A new strain Penicillium Sp.B1 ATCC74414 has been discovered that is capable of degrading polymeric aromatic dyes, including azo dyes. The invention features new Penicillium strains, and mutants thereof, as well as methods of bioremediation to degrade these dyes and other, related aromatic pollutants.

The invention relates to a new strain of Penicillium that can be used in bioremediation and to degrade toxic compounds.
Bioremediation is the use of organisms, such as fungi, bacteria, or plants, to degrade pollutants, e.g., in soil, water, or the air. Several fungi are known that degrade organic pollutants. For example, Phanerochaete chrysosporium strain BKM-F-1767, Trametes spp., and Bjerkandera adusta are known to degrade polycyclic hydrocarbons, including fluorene and benzoa!pyrene, and have been investigated for possible use in the bioremediation of contaminated soil and water. In addition, strains of Pseudomonas spp., Alcaligenes spp., Acinetobacter spp., and Marinobacter hydrocarbonoclasticus that were isolated from marine sediments contaminated by petroleum were found to degrade Arabian Light crude oil (LaCotte et al., Chemosphere, 31:4351, 1995). Pseudomonas spp. and Bacillus spp. can degrade organochlorine pesticides such as DDT, dieldrin, and eldrin (Patil et al., Appl. Microbiol., 19:879, 1970). Trichoderma harzianum is known to degrade DDT, dieldrin, endosulfan, and also pentachlorophenol and pentachloronitrobenzene (Katayama and Matsumura, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 12:1059, 1993). Trichoderma also produces peroxidases, and two families of this enzyme have been shown to initiate sulfonated azo dye degradation (Chivikula et al., Biochemistry, 34:7765, 1995) and oxidation of polycyclic hydrocarbons in vitro (Haemmerli et al., J. Biol. Chem., 261:6900, 1986).
One family of organic pollutants includes the synthetic dyes that are used for textile dyeing, paper printing, color photography, and other industrial applications. Major classes of these synthetic dyes include anthraquinone, azo, and triarylmethane dyes, with azo dyes constituting more than 50% of those used in industrial applications. Many of these dyes are toxic, and discharge of these dye effluents causes serious environmental pollution. Over 0.7 million tons of synthetic dyes are produced annually worldwide, and it is estimated that 10-15% of the dyes are lost in the effluent during use in dyeing processes (Nigam et al., Process Biochem. 31:435, 1996). In mammals, the azo linkages are reduced by the intestinal microflora to generate aromatic amines, some of which are potentially carcinogenic (Chivikula et al., Biochemistry 34:7765, 1995).


A method of fabricating ferrite toroids used in ferrite phase shifters. The method employs fabrication techniques found in low temperature cofired ceramics (LTCC) tape technology and involves fabricating long rectangular through-holes, as is required by the toroid design, in layers of green ceramic tape and maintaining the integrity of the through-holes during a firing process wherein ferromagnetic ceramic oxide in the tape is converted to ferrite.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to ferrite phase shifters and their method of fabrication and more particularly to a method of fabricating ferrite toroids for phase shifters using low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) tape technology.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ferrite phase shifters are well known devices in which the phase of an electromagnetic wave of a given frequency propagating through a transmission line can be altered. Such devices have been extensively used in radar applications for electronic beam steering and phased array application. Two types of electronic phase shifters are currently utilized for modern phased array antenna systems, namely, ferrite phase shifters and solid state semiconductor phase shifters. Ferrite phase shifters generally fall into two categories: toroid phase shifters enclosed within a waveguide structure, and phase shifters built using transmission line microstrip configurations.
The most costly item in the fabrication of toroid ferrite phase shifters is the fabrication of ferromagnetic toroids which typically involves powder processing, sintering and expensive machining using precision diamond cutting and grinding tools.
A typical fabrication technique for producing a ferrite toroid is as follows. Oxide raw materials are first ground and wet-mixed in a ball mill lined with rubber or plastic to prevent contamination. An appropriate amount of organic binder system, solvent and water are next added during the mixing process of the powder to form a slurry which is then subjected to spray drying. The solvents are then evaporated from the atomized liquid droplets and spherical powders of the mixture of oxides and binders are formed in a spray-drying chamber. Finally, the powders are collected, poured into dyes, pressed into shape and sintered.
Another approach is to mix the ceramic, binder, plasticizer and solvent in such a way that the mixture becomes a plastic which can then be extruded in the form of bars and rods of various dimensions, after which they are dried and fired.
The firing temperature of ferrite varies between 1100.degree. C. and 1500.degree. C. and requires a precise firing schedule and oxygen partial pressure to carefully control the chemical valance state of the ferrite compounds. During firing, the oxides react with each other to form what is commonly known as ferrite.
Redimensioning and reshaping of fired ferrite devices to make square holes through the length of the structure and to maintain close tolerances are the most important and most expensive steps in the fabrication of ferrite toroids and are typically accomplished by cutting and grinding using diamond blades. Tooling and labor costs in this latter phase of fabrication are relatively high.


In a turbo machine with magnetic bearings on both sides and dry gas seals for the rotor, the axial thrust acting upon the rotor and generated by the pressure difference between the pressure side and the suction side is compensated for in that a dry gas seal provided on the suction side and the end of the shaft are acted upon by a certain pressure, which generates a compensating axial thrust, so that the resultant axial thrust becomes as slight as possible. Advantageously, this pressure is regulated via the bearing gap of an axial magnetic bearing of the rotor such that the bearing gas assumes a predetermined value.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a turbo machine having a rotor, surrounded by a housing, with a suction side and a pressure side, and having a shaft which is supported on both ends in a housing with suitable bearings and is sealed off with seals between the interior of the housing and the surroundings, and having an arrangement for absorbing the axial thrust generated by the pressure difference between the suction side and the pressure side.
2. Description of Background and Material Information
Turbo machines of the aforementioned type are known from numerous publications, such as Swiss Patent No. 663,447, dated Dec. 15, 1987, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, and may for instance be embodied as turbo compressors of an axial, radial or combined type, or as turbo machines of some other kind, in which a pressure difference arises between the suction side and the pressure side of the rotor.
The pressure difference between the suction side and the pressure side of the rotor creates an axial thrust. In the most favorable case, this axial thrust can be absorbed by suitable axial thrust bearings. Although numerous embodiments of such bearings are known, their load capacities are limited, especially at high rpm and for significant pressure differences.
Attempts have therefore already been made to absorb the axial thrust, or at least reduce it, by means of special arrangements. Swiss Patent No. 449,659, dated Apr. 11, 1968, describes one such arrangement, in which the axial thrust is intercepted by a co-rotating pressure comb on a secondary shaft driven with gear-wheel transmission. This requires a complicated construction requiring a significant amount of space, however.
In other arrangements, the pressure difference on the pressure side is reduced by a pressure equalization piston with a labyrinth seal. This dictates major leakage losses, however, particularly in machines having a high pressure drop and a low pumping capability.
In modern turbo machines, which use especially low-loss bearings such as magnet bearings, these provisions are often inadequate, since axial thrusts can then be absorbed only to a very limited extent, because of the low thrust capacities. From U.S. Pat. No. 5,028,204, issued on Jul. 2, 1991, and European Published Patent Application No. 373,817, a turbo machine with a magnet-supported rotor is known in which seal gas is carried to the suction-side labyrinth seal, via a pipe that is flush with the shaft and is attached to the housing, and at the same time is carried to the end face of the shaft, at reduced pressure, via a dry gas seal. By throttling the outflow of seal gas, the force of the thrust on the end face can be adjusted and the axial thrust can be compensated for. Supporting the shaft on the suction side is impossible here, so that the turbo machine is embodied in an overhanging fashion. In heavy weight machines with a number of stages and a correspondingly long length, this feature is unusable, because of the lack of rotor stability. Furthermore, the labyrinth seal used does not allow a major pressure difference, or else causes undesired leakage losses.

Axially thrust-compensated turbo machine


This document describes techniques for contextually intelligent code editing. In at least some embodiments, the techniques are network-based and can use client-server interactions to develop programming code. For example, input to a local programming environment of a client can be transmitted to a server. A functionality at the server can inspect the input and determine programming options (e.g., programming terms and/or phrases) that are contextually valid in the local programming environment. A list of the programming options can then be transmitted to the client and presented via a user interface. In some embodiments, a selection of one of the programming options can cause the programming option to be populated to the local programming environment, e.g., as part of a user interface associated with the local programming environment. In at least some embodiments, the list of programming options can be cached locally on the client for quick retrieval.

Writing computer programming code can be a confusing and time consuming task. For example, if a user is not familiar with a particular programming language (e.g., C#), it may take a great deal of time and effort for the user to generate programming code in the particular language that can be accurately compiled to perform a desired function. Additionally, each programming language includes a variety of different functions, parameters, methods, and other programming terms that can be included as part of a section of code. Therefore, deciding which programming term is valid or useful in a particular coding context can be difficult and time consuming.


Methods, systems, and apparatus in a service layer environment may create, update, or delete access control policy triples whenever an access control policy (ACP) resource is created, updated, or deleted. In addition, methods address potentially frequent and unnecessary ACP triple management.

Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is an extension of the Web through standards by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The standards promote common data formats and exchange protocols on the Web, most fundamentally the Resource Description Framework (RDF).
The Semantic Web involves publishing in languages specifically designed for data: Resource Description Framework (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL), and Extensible Markup Language (XML). These technologies are combined to provide descriptions that supplement or replace the content of Web documents via web of linked data. Thus, content may manifest itself as descriptive data stored in Web-accessible databases, or as markup within documents, particularly, in Extensible HTML (XHTML) interspersed with XML, or, more often, purely in XML, with layout or rendering cues stored separately.
Semantic Web Stack
The Semantic Web Stack illustrates the architecture of the Semantic Web specified by W3C, as shown in FIG. 1. The functions and relationships of the components, as shown in FIG. 1, are discussed below. XML provides an elemental syntax for content structure within documents, yet associates no semantics with the meaning of the content contained within. XML is not at present a necessary component of Semantic Web technologies in most cases, as alternative syntaxes exist, such as Turtle. Turtle is the de facto standard but has not been through a formal standardization process. XML Schema is a language for providing and restricting the structure and content of elements contained within XML documents. RDF is a simple language for expressing data models, which refers to objects ("web resources") and their relationships in the form of subject-predicate-object, e.g., S-P-O triple or RDF triple. An RDF-based model can be represented in a variety of syntaxes, e.g., RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, and RDFa. RDF is a fundamental standard of the Semantic Web.
RDF Graph is a directed graph where the edges represent the "predicate" of RDF triples while the graph nodes represent "subject" and/or "object" of RDF triples. In other words, the linking structure as described in RDF triples forms a directed RDF Graph. RDF Schema (e.g., RDF Schema 1.1.) extends RDF and is a vocabulary for describing properties and classes of RDF-based resources, with semantics for generalized-hierarchies of such properties and classes. OWL adds more vocabulary for describing properties and classes: among others, relations between classes (e.g. disjointness), cardinality (e.g. "exactly one"), equality, richer type of properties, characteristics of properties (e.g. symmetry), and enumerated classes.
SPARQL (e.g., SPARQL 1.1) is a protocol and query language for semantic web data sources, to query and manipulate RDF graph content (e.g., RDF triples) on the Web or in an RDF store (e.g., a Semantic Graph Store). SPARQL 1.1 Query (a query language for RDF graph) can be used to express queries across diverse data sources, whether the data is stored natively as RDF or viewed as RDF via middleware. SPARQL contains capabilities for querying required and optional graph patterns along with their conjunctions and disjunctions. SPARQL also supports aggregation, subqueries, negation, creating values by expressions, extensible value testing, and constraining queries by source RDF graph. The results of SPARQL queries can be result sets or RDF graphs. SPARQL 1.1 Update is an update language for RDF graphs. It uses a syntax derived from the SPARQL Query Language for RDF. Update operations are performed on a collection of graphs in a Semantic Graph Store. Operations are provided to update, create, and remove RDF graphs in a Semantic Graph Store. RIF is the W3C Rule Interchange Format. It's an XML language for expressing Web rules that computers can execute. RIF provides multiple versions, called dialects. It includes a RIF Basic Logic Dialect (RIF-BLD) and RIF Production Rules Dialect (RIF PRD).
Semantic Search and Semantic Query
Relational Databases contain relationships between data in an implicit manner. For example the relationships between customers and products (stored in two content-tables and connected with an additional link-table) only come into existence in a query statement (e.g., SQL is used in the case of relational databases) written by a developer. Writing the query demands the exact knowledge of the database schema. Many relational databases are modeled as in a hierarchical database in which the data is organized into a tree-like structure. The data is stored as records which are connected to one another through links. A record in the hierarchical database model corresponds to a row (or tuple) in the relational database model and an entity type corresponds to a table (or relation—parent & child). A search or query of a record may be conducted by SQL or non-SQL search engines.
As shown in FIG. 2, a hierarchical database model mandates that each child record has only one parent, whereas each parent record can have one or more child records. In order to retrieve data from a hierarchical database the whole tree needs to be traversed starting from the root node. This structure is simple but inflexible because the relationship is confined to a one-to-many relationship.
Linked-Data contain all relationships between data in an explicit manner. In the above mentioned example described for relational database, no query code needs to be written. The correct product for each customer can be fetched automatically. Whereas this simple example is trivial, the real power of linked-data comes into play when a network of information is created (customers with their geo-spatial information like city, state and country; products with their categories within sub- and super-categories). Now the system can automatically answer more complex queries and analytics that look for the connection of a particular location with a product category. The development effort for this query is omitted. Executing a semantic query is conducted by walking the network of information and finding matches (also called data graph traversal).
Semantic Search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results. Semantic search systems consider various points including context of search, location, intent, variation of words, synonyms, generalized and specialized queries, concept matching, and natural language queries to provide relevant search results. Major web search engines like Google and Bing incorporate some elements of Semantic Search. Semantic Search uses semantics to produce highly relevant search results. In most cases, the goal is to deliver the information queried by a user rather than have a user sort through a list of loosely related keyword results. For example, semantics may be used to enhance a record search or query in a hierarchical relational database.
Semantic query allows for queries and analytics of associative and contextual nature. Semantic queries enable the retrieval of both explicitly and implicitly derived information based on syntactic, semantic and structural information contained in data. They are designed to deliver precise results (possibly the distinctive selection of one single piece of information) or to answer more wide open questions through pattern matching and digital reasoning.
Semantic queries work on named graphs, linked-data, or triples. This enables the query to process the actual relationships between information and infer the answers from the network of data. This is in contrast to semantic search, which uses semantics in unstructured text to produce a better search result (e.g., natural language processing).
From a technical point of view semantic queries are precise relational-type operations much like a database query. They work on structured data and therefore have the possibility to utilize comprehensive features like operators (e.g. >, <, and =), namespaces, pattern matching, sub-classing, transitive relations, semantic rules, and contextual full text search. The semantic web technology stack of W3C offers SPARQL to formulate semantic queries in syntax similar to SQL. Semantic queries are used in triple stores, graph databases, semantic wikis, natural language, and artificial intelligence systems.
Another aspect of semantic queries is that the type of the relationship can be used to incorporate intelligence into the system. The relationship between a customer and a product has a fundamentally different nature than the relationship between a neighborhood and its city. The latter enables the semantic query engine to infer that a customer living in Manhattan is also living in New York City whereas other relationships might have more complicated patterns and "contextual analytics." This process is called inference or reasoning and is the ability of the software to derive new information based on given facts.
oneM2M Functional Architecture
The oneM2M standard (neM2M-TS-0001 oneM2M Functional Architecture—V2.9.0) under development defines a Service Layer called common service entity (CSE). The purpose of the service layer is to provide "horizontal" services that can be utilized by different "vertical" M2M systems and applications. The CSE supports the reference points as shown in FIG. 3. The Mca reference point interfaces with the Application Entity (AE). The Mcc reference point interfaces with another CSE within the same service provider domain and the Mcc′ reference point interfaces with another CSE in a different service provider domain. The Mcn reference point interfaces with the underlying network service entity (NSE). An NSE provides underlying network services to the CSEs, such as device management, location services, and device triggering.
CSE contains multiple logical functions called common service functions (CSFs), such as "Discovery" and "Data Management & Repository." FIG. 4 illustrates some of the CSFs defined by oneM2M.
The oneM2M architecture enables the types of nodes as shown in FIG. 3. An applications service node (ASN) is a Node that contains one CSE and contains at least one application entity (AE). An ASN may reside in an M2M end device. An application dedicated node (AND) is a node that contains at least one AE and does not contain a CSE. There may be zero or more ADNs in the Field Domain of the oneM2M System. Example of physical mapping: an Application Dedicated Node could reside in a constrained M2M Device. A middle node (MN) is a Node that contains one CSE and contains zero or more AEs. There may be zero or more MNs in the Field Domain of the oneM2M System. A MN may reside in an M2M Gateway. A infrastructure node (IN) is a node that contains one CSE and contains zero or more AEs. There is exactly one IN in the Infrastructure domain per oneM2M Service Provider. A CSE in an IN may contain CSE functions not applicable to other node types. Example of physical mapping: an IN could reside in an M2M Service Infrastructure. A non-oneM2M node (NoDN) is a node that does not contain oneM2M Entities (neither AEs nor CSEs). Such nodes represent devices attached to the oneM2M system for interworking purposes, including management.
Access Control Policy in oneM2M
As shown in FIG. 5, the <accessControlPolicy> resource is comprised of privileges and selfPrivileges attributes which represent a set of access control rules defining which entities (defined by accessControlOriginators) have the privilege to perform certain operations (defined by accessContolOperations) within specified contexts (defined by accessControlContexts) and are used by CSEs to make Access Decision for specific resources. For a particular privileges attribute, an access control rule defines which AE/CSE is allowed for which operation. So for sets of access control rules is permitted if it is permitted by one or more access control rules in the set. For a resource that is not of <accessControlPolicy> resource type, the common attribute accessControlPolicyIDs for such resources contains a list of identifiers which link that resource to <accessControlPolicy> resources. The CSE Access Decision for such a resource shall follow the evaluation of the set of access control rules expressed by the privileges attributes defined in the <accessControlPolicy> resources. The selfPrivileges attribute represents the set of access control rules for the <accessControlPolicy> resource itself. The CSE access decision for <accessControlPolicy> resource shall follow the evaluation of the set of access control rules expressed by the selfPrivileges attributes defined in the <accessControlPolicy> resource itself.
The <accessControlPolicy> resource contains the attributes specified in Table 1. The set of Access Control Rules represented in privileges and selfPrivileges attributes are comprised of 3-tuples described in more detail below: accessControlOriginators, accessControlContexts, and accessControlOperations.
TABLE 1Attributes of <accessControlPolicy> ResourceRW/<accessControlAttributes ofRO/PolicyAnnc><accessControlPolicy>MultiplicityWODescriptionAttributesprivileges1RWA set of access control rules thatMAapplies to resources referencingthis <accessControlPolicy>resource using theaccessControlPolicyIDs attribute.selfPrivileges1RWA set of access control rules thatMAapply to the<accessControlPolicy> resourceitself.
The accessControlOriginators is a mandatory parameter in an access-control-rule-tuple. It represents the set of Originators that shall be allowed to use this access control rule. The set of Originators is described as a list of parameters, where the types of the parameter can vary within the list. Table 2 describes the supported types of parameters in accessControlOriginators.
TABLE 2Types of Parameters in accessControlOriginatorsNameDescriptiondomainA SP domain or SP sub-domainoriginatorIDCSE-ID, AE-ID or the resource-ID of a <group> resourcethat contains the AE or CSE that represents the Originator.allAny Originators are allowed to access the resource withinthe accessControlOriginators constraints
When the originatorID is the resource-ID of a <group> resource which contains <AE> or <remoteCSE> as members, the Hosting CSE of the resource shall check if the originator of the request matches one of the members in the memberIDs attribute of the <group> resource (e.g. by retrieving the <group> resource). If the <group> resource cannot be retrieved or doesn't exist, the request shall be rejected.
The accessControlContexts is an optional parameter in an access-control-rule-tuple that contains a list, where each element of the list, when present, represents a context that is permitted to use this access control rule. Each request context is described by a set of parameters, where the types of the parameters can vary within the set. Table 3 describes the supported types of parameters in accessControlContexts.
The following Originator accessControlContexts shall be considered for access control policy check by the CSE.
TABLE 3Types of Parameters in accessControlContextsNameDescriptionaccessControlTimeWindowRepresents a time window constraint which is comparedagainst the time that the the request is received at the HostingCSE.accessControlLocationRegionRepresents a location region constraint which is comparedagainst the location of the Originator of the request.accessControlIpIPAddressRepresents an IP address constraint or IP address blockconstraint which is compared against the IP addressof the Originator of the request.
The accessControlOperations is a mandatory parameter in an access-control-rule-tuple that represents the set of operations that are authorized using this access control rule. Table 4 describes the supported set of operations that are authorized by accessControlOperations.
The following accessControlOperations shall be considered for access control policy check by the CSE.
TABLE 4Types of parameters in accessControlOperationsNameDescriptionRETRIEVEPrivilege to retrieve the content of an addressed resourceCREATEPrivilege to create a child resourceUPDATEPrivilege to update the content of an addressed resourceDELETEPrivilege to delete an addressed resourceDISCOVERPrivilege to discover the resourceNOTIFYPrivilege to receive a notification
The accessControlPolicyIDs is a common attribute of many oneM2M resources as defined in oneM2M-TS-0001 oneM2M Functional Architecture—V2.9.0. This attribute contains a list of identifiers of an <accessControlPolicy> resource. The privileges attribute defined in the <accessControlPolicy> resource that are referenced determines who is allowed to access the resource containing this attribute for a specific purpose (e.g. Retrieve, Update, Delete, etc.).
If a resource type does not have an accessControlPolicyIDs attribute definition, then the accessControlPolicyIDs for that resource is governed in a different way, for example, the accessControlPolicyIDs associated with the parent may apply to a child resource that does not have an accessControlPolicyIDs attribute definition, or the privileges for access are fixed by the system. Refer to the corresponding resource type definitions and procedures to see how access control is handled in such cases.
If a resource type does have an accessControlPolicyIDs attribute definition, but the (optional) accessControlPolicyIDs attribute is not set, or it is set to a value that does not correspond to a valid, existing <accessControlPolicy> resource, or it refers to an <accessControlPolicy> resource that is not reachable (e.g. because it is located on a remote CSE that is offline or not reachable), then the system default access privileges shall apply.
All resources are accessible if and only if the privileges (i.e. stored as privileges or selfPrivileges attribute of <accessControlPolicy> resource) allow it, therefore all resources shall have an associated AccessControlPolicyIDs attribute, either explicitly (setting the attribute in the resource itself) or implicitly (either by using the parent privileges or the system default policies). Which means that the system shall provide a default access privileges in case that the Originator does not provide a specific accessControlPolicyIDs during the creation of the resource.
Semantic Enablement in oneM2M
The <semanticDescriptor> resource as shown in FIG. 6 is used to store a semantic description pertaining to a resource and potentially sub-resources. Such a description may be provided according to ontologies. The semantic information is used by the semantic functionalities of the oneM2M system and is also available to applications or CSEs. The <semanticDescriptor> resource shall contain the attributes specified in Table 5.
TABLE 5Attributes of <semanticDescriptor> ResourceRW/Attributes ofRO/<semanticDescriptor>MultiplicityWODescriptiondescriptorRepresentation1RWIndicates the type used for the serialization of thesemanticOpExecdescriptor attribute, e.g. RDF serialized in XML.0 . . . 1RWThis attribute cannot be retrieved. Contains aSPARQL query request for execution of semanticoperations on the descriptor attribute e.g.SPARQL update as described in oneM2M TS-0004.descriptor1RWStores a semantic description pertaining to aresource and potentially sub-resources. Such adescription shall be according to subject-predicate-object triples as defined in the RDF graph-baseddata model (see W3C RDF 1.1). The semanticdescription can be fully and partially updated byan Originator. The elements of such triples may beprovided according to ontologies. Examples ofsuch descriptors in RDF can be found in oneM2MTR-0007.ontologyRef0 . . . 1WOA reference (URI) of the ontology used torepresent the information that is stored in thedescriptor attribute. If this attribute is not present,the ontologyRef from the parent resource is used ifpresent.relatedSemantics0 . . . 1(L)WOList of URIs for resources containing relatedsemantic information to be used in processingsemantic queries. The URI(s) may reference eithera <group> resource or other<semanticDescriptor> resources.
Semantic Filtering Proposals in oneM2M—Generic filtering is supported by having filter criteria specified in a request operation (oneM2M-TS-0001 oneM2M Functional Architecture—V2.9.0 section 8.1.2). In order to provide for semantic filtering, an additional value for the request operation filter criteria has been proposed in neM2M TR-0007-Study_on_Abstraction_and_Semantics_Enablement-V2.11.0 section 8.5.4, with the definition shown in the table below. Multiple instances may be used, which according to the general rules for evaluating filter criteria, means that an "OR" semantics applies, i.e. the overall result for the semantics filter criteria is true if one or more of the semantic filters matches the semantic description. Note that semantics in the table below is defined in neM2M TR-0007-Study_on_Abstraction_and_Semantics_Enablement-V2.11.0 and it corresponds to request parameter semanticFilter in oneM2M-TS-0001 oneM2M Functional Architecture—V2.9.0. When the SPAQRL query contained in the semanticFilter parameter matches semantic triples in one of child resource <semanticDescriptor>s of a parent resource, it means this semantic filtering is successful and corresponding parent resource will be returned.
TABLE 6semantics Filter Criteriasemantics0 . . . nThe semantic description contained in one of the<semanticDescriptor> child resources matches thespecified semantic filter.
The proposal above uses the following assumptions: the semantic descriptions are specified as RDF triples (representation, e.g. RDF/XML, Turtle, description format had not been fully specified in oneM2M yet); the semantics filter criteria will be used for SPARQL requests to be executed on semantic descriptions.
Below is a semantic filtering example giving in oneM2M TR-0007.

Access control policy synchronization for service layer


A centralized system may collect and aggregate assessments from multiple websites. An aggregate score may be calculated for the resource that cumulatively considers assessments from a plurality of different websites from which assessments are received from users. Text descriptions associated with each of the assessments may be provided to a machine-learning system that uses a trained model to assign identifiers to the assessments as they are received. These identifiers may include common words or text that are descriptive of different facets of user experiences related to receiving and using the resource. After selecting one or more identifiers, assessments associated with that identifier may be included or excluded from the display. Additionally, the overall aggregate score for the resource may be recalculated by removing components of that score that are based on assessments with identifiers that have been selected for exclusion.

Electronic markets (or electronic marketplaces) may be defined as information systems that are used by multiple separate organizational entities. Electronic markets denote networked relationships with many possible configurations. The topology of electronic markets may be centralized or decentralized in nature. Centralized electronic markets are hubs which often provide services to their participants. Decentralized settings involve sequential relationships that often are found when electronic messages are exchanged directly between entities (e.g., electronic data interchange, EDI). The services provided by electronic markets may serve infrastructural or allocation purposes. Among the infrastructure services are routing, messaging, identification and partner directories whereas allocation services enable pricing process which in turn may be static or dynamic in nature. Typical implementations are catalogs, exchanges and auctions. In a broader sense, electronic markets may cover all forms of electronic collaboration between organizations and users/clients as well as vice versa.
However, espite the efficiencies that may be gained by using electronic markets, the problem remains that access to resources is largely virtual rather than hands-on. Thus, instead of relying on a personal interactions with the resource, users are often required to rely instead on assessments of the resource made by others. These assessments can be quite numerous and may cover a wide range of characters that may or may not be relevant to the user. Therefore, improvements in the art are needed to refine the way in which the user assessments are stored, aggregated, and presented.

Machine-learning model for resource assessments


An LED linear light with a rotational mounting including a base plate adapted for attachment to a surface and a rotating connection member. The rotating connection member is attached to the base plate by a hinge means to permit rotation of the rotating connection member relative to the base plate. When attached to the housing of the LED linear light, rotation of the rotating connection member relative to the base plate, the illumination direction of the LED linear light is changed.

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor light source. Since the first LED was developed in the 1960's, the technology has grown exponentially to today where LED's are increasingly being used commercially as replacements for incandescent, high intensity discharge (HID) and compact fluorescent (CFL) lights due to their long life and lower energy consumption.
In LED linear lights, the LEDs are arranged in a linear array fixed in a housing suitable for surface, recessed or pendant mounting with the illumination by the LEDs in a fixed orientation.

Cledlight Semiconductor Lighting Co., Ltd.


A precision holder for hand-held optical scanning digitization devices is provided in which varying thicknesses of source documents may be securely held to a flat table by a support which also functions as a guide along which the scanning device may be accurately and repeatedly moved. In one embodiment, the original document is held by a guide held by a double hinge arrangement and secured by springs pulling toward the table. In another embodiment, the guide is held to the table by springs in a frame and track assembly much like a guillotine. For more accurate use of the scanning device a scanner alignment tray is provided for attachment to allow precise use of scanning devices which do not have a suitable square side to fit against the guide of the described scanning table.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of computer accessories, and in particular to devices for the scanning of images for storage and processing by computers in the digital domain.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In informal parlance, scanning refers to the use of an optical machine to convert an image into a machine-readable file for manipulation, use, or printing by computers, so that term will be used for simplicity and clarity hereafter.
The design of a so called `flat-bed` scanner looks and operates much like a photocopy machine in reverse: it has a glass window where the original is placed for scanning; the original is usually not moved during the scanning process; and the optical sensing part of the scanner itself is not physically manipulated by the operator during normal operation. All relative motion between the original and the scanning apparatus in a flat-bed scanner is done by the scanner itself. Because of the level of mechanical complexity involved with this design most flat bed scanners are relatively expensive. More inexpensive scanning is generally accomplished by using hand-held scanners.
Hand-held scanners have no internal mechanism for controlling the relation of the scanner to the source object. This relation is controlled by the user when he passes the scanner over the source document while holding the scanning button on. The digital quality of images retrieved by using hand-held scanners is actually quite high, but there is no easy method to precisely orient the scanner to the source document squarely, in relation to the natural X-Y axis of that document. Results of hand scanning are mostly unsatisfactory because the human hand can not pull the scanner in a perfectly vertical pattern from the top of a page to the bottom. Current hand scanners are capable of resolutions beginning at about 300 lines per inch; even the most steadfast human would find it difficult if not impossible not to stray a few hundredths of an inch to the left or right moving a scanner down a page. When the scanner is not moved in a square vertical fashion the resultant output has the entire scanned image slightly skewed horizontally along the page. This means perfectly vertical lines in the original image are incorrectly slanted. Though attempts have been made to correct skewed scans such as these with computer programs for straightening out the lines, there is no substitute for having a straight scan in the first place because there is always information loss.
Another problem with free hand use of hand scanners involves securely holding the original to be scanned. Even if the scanner is pulled in a fairly straight motion across the source document any movement of the original during the scanning process also results in skewed output.
Additionally, results are not repeatable with hand-held scanners because each scanning attempt yields a different relation between the source document and the scanner itself. As a result, there can be no reiterative refinement of subsequent scans. This can probably be best understood by contrasting with a flat bed scanner where the relation of the original to the scanning mechanism stays constant until the original is moved. This means the flat bed design can make a first pass to `preview` what the final scan would look like. This kind of feature can not be used with hand scanners because the relation between the original image and the scanner is not constant among scanning attempts.
Current hand scanning systems suffer from a number of disadvantages:
(a) No capability for starting the scanner in the same part of the original image with each scan in a series.
(b) No provision for holding the original image securely.
(c) No provision for holding a thick original image, as in a book.
(d) No capability for restricting the motion of the scanner over the source image to follow a precise vertical path.
(e) No apparatus for physically orienting the scanner itself in a precise relation to other objects or images.
(f) No provision for aligning the relation of the scanner to the natural vertical orientation of the original image.
(g) No system of calibration for repeatedly relating the scanner to the original image.

Precision portable scanning table with attachment apparatus


In a wired base plate for an electronic part, an infinite number of metallic posts made of copper are provided to a lid joining section of a plural wire layer portion, which section includes a lid joining surface area to which a lid is joined. The metallic posts supports a pressure applied thereto from a lid at the time of mounting of the wired base plate on a circuit board and prevent the plural wire layer portion having a plurality of conductor wire layers and a plurality of resinous insulation layers, from being deformed by compression. A package for an electronic part having such a wired base plate is also provided.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a wired base plate and package for electronic parts, and more particularly to a LGA (Land Grid Array) type wired base plate for mounting thereon an integrated circuit chip and an electronic part package having such an LGA type wired base plate on which an integrated circuit chip is mounted and which is hermetically sealed by means of a lid.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, a LGA type wired base plate for electronic parts (hereinafter referred to as LGA type wired base plate or simply as wired base plate) has been formed from high strength ceramic such as alumina by firing simultaneously with internal conductor wire layers and vias which are disposed inside the wired base plate. FIG. 8 shows an example of a prior art wired base plate 101. As shown, an electronic part 121 including an integrated circuit chip, transistor, capacitor and the like (hereinafter referred to simply as integrated circuit chip) is installed on the wired base plate 101 and electrically connected to same. A lid or cap 122 is bonded to the wired base plate 101 by soldering or the like, whereby an electronic part package 131 is completed.
In the meantime, such an electronic part package 131 is generally installed or mounted on a circuit board (exterior circuit board) in the following manner. For example, as shown in FIG. 9, a number of pads (connecting terminals) 105 formed on a lower or rear surface of the wired base plate 101 are brought into contact with respective pads 143 of a circuit board 142 by way of an intermediate connecting member (hereinafter referred to as a spring connector) 141 having a springy property, i.e., a resilience like a spring, and in such a state screw members 145 extending through a pushing plate 144 which is placed on the lid 122 and through the circuit board 142, are screwed into rear plates (metallic plate) 146 attached to a rear surface of the circuit board 142 and tightened with a predetermined torque to join them together. By such installation or mounting, the number of pads 105 on the rear surface of the wired base plate 101 and the number of pads 143 of the circuit board 142 are always brought into contact with each other under spring pressure to assure the electrical connection therebetween.
In the meantime, the spring connector 141 shown in FIG. 9 has an insulator in the form of a plate and made of rubber or flexible resinous material and a number of metal spring pieces having a bent shape (i.e. , like <). The bent metal spring pieces are disposed vertically and horizontally of the spring connector 141, i.e., at corresponding positions to the pads 105 and 143 so as to be resiliently deformable or compressed by the above pressure and brought into contact with the pads 105 and 143 under spring pressure. As will be understood from such a structure, in order to retain electrical connections between such a number of pairs of pads, it is indispensable for the both pads, i.e., a number of pairs of pads are pressed against each other with a considerable load. For example, a load necessary for such an end (hereinafter referred to simply as pressure or pushing pressure) is generally 50 to 100 g/pad (one contact point). Accordingly, in case of a wired base having 1000 pads, the wired base is always subjected to a load of from 50 to 100 Kg.
On the other hand, as the integrated circuit chip has come to operate at high speed, there may occur such a case in which a conventional wired base plate made of alumina ceramic cannot satisfy the requirements for its electrical characteristics such as impedance, capacitance, crosstalk and so on. Thus, to meet with such requirements for the high speed of the integrated circuit chip, a trial has been made to use such a wired base plate 201 shown in FIG. 10., i.e., a wired base plate including a substrate (single plate or laminated plate) 202 of ceramic such as alumina as a base, and a plural wire layer portion (multi-wire layer portion) 203 disposed on the substrate 202. The plural wire layer portion 203 includes a plurality of insulation layers of polyimide resin (hereinafter referred to simply as polyimide) or the like resin having a low dielectric constant as compared with alumina and a plurality of conductor wire layers which are laminated or placed alternately on upon another.
However, polyimide or the like resin is weak in the mechanical strength (compression) as compared with ceramic and furthermore considerably small in Young's modulus so it is easily deformed by compression. Thus, the LGA type wired base plate 201 formed in the above manner is subjected to a large pressure in case of installation or mounting on a circuit board as described above, there are caused the following problems. As shown in FIG. 11, an integrated circuit element 121 is mounted on such a wired base plate 201 and then a lid 122 is bonded or attached to the base plate 201 to complete a package. Thereafter, in mounting of the package on a circuit board, a pressure is applied to the package through the lid 122. When this is the case, all of the pressure is applied through the lid 122 to an outer peripheral part (i.e., lid bonding surface) of the plural wire layer portion 203.
Due to this, as shown in FIG. 11, the polyimide is caused to deform largely by the pressure P at or adjacent the surface area to which the lid 122 is bonded (i.e., the surface area indicated by the width W in the figure), so that a lid bonding section of the plural wire layer portion 203 is caused to sink or depressed relatively from an inner section of same by a deformation amount S. Such sinking or depressing, i.e., such deformation S by compression means that the plural wire layer portion 203 is always subjected to a shearing force at the border (i.e., the portion along the line K--K in FIG. 11) between the region (i.e., the region indicated by the width W) to which the lid 122 is bonded and the region to which the lid 122 is not bonded. Accordingly, the wired base plate 201 encounters a problem that there is a possibility of breakage or disconnection of the conductor wire layer 206 disposed inside the base plate 201 or the like defect being caused, i.e., a problem of being poor in the reliability in elongated period of usage.
Such a problem exists similarly even in case another resin is used in place of polyimide for an insulation resin layer constituting a plural wire layer portion so long as it is still deformed by compression similarly to polyimide by the force to which it is subjected at the time of the above described mounting. Further, it can be considered to use a glass epoxy resin or the like for a substrate in place of ceramic, but in this case the above problem exists entirely similarly.

Wired base plate and package for electronic parts


An apparatus and a concomitant method for controlling coolant (air) flow proximate a reaction chamber within a workpiece processing system such that the temperature of a wall of the reaction chamber is maintained at a predefined target temperature. The target temperature is typically a temperature that optimizes a process concurrently being accomplished within the chamber, e.g., utilizing one temperature during deposition processes and a different temperature during cleaning processes. The apparatus contains a temperature measuring device to measure the temperature of the chamber wall. The measured temperature is compared to the predefined target temperature. A closed loop system controls the air flow proximate the chamber walls such that the measured temperature becomes substantially equal to the target temperature. Air flow control is provided by an air flow control device located within an inlet conduit that supplies air to a shroud for channeling the air past the reaction chamber. The shroud forms a portion of a housing which supports and encloses the reaction chamber.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems and, more particularly, to temperature control apparatus, and a concomitant method, for controlling the temperature of the walls of a CVD reaction chamber.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system, a reaction chamber envelopes a volume wherein the deposition process occurs. The chamber typically is fabricated of transparent quartz. As such, the reaction chamber is said to have quartz windows (accessible surfaces of the chamber) through which the temperature of the apparatus within the chamber can be optically monitored using optical pyrometers. In general, since the windows are integral with the walls of the chamber, the temperature of these windows is indicative of the chamber wall temperature. The temperature of the windows and the walls of the chamber vary depending upon the temperature of the workpiece within the chamber, the process presently being accomplished, the gases involved in the current process, and the run time of the process.
More specifically, it is desirable that during a deposition process, the quartz wall temperature be controlled within a narrow temperature range to minimize deposits on the chamber wall. Furthermore, it is desirable that, during cleaning steps, the quartz wall temperature be maintained at a different temperature to maximize the etch rate of any film that may have been deposited on the chamber walls. Such temperature maintenance minimizes particulate contamination problems.
Typically, the temperature of the walls of the chamber is maintained at a nominal value by a flow of air proximate the outer surface of the chamber. This air flow is fixed for each process performed within the chamber. Thus, the temperature of the chamber walls varies with conditions within the chamber, e.g., the wall temperature differs depending on whether the process in the chamber is depositing material or etching material from a workpiece.
Through empirical study, it has been shown that the processes performed within the chamber can be optimized when the chamber wall temperature is maintained at an optimum temperature for a particular process. However, prior art CVD systems contemplate maintaining the air flow past the chamber at a fixed flow rate. As such, these systems exhibit significant chamber wall temperature variations which preclude a high degree of temperature optimization.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for closed loop apparatus, and a concomitant method, for controlling the air flow proximate a reaction chamber such that the temperature of the chamber walls can be readily optimized for each of the processes accomplished within the chamber.

Method and apparatus for controlling the temperature of reaction chamber walls


A sample cartridge block that includes a first plate, a second plate and a third plate. The third plate is thermally connected to the first plate and the second plate. In some embodiments, the block is capable of holding a relatively high density of sample cartridges. In certain embodiments, the block provides good sample temperature stability while the sample temperature is held constant or while the sample temperature is being changed. According to the invention, a sample block may include one material or more than one material. Preferably, a sample cartridge block has a relatively low thermal mass. In some embodiments, the first plate of a sample cartridge block may have a larger surface area than the surface area of the third plate. According to the present invention, the first plate of the sample cartridge block may be thermally connected to a temperature controller. In certain embodiments, a sample cartridge block may have a relatively large surface area in contact with a temperature controller.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to sample cartridge blocks and more specifically to such blocks which are capable of providing improved sample temperature characteristics and increased sample density.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A variety of biochemical experiments, involve monitoring certain temperature sensitive reactions. Typically, such studies include thermal cycling of the sample. Such experiments include: nucleic acid hybridizations, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and its variants (e.g., RT-PCR), isothermal amplification techniques (e.g., "NASBA", "In-Situ-3SR", "PRINS"), cycling "PRINS" and antigen based detection of tissue features. These procedures and general background are contained in the following literature references: Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, F. M. Ausubel, et al., eds., John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sections 14.3 and 14.7; Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, F. M. Ausubel, et al., eds., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Section 14.8; Steacker, H., M. Cammer, R. Rubenstein and T. R. Van de Water. 1994. A procedure for RT-PCR Amplification of mRNAs on Histological Specimens. BioTechniques. 16:76-80; Sooknanan, R. And L. T. Malek. 1995. NASBA. A detection and amplification system uniquely suited for RNA. Bio/Technology. 13:563-564; Zehba, I., G. W. Hacker, J. F. Sallstrom, E. Rylander and E. Wilander. 1992. Self sustained sequence replication-based amplification (3SF) for the in situ detection of MRNA in cultured cells. Cell Vision. 1:20-24; Gosden, J., D. Hanratty, J. Starling, J. Fantes, A. Mitchell, and D. Porteous. 1991. Oligonucleotide-primed in situ DNA synthesis (PRINS): a method for chromosome mapping, banding and investigation of sequence organization. Cytogenet. Cell Genet. 57:100-104; Watkins, S. Immunohistochemistry. in: Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, F. M. Ausubel, et al., eds., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Section 14.6. In such studies, the sample may be rapidly or slowly cycled among a variety of temperatures ranging up to nearly 100.degree. C.
Accordingly, various sample cartridges, such as microscope slides, are used in large volumes in both industry and academia. As a result, studying individual sample cartridges can be both tedious and inefficient. Therefore, sample blocks, devices that are capable of holding several sample cartridges, are often used. To optimize efficiency and economy, it is typically desirable to utilize sample cartridge blocks that are capable of holding or containing a relatively large number of samples and/or sample cartridges.
In a variety of circumstances, it is desirable to use a sample cartridge block that can monitor and control the temperature of a sample cartridge contained within the sample cartridge block. Therefore, sample blocks are typically capable of providing temperature control of the sample cartridges. When using a temperature controller in conjunction with a sample cartridge block, it is often advantageous to minimize temperature gradients throughout the three dimensional volume defined by the sample cartridge block so that the temperature of each sample cartridge contained within the sample cartridge block can be controlled to within some acceptable range of temperatures.
Typically, it is advantageous for a sample cartridge block to be capable of changing the temperature of a sample or sample cartridge at a relatively high rate while maintaining a relatively low thermal gradient throughout the sample cartridge block. To achieve this goal, a sample block should preferably include a material that has a relatively high thermal conductance. In order to achieve this goal, it is desirable for the surface area of the sample cartridge block in contact with the temperature controller to be comparatively high.
One known prior art sample cartridge block, designed for the Perkin Elmer Gene Amp In Situ 100 System, includes a horizontal base plate and sample plates which project vertically from the base plate to form a comb-like structure. A spring is located within each slot to hold the sample cartridges in place within the sample block. However, since the sample cartridges are placed vertically within the sample block, special sample cartridges must be used which reduce or eliminate the possibility of sample leakage due to gravity. Moreover, this sample block design allows the temperature of the slides to be controlled from only one side. As a result, asymmetric heating of the samples occurs due to a thermal gradient, and the temperature stability of the samples and/or sample cartridges is limited. Furthermore, this design offers a relatively poor heat pump area to thermal mass ratio, resulting in inefficient heating. Thus, the sample block has a relatively complex design and provides relatively poor sample temperature control characteristics.
Another sample cartridge block, designed for the Hybaid OmniSlide thermal cycler, includes an essentially planar surface and recessions. The recessions are designed to hold sample cartridges in a side-by-side fashion. This arrangement results in a relatively small cartridge density. In addition, precise temperature control of samples and sample cartridges is difficult because the cartridges must be separated by a distance of at least the width of a sample cartridge. Furthermore, the temperature of the sample block is controlled from the undersurface only, and heating occurs by electrical resistance and cooling is achieved by forced air flow. As a result, the sample cartridge block provides comparatively poor sample temperature characteristics. Moreover, with this design, good thermal control of the sample cartridges would require a separate sensor and independent temperature control for each sample cartridge. Hence, this sample block provides a relatively low sample density and comparatively poor sample temperature control characteristics.
An additional design for a sample block, the MJ Research PTC-100-16MS, includes a stacked, two-dimensional array of sample cartridge slots machined into a sample block. In addition, a temperature control device is located at the underside of the sample block only, so heat flow across the sample block is asymmetric. Thus, there is usually a temperature gradient across the sample cartridge block. To reduce the temperature gradient across the sample block, a relatively low rate of heating and cooling must be used, but this can reduce the utility of the sample cartridge block. Accordingly, this arrangement provides limited sample temperature control.
Thus, it remains a desirable in the art to provide a sample block having a design that affords high sample cartridge density while avoiding uneven heating of samples and/or sample cartridges due to thermal gradients. It is a further challenge in the art to provide a sample block that allows sample cartridges to be stacked horizontally. Furthermore, it is a general problem to design a sample cartridge block that has good mechanical integrity yet also has a relatively low thermal mass. Typically, low thermal mass materials provide comparatively poor mechanical integrity. Hence, it would be advantageous to provide a sample cartridge block designed to reduce or eliminate the significance of having good mechanical integrity.


Methods of repairing a periphery of a threaded hole of a part are provided. An embodiment of the method includes adding material to a region of the part including on a periphery of the threaded hole. New threads are formed in the added material. The new threads are continuous with existing threads formed in the hole.

Gas turbine engines typically include one or more larger parts (e.g., casings, housings) that may be relatively expensive and that may be produced by casting. Various factors in a casting process can cause the presence of one or more defects on a casting. Some casting defects might only be detected after the casting part has undergone subsequent machining and/or finishing (e.g., grinding, drilling, tapping) operations. Depending on the location, type and size of a defect, the presence of the defect may result in the whole casting having to be scrapped. Improvement is desirable.

Method of repairing a region of a part including a threaded hole


A novel macromer or mixture thereof is described herein, comprising benzoyl isocyanate terminal moieties and at least two residues of a water-soluble polymer having a molecular weight ranging from 80 to 10,000 adjacent to the carbonyl group of the benzoyl isocyanate moieties, thereby forming at least two ester linkages in the macromer or mixture thereof. A method for making a diisocyanate macromer is also described herein.

Generally, the key requirements of a tissue adhesive are:                (1) In use, the adhesive must mimic the mechanical performance of the undamaged tissue;        (2) The adhesive should provide sufficient tack for "primary" fixation with the opportunity for manipulation and re-alignment prior to setting strongly;        (3) Any exothermic process involved in the curing of the adhesive should not damage the surrounding tissue;        (4) The adhesive must not elicit any toxic response by the surrounding healthy tissue and should facilitate the re-growth of new tissue where possible;        (5) The adhesive should not liberate harmful degradation products;        (6) The adhesive should degrade, and as it does so, it should be replaced by new tissue with minimal scarring; and        (7) Any biodegradation products should not accumulate in the body but should be eliminated naturally either by excretion or incorporation into the natural biochemical cycle.["Polymeric Biomaterials", 2nd Ed., Marcel Dekker Inc., (2002) pp. 716]
It is well known in the art that diisocyanate monomers may be used to form polymeric adhesives. However, many of the diisocyanate monomers that are commercially available are small molecule diisocyanate monomers that present toxicity and sensitization hazards and that polymerize to form products having toxic degradation products, for instance, aromatic amines. As such, commercially available small molecule diisocyanate monomers are unsuitable for human use as an internal adhesive or sealant.
Metabolically acceptable polyisocyanate monomers are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,099. More specifically, this reference describes an aromatic benzoyl isocyanate terminated monomer, having glycolic acid residues and polyethyleneglycol residues, in formula "I, Preferred". This reference indicates that the resultant polymer will degrade ultimately to metabolically acceptable products, including p-aminobenzoic acid, polyethylene glycol and glycolic acid. Although the resultant polymer in principal could degrade into the aforementioned compounds, it is believed that only the glycolic acid residues would hydrolyse in vivo, resulting in a mixture of water-soluble and water insoluble fragments. The water-soluble fragments would be eliminated naturally by excretion from the body. However, the water insoluble fragments would not be eliminated naturally, resulting in the undesirable accumulation of the water insoluble fragments in the body.
Polyester-urethane-urea block copolymers prepared from commercially available small molecular diisocyanates, i.e. tolylene diisocyanate (TDI), diphenylmethane-4,4′-diisocyanate (MDI), and hexamethylene disisocyanate (HMDI), are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,210,441. However, these copolymers would be unsuitable for use as a surgical adhesive or sealant, since the copolymers are already polymerized, i.e., already cured, and would not provide sufficient opportunity for manipulation and re-alignment. Moreover, such copolymers are not believed to mimic the mechanical performance of undamaged tissue.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a monomer based internal adhesive or sealant formulation that is capable of polymerizing in vivo to form an internal adhesive or sealant, in order to provide an opportunity for manipulation and re-alignment. Specifically, it is desirable that the adhesive or sealant formulation fill internal cavities and voids, penetrating and conforming to the interstices and pores of the tissue, prior to curing or setting.
Additionally, it is desirable to have a monomer based internal adhesive or sealant formulation that polymerizes in vivo, where the monomer, the formulation thereof, and the resultant polymer are biocompatible. The resultant polymer should also be biodegradable.
Finally, it is desirable that the degradation products of the resultant polymer be both biocompatible and water soluble, so that the degradation products are completely eliminated from the human body as waste products.

Method of making a diisocyanate terminated macromer


The present invention is an anti-vibration device (1) that includes: a first mounting component (2) that is cylindrically-shaped and joined to one of a vibration generating portion and a vibration receiving portion; a second mounting component (3) that is joined to the other one of the vibration generating portion and the vibration receiving portion; a first elastic body (4) that elastically joins the first mounting component (2) and the second mounting component (3) together; a fluid chamber (5) that is provided inside the first mounting component (2) and inside which a fluid is sealed; a first partitioning wall (10) that divides the fluid chamber (5) in an axial direction so as to define a main fluid chamber (8), a portion of wall surfaces of which is the first elastic body, and an auxiliary fluid chamber; a second partitioning wall (12) that divides the main fluid chamber (8) in a circumferential direction so as to define a plurality of divided main fluid chambers (11); and a plurality of restricting passages (35) that enable the plurality of divided main fluid chambers (11A, 11B) and the auxiliary fluid chamber (9) to communicate with each other, wherein at least a portion of the first partitioning wall (10) is formed by a second elastic body (26) that is elastically deformable, the second partitioning wall (12) is joined to both the second mounting component (3) and the second elastic body (26), and the second elastic body (26) has differences in rigidity in a radial direction.

An anti-vibration device, for example, such as that illustrated in Patent document 1 (see below) is known that demonstrates attenuation characteristics towards vibration in both an axial direction and a radial direction. This anti-vibration device includes: a first mounting component that has a cylindrical shape and is joined to one of a vibration generating portion and a vibration receiving portion; a second mounting component that is joined to the other of the vibration generating portion and the vibration receiving portion and is placed inside the first mounting component; an intermediate cylinder that is fitted inside the first mounting component; a first elastic body that elastically joins the intermediate cylinder to the second mounting component; a partitioning component that is fitted inside the first mounting component and forms a first pressure-receiving fluid chamber between itself and the first elastic body; a diaphragm that is adhered to the first mounting component and forms an auxiliary fluid chamber between itself and the partitioning component; a second elastic body that elastically joins the intermediate cylinder to the second mounting component and that forms a second pressure-receiving fluid chamber between itself and the first elastic body; and a partitioning wall portion that is provided on one of the first elastic body and the second elastic body and partitions the second pressure-receiving fluid chamber into a pair of chambers.


A brake booster coupling device includes: a braking piston, an input piston displaceable by an operation of a brake input element from its starting position by a driver braking distance, a force transmission between the input piston displaced by a driver braking distance below a predefined threshold value and the braking piston is suppressed, and a booster piston displaceable with the aid of the brake booster drive such that the braking piston, which contacts the booster piston, is displaceable with the aid of the brake booster drive from a non-braking position into a braking position; a contact element displaceable by a displacement of the braking piston from the non-braking position into the braking position such that a first contact surface of the contact element contacts a second contact surface of the input piston in such a way that a driver brake force is transmittable to the braking piston.

A conventional brake system for a vehicle frequently has a nonlinear relationship between a driver brake force, which a driver exerts on a brake input element of the brake system, and a braking force, which is applied to a braking component situated on a brake master cylinder. In particular, such a brake system, such as the servobrake device discussed in DE 197 22 739 C2, for example, often has a jump-in range which is perceptible to the driver during the operation of the brake input element.
FIGS. 1A and 1B show two coordinate systems to illustrate an example of a relationship between a driver brake force and a resulting braking force. The abscissas of the coordinate systems show a driver brake distance z, by which an input piston, which is coupled to the operated brake input element, is displaceable. The ordinate of the coordinate system of FIG. 1A shows driver brake force Ff to be applied to displace the input piston by driver brake distance z. In the coordinate system of FIG. 1B, the ordinate specifies resulting braking force Fe.
As is apparent in FIG. 1A, the driver must apply a minimum force Fm to move the input piston, which is in its starting position (z=0) when the brake input element is not operated, out of this position. During subsequent jump-in range J from the starting position up to a driver brake distance zj, driver brake force Ff to be applied to displace the input piston is comparatively low and nearly constant. In jump-in range J, braking force Fe only increases with a small slope. From driver brake distance zj, driver brake force Ff and braking force Fe become increasingly steeper and subsequently merge into an approximately linear range.
Jump-in range J often results from an air gap between the input piston, which is present in its starting position, and a disc (reaction disc), via which the driver brake force is transmittable from the input piston to a braking piston situated on the brake master cylinder after a displacement of the input piston by driver brake distance zj. Since in this case there is no contact for the force transmission between the input piston and the reaction disc in the event of a driver brake distance less than zj, braking force Fe is typically exerted on the braking piston by a brake booster drive in jump-in range J. The brake booster drive is typically activated in such a way that a booster piston, which is situated on the brake booster drive and contacts the disc, is synchronously moved with the input piston in such a way that a nonzero differential distance does not exist between the input piston and the booster piston.


A printed circuit board assembly has plural printed circuit boards that are mechanically and electrically connected to each other with them being stacked, and a connection layer that connects the adjacent two printed circuit boards to each other is provided. The connection layer includes an insulation portion and an electric conduction portion. The insulation portion contains an insulating member and is adhered to each of the adjacent two printed circuit boards. The electric conduction portion passes through the insulation portion and connects electrode terminals of the adjacent two printed circuit boards.

The present application relates to a printed circuit board assembly which is available for hardware such as a portable phone, and a method of manufacturing the same.
Accompanying with enhancing functionality of the hardware such as the portable phone and downsizing it, multiple layers for circuit wiring have been advanced in any printed circuit boards that are available for the hardware. Such the multiple layers for circuit wiring in the printed circuit boards have enabled a degree of freedom in the circuit wiring to be increased, thereby allowing a high density of wired wires to be implemented. Multi-layered printed circuit board has been made in general by using build-up technology or the like such that insulation layers and wiring layers have been alternately formed on a core printed circuit board.
Alternatively, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-168279 has disclosed that a multi-layered printed circuit board assembly and a method of manufacturing the same in which an air layer stays between the stacked plastic sheets. The multi-layered printed circuit board disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-168279 is manufactured so that plastic sheets each having circuit patterns and electrode terminals are stacked and connected to each other electrically via a solvent-soluble filler layer having a predetermined thickness and then, the solvent-soluble filler layer can be dissolved to provide the air layer between the stacked plastic sheets.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H08-8539 has disclosed that a multi-layered printed circuit board assembly and a method of manufacturing the same in which metal layers of the printed circuit boards are plated and connected to each other. The multi-layered printed circuit board assembly disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H08-8539 is manufactured so that printed circuit boards each in which a circuit pattern of metal layer is formed are faced to each other and held at a predetermined position and the metal layers in the circuit patterns that are faced to each other are connected to each other using electrolytic plating by energizing the metal layers.
However, in the above-mentioned method of manufacturing the multi-layered printed circuit board assembly using the build-up technology, as the numbers of layers of the printed circuit boards to be manufactured are increased, proportion defective may be accumulated in the layers, so that a yield rate for a final complete printed circuit board assembly is decreased, thereby causing manufacture costs for the multi-layered printed circuit board assembly to increase.
According to the multi-layered printed circuit board assembly and the method of manufacturing the same, which have been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-168279, it is necessary to dissolve the solvent-soluble filler layer between the plastic sheets after the plastic sheets have been connected to each other via the solvent-soluble filler layer. This causes the manufacture steps to be complicated, thereby increasing its manufacture costs.
Further, according to the multi-layered printed circuit board assembly and the method of manufacturing the same, which have been disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H08-8539, it is necessary to connect the printed circuit boards to each other using electrolytic plating by energizing the metal layers with the metal layers being face to each other in the printed circuit board assembly when connecting the printed circuit boards. This also causes the manufacture steps to be complicated, thereby increasing its manufacture costs.

Printed circuit board assembly and method of manufacturing the same


Disclosed are systems and methods for providing a spoken dialog system using meta-data to build language models to improve speech processing. Meta-data is generally defined as data outside received speech; for example, meta-data may be a customer profile having a name, address and purchase history of a caller to a spoken dialog system. The method comprises building tree clusters from meta-data and estimating a language model using the built tree clusters. The language model may be used by various modules in the spoken dialog system, such as the automatic speech recognition module and/or the dialog management module. Building the tree clusters from the meta-data may involve generating projections from the meta-data and further may comprise computing counts as a result of unigram tree clustering and then building both unigram trees and higher-order trees from the meta-data as well as computing node distances within the built trees that are used for estimating the language model.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to speech recognition and more specification to using meta-data dependent language modeling for speech recognition.
2. Introduction
Speech recognition has gained momentum as a viable technology over time. As computer processors improve and as the language models and recognition algorithms improve, the recognition accuracy for systems that perform speech recognition also improve. One way used by those of skill in the art to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) is to use language models that have many recognition examples and samples within a certain "domain." For example, if a speech recognition engine is to recognize speech from a person who will be talking about making a flight reservation, then there is a known world of words and phrases that are expected to be spoken by the user. The speech recognition engine and the experts designing the system can make use of commonly used words for that domain to improve recognition.
A language model used by a speech recognition engine needs to be "trained" to recognize speech. This typically involves experts recording average or expected discussions between a person and the system, labeling that data, and creating the language model. For example, the expert may record a person saying "I want to fly from LA to New York". The person would then label the terms used "LA", "New York" and so forth so that the system, when faced with similar sounding words in live use, will associate the appropriate sound with the appropriate word. With enough training data that covers many scenarios, the language model is ready for live use to listen to real users.
There are still many challenges with providing a speech recognition application that approaches acceptable recognition accuracy such that its use will become widespread. While many technologies exist to help improve accuracy, there is a need in the art to consider extending the information used by a recognition engine beyond what is presently available to further improve the technology.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

System and method for using meta-data dependent language modeling for automatic speech recognition


An excitation unit applies, to an excitation coil, an excitation voltage with a voltage level alternately changing between a first high voltage value higher than a reference voltage value and a first low voltage value lower than the reference voltage value. The excitation unit includes a comparison circuit and a voltage switching circuit. The comparison circuit outputs a comparison signal having a voltage level switching between a high level and a low level depending on whether a detection voltage is greater than, or equal to or less than, a threshold voltage. The voltage switching circuit switches the voltage level of the excitation voltage between the first high voltage value and the first low voltage value according to the voltage level of the comparison signal.

A circuit breaker with the capability of detecting a DC leakage current has been known in the art (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). The circuit breaker of Patent Literature 1 includes a magnetic core, a winding, an excitation unit, a current detection unit, a DC component detection unit, a pair of contacts, and a decision unit. The magnetic core is electromagnetically coupled to a pair of electrically conductive paths through which an alternating current flows. The winding is wound around the magnetic core. The excitation unit supplies an excitation current as an alternating current to the winding. The current detection unit detects a current flowing through the winding. The DC component detection unit detects the magnitude of a DC component from the current detected by the current detection unit. The pair of contacts are respectively arranged on the pair of electrically conductive paths. On finding the magnitude of the DC component detected by the DC component detection unit greater than a threshold value, the decision unit turns the pair of contacts OFF. The decision unit turns the pair of contacts OFF in a state where supply of electricity is cut off.
The excitation unit is a positive feedback oscillator circuit including an operational amplifier, two resistors, and a constant voltage source. The operational amplifier is driven by a single power supply. The voltage value of a DC voltage supplied from the constant voltage source is approximately a half of the supply voltage of the operational amplifier. The inverting input terminal of the operational amplifier is connected to a connection point between the winding and a resistor (current-detecting resistor). The output voltage of the current detection unit (i.e., a voltage at the connection point between the winding and the current-detecting resistor) is supplied to the inverting input terminal of the operational amplifier. The non-inverting input terminal of the operational amplifier receives a threshold voltage, which is obtained by dividing, by two resistors, a differential voltage between the output voltage of the operational amplifier and a DC voltage supplied from the constant voltage source. The output voltage (excitation voltage) of the operational amplifier has its voltage level switching depending on whether the output voltage of the current detection unit (i.e., detection voltage) is greater than, or equal to or less than, the threshold voltage.
If the accuracy of comparison between the output voltage (detection voltage) of the current detection unit and the threshold voltage and the accuracy of the voltage level of the excitation voltage are both low, then the detection accuracy of the DC leakage current could be low. The excitation unit of Patent Literature 1 uses a single operational amplifier to compare the detection voltage with the threshold voltage and to output the excitation voltage. For example, as an input offset voltage of the operational amplifier increases, the timing when the detection voltage reaches the threshold voltage shifts from a timing when the output voltage of the operational amplifier switches its voltage level. That is to say, as the input offset voltage of the operational amplifier increases, the accuracy of comparison between the detection voltage and the threshold voltage decreases. Also, as the ON resistance between a high-side switch and a low-side switch of the operational amplifier increases, the difference between the voltage level of the excitation voltage and either the supply voltage or the ground potential increases, thus decreasing the magnitudes of the excitation voltage and the threshold voltage with respect to the output voltage of the constant voltage source. In other words, as the ON resistance between the high-side switch and low-side switch of the operational amplifier increases, the accuracy of the voltage level of the excitation voltage decreases.
Therefore, to increase the detection accuracy of the DC leakage current, the excitation unit needs to include a high-performance operational amplifier in which the accuracy of comparison between the detection voltage and the threshold voltage and the accuracy of the voltage level of the excitation voltage are both high. This causes a decline in the freedom of selection of parts that form the excitation unit.

Direct-current electricity leakage detection device and electricity leakage detection device

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.


A directional control valve having three positions controls the direction of flow through an asphalt distributor. The directional control valve is interposed between a pump and a feed line assembly to a spray bar. The directional control valve has a first position in which flow is recirculated through the pump, a second position in which flow is delivered to the spray bar and a third position providing for handspray and transfer operations. A pressure relief valve is provided for controlling return flow of asphalt from the spray bar to the tank. The pressure relief valve is open in spray bar circulation mode and is closed during a spraying mode. According to the preferred embodiment the directional valve and pressure relief valve are contained within a modular control valve assembly. The directional control valve eliminates the need to reverse the flow in one of the individual feed lines and feed line assembly connecting the modular control valve assembly to the spray bar. The feed line assembly includes a delivery and return line running coaxial or otherwise adjacent for heat transfer therebetween. The directional control valve reduces the quantity and lengths of exposed valving and plumbing associated with prior asphalt distributors.

The present invention generally relates to asphalt distributors and more particularly relates to control valves in the circulating systems of asphalt distributors.
Asphalt distributors apply hot liquid asphalt to road and other surfaces in a variety of paving applications. Upon cooling, asphalt material becomes more viscous and eventually xe2x80x9cfreezesxe2x80x9d to provide a binder material for pavement. Although it is desired that asphalt freezes upon spray application, it is important to prevent cooling of the asphalt material before spraying, while the asphalt is in the distributor. If asphalt freezes in the distributor, the asphalt can cause serious operating problems such as plugging the system and decreasing uniformity of the spray application.
Asphalt distributors conventionally include a tank, a pump, a spray bar and the plumbing network for communicating asphalt from the tank through the pump to the spray bar. The tank, pump and spray bar are conventionally supported directly by a vehicle such as a truck or supported by a detachable trailer pulled behind the vehicle. The plumbing network of an asphalt distributor preferably performs a number of desired functions, including loading of asphalt into the tank, off-loading asphalt out of the tank, transfer to handspray operations, circulating asphalt in the tank during initial asphalt heating, spraying of asphalt, and circulating asphalt through the spray bar while not spraying to prevent freezing of asphalt therein.
A prior attempt of providing an asphalt distributor is exemplified by Hill, U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,586. Hill provides a circulating system that includes dual feed lines connecting the pump to the spray bar, each feed line being connected near one end of the spray bar. In Hill, flow through one feed line is positive or one directional while the flow through the other feed line is positive or negative (bi-directional) depending upon whether spraying or circulation through the bar is desired. During normal spraying operations, flow through both feed lines is positive to deliver asphalt flow to the spray bar. However, when the distributor is stopped, flow through the bi-directional feed line is typically reversed to circulate asphalt through the spray bar and back to the tank to continuously move the asphalt through the feed lines and spray bar and prevent asphalt from freezing therein. Switching the flow is accomplished with an intermediate conduit having an on/off valve therein selectively connecting the feed lines, an adjustable pressure relief valve in the bi-directional feed line, and a pair of on/off valves in the spray bar.
Problems existing in the art relate to the complexity and cost of providing the circulating network in the asphalt distributor. Prior attempts have typically required complex and multiple valves and extensive lengths of circulating plumbing to reverse the flow of asphalt in one of the feed lines and provide the desired operating functions of an asphalt distributor, while all the time preventing asphalt from freezing and plugging the system. Not only are complex valves expensive but the multiple valve locations which are dictated by the routing of interconnecting plumbing do not provide easy operation or straightforward understanding of operation. For manually operated valves, this requires extra worker training and presents a potential safety hazard. The multiple connections can be prone to assembly difficulties and leaks, and the multiple lengths of exposed plumbing result in excessive heat loss from the asphalt which can lead to freezing or plugging of the system.
It is therefore the general aim of the present invention to provide an improved approach of directing asphalt flow through the circulating system of an asphalt distributor.
It is another general aim to centralize the control of asphalt flow through the circulation system of an asphalt distributor.
It is another general aim of the present invention to reduce the cost of providing control valving for the circulating system of an asphalt distributor.
It is therefore objects of the present invention to reduce the complexity of valving in a circulating system of an asphalt distributor while providing for multiple desire operating features.
It is a further objective of the present invention to provide a circulating system in an asphalt distributor that is easier to use, and therefore which is safer to workers.
It is a subsidiary object of the present invention to reduce the lengths of exposed plumbing in a circulating system of an asphalt distributor.
It is another subsidiary object of the present invention according to a preferred embodiment to eliminate the need to reverse the flow in one of the feed lines to the spray bar in the circulating system of an asphalt distributor.
It is therefore a feature of the present invention to provide a directional control valve that has three positions corresponding to four different operating modes of an asphalt distributor. The directional control valve includes an inlet receiving asphalt from a pump, a first outlet to the tank and a second outlet to the spray bar. Control means is provided for selectively positioning the directional control valve. The directional valve includes the first position connecting the inlet to the first outlet for recirculation mode, a second position connecting the inlet to the second outlet for spraying and spray bar circulation modes, and a third position in which the inlet is disconnected from both outlets.
It is an aspect of the present invention that the directional control valve provides a third outlet to a transfer line for operating as off-loading and/or handspray operations. This allows asphalt to continually flow through the directional control valve during transfer operations so as to further prevent freezing of asphalt in the directional control valve.
It is another aspect of the present invention that the directional control valve does not switch the flow through the feed line assembly which delivers asphalt to and from the spray bar. According to the preferred embodiment, the feed line assembly includes a delivery line for one directional delivery flow to the spray bar and a return line for one directional return flow back to the tank. The return line runs coaxially or otherwise adjacent to the delivery line to form a heat exchanger so that static asphalt in the return line is heated by the delivery line to prevent asphalt freezing therein.
It is another feature of the present invention to provide a modular control valve assembly which includes a directional control valve and a pressure relief valve housed in the same valve body. The valve body includes an inlet to the pump, a recirculating outlet for recirculating asphalt to the tank, a delivery outlet for delivering asphalt to the spray bar and a return inlet connected to the spray bar for receiving circulated asphalt from the spray bar. The directional control valve has three positions for alternatively connecting the inlet to the recirculating and delivery outlets. The pressure relief valve is interposed between the return inlet and the recirculating outlet. The pressure relief valve has open and closed positions corresponding to spraying and spray bar circulating modes. During the spraying mode the pressure in the spray bar is low because nozzles on the spray bar are open for discharging asphalt. During spray bar circulation mode, the pressure in the spray bar increases as the nozzles are closed. This causes the pressure relief valve to open thereby allowing asphalt to circulate through the manifold return line and recirculating outlet back to the tank.
It is an aspect of the present invention that the delivery line and return line of the feed line assembly which connects the modular control valve assembly to the spray bar are coaxial or otherwise run adjacent to provide a heat exchanger means for heat transfer therebetween. During the spraying mode, heat is transferred from the delivery line to the return line to prevent freezing of residual or remaining asphalt therein.
These and other objects and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Directional control valve and valve assembly in an asphalt distributor