.
However chemical gassing has its limitations as will be detailed.
Nowadays, the PIBSA (Polyisobutylene Succinic Anhydride) based emulsifiers used for the emulsion preparation and stabilisation the emulsion explosives are stable and safer to manufacture, transport, re-pump, load and use in the all kind of blasting and mining applications. PIBSA based emulsifiers are, however, more expensive, when compared with the SMO (Sorbitan Mono Oleate) or other conventional water-in-oil emulsifier-based systems.
Therefore, there is a need to provide greater effectiveness without greater use of PIBSA and preferably with using less.
Also, the droplets of these emulsions comprise a super-cooled aqueous solution of ammonium nitrate salt (AN) dispersed in an oil based dispersant solution, which results in a thermodynamically unstable system. Hence, the system ages with time, resulting in changes to the rheological properties, the phase composition and consequently the blasting performance.
Instability in the explosives field is always a problem that needs options to make improvements.
The pumpability of liquid viscous bulk explosives is well researched and described in the prior art. The instability of these emulsions is related to the crystallisation of the ammonium nitrate (AN) solution inside the emulsion droplets. The crystallisation processes of emulsions of super-cooled salts are kinetically slow and can take up to a number of weeks to a few months. However, it has been found that small nucleation sites within the system can cause the emulsion to change and start crystallising.
The instability of the emulsion results in droplets rupturing, which in some cases can initiate further nucleation and crystallisation of adjacent droplets. The emulsion droplets usually contain a range of surfactants, like PIBSA based emulsifiers that stabilise these colloidal two-phase systems by preventing contact between the dispersed droplets.
The emulsion stability, generally speaking, depends on the properties of the interfacial layer that forms between two immiscible phases, and the interfacial properties are influenced by surfactant type and behaviour at the surfactant interactions with the AN solution.
It is known that EE (Emulsion Explosives) sensitivity and performance depend on the gaseous bubbles or gas occluded solids in form of closed or partly closed microspheres admixed into emulsion.
The most common method for producing those "hot spots" and regulating/controlling the emulsion density is the chemical gassing in which the gassing agent reacts with ammonium ion (NH4+) of the super cooled AN solution producing gas bubbles of nitrogen.
During the gassing process the stability of emulsion is being disturbed due to the rupture of the continuous oil/emulsifier layer surrounding the droplets of super-cooled AN solution droplets. Some nucleation (crystallisation) is a direct result of that gassing reaction and the rate of that nucleation would depend on a number of factors (formulation, ratio of the various components, type of nitrate salts, water content, emulsifier type and % content, temperature cycling, mechanical stresses and other factors). Consequently, the stability and the shelf life/sleeping time in the blast hole gets shorter and that change affects the blasting performance in a negative way.
Usually, to prevent the instability caused by chemical gassing, a higher content of expensive PIBSA/other emulsifier combinations is used in the EE formulations.
It can be seen that known prior art emulsion explosives have the problems of:
a) The initial high cost of PIBSA
b) Need to improve sensitivity and performance
c) Need to control thermodynamic stability
d) A need to form hot spots without chemical gassing
e) While limiting the need for a higher content of expensive PIBSA
The present invention seeks to provide an improved emulsion explosive, which will overcome or substantially ameliorate at least one or more of the deficiencies of the prior art, or to at least provide an alternative.
It is to be understood that, if any prior art information is referred to herein, such reference does not constitute an admission that the information forms part of the common general knowledge in the art, in Australia or any other country.


This is a surgical instrument. It is a guidewire made of a stainless steel alloy core which is coated with a non-hydrophilic lubricious polymer on the majority of its length located proximally and a hydrophilic polymer located at the majority of the remaining distal length of the guidewire. Preferably, the guidewire has a polymeric tie layer located between the metallic core of the guidewire assembly and the hydrophilic polymeric layer. The metallic core is one of a number of stainless steels so to preserve its torque transmitting capabilities. Desirably the outside diameter of the guidewire is constant from the distal end to the proximal end. The metallic core may be tapered at appropriate locations along the guidewire assembly.

As costs of medical care increase, the need for more precise and less traumatic medical procedures has increased as well. These procedures result in fewer effects ancillary to those necessary for the specific treatment. Hospital stays may be lessened. Recovery times may be improved. Vascular catheters are used to treat a variety of maladies formerly treated by drastic surgery. For instance, current high performance catheters are used in the treatment of berry aneurysms in the brain, various vascular accidents (such as strokes and contusions), percutaneous transcatheter angioplasty (PTCA), and the like.
Although various different catheter designs may be used in attaining selected treatment sites, many catheters used for the delivery of therapeutic materials such as drugs and vasooclusive devices are over-the-wire catheters. Other catheters used in the vascular system may be of a design which is flow-directed. A few flow-directed catheters are designed to use a simple distal end which is quite floppy and able to be carried along by the flow of blood through the body. Other flow-directed devices utilize small balloons at their distal end which act as "drag anchors" in pulling that distal end through the vascular path. Flow-directed catheters have the advantage of quickly approaching a site through the vasculature if the site is in a high blood flow region. If the selected site is not in the highest velocity courseway, there is little or no chance that the catheter will reach the desired site.
Over-the-wire catheters are especially useful in treating or diagnosing regions of the body which are difficult to reach because of their location, e.g., at the end of distal and complicated routes through the vasculature. This is so since, unlike catheters typically used in the region of the heart, vascular catheters for remote vasculature do not have sufficient strength, stiffness, and ability to transmit torque to allow movement of the catheter by itself to the selected remote site. Consequently, guidewires are used to provide column strength and torsional strength to the overall catheter/guidewire assembly so that these fine vascular catheters can be tracked over the guidewire and steered through pertinent vessels. See, for instance, the disclosure in U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,579 to Engelson.
In general, the method of using a guidewire with a highly flexible catheter is as follows: a torqueable guidewire having a distal, bent end is guided by alternately rotating and advancing the wire in the vascular pathway to the target site. The distal bend allows the attending physician the choice (with the aid of fluoroscopy) to select a route through bends and "Y's" in the vasculature to the target site. As the guidewire is moved along the selected route, the catheter is typically advanced along the guidewire in increments. It is critical that the catheter be able to track the guidewire along the route in which the guidewire has been placed. That is to say that the catheter must not be so stiff at its distal end (for a selected guidewire) that the catheter pulls the guidewire from its previously selected route. Additionally the guidewire must be flexible enough to be able to follow the chosen route. Furthermore, both the guidewire and the catheter must be of sufficient resilience that they not easily kink when a difficult or tight region of vasculature is encountered. The guidewire must ideally have the ability to transmit torque along its length in a controllable fashion--that is to say that a selected wire rotation at the wire's proximal end produces a corresponding rotation at the distal end--so to allow the physician to steer the guidewire as needed. The need to penetrate farther into the vasculature of extremely soft organs such as the brain and liver provide great demands on the physical description of and material selection for guidewires.
If the wire is too thin along its entire length, it is often difficult to transmit torque in a controlled manner along that wire length. Further, the wire may buckle with axial movement due to low column strength.
One solution to many of these problems has been through appropriate choice of material for the guidewire. One such choice of materials is of alloys containing nickel and titanium and which has been treated in a specific fashion to result in a class generally known as nitinols. Typical of such guidewires are those shown in Bates, U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,890 and to Cook, U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,111. Some improvements to such device is using nickel titanium alloys may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,409,015 to Palermo. These alloys are especially suitable for accessing deep into vasculature within soft tissue in that for properly chosen alloys, the guidewires have the ability to undergo major bending without any plastic deformation. Although nitinol guidewires are very suitable for deep access into the vasculature, an offset in performance is typically attained because the alloy itself is quite resilient and stores significant mechanical energy. Said another way: a nitinol guidewire that is flexible enough to enter deep tortuous pathways may be difficult to use: a.) the user may not be able controllably to twist or torque the tip of the guidewire into an appropriate position, and b.) the excessive flexibility doesn't permit tracking of the catheter since the stiffer catheter may pull the guidewire from its preselected route. This usability parameter is one which is typically attributable to the size and material found in the more proximal portions of the guidewire.
Increasing the size of the proximal portion of the guidewire raises the lateral stiffness of the guidewire. Increasing the diameter of a nitinol guidewire to a point where the torqueability is improved sometimes will result in a guidewire having a diameter which is too large for easy physical manipulation.
Another tack taken in improving manipulation and insertability of guidewires has been that of coating the wires with various lubricating materials. An early lubricating material has been high molecular weight silicon-derived oils or near-greases. Other more substantial (and permanent) coverings such as polytetrafluorethylene (TEFLON) and various hydrophilic coatings have also been suggested as coatings for these guidewires. Lubricious coatings on guidewires provide a number of benefits. Proper selection of coatings lowers the resistance to axial movement of the guidewire within the catheter. Similarly, the coatings may be used to lower the resistance of the guidewire within the catheter as it is turned or torqued. Slippery coatings on the guidewire lessen the chance that the catheter will kink as it is moved axially along the guidewire.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,129,890 to Bates, et. al was mentioned in passing above. This patent describes a guidewire having a shaped-memory material. The guidewire's central core has an elongated coil attached distally. A thin polymer sleeve, preferably of polyurethane, is positioned adjacent the core wire. The polymer sleeve provides a base for a hydrophilic polymer coating which is placed on the outer periphery of the underlying polymer sleeve. An alternate embodiment of the guidewire is a one in which the proximal portion of the inner polymer sleeve is not coated with a hydrophilic covering.
Another variation is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,579 to Engelson. Engelson teaches a guidewire having a distal section which allows greater purchase with the vessel walls through which it is placed; that is to say the distal portion is a higher friction portion of the guidewire than is the portion just proximal of the higher friction section. The somewhat more proximal section is covered with a material which renders that section more lubricious. Suitable coating materials include TEFLON, polyurethane, or materials which form the support for hydrophilic polymers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,111, to Cook, shows a composite guidewire made up of a thin stainless steel wire radially surrounded by a shape-memory alloy, such as a nickel-titanium alloy. The guidewire assembly is said to be coated with a polymer layer and 70%-80% of the distal-most portion of the wire can be coated with a hydrophilic polymer to increase lubricity.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,228,453 to Sepetka, shows a guidewire made up of a flexible, torqueable proximal wire section, a more flexible intermediate section with a flexible polymeric tube covering, and a most flexible distal end section. A helical ribbon coil is wrapped about the intermediate core segment between the wire core and the polymer tube covering to increase radio-opacity and to improve torque transmission while retaining flexibility.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,259,393 to Corso, Jr. et. al, describes a guidewire having controlled radio-capacity at the guidewire's distal tip. A single spring mounted on the guidewire has a tightly coiled region and a second more loosely coiled and less radio-opaque region. The loosely coiled region may be coated with a polymer to avoid roughness due to the presence of the coil.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,333,620 to Moutafis, et. al, describes a guidewire having a metal wire core and a high performance plastic sleeve extruded over that core. A high performance plastic is said to be one which has a flexural modulus of at least 150 ksi and an elongation (at yield) of at least two percent (2%). The preferred high performance plastic is a polysulfone. Other suitable high performance plastics are said to include polyimide, polyetheretherketone (PEEK), polyaryleneketone, polyphenylene sulfide, polyarylene sulfide, polyamideimide, polyetherimide, polyimidesulfone, polyarylsulfone, polyarylethersulfone, and certain polyesters. The coextruded compliant jacket is then said to be completely coated with lubricious material which preferably is hydrophilic. The preferred lubricious materials include complexes of polyurethane and polyvinylpyrrolidone.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,372,144 to Mortier, et. al, describes a guidewire having a sleeve element exterior to a guidewire core. The sleeve element apparently is a polymeric material of high elasticity and low flexural modulus such as polyurethane.
None of these documents show a high torque capability guidewire comprising stainless steel and a composite covering of sprayed polytetrafluoroethylene proximally and a hydrophilic covering distally.


A pleisiochronous repeater system and components thereof are disclosed. In one particular exemplary embodiment, a pleisiochronous repeater system component may be realized as a receiver circuit comprising a clock multiplier that multiplies a reference clock signal by an integer multiple to generate a data clock signal. The receiver circuit may also comprise a divider circuit that generates a timing reference signal having a frequency that is not an integer divisor of a frequency of the reference clock signal.

All traditional clock multipliers exhibit some residual phase modulation of a multiplied clock at the frequency of a reference clock signal. The process of clock recovery in a receiver or a transmitter will cause a phase error appearing on the multiplied clock to be sampled at a frequency that is equal to a timing reference signal. This sampled phase error appears directly on the phase of the timing reference signal. The magnitude of this phase error is a function of a phase difference between the timing reference signal and the reference clock signal at the sampling instant. The shape of the function is a characteristic intrinsic to the clock multiplier.
A transmitter clock recovery loop operates based upon phase differences between timing reference signals so any phase error between the timing reference signals that is within a pass band of a transmitter phase detector filter will appear as a phase offset in the transmitter clock recovery loop. The resulting phase offset from phase modulation of the timing reference signals will depend on relative amplitudes and phases of the modulation sources (e.g., the sampling of the phase error on the multiplied clock by timing reference generators). System variables such as the propagation delay of a receiver timing reference signal from a receiver to a transmitter, along with a reset behavior of timing reference clock dividers, would in practice affect the phase error appearing between the timing reference signals at the input to the transmitter phase detector filter.
For example, referring to FIG. 1, there is shown an exemplary traditional pleisiochronous repeater system 100 comprising a receiver 102 and a transmitter 104. The receiver 102 comprises a clock multiplier 110, a clock recovery circuit 112, a sampler 114, a deserializer 116, a divide by K circuit 118, and a divide by 2 circuit 120. The clock recovery circuit 112 comprises an interpolator 122, a phase detector 124, and a filter 126. The transmitter 104 comprises a clock multiplier 130, a clock recovery circuit 132, a driver 134, a serializer 136, a divide by K circuit 138, and a divide by 2 circuit 140. The clock recovery circuit 132 comprises an interpolator 142, a phase detector 144, and a filter 146.
The receiver 102 receives a reference clock signal (refclk), which is multiplied by the clock multiplier 110 to generate a receiver multiplied clock signal (rmclk). The receiver multiplied clock signal (rmclk) is phase adjusted by the interpolator 122 based upon a receiver low frequency phase difference signal (rphase) to generate a receiver data clock signal (rdclk).
The receiver 102 also receives serial data, which is sampled by the sampler 114 using the receiver data clock signal (rdclk). The sampled serial data is deserialized by the deserializer 116 using the receiver data clock signal (rdclk), and a receiver word clock signal (rwclk) generated by the divide by K circuit 118. The deserializer 116 outputs a K-bit parallel data word. The receiver word clock signal (rwclk) is divided by the divide by 2 circuit 120, which outputs a receiver timing reference signal (rtref).
The serial data is also compared against the receiver data clock signal (rdclk) in the phase detector 124 in the clock recovery circuit 112 to determine if there is any phase difference therebetween. Any resulting high frequency phase difference components detected by the phase detector 124 are filtered out by the filter 126 in the clock recovery circuit 112, while any resulting low frequency phase difference components detected by the phase detector 124 are passed by the filter 126 in the clock recovery circuit 112. The filter 126 thus provides the receiver low frequency phase difference signal (rphase) to the interpolator 122.
The transmitter 104 receives the reference clock signal (refclk), which is multiplied by the clock multiplier 130 to generate a transmitter multiplied clock signal (tmclk). The transmitter multiplied clock signal (tmclk) is phase adjusted by the interpolator 142 based upon a transmitter low frequency phase difference signal (tphase) to generate a transmitter data clock signal (tdclk).
The transmitter 104 also receives a K-bit parallel data word either directly from the receiver 102 or from some intermediate circuitry (not shown). The received K-bit parallel data word is serialized by the serializer 136 using the transmitter data clock signal (tdclk), and a transmitter word clock signal (twclk) generated by the divide by K circuit 138. The serializer 136 outputs serial data to the driver 134, which outputs clocked serial data using the transmitter data clock signal (tdclk). The transmitter word clock signal (twclk) is divided by the divide by 2 circuit 140, which outputs a transmitter timing reference signal (ttref).
The transmitter 104 further receives the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) either directly from the receiver 102 or from some intermediate circuitry (not shown). The received receiver timing reference signal (rtref) is compared against the transmitter timing reference signal (ttref) in the phase detector 144 in the clock recovery circuit 132 to determine if there is any phase difference therebetween. Any resulting high frequency phase difference components detected by the phase detector 144 are filtered out by the filter 146 in the clock recovery circuit 132, while any resulting low frequency phase difference components detected by the phase detector 144 are passed by the filter 146 in the clock recovery circuit 132. The filter 146 thus provides the transmitter low frequency phase difference signal (tphase) to the interpolator 142.
In the traditional pleisiochronous repeater system 100, alignment of the transmitter word clock signal (twclk) with the K-bit parallel data word that is received at the transmitter 104 is attempted by forwarding phase information from the receiver 102 to the transmitter 104 using the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) which transitions at the same rate as the received K-bit parallel data word. However, when the frequency of the reference clock signal (refclk) is integer divisible by the frequency of the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) (e.g., one half the frequency of the received K-bit parallel data word), the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) is phase modulated at a frequency that is equal to an offset frequency of the serial data that is received at the receiver 102, with a modulation amplitude that is equal to the amplitude of phase modulation appearing on the receiver data clock signal (rdclk) at the frequency of the reference clock signal (refclk). For example, when the clock multiplier 110 has a multiplier value M that is equal to the product of the divider values for the divide by K circuit 118 and the divide by 2 circuit 120 (i.e., 2*K), the frequency of the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) is offset from the frequency of the reference clock signal (refclk) by an amount that is equal to the frequency of the reference clock signal (refclk) multiplied by a frequency difference between the frequency of the serial data that is received at the receiver 102 and the frequency of the receiver data clock (rdclk), divided by the frequency of the receiver data clock (rdclk) (e.g., if the frequency of the serial data is 2.5 GHz, and the frequency of the reference clock signal (refclk) is 156.25 MHz, then the frequency of the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) would be 156.28125 MHz). As mentioned above, in all traditional clock multipliers, phase modulation appearing on a multiplied clock is sampled at a frequency that is equal to a receiver timing reference signal, and appears on the receiver timing reference signal as a phase error. Thus, in this case, the phase error appearing on the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) traces out the phase modulation appearing on the receiver multiplied clock signal (rmclk) at a rate equal to the frequency offset between the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) and the reference clock signal (refclk). That is, the receiver interpolator 122 essentially traces out the phase error appearing on the receiver data clock signal (rdclk) as it rotates the phase of the receiver data clock signal (rdclk) to track the offset frequency of received serial data. The resulting phase modulation in the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) is extremely low frequency (e.g., 200 ppm of the received serial data rate), and passes through the filter 146 in the clock recovery circuit 132 in the transmitter 104. Phase modulation also occurs on the transmitter data clock signal (tdclk) and the transmitter word clock signal (twclk) when the transmitter clock recovery circuit 132 attempts to align the transmitter timing reference signal (ttref) to the receiver timing reference signal (rtref).
The phase modulation associated with the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) is detrimentally summed with the phase modulation associated with the transmitter data clock signal (tdclk) and the transmitter word clock signal (twclk) in the transmitter clock recovery circuit 132. A resulting modulation amplitude of the transmitter data clock signal (tdclk) and the transmitter word clock signal (twclk) will vary, depending on the relative phase relationship of the receiver timing reference signal (rtref) and the reference clock signal (refclk). This result is undesirable and often even unacceptable in many pleisiochronous repeater systems.
In view of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a pleisiochronous repeater system which minimizes or avoids the above-described inadequacies and shortcomings associated with traditional pleisiochronous repeater systems.

Pleisiochronous repeater system and components thereof


A document printing system and methodology wherein plural, potentially useable printers are reviewed in a preliminary discovery process to assess (1) which ones are currently available for use, and (2) of these, which have the best-suited operational characteristics relative to a particular printing job. The latter “collection” of printers is then treated as a cluster to which a scanned document is appropriately sent for implementation of that job.

This invention relates to printing a document from a scanner which has scanned in that document, and more particularly to printing such a document utilizing multiple printers organized into a selected cluster of appropriate, available printers which have an operative connection to such a scanner.
The present invention specifically addresses the issue of implementing a high volume of documentary printing of scanned images through a system, and a methodology, which allow for a scanned image to be directed for printing to a currently selected cluster of a plurality of printers that have been identified as being currently available for use, and which have been found to possess appropriate characteristics for the particular printing job.
The invention thus proposes, for the first time, a system which can be described as including (1) a scanner for scanning in images that are to be printed, (2) appropriate control structure connected to, or part of, that scanner for performing an enhanced discovery function that enables detection of the availabilities, identities, and operating characteristics of a plurality of available printers, and (3) an appropriate population of printers from which a operative cluster can be selected for use. The fundamental methodology of the invention can be expressed as a process which utilizes the performances of these three systemic elements, namely, a scanner, a control structure as generally described, and an available population of potentially selectable printers. Cluster selection according to the invention is very flexible, and is definitively variable from print-job to print-job.
Various manners of implementing and specifically structuring the system and methodology of this invention will become more fully apparent as the description which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Scan to cluster print structure and methodology


The object of the present invention is to enable efficient vibration processing by applying a sufficient displacement amount and response speed to an object to be vibrated. In grinding of an outer surface of a workpiece W, first and second supporting members are provided for supporting two opposed points of the workpiece, and first and second vibrators comprising a plurality of piezoelectric elements are arranged in blind holes formed in the center of the first and second supporting members. The first and second vibrators are activated with sine wave signals which differ in phase by 180 degrees so as to cause the first and second supporting members to expand and shrink in the back-and-forth direction. The displacement amount is amplified and the processing is performed. Also, the second supporting member can move back and forth toward the first supporting member.

Conventionally, there is known a technique in which cutting, drilling, pressing or the like is performed to a workpiece while a processing tool or the workpiece is vibrated. Specifically, there is a known dicing device in which complex vibration is applied to a blade for cutting a workpiece so as to prevent burrs or reduce blade abrasion (see Patent Document 1), and a vibration processing device in which processing accuracy or processing efficiency is improved by applying vibration to a press head from a motor via an non-concentric shaft (see Patent Document 2).    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2003-80442    Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H09-285896
Also, various kinds of vibrating devices using magnetostriction or electrostriction have been proposed as a means for generating vibration. For example, there is a known vibrating mechanism in the field of vibration testing machines, a micropiston or the like, in which piezoelectric elements are provided in the center and the end portions of a lever, and the lever is rotated in a state where the bearing of the lever is a center of rotation (see Patent Document 3). There is also known a seesaw vibrating device in the field of a cell phone vibrator or the like, in which a first piezoelectric element and a second piezoelectric element are provided in the bottom below the left and right sides of a bearing shaft of a seesaw plate, and these piezoelectric elements are activated in a reversed phase so as to vibrate the seesaw plate around the bearing shaft (see Patent Document 4).    Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H05-138128    Patent Document 4: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-25009
In order to improve the processing accuracy as well as the lifetime of the tool or the processing efficiency in the field of vibration processing, it is necessary to adjust vibration to be minute in which the displacement amount is around several microns, and improve the response characteristic by applying vibration at a high frequency. However, when vibration is applied to the blade or the press head of the processing tool as described in Patent Documents 1 and 2, it is impossible to achieve sufficient displacement amount or response characteristics in a case where the processing device has a certain amount of weight. Additionally, vibration or noise easily occurs in the processing device, and such vibration or noise becomes significant if the device has a certain amount of weight. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the rigidity of the whole device and take measures for sound insulation.
The object of the present invention is to enable efficient vibration processing by applying a sufficient displacement amount and response speed to an object to be vibrated without increasing rigidity of the processing device and taking measures for sound insulation.


A flight passenger seat for an airplane. The flight passenger seat may comprise a back element, a seat element and an arm rest. The seat element, back element, and arm rest may be pivotable. Reset elements for an automatic pivoting may be integrated into the back element and the seat element in such a way that they occupy as little traffic area space as possible. In an advantageous manner, this allows for an enlargement of a traffic area in an airplane and thereby may effectuate a reduction of a “turn around” time of an airplane.

Conventional flight passenger seats for airplanes have a support frame with either a seat area fixedly disposed thereon or a pivoting seat area. In the region of the rear edge of the seat area, a back rest is disposed. In airplanes, the passenger seats preferably form seat rows, wherein two or several adjacently disposed passenger seats or seats may be combined to one seat group supported by one shared support frame. Nowadays, in the case of seats having a pivoting seat area, there may be differentiation among several embodiments. There are models, at which the folding mechanism has to be operated manually in a disadvantageous manner. In the case of automatically pivoting seat areas, it proves to be disadvantageous that, for example, not all seats of a seat group are pivotable, or, on the other hand, elements of a seat which are, for example, required for the folding mechanism, extend into the space cleared due to pivoting in an obstructing manner. Usually, the seat mechanicals are relatively large.
Usually, there is disposed an arm rest at each side of a seat. The seat groups are provided as stiff units for the mounting in the passenger cabins of the airplanes. According to the requirement of the airlines, this may lead to diverse configurations, wherein primarily a maximum seat capacity is strived for.
One disadvantage of a passenger cabin having a large number of seats is that due to the narrow cabin's longitudinal corridors—also called a traffic area or aisle—between the seat rows, boarding and deboarding of the passengers requires a large expenditure of time. Particularly, deadlocks may be generated, when the passengers remain the corridor stowing away hand luggage, for example, in the overhead bins above the seats. Thereby, the corridor is obstructed. Usually, the cabin's corridors are too narrow to enable two flight passengers to pass by one another. Even during cleaning operations a space between the seat rows is hardly accessible.
The ground time between successive flights of an airplane—also called "turn around"—time is of great importance for the cost effectiveness of a commercial aircraft. In spite of a high seat occupancy in the passenger cabin, it is necessary that the traffic area be configured in such a way that a speedy boarding and deboarding of the passengers is allowed for, and that the expenditure of time for necessary ground works is minimized.

Flight passenger seat with an integrated spring element


A system has a processor that may receive an order of an industrial device assembly having multiple industrial automation devices. The processor may also generate a first data file based on the order of the industrial device assembly. The first data file may have specification data associated with each industrial automation device and hierarchical information associated with each industrial automation device. Additionally, the processor may generate a second data file based on the first data file. The second data file has one or more control blocks of code associated with each industrial automation device. Further, the processor may transmit the second data file to a control system associated with the industrial device assembly. The control system is automatically programmed based on the second data file to control one or more operations of each industrial automation device in the industrial device assembly.

The present disclosure relates generally to automatically commissioning industrial device assemblies. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a controller of an industrial device assembly that provides for subsequent automatic commissioning of the industrial equipment.
Industrial systems may include various types of industrial device assemblies, such as motor control centers (MCCs), switchgear assemblies, and the like. Such industrial device assemblies are typically custom ordered from a manufacturer for a particular industrial site. Before submitting the order for a particular industrial device assembly, the customer may define specifications of the industrial device assembly and submit the specifications of the industrial device assembly through an approval cycle. Additionally, after the industrial device assembly has been manufactured and shipped to the industrial site, the industrial device assembly and human machine interfaces (HMIs) associated with the industrial device assembly may be manually programmed and configured for use at the industrial site. Altogether, this process is arduous and time-consuming and may often contribute to long delays on a particular project at the industrial site. As such, it may be useful to provide systems and methods for automatically commissioning the industrial device assembly to minimize manual programming and configuration of the industrial device assembly.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present techniques, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.

Systems and methods for automatic commissioning of an industrial device assembly


An exemplary embodiment of the present invention is a display apparatus. In the display apparatus, each row has as many row selection lines as the number of colors of light emitting elements, and row selection signals are supplied via the row selection lines such that a first row selection signal and a second row selection signals are supplied to driving circuits of light emitting elements of each color in first and second periods alternately and a plurality of times at different intervals in each frame. In the first period, light-emission or no-light-emission data signals are supplied over data lines. In the second period, only no-light-emission data signals are supplied. One of the first and second row selection signals is supplied with the same timing for all colors, while the other one of the row selection signals is supplied with timing different among the colors.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus, and more particularly, to a display apparatus using an organic electroluminescence (EL) display element.
2. Description of the Related Art
To achieve gray levels in an image displayed on an active matrix organic electroluminescent display apparatus, it is known to divide one frame period into a plurality of subframe periods, and rewrite data on a subframe-by-subframe basis to control emission of each pixel in each subframe. In the case of a color organic electroluminescent display apparatus, the display apparatus includes a plurality of pixels each including three organic electroluminescent elements capable of emitting light of red (R), green (G), and blue (B), respectively, and a white balance adjustment is performed by changing the ratio of luminance among the three organic electroluminescent elements.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0208656 discloses a technique in which timing of turning on organic electroluminescent elements of pixels into a light emission state is fixed for light of R, G, and B colors (hereafter referred to as RGB colors), while timing of turning off into an extinction or no light emission state is varied among the RGB colors to achieve a white color adjustment in each subframe.
To control the timing of turning off the organic electroluminescent elements into the extinction state individually for respective RGB colors, each EL driving circuit needs to include not only a circuit for turning on the corresponding organic electroluminescent element according to data but also a circuit for turning off the organic electroluminescent element. Furthermore, in addition to control lines for writing data in units of rows, three control lines are provided in each row to control transistors for turning off the organic electroluminescent elements of the respective RGB colors.
The provision of such additional control lines results in a reduction in layout space in which circuit elements such as transistors, capacitors, etc., of EL driving circuits are disposed, and thus it becomes difficult to realize a display apparatus with a small size and/or high resolution.
In view of the above, the present invention provides a display apparatus capable of adjusting white balance with a minimized number of circuit elements such as control lines, transistors forming an EL driving circuit, etc.


Systems and methods for detecting robust fade and dissolve and video sequences. The systems and methods use a two step approach to detect both discontinuous cuts and gradual changes in a video sequence. Specifically, an input video signal is first divided into video segments based on the location of the discontinuous cut. A gradual change detector is then applied to the discontinuous cut segments to determine further cuts based on editing characteristics. By using this two part approach, the systems and methods of this invention can robustly detect scene breaks within a video.

1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to video segmentation. More particularly, this invention is directed towards systems and methods that robustly detect fades and/or dissolves in video sequences.
2. Description of Related Art
Major techniques that have been used in video segmentation can be summarized as histogram comparison, pixel-wise intensity comparison, motion-based comparison, compression factor or difference comparison, and edge fraction comparison.
The simplest way to detect whether two frames are significantly different from each other is to compare corresponding pixels in the two frames. The number of pixels in which the difference between that pixel and the spatially corresponding pixel in a second frame is greater than a threshold provides a measure of the distance between the two frames. A major drawback of these methods is their sensitivity to moving objects and movements of the camera. For example, camera panning or a large change in a small area of the frame may yield false detections.
Methods using intensity histograms seem to perform better than these pairwise comparison techniques. There are two basic techniques in this category: global histogram comparison, where a boundary is declared when the difference between histograms of two consecutive frames exceeds a threshold; and local histogram comparison, where a frame is first divided into non-overlapping regions, then the histogram of each individual region is determined. However, these methods can miss cuts when scenes look quite different but have similar distributions.
Motion-based comparison methods are based on the ratio of velocity, i.e., rate of change of motion, to the motion in each frame of the video, and an average interframe correlation coefficient. For motion-based comparison, boundary points are defined as the points where the correlation between frames is low and the ratio of velocity to motion is high.
For a feature-based technique to segment the video, the percentage of edges that enter or exit between the consecutive frames is determined and used to detect the boundaries. However, this technique requires estimating the motion beforehand to align the consecutive frames. The success of the segment detection thus depends on the robustness of the motion estimation technique.
While these conventional methods provide reasonable results for discontinuous boundaries, they are not robust in detecting boundaries that are due to dissolves, wipes, fade-ins, fade-outs, and continuous cuts.
Video segmentation is a first step towards automatic annotation of digital video sequences. Segmenting the video source involves detecting boundaries between uninterrupted segments of the video, e.g., scene breaks, by evaluating a function S(Ik, Ik+1) of two consecutive frames Ik and Ik+1. Within a video sequence, consecutive frames may differ from each other due to object and/or camera movement, lighting changes, gradual changes, e.g., continuous cuts, or abrupt changes, e.g., camera cuts and/or discontinuous cuts. Any scene change detection method should be sensitive to gradual changes and abrupt changes but should also ignore object and camera movement, as well as lighting changes, as much as possible. One method to achieve this is to perform a large spatial averaging on frame data prior to scene change detection. However, this makes it difficult to detect both the abrupt changes and the gradual changes at the same time.
This invention provides methods and systems that enable feature-based hierarchical video segmentation.
This invention separately provides methods and systems that segment a video.
This invention additionally provides methods and systems that use a two-pass procedure to detect scene breaks in video sequences.
The methods and systems of this invention provide robust systems and methods that detect both continuous and discontinuous cuts simultaneously.
The methods and systems of this invention use a two-pass procedure that detects the camera cuts on low resolution images and detects the gradual changes on high resolution images. For camera cut detection, a histogram comparison technique is used due to its robustness. The gradual changes are detected by examining the frames between the previously-detected discontinuous cuts using an intensity comparison and frame structure technique.
These and other features and advantages of this invention are described in or are apparent from the following detailed description of the preformed embodiments.

Feature based hierarchical video segmentation


A method for resolving ambiguity in computer data includes processing a record creation request transmitted from a computing device. The record creation request includes entity creation data and a login key. The login key includes a primary identifier and a password. The method also includes executing a matching algorithm with a selectable combination of the entity creation data at an entity database to identify a single entity record matching a selectable combination of the record creation request. The single entity record is linked to multiple different login keys. The method also includes updating one or more attributes of the single entity record with the entity creation data. Further, the method includes storing session data created during a session associated with the login key by using the login key to segregate the session data in the entity database, and linking the session data to the single entity record.

Entities interacting with computing systems often create two fundamental objects: records relating to the entity's purpose in processing information, and login/credentialing records relating to the entity's permissions and preferences with the system. Entities often forget or lose credentials, and/or create multiple login and entity records, thereby creating duplicate records and other clutter in the resulting database. The proposed invention eliminates the clutter while still maintaining privacy and security. More specifically, the methods and systems described herein address the issue of duplicate entity and login record creation while maintaining security and privacy by creating associated cache files that contain the data of each login. These cache files only display data that was provided with specific credentials. Each cache file will update the primary record and display the latest information. When the specific credentials are used to login to the computing system, access is allowed only to the data supplied with the specific credentials and not the data supplied by the same entity using different credentials another cache file. The result will be a single record in the database with no duplicates and the ability to register multiple times with different credentials.
The methods described herein meet the threshold of subject eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as a process because the utility of this new information processing method is independent of the particular meaning or use of the information processed. The immediate consumer of the newly processed information is a computerized database management system, which is incapable of hosting an abstraction. Further, the methods described herein are limited to statutory subject matter under 35 U.S.C § 101.

System and method for associating multiple logins to a single record in a database