A system for feeding and positioning articles being processed comprises: a conveying device for driving and conveying the articles; a passage detecting component for detecting the passage of a part to be detected of one part of an article, which is being thus conveyed and driven, past a forward mark point which has been set at a position spaced apart by a specific distance immediately in front of an ultimate objective stopping position; a position pulse counter for counting the timing of the passage of the part to be detected past the forward mark point; an additional feed quantity setting component for setting the quantity of feeding of an article up to the ultimate objective stopping position in accordance with the timing of passage of the part to be detected past the forward mark point; and a feed quantity control component for controlling the driving quantity of the conveying device in accordance with the said quantity feeding thus set.

This invention relates generally to means for feeding and positioning articles undergoing processing relative to the means carrying out the processing. More particularly, the invention relates to a system for feeding and positioning articles which is designed to carry out with high precision positioning of articles such as lead frames in the fabrication and assembly of semiconductor devices.
In general, the process of assembling a semiconductor device comprises the steps of mounting a semiconductor chip on a lead frame, carrying out wire bonding with respect to this semiconductor chip thus mounted, and setting this semiconductor chip thus wire bonded in a metal mold. In carrying out these steps, a lead frame is fed along guide rails, and, at each work position, it is required that the lead frame be positioned and stopped accurately and positively.
In order to feed and position the lead frame, it has been the practice to form pilot holes at constant spacing intervals along a lateral side part of the lead frame in the longitudinal direction thereof and to cause a pilot pin to engage with each pilot hole thereby to achieve positioning.
In this known technique, however, pilot pins respectively suitable for a variety of lead frames of different frame widths and feed pitches become necessary, whereby the pilot pin must be changed for every frame, and assembly efficiency drops.
For this reason, we have proposed a system (as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 81634/1986) in which: a lead frame is moved through only a set distance; the actual lead frame feed quantity is detected at every completion of the movement; the (error) difference between this detected quantity and a specified lead frame feed quantity is measured by means such as an ITV camera; and the difference thus measured is used as feedback to correct the lead frame feed quantity of the succeeding feeding, whereby the necessity of using pilot pins is obviated.
In another prior-art technique (as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 80231/1985), positioning of a lead frame is accomplished by using an image sensor. More specifically, the positional difference or offset between the detection position and the center position of the island of the lead frame is detected by an image sensor, and the lead frame is moved by a distance corresponding to this positional offset thereby to accomplish correction.
However, in the above described positioning techniques in which pilot pins are unnecessary, it has been heretofore necessary to either use a pattern-recognition ITV camera having the object of pattern recognition of chip mounts, wire bonding, etc., or to use separate ITV cameras. In either case, time for pattern recognition becomes necessary and gives rise to a decrease in cycle time. Moreover, pattern recognition entails a program of relatively high level, the control of which occupies a large proportion thereof, whereby not only does a control system of extensive scale become necessary, but, for adaptability to a large variety of articles, a memory capacity for storing corresponding patterns becomes necessary. Furthermore, in pattern recognition, a pattern of a configuration which is appropriate for the lead frame is required, and its size must match the image size of the ITV camera.
In the above described example of the prior art, an X-Y table is caused to move, and an appropriate shape in the vicinity of the inner lead is made the objective. However, not only does a movement time become necessary, but the inner lead is readily deformed, whereby there arises the problem of uncertainty of reliability of this as a datum reference. While a pilot hole is suitable as a datum reference, it is accompanied by a number of problems such as the great length of the movement distance and the addition of the movement time. Furthermore, the size of a pilot hole is of the order of 1 to 2 mm and does not match the ITV camera in some cases, and, even if it does match, memory means for a great variety of patterns becomes necessary.
The use of separate ITV cameras for respectively exclusive use may appear to be feasible, but it has been accompanied in all instances by the problem of high costs and the problem of excessive installation space due to the positioning above of the head of the chip mounting mechanism and of the head of the wire bonding mechanism and other parts and to the positioning below of a wafer ring, heater, etc.

System for feeding and positioning articles being processed


In a vortex chamber flow meter, a bearingless annular rotor rotates about an axis in a cylindrical operating chamber. The chamber is enclosed in a jet ring within a meter housing. Liquid enters the housing and flows to a plurality of circumferentially spaced ports in the jet ring, directing flow through conduits into the vortex operating chamber tangentially. Liquid flow exits the vortex chamber axially through a central aperture. Optical sensing means respond to markings on the surface of a rotor moving past a selected position. The meter is constructed to effectively offset the entry of the liquid into the vortex chamber. The centerlines of the ports define a plane which is positioned to be off center from a plane bisecting the vortex chamber in the axial degree of freedom. The offset is in an axial direction away from the exit.

The present invention relates to fluid flow meters having an annular rotor operating in a vortex chamber.
The present invention is particularly useful in the context of vortex flowmeters including a rotor that rotates without contact with other components. This operation is useful in applications in which rotor bearing drag can affect resolution or accuracy. Rotation of the rotor is sensed by transducer means.
In a vortex chamber flow meter, liquid flows into a meter housing. Within the housing is a component which may be described as a jet ring having a central cylindrical operating chamber therein. An annular rotor in the chamber is centrally positioned in operation by vortex flow. Liquid enters the jet ring through a plurality of ports each communicating with a conduit extending through the cylindrical wall of the jet ring. Conduits each direct flow into the chamber tangentially with respect to the rotor. Liquid exits axially from an aperture at the center of the chamber. The rotor rotates free of contact with the chamber, and rotation is monitored by transducer means such as optical sensing means responsive to movement of index marks on a surface of the rotor. The ports are equiangularly positioned around the periphery of the chamber.
Such a design has been successfully employed and has been considered to be satisfactory. It was not readily apparent to those skilled in the art that this operation could be improved upon.

Rotor operation in a vortex chamber flowmeter


A system and method for generating a transportable physical level data block trace for a computer system. The method comprises capturing a first physical level data block trace on a first computer system, then performing a reverse file system lookup to generate a logical representation of that trace. That logical representation may be delivered to a second computer system, which may perform a file system lookup to convert the logical representation to a second physical level data block trace for a sequence of disk block accesses resulting from executing an application on the second computer system.

The present invention relates to computer systems. More specifically, the invention relates to a method for generating a data block trace (representing a sequence in which data blocks are loaded from a storage device to memory) that can be transmitted across platforms.
The speed at which data blocks are loaded into memory from a storage device (e.g., a hard disk, CD or DVD) may depend upon how those blocks are distributed on the device and the sequence with which they are accessed. By optimizing those blocks"" arrangement for a given access sequence, improved overall access time for a sequence of disk accesses may be achieved. Such an intelligent reordering may be realized by (1) tracing the sequence of data block accesses to determine the current data block allocation, then (2) optimizing data block allocation, using the trace results, to improve access time. Processes for performing such data block reallocation are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,787,296; 5,802,593; 5,890,205; and 5,920,896xe2x80x94each assigned to this application""s assignee.
In the processes that these patents describe, the tracer for tracing disk accesses comprises programming instructions that are stored on a computer system""s disk drive. As mentioned in U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,297, also assigned to this application""s assignee, the tracer may trace logical file accesses, and then map them to physical disk block accesses. Alternatively, the tracer may trace the physical block accesses directly. The tracer may be part of a standalone utility, or part of an installation utility integrated into an application. Alternatively, the tracer may be integrated with the operating system.
When both the tracer and the data block reallocator are installed on the same platform, the process by which they trace and reorder data block accesses for an application may be relatively complicated for a user. Removing the tracing burden from such a process could simplify that operation for the user. This may be accomplished by performing the tracing operation for the application of interest separately from performing the data block reordering operation. Such a trace, which represents disk access sequence information, may be provided to an unlimited number of computer systems. Those systems may use that trace to optimize the data block allocation for the application, as executed on them.
Transporting accurate disk access sequence information from one system to another is not, however, a straightforward task. Such a trace may consist of a sequence of low level physical data blocks, e.g., a record of low level physical hard drive transactions. Although a physical trace may be more accurate than a logical trace, it is system and state dependent. Such a trace may become invalid, even on the system from which it was made, if moving data on the hard drive (resulting from hard drive use) negates the trace""s accuracy.
Such a trace may instead consist of a logical file system trace. Such a trace records hard drive traffic, as reported by the computer""s operating system. While this type of trace is more portable than a physical trace, it may not be as accurate as a physical trace because it is captured at a relatively high level in the operating system""s driver stack. For that reason, a logical file system trace may not accurately reflect physical hard drive transactions.
Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus and method that enables a physical level data block trace to be transported across multiple systems and configurations. There is a need for such an apparatus and method that enables transmission of such a physical trace by abstracting it into a device independent format. The present invention provides such an apparatus and method.

Method and apparatus for generating a transportable physical level data block trace


Device-space color specifications for two color-presentation devices are interrelated through the intermediary of at least one perceptual color space. This interrelation is performed by either tabulations or real-time software processing, and in such a way that color, and color changes, specified in relation to one device--in a control language of that device--are tracked in both the language and the actual performance of the other device. This mapping through perceptual space can be used to produce the effect of matching the two device gamuts to each other, so that the full gamuts of both are in effect merged. When so used, this new kind of mapping preserves relative positions in color space--and thus the capability of the tracking device to maintain distinctions between colors seen on the source/input device that appear very closely similar. Such discrimination between adjacent colors can be supported essentially throughout the gamut of both devices and in particular even very near the lightness extrema and maximum-saturation point on a hue page. A related technique of merging two- or three-dimensional color elements can be used either to implement the new mapping, or for very different purposes such as converting colors from perceptual into machine space. A new radial-displacement surface scaling also preserves relative color information by avoiding lightning-rod effects at the lightness extrema, and at the maximum-saturation point.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to color presentation by different devices--for example different printers, cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs)--and more particularly to coping with divergent color gamuts of such color-presenting devices, when color specifications developed with one device are used to control color presentation on another device.
An exemplary application is in controlling color presentation by a printer, based on color specifications developed using a CRT computer monitor.
2. Related Art
A. Coexistent machine color spaces--The use of color monitors for computers has accelerated the need for color printers which can produce a satisfactory printout of what is displayed on the screen. As suggested above, this is one important instance of coordinating color appearances produced with two different physical systems.
With all such equipment, determining what constitutes a "satisfactory" color presentation--for instance, color printout on a printing medium such as paper--is often quite problematic.
Part of this problem arises from the subjective nature of color. Color is a sensation produced by combined effects of light, objects and human vision. A particular color or combination of colors may be appealing to one person while at the same time being offensive to another.
Another part of the "satisfactory"-color definitional problem arises from different color technologies used in computer monitors, color printers, and other color-presenting devices--such as broadcast or tape-recorded video. In general these technologies diverge dramatically.
For example, color presentation by CRT computer monitors and television sets is based on a color gamut defined by red, green and blue (RGB) CRT intensities. Color presentation by printers such as inkjet printers is instead typically based on a color gamut defined by cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) printed-page colorants.
The RGB color intensities of CRT screens are combined together in an additive way by mixing red, green and blue light rays from a first class of physical substances--namely phosphors--to form a first variety of different colors. The CMYK components of color inks, a second and entirely different class of physical substances, are applied to media in different combinations in a subtractive way to form a second variety of different colors; and the three chromatic elements CMY are only nominally the complements of the RGB intensities.
Various different color-management techniques have been used to provide some form of coordination between, for instance, the colors viewed on a computer monitor and the colors printed by a specific printer using a given ink formula on a particular type of printing medium. Modernly, most such control regimes are implemented in computer software or device firmware, or both.
Some color-matching technology has been incorporated into printer drivers, and in some such cases partially into accompanying lookup tables. A driver provides a translation interface between--on one hand--a particular computer operating system, and/or application software running in the computer, and on the other hand a color printer which acts as a hardcopy output device.
Portions of this document refer to an "input device" or "source device". By this is meant a device in reference to which a set of color-image specifications has been developed--not necessarily a device within which specifications literally originate.
Quite commonly, for example, a person watching a CRT screen (here serving as the input device) creates or modifies specifications for the colors, as seen on the screen, of various image portions, respectively. A printer or other device may be used instead of a CRT as the input device, even though naturally CRT screens are in general much faster and so in most cases preferred for this purpose--and conversely a CRT may be an output device.
It will be clear to readers who are skilled in this field that the CRT screen or other input device is not literally the source of the specifications. Rather, the source of the specifications is usually the person, typically in interaction with some apparatus or computer program--often a so-called "applications" program.
Such apparatus or program receives the person's commands, translates them into display-device signals and causes them to be displayed on the CRT screen. The physical properties (or so-called "characterization") of the CRT enter into the determination of how the specified colors will appear.
Once created or modified, or both, specifications are commonly directed into control systems for operation of another device--the "output device" or "destination device"--often a printer. Thus in many cases both the "input device" and "output device" in common are recipients of the specifications, in the form of data, electrical signals etc.--and the differences between physical properties or "characterizations" of the two devices in general give rise to differences between the resulting color appearances.
Terms such as "source device" or "input device" in this document thus encompass color-presenting devices which may be used by a person in conjunction with developing color-image specifications. These terms also, however, encompass devices that actually do serve as the source of the specifications.
An instance of this which is of particular interest is an applications program or system which leaves--as some do--the CRT signals or data essentially unaltered. In such a case the information in substantially the same form as used to control the CRT is treated as, or may be regarded as, the color specifications.
B. Pipe-through systems--In designing control systems for early apparatus, a classic assumption was sometimes used that the red, green and blue (for example) of one system were compatible, or consistent, with the red, green and blue complements of the cyan, magenta and yellow (for example) of another system. These assumptions are grossly incorrect, but had several interesting and useful properties.
First, the assumptions and resulting conversions were simple and required little understanding of relationships between the different color-production mechanisms used in the different systems. In particular these assumptions sidestepped all inquiry into the color gamuts respectively available with the two systems, and so into the relationships between those gamuts.
Therefore these assumptions were very easily implemented. In essence the RGB data were simply piped through to form CMYK data--but with elementary conversions based on the previously well-taught oversimplifications of so-called "complementary" colors; and also with some side calculations to derive black-ink (K) quantities.
Second, seen from the more-modern perspective of gamut relationships, these assumptions had the technical or theoretical benefit of in essence forcing both gamuts into concurrence, thus completely using both color spaces. They perfectly superposed the source- and output-device gamuts, thus producing colors with--potentially--a full range of vividnesses and lightnesses.
Third, viewed from a simple perceptual standpoint, these assumptions did produce color presentations for output devices (e.g., usually printers) that were usually distorted in relation to the colors presented by the input devices (e.g., usually CRTs). The relationship was generally quite poor--suffering from severe errors in hue and chroma, usually obscured by even more severe errors in lightness.
Because apparatus users found these lightness errors unacceptable, system designers next proceeded to incorporate lightness/darkness adjustments into the otherwise piped-through signals. These adjustments were sometimes labeled with such words as "lightness" and "darkness".
Sometimes they were instead called adjustments in "contrast" and designated by the corresponding parameter ".gamma." (a lower-case Greek letter "gamma")--a classical variable in photography, photolithography and photometrics. In either case these adjustments were often actually implemented in the classical manner as .gamma. slopes in a logarithmic response space.
In any event, lightness/darkness corrections generally took the form of separate adjustments--generated painstakingly through trial-and-error--to red, green and blue input signals. Through these efforts, lightness as presented by an output device could be brought into an acceptable range of relationships with that presented by an input device.
Another result, however, as the residual of this process was to reveal the theretofore-unaddressed deviations in hue and chroma. With lightness errors under relatively better control, these chromatic errors became far more conspicuous--and they are much more difficult to master.
C. Overlapping gamuts--In later apparatus some effort was addressed to controlling the relationship between these perceptual chromatic elements (hue and chroma) of input- and output-system colors. This effort generally took the form of attempts to match the appearances of the two.
This step entailed analytically characterizing the two devices--e.g., CRT and printer--in some common perceptual space. At this point the physical reality of the differences between the two sets of colors and the two device gamuts came out, disclosed by the perceptual frame of reference.
Now for the first time it became meaningful to consider the matter of dealing with gamut divergences. In general the gamuts of any two different devices fail to be congruent, and in particular often are overlapping--in all three dimensions of color space.
Thus typically each of the two gamuts extends to more-vivid colors, in some parts of the lightness ranges and some parts of the hue spectrum, than does the other gamut. Moreover, typically one gamut extends to lighter or to darker colors, or to both lighter and darker colors, than does the other gamut.
This overlap phenomenon implies, for example, that some colors which can be displayed on a CRT simply cannot be printed on a printer. It also has a converse implication (which will be introduced shortly)--but the unavailability of printer representations for some CRT-representable points is a particularly demanding matter.
It is demanding because color specifications developed by a person operating a CRT will in general include data points that are outside the printer gamut--but yet must be processed in some way. Thus system programmers, whether they wish to make color-relationship decisions or not, are forced to instruct systems what to do with those out-of-gamut points.
Faced with this necessity, system designers devised one or another scheme for translating the furthest-out-of-gamut CRT color into the interior of the printer gamut. A natural concern in specifying such a scheme is how to retain some degree of consistency in dealing with all colors--in other words CRT color-data points that are within the printer gamut, as well as different points that are outside it.
This idea of consistency is very important, particularly in presenting color images that include pictures, intended to appear realistic, of physical objects. Pictures of objects often derive a degree of realism through preservation of color relationships between colors of physically nearby image elements, such as for instance adjacent portions of subtlely-shaded clouds, or of the surfaces of curved objects. Another way to refer to preserving such "relationships" is to speak of retaining "information content".
A classical example of the relationship-preserving or information-content-retaining challenge has been denominated the "gum-ball problem". This phrase conjures the difficulty of realistically presenting a color picture of an object whose portrayed curvatures extend through a full range of values from flat-on to tangential.
As is well known, realistic portrayal of curvatures generally requires reproduction of a continuum of surface shadings--without which surfaces tend to appear, literally, flat. Attaining such realistic presentation is particularly difficult for a vividly colored object such as a gum ball.
The necessary shadings needed to realistically portray curvatures are especially demanding for vividly colored objects because these colors are near the peripheries of overlapping-gamut systems. In particular, often, these colors are within the source-device gamut but outside the destination-device gamut.
The difficulty arises from the need to somehow preserve as much as possible of the relationships between these many different shadings found in the source-device gamut--even when they are all outside the output-device gamut. The question then is how to represent, within the capabilities of an output device, relationships between many different vivid-color appearances that are all, by definition, outside those capabilities.
D. Gamut compression--One standard solution to these concerns heretofore has been to make a proportional adjustment to the chroma, or distance from the central lightness/darkness axis of the three-dimensional color-solid gamut, for all CRT-defined points. A common variant of this technique is proportional adjustment to both chroma and lightness--the latter being represented as position projected along that central axis.
The chroma-adjusting proportionality factor in such systems is less than unity, and is generally constant. Usually the proportionality factor is constant throughout the entire three-dimensional gamut; possibly in some systems, however, that factor is at least constant throughout each so-called "hue page", or defined grouping of hue pages.
(A hue page, as considered within any single specified color space, is a vertical plane extending radially outward from the central color-space axis of lightness/darkness, and representing the available variations of chroma and lightness that make up all the available colors of a selected single hue. As between different color spaces, the hue-page concept has important limitations which are discussed in section d! below.)
The selection of a constant proportion throughout the color space may be an intuitively satisfying choice, since its physical implication is in theory a mapping of all colors with no change in lightness or hue, only a change in vividness--and since, furthermore, at least in an analytical sense this vividness change is applied consistently to all the colors in the CRT gamut.
Thus the various colors retain nearly their original lightness and hue, and also retain their mutual relationships in a comparative way. For example, if a first color on the CRT screen is originally darker, bluer and more saturated than a second on the CRT screen, then in principle the resulting, first color printed on paper should likewise be darker, bluer and more saturated than the resulting second color printed on paper--and a like relationship should be exhibited for any selected pair of colors.
One variant of this proportional-adjustment technique is to incorporate accompanying lightness adjustments, or often lightness/chroma tradeoffs (which themselves may or may not operate on the same principle of proportionality). These adjustments are provided to avoid some intuitively unsatisfying results of proportionally adjusting chroma exclusively.
All such proportional-adjustment techniques, sometimes known as "gamut compression", nevertheless have drawbacks. One relatively minor problem is that the theoretically consistent character of the transformation is not in general observed for real systems; in other words, the vividness compression is sometimes perceptually nonuniform.
More serious and fundamental is the fact that gamut compression artificially restrains the vividness of almost all the colors printed. The only colors in the CRT gamut which are printed near the full vividness of which the printer is capable are (1) the CRT color which is furthest out of the printer gamut and (2) the near-neighbors of that CRT color.
Even that furthest-out-of-gamut color is, by definition, very significantly reduced in vividness from what is seen on the CRT screen--but this cannot be helped because the printer gamut at this point does in fact limit the available vividness. Everywhere else in the printer gamut, however, the capability of the printer to present saturated, vivid colors is essentially discarded.
Thus in essence all the colors in the CRT screen gamut are synthetically and systematically reduced to the lowest common denominator, so to speak, of the printer gamut. One result has been to create among many users a misapprehension that CRT screens are capable of displaying colors vividly whereas CMYK printers are not.
As to printers the contrary is true--but the colors which printers can print vividly are different colors from those which CRT screens can display vividly. This is the "converse implication" mentioned parenthetically above.
To state that converse implication directly: some colors which can be printed on a printer simply cannot be displayed on a CRT. Evidence of this fact heretofore was, in effect, inadvertently concealed from many users by the popular technology of color-matching and gamut compression.
Thus in inventing gamut compression to solve the earlier problems of lightness and hue shifts in printed colors, relative to CRT-displayed colors, system designers created a new problem: printed colors which failed to make use of the printer gamut and so appeared--in comparison with CRT displays--drab, lifeless, boring, and generally disappointing to users of color-presenting apparatus.
Gamut compression, while serviceable in many contexts, thus failed to provide a technique for presenting such colors in a manner that is both fully useful (retaining information content, to a reasonable extent) and perceptually vibrant.
An earlier passage in this discussion posed the problem of "how to represent, within the capabilities of an output device, relationships between many different vivid-color appearances that are all, by definition, outside those capabilities." To that expression of the problem may now be added the additional constraint that the desired representation should at the same time preserve, to the extent possible, the vividness of the original colors.
The gum-ball problem, after all, is easily solved in the limiting case of black-and-white pictures--or whenever vibrant color is of little consequence. The challenge resides in concurrently retaining the vividness of the bright colors used in making the balls.
E. Surface scaling--Another line of effort has focused more emphatically on this latter constraint. Unfortunately, as will now be seen, the result has been to sacrifice a large part of the information-preserving or relationship-preserving concern.
Here the technique entails generally maintaining essentially unchanged the colors within the common portions of the input and output gamuts. Adjustments are applied exclusively--or almost exclusively--to those specified colors which are within the source-device gamut but found to be outside the destination-device gamut.
These adjustments consist of mapping, or moving, all those specified colors to some points along the destination-device gamut surface. In this line of development, known as "surface scaling", various rules have been adopted by various workers for selecting the new point along the output-gamut surface to assign to each given out-of-gamut color.
At the outset it will be understood that considerable loss of information is necessarily inherent in any such exercise, for at heart it consists of mapping areas into lines. Nonetheless the effort is entirely meritorious because retention of vividness is very important.
In fact, for many users vividness of the final presented color is at least as important as, and sometimes more important than, the retention of intercolor relationships and thus information conveying, e.g., spatial curvatures of objects portrayed. A major issue, then, is the extent to which the appearance, or even illusion, of seeming to retain such relationships can be sustained.
One straightforward kind of surface scaling is mapping colors to the output-gamut surface at constant lightness--in other words, displacing each out-of-destination-device-gamut point along a horizontal (constant-lightness) line to the intersection of that line with the gamut boundary. Intellectually this may seem the optimum arrangement, since it preserves lightness, and operationally may be appealing in that it is very simple to implement.
Unfortunately, however, because of the relative geometries of gamut boundaries, this approach tends to preserve relatively very small fractions of the relationships between out-of-destination-gamut colors. In other words this approach typically retains very small fractions of the information needed to distinguish different parts of objects.
Consideration of typical device-gamut shapes, particularly within hue pages, reveals why this is so. Device gamut boundaries as represented in perceptual spaces, in the usual lightness-vs.-chroma hue-page geometry, typically lie neither near-horizontal nor near-vertical but rather middlingly in between.
Hence a horizontal (along-constant-chroma) displacement of out-of-destination-gamut points approaches the destination-gamut boundary along an acute angle. The result of using this particular form of area-to-line mapping is to map a very long, horizontal line (within the out-of-gamut areas) into each point on the destination-gamut surface.
Similar objections may be lodged against a competing candidate mapping--namely, along vertical (constant chroma) lines. While perhaps not as often sacrificing as much information content in general, such a mapping tends to collapse multiple values of lightness onto each gamut-boundary point.
This particular sort of information deformation is particularly troublesome: first, it flattens apparent shapes of curved surfaces. Second, it also draws attention to itself by introducing relatively severe lightness shifts per se--and, as previously suggested, shifts in this color dimension are particularly noticeable and objectionable.
Mindful of these relationships, some workers choose instead to map each out-of-gamut color point to the nearest point on the gamut boundary. For much of the out-of-gamut area this amounts to displacing the color points along a normal to the boundary, which--considering typical overlapping-gamut geometries--can be seen to minimize the length of displacement.
In this way, still for much but not all of the out-of-destination-gamut area, this mapping geometry tends to maximize the extent of relationship/information retention. In certain areas of the hue page, however, the mechanism leading to this benefit tends to break down.
Those include, first, the areas in which there is no normal to the gamut boundary, and second the areas which are adjacent to those areas. Study of hue-page graphs for typical overlapping-gamut situations will reveal that these conditions can usually obtain only in relatively small hue-page regions.
These are the regions near the maximum-saturation point and the lightness/darkness-extremum points for the destination gamut. From the localization and smallness of these effects it might be supposed that they are correspondingly of little consequence.
To the contrary, as a practical matter it is found that the quality of mapping in these areas is particularly important to the user. Areas near the maximum-saturation point are of particular concern to users generally, as the earlier presentation of the "gum-ball problem" makes evident.
Mapping performance in areas near the extrema of darkness and lightness implicates the capability of an image-presentation system to preserve image information or detail only in very dark and very light parts of the image. As such, image appearance in these selected areas may seem an obscure criterion.
Such a criterion may perhaps be of greatest concern only to relatively more-discerning users, but of these there are plenty. Furthermore, classical evaluations of image-presenting technologies from oil painting through photography and photolithography have concentrated attention upon these criteria.
With this in mind, one may go on to notice an important phenomenon of surface scaling by application of any algorithm that maps to the nearest surface point. In the out-of-gamut regions near the three extremum points, those extremum points tend to act as lightning rods, collecting all the colors from diverging, sector-shaped regions outside the destination gamut.
It is fair to conclude that surface-scaling techniques of the to-the-nearest-boundary-point type leave considerable room for improvement with respect to image-presenting quality in these critical regions of the color space.
F. Data storage and processing requirements--Heretofore the amount of data needed for useful characterization of hue pages in machine or perceptual color spaces has bordered on the massive.
In some cases characterizations have taken such forms as, for instance, point-by-point perceptual chroma and lightness values corresponding to RGB data triplets or other machine-space data. Typically these values are tabulated for each point in a grid covering the entire interior of a hue page (or other color-space element) of interest.
In other cases characterizations have taken the form of point-by-point descriptions of upper and lower gamut boundaries for each hue page of interest. Here the amount of data required is less than in the full-interior characterization just mentioned, but still unwieldy.
Even with such multipoint characterizations, considerable operating time typically must be devoted to interpolation, in three color-space dimensions, between the table entries. Thus operating-time cost is added to the cost of data storage.
In still other cases perhaps there has been put into use, for characterizing chroma and lightness within a hue page, some multiterm polynomial expansion that satisfies boundary values for each hue page of interest. This may be an improvement, but has some tendency merely to replace near-massive data storage with near-massive data processing--a substitution that saves disc space only at the cost of time and throughput penalties.
For some purposes, detailed and accurate lookup tables, or calculations good to three or four places, seem serviceable and in some cases perhaps even unavoidable. A methodology, however, heretofore has been severely needed for at least mitigating this brute-force approach to machine-and perceptual-space characterizations, wherever extremely high precision or accuracy is not fundamentally necessary.
G. Summary--Thus there has been heretofore a need for a refined color-management technology which somehow permits use of the full color-saturating capability of printers. It is desirable that such a technology at the same time preserve at least some of the acknowledged benefits of color-matching, and of its perhaps most-popular implementation, gamut compression.
For example, again with respect to CRT/printer systems, the related art provides no system for printing well-saturated color in conjunction with:
at least approximate preservation of the lightness relationships in a CRT-displayed image; or PA1 preservation of what may be called "information"--meaning the discrimination between initially adjacent colors, with at least some preservation of the hue and of the relative, if not absolute, lightness and vividness magnitudes--in a CRT-displayed image. PA1 at least approximate preservation of the lightness relationships in a corresponding image produced by a source color-presenting device; or PA1 preservation of information in the source color-presenting device. PA1 determining the position of the color specification within a first color gamut, PA1 superposing, at least approximately, elements of that color gamut and a second color gamut, and PA1 using the at-least-approximate superposition, and using the color-specification position, to define a new color specification for the same portion of the image. PA1 interpreting relative-position values of lightness and chroma, within a display-device hue page that is part of a display-device gamut in a perceptual space, as also being relative-position values of lightness and chroma within a corresponding hue page that is also part of the printer gamut in the same perceptual space, and PA1 using these relative-position values of lightness and chroma, within the printer gamut, to derive printer signals. PA1 based upon the selected specifications in terms of a hue page that is part of the display-device gamut and display-device color space, determining corresponding values of hue, lightness and chroma, expressed in terms of absolute position within a display-device hue page in a perceptual color space, PA1 finding hue-page characterizations for the display-device and printer hue pages (and particularly for the gamut boundaries of those pages), expressed in that same perceptual space, for the determined hue--also expressed in that perceptual space, PA1 using the found display-device (gamut) characterization, and also using the found absolute-position values of lightness and chroma expressed in the perceptual space, to find corresponding first intermediate values of lightness and chroma, expressed in terms of relative position in the same perceptual space within the display-device gamut, PA1 employing the found printer (gamut) characterization, and also the first intermediate relative-position values of lightness and chroma, interpreted as also being relative-position values of lightness and chroma still in the same perceptual space within the printer gamut, to find second intermediate values of lightness and chroma expressed in terms of absolute position in that perceptual space within the printer gamut, and PA1 based upon the hue and the second intermediate relative-position values, all expressed in the same perceptual space, obtaining new color specifications expressed in terms of the printer gamut and a color space used for operation of the printer, for the particular image portion. PA1 i. absolute values in input-device space translated into perceptual space, PA1 ii. absolute to normalized values, PA1 iii. input-device renamed to output-device values, PA1 iv. normalized to absolute values, PA1 v. perceptual-space to output-device space, and finally PA1 vi. driving the output device. PA1 interpreting relative-position values of lightness and chroma, within a display-device hue page that is part of the display-device gamut in a perceptual space, as also being relative-position values of lightness and chroma within a corresponding printer hue page within the printer gamut, in that same perceptual space; PA1 employing these relative-position values within the printer hue page to derive printer signals; and PA1 then applying the printer signals to control printing by the printer. PA1 receiving or developing, for a particular image portion, display-device signals for controlling red, green and blue intensities for each image portion, in operation of the display device; PA1 performing on the display-device signals a transformation that has the effect of performing these substeps: PA1 then applying the printer signals to control printing of the particular image portion by the printer.
Now couching these same problems in broader terms, the need is for--in operation of a destination or target color-presenting device
In principle the source and destination devices may be two different kinds of printers, or two different kinds of computer monitors (e.g., one an LCD screen), or the source device a printer and the target a display screen, or one device a broadcast or tape-recorded video monitor and the other a lithography system, etc.
It will be recalled that the early, classical system of, in essence, directing source-device signals to output-or destination devices did have one technical advantage: the gamuts of the two devices were fully and perfectly superposed. Satisfying this condition ensures complete gamut usage (including vivid colors) and complete information preservation.
It is accordingly desirable in a modern system to restore some such relation--but not perceptually willy-nilly as in the early systems. Rather instead gamut superposition should be effected in a manner that somehow incorporates a perceptual frame of reference, to provide better hue control and some more-acceptable degree of lightness control than in those early systems.
In addition it is desirable to provide methodology for avoiding heavy usage of memory and processing time where not really essential. This is particularly important as to transformations within hue pages.
As can now be seen, important aspects of the technology which is used in the field of the invention are amenable to useful refinement.

Coordinating color produced by two devices--using a hue-controlled machine color space, or surface scaling


The present invention provides an image processing apparatus for allowing a user to easily understand a direction of setting a document intuitively, in which, when two single sided documents are printed on front and rear faces of a recording sheet, a display section is caused to display an image showing a direction of setting the documents and a message showing whether or not the setting direction of the documents is different between the first and second documents at the time of reading the two single sided documents, so that the user is able to understand the direction of setting the documents intuitively.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates particularly to an image processing apparatus in which a direction of setting a document or a recording sheet can be understood when single sided documents are subjected to double sided printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In image processing apparatuses, there are two kinds of directions of setting a document and a recording sheet, including a portrait and a landscape, and therefore it is impossible to respond to all requirements. Thus, conventional image processing apparatuses have responded in such a way that an image is rotated so as to be able to obtain a printed object regardless of at least directions.
However, as regards existence/absence and directions of the image rotation, in particular, when single sided documents are subjected to double sided printing, unless it is strictly recognized that in which direction information on a document is written, that is, whether the document is a laterally written document for a vertically long paper (portrait document) or a laterally written document for a laterally long paper (landscape document), it has been difficult for a user to obtain desired rotation result.
Hence, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H07-13160 proposes a technical content that at the time of performing double sided printing with single sided documents, an inputted document image is rotated based on an orientation of a document set by a user and an inputted binding direction.
In an image processing method disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 07-13160, although a document image is rotated depending on the orientation of the set document, there is a problem that it is difficult for general users to understand how to set orientations of each first and second document.
Moreover, in recent years, although multifunctional peripherals for offices have been used for convenience stores, it is standard in multifunctional peripherals installed in convenience stores based on the agreement in a convenience-store industry, that documents are set in a lateral direction even when they are portrait documents (vertically long documents), different from those for offices, thus it has been further difficult for users who are familiar with the machines for offices to understand an orientation of setting a document.
In view of the above described circumstance, it is an object of the present invention to provide an image processing apparatus in which a user can easily understand a direction of setting a document intuitively.


Zinc pyrithione and copper pyrithione are highly evaluated in the market as an antidandruff agent for shampoo, or an antifouling agent for ship bottom paint and fish-farming net, or an antibacterial/antifungal agent or preservative/mildewcide for industrial products and household articles. For enhancing the market value thereof, there has been a demand for a product that not only attains an increase in conventional antibacterial/antifungal effects but also exhibits novel bioactive effects and that achieves improvement with respect to problems and drawbacks relating to properties, such as solubility in seawater, and stability, such as thermal stability and weather resistance, of polymer materials. There is provided a novel pyrithione complex compound obtained by converting the conventional pyrithione metal salt to a complex compound with an oxide or hydroxide of metal such as zinc, copper or aluminum. As compared with the conventional pyrithione metal salt, this complex compound exhibits superior antibacterial/antifungal effects, newly realizes a hair-regrowing effect and successfully attains improvement with respect to the solubility in seawater and thermal stability/weather resistance of polymer materials.

The technology used to add a pyrithione metal salt to a part of a metal oxide or metal hydroxide is known. For example, there are descriptions as to technologies for forming metal pyrithione as a shell on the surface of a metal oxide or metal hydroxide used as a core and as to a biocidal composite in the publication of Japanese Patent Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2002-521339. However, in these technologies, the amount of the metal pyrithione to be added to a metal oxide or metal hydroxide is merely about 10 W % based on the metal oxide or metal hydroxide and the biological activity of the pyrithione metal salt is therefore insufficiently made effective.
Also, technologies for enhancing the efficiency of metal pyrithione by using the metal pyrithione and a metal oxide or metal hydroxide are known. For example, the publication of Japanese Patent Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2003-522734 suggests that the use of a combination of zinc oxide, copper oxide, zinc hydroxide or copper hydroxide and metal pyrithione increases antibacterial and antifungal efficacy. However, the effect of this combination is not developed as long as the metal oxide or the metal hydroxide does not generate a metal ion and therefore the use of this combination is limited to aqueous products and also, a stable effect is not obtained.
Also, in the publication of Japanese Patent Publication Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 51-95078, a method in which pyridinethiol is reacted with a zinc salt in the presence of a base and water is disclosed as a method of producing a 2-pyridylthio zinc oxy complex. The method of producing this complex is similar to a method of producing a pyrithione complex compound which is a compound obtained when M is zinc, Q is one oxygen atom, D is zinc pyrithione, y=0, p+2q=0, n=0, neither A nor B are present and x is ⅓ among the compounds represented by the formula (I) which will be explained later. However, the both methods differ from each other as to the product to be produced and its effect in the point that first, the materials obtained in both methods are different from each other and second, the zinc pyrithione/zinc oxide complex compound of the present invention has biocidal activity whereas the above 2-pyridylthio zinc oxy complex shows the effect of preventing a deterioration of a resin which is caused by the contact with a heavy metal.
Patent Reference 1: Japanese Patent Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2002-521339.
Patent Reference 2: Japanese Patent Publication (Laid-Open) No. 2003-522734.
Patent Reference 3: Japanese Patent Publication (Laid-Open) No. S51-95078.

Pyrithione complex compound, process for producing the same and use thereof


An unstable optical resonator for an optically active medium comprising a spherical back mirror and a spherical outcoupling mirror is proposed, and an outcoupling which is asymmetrical in relation to the optical axis takes place therein.

Optical resonators are known, for example, from the publication "Optische Resonatoren für Hochleistungs-Festkörper-Laser" (Optical Resonators for high-power solid-state Lasers) by N. Hodgson, Festkörper-Laser-Institut Berlin GmbH, internal report, December 1990 or from the article "Analysis of stable-unstable free electron laser resonators" by C.-C. Shih, SPIE Vol. 1868, pages 278 to 285. The article "Improvement of slab-laser beam divergence by using an off-axis unstable-stable resonator" by K. Kuba et al. (Optics Letters, Vol. 15, 1990, pages 121 to 123) also discloses resonators. In particular, cylindrical mirrors are used in the optical resonators disclosed in these references.

Unstable optical resonator and laser device

Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft-und. Raumfahrt E.V.


An electric heating structure of a domestic appliance includes at least one first electric heating track (23) having a positive temperature coefficient and at least one additional electric heating track (27, 28). A control structure (22, 25, 29) is provided for controlling electric power supply to said first and additional heating tracks (23, 27, 28) and is sensitive to the heating of said at least one first heating track (23) for switching on said at least one additional electric heating track (27, 28) in parallel and in addition to said at least one first heating track (23) when said at least one first heating track (23) has been heated to at least a predetermined extent.

Many electric heating structures of domestic appliances include a heating element with a positive temperature coefficient (PTC), such as a thick-film resistive heating element. In a PTC heating element, the electric resistance increases with the temperature.
A problem of such heaters is that, in operation, the heating power of the heating element reduces as its temperature rises. The increase of the electric resistance as the temperature rises causes a reduction of the current through the heating element, and accordingly of the rate at which electric energy is converted into heat by the heating element.
For instance, in silver based heating elements the electric resistance typically increases by at least 0.2% of the room temperature resistance per ° C. This results in a power drop of more than 50% when heating up from room temperature to an operating temperature of the heating element of 250° C. and more than 20% when heating to 100° C. In a heating structure that has for instance been designed for a maximum power consumption of 2000 W, in order to avoid exceeding the maximum power usually available for household use without causing safety fuses or circuit breakers to trip, the maximum power available at 250° C. is therefore less than 1000 W. The high temperature power reduction generally associated to heaters with PTC heating elements causes an increase of the time required for heating to the maximum temperature associated to the selected or pre-set temperature setting, which manifests itself in particular during re-heating such as occurs for instance in thermostatically controlled heaters. Alternatively or in addition, the reduction of the available amount of power at higher temperatures results in a reduction of the conversion rate of a process, such as for instance steam generation, driven by the heating element.

Domestic appliance and heating structure for a domestic appliance


A plug connector is provided for mating with a jack connector. The plug connector includes a base and a tubular member extending from the base. The tubular member includes a ground contact area adjacent the base, a conductive end distal to the base and an external, axially extending spring. The conductive end is insulated from the contact area and has a recess located thereon. This configuration permits retentively engaging the signal tip of the plug by corresponding structure in the jack, while simultaneously supporting the tubular portion of the plug with externally directed spring elements engaging corresponding structure in the jack, to achieve reduced relative movement when the plug connector and the jack connector are mated.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electrical plug connectors and, more particularly, relates to electrical plug connectors configured to provide reduced movement when connected to a jack and reduced likelihood of electrical discontinuity therebetween.
2. Description of Related Art
Plug and jack type connectors are well known for use in connecting, e.g., audio equipment. Typically, the plugs and jacks may connect a signal line and a ground (e.g., referred to as a monotype of connection) or two signal lines and a ground (e.g., referred to as a stereo type of connection). Generally, the jack includes a single wiper contact for each conductive portion of the plug. Because of, e.g., resiliency in the wipers and clearance, the plugs are somewhat moveable within the jack and through wear and the like the movement increases.
One typical use for a plug and jack connector is in the connection between a musical instrument and an amplifier. For example, electric guitars typically employ a jack, which receives a plug connected to one end of a cord. The other end of the cord may go directly to an amplifier or may connect to a radio transmitter linked to the amplifier. During playing of the guitar and movement thereof, a torque may be created on the plug connector by movement of the instrument causing movement of the plug within the jack resulting in intermittent electrical contact between the jack and plug. In turn, sound from the instrument may be intermittently output from the amplifier and/or xe2x80x9cclickingxe2x80x9d sounds may be generated by this intermittent contact.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a plug connector that achieves reduced relative movement when mated with a jack connector.
It is another object to provide the combination of a plug connector and jack connector that reduces the possibility of electrical discontinuity between the jack and the plug disposed therein while also assisting in reducing the relative movement therebetween.
In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a plug connector is provided for mating with a jack connector. The plug connector comprises a base and a tubular member extending from the base. The tubular member includes a ground contact area adjacent the base, a conductive terminal end distal to the base and insulated from the ground contact area, a circumferential groove located at the terminal end, and a spring portion bulging radially outward from the contact area and insulated from the terminal end.
In another aspect, the invention is directed to a plug connector on a cable having a ground conductor and at least one signal conductor, comprising a handle within which the cable is received, and a tubular member extending from the handle. The tubular member includes an electrically conductive, external ground contact area adjacent the handle and electrically connected to the ground conductor within the handle, and an insulative core extending within the ground contact area toward a distal end of the connector. The distal end has an electrically conductive external tip distal to the handle, electrically connected to a signal conductor by a wire extending within the core. Means are provided for insulating the external ground contact area from the tip. The tip has a recess formed thereon for retentively engaging a signal contact on the jack and the ground contact area is electrically connected with a plurality of axially extending, external spring elements for retentively engaging a ground contact on the jack.
In particular aspects of the present invention, the tubular member may further comprise an intermediate conductive portion disposed between and insulated from the ground contact area and the conductive terminal end. The spring preferably includes a plurality of strips bowed radially outward of and extending along the central axis of the tubular member.
The present invention provides a jack and plug connection which has reduced relative movement and thereby prevents, for example in an audio signal connection, intermittent and undesirable sounds.


A piezoelectric transducer chip comprising a plurality of transducer elements arranged in a two-dimensional array is disclosed. At least one of the transducer elements is a multi-layer element which comprises a plurality of piezoelectric layers, each of which is separated from the adjacent piezoelectric layers by an electrode layer so that a plurality of capacitive elements is electrically connected in parallel. A first via connects a first set of alternating electrode layers, and a second via connects a second set of alternating electrode layers. The first via is insulated from the second set of alternating electrode layers, and the second via is insulated from the first set of alternating electrode layers. At least one of the plurality of multi-layer elements has an internal edge. At least one of the vias of a multi-layer element is an internal via. Also disclosed are an ultrasonic transducer which includes such a piezoelectric chip, and an ultrasonic scanner which includes such a transducer.

Diagnostic ultrasound is an essential modality in virtually every medical specialty and particularly in obstetrics, cardiology and radiology. The ultrasound transducer is the critical component and the limiting factor affecting the quality of diagnostic ultrasound imaging and Doppler measurements. In a conventional circular piston piezoelectric transducer used in mechanical scanning for medical applications (e.g., 19 mm diameter, 3.5 MHz resonant frequency) the electrical impedance of the transducer is approximately 50 .OMEGA.. Such a transducer is well matched to the conventional electrical transmit circuit for delivering large amounts of acoustic power to the tissue load during the transmit mode. In a like manner, in receive mode, such a transducer is well suited for driving the typical 50 .OMEGA. or 75 .OMEGA. coaxial cable connected to the amplifier circuits of the scanning system.
The most sophisticated medical ultrasound scanners now typically use (N.times.1) linear arrays containing over a hundred transducer elements which may be multiplexed and/or electronically steered and focused via phased array techniques. A linear array transducer for phased array scanning, typically employs much smaller array elements than the conventional transducer described above. For example, a typical linear array includes 128 elements, each of which is 0.2 mm wide by 10 mm long with a resonant frequency of 3.5 MHz. Each piezoelectric ceramic transducer element in a linear array acts as a capacitor of approximately 150 picofarads (pf), which produces an electrical impedance Z=R.sub.a +jX where X.apprxeq.300 .OMEGA. at 3.5 MHz. At resonance the reactive component is in series with the radiation resistance R.sub.a, which is roughly the same magnitude as X. These higher impedance elements reduce the sensitivity of the transducer for medical ultrasound scanning. The higher impedance element creates an impedance mismatch with conventional transmit circuitry in transmit mode, thus reducing acoustic power transmitted into the patient's body. In receive mode, the high impedance array element suffers significant losses when trying to drive conventional coaxial cable characterized by its capacitance/length.
It has been a significant challenge for the ultrasound community to design and fabricate linear phased arrays for medical ultrasound over the past two decades. Three performance characteristics have established conventional size and geometry of the transducer array elements: (1) the elements have sufficient angular sensitivity to steer the phased array over a .+-.45.degree. sector angle; (2) The arrays suppress grating lobe artifacts by fine inter-element spacing; and (3) the width of each rectangular element is small compared to the transducer thickness to remove parasitic lateral mode vibrations from the desired transducer pass band. Adherence to these performance characteristics have produced linear arrays having long narrow elements which are sized to be less than one wavelength wide for the ultrasonic frequencies used in tissue imaging, (e.g., <0.3 mm wide.times.10 mm long at 3.5 MHz).
Two dimensional (N.times.M) transducer arrays are believed to hold promise in improving clinical image quality in future diagnostic ultrasound equipment. An immediate clinical application of 2-D phased arrays is the reduction of image slice thickness by focusing in the elevation plane perpendicular to the scanning dimension. An additional application of 2-D transducer arrays is the correction of phase aberrations introduced across the transducer aperture by tissue inhomogeneities. These aberrations occur in two dimensions, so 2-D arrays combined with the proper phase correction signal processing can restore diagnostic image quality. In addition to improving conventional ultrasound B-scan image quality, two-dimensional transducer arrays should assist in the development of new modes of ultrasound imaging. Projected new techniques include: (1) presentation of simultaneous orthogonal B-mode scans; (2) acquisition of several B-scans electronically steered in the elevation direction; (3) development of high-speed C-scans; and (4) high-speed volumetric ultrasound scanning to enable real time three-dimensional imaging and volumetric, angle-independent flow imaging. With known technology, these techniques can only be implemented with 2-D array transducers.
Unfortunately, the design and fabrication problems of one-dimensional transducer arrays become almost overwhelming when extended to a two dimensional array, in which case the element size may be less than 0.2 mm.times.0.2 mm for more than 1000 elements in the array. There are two significant obstacles which limit the use of 2-D transducer arrays. First, a simple fabrication method for the electrical connections to such array elements, which can be less than one ultrasound wavelength on a side, is not known. Second, it is very difficult to achieve adequate sensitivity and bandwidth from such small elements.
In the last 15 years there have been several descriptions of prototype 2-D array transducers for medical ultrasonic imaging, but the resulting products were acoustically unsuitable for modern medical ultrasound imaging procedures.
Two dimensional arrays also have been confronted with the problem of high electrical impedance in transducer elements. Two-dimensional arrays have been developed in two geometries. A typical geometry for a 4.times.32 array transducer ia designed for focusing (but not steering) in the elevation direction and for correction of phase aberrations in two dimensions. Such transducers have been called 1.5-D arrays. For a transducer array of this design, each element typically exhibits complex impedance, the magnitude of which is approximately 1000 at a resonance of 3.5 MHz; this complex impedance causes an electrical impedance mismatch and the accompanying sensitivity decrease which are more severe than seen in linear arrays. Elements in full 2-D arrays which can steer the ultrasound beam in azimuth as well as elevation may be smaller than 0.2 mm.times.0.2 mm; these elements exhibit a complex electrical impedance having a magnitude of approximately 5000 or greater, so sensitivity is further reduced. Thus, for 1.5-D and 2-D arrays, the development of suitable piezoelectric materials are critical to improved sensitivity.
Unfortunately, the piezoelectric ceramics as described in the prior art are ill suited for such transducers. 1.5-D and 2-D arrays are commonly fabricated by dicing a single piezoelectric chip in two directions with a kerf width as small as 0.01 mm. In the prior art, termination electrodes for parallel electrical connection of the alternate layers can only be placed on the external edges of the piezoelectric chip as described by Saitoh et al. Thus, after dicing, elements in the inner rows and columns of 1.5-D and 2-D arrays have no side electrodes.
In an attempt to address the problem of high electrical impedance in linear arrays, U.S. Pat. No. 4,958,327 to Saitoh et al., teaches the concept of a multi-layer ceramic piezoelectric material consisting of K layers laminated in parallel electrically but in series acoustically. For K layers of uniform thickness, the capacitance of each element is increased by K.sup.2 ; this capacitive increase reduces the electrical impedance of the element by K.sup.2 and significantly improving transmit efficiency and receive mode sensitivity. However, the teaching of Saitoh is inapplicable to two dimensional arrays; as the electrode layers are short circuited on a side surface of element, the concept is limited to elements with electrode layers having a surface on the periphery of the transducer, and cannot be used for the elements of the inner rows of two dimensional arrays.
In view of the foregoing, it is an object of the present invention to provide a two-dimensional ultrasound transducer chip which includes multilayer elements in the inner rows of the arrays.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an ultrasound transducer array which contains such a transducer chip.
It is an additional object of the invention to provide ultrasound diagnostic devices which utilize a two-dimensional transducer array as described.

Two-dimensional array ultrasonic transducers


Disclosed is a liquid toner composition, comprising an ethylene-based copolymer resin, an ethylene-based copolymer resin, an electrically insulating liquid material, and a surfactant represented by general formula given below ##STR1## where R is an alkyl group or an alkylaryl group, n, which represents ad adduct ethyleneoxide mole number, is an integer of 4 to 13, and R' is H or R(CH.sub.2 CH.sub.2 O).sub.n group.

The present invention relates to a liquid toner composition adapted for use in, particularly, an electrophotography, an electrostatic printing and an information recording.
The conventional liquid toner composition adapted for an electrophotography comprises in general an electrically insulating liquid material, coloring particles having a particle diameter of 0.1 to 1 .mu.m and dispersed in the liquid material, and a resin soluble in the electrically insulating material and serving to disperse, fix and adjust the electrical charge of the coloring particles. Such a liquid toner is disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 5-134468.
The coloring particles contained in the liquid toner composition of this type have a small particle diameter, leading to an excellent resolution. In addition, the composition can be prepared relatively easily. On the other hand, the toner composition is poor in its fixing properties. If the composition is used over a long period of time while replenishing toner of a higher concentration, the image quality is rendered defective by the change in the concentration of the resin dissolved in the electrically insulating material.
To overcome the above-noted difficulty, proposed is a liquid toner composition prepared by dispersing particles, including colorant particles in some cases, of resin in an electrically insulating material, said resin being insoluble at room temperature in said electrically insulating liquid material. However, if the resin particles are prepared by polymerization, the reaction is restricted by various polymerizing conditions. In addition, in order to obtain a satisfactory liquid toner composition, it is necessary in some cases to remove the initiator, unreacted monomers, etc. attached to the surfaces of the resin particles after the polymerization. Further, where resin is once dissolved in a solvent under heat, followed by cooling the resultant solution to cause precipitation of resin particles, it is difficult to control as desired the particle diameter of the resin particles.
Under the circumstances, the present inventors previously developed an effective method and already filed a patent application for the particular method. In this method, an olefin resin is dissolved under heat in a solvent having a high temperature dependency in its capability of dissolving the resin and having its solubility parameter, hereinafter referred to as SP, adjusted to control as desired the diameter of the resin particles, followed by lowering the solubility of the resin in the resultant solution so as to obtain resin particles having a desired average particle diameter and a narrow range of the particle size distribution. Further, the present inventors have now developed a liquid toner composition containing the above-noted resin particles and adapted for producing a high quality image and also developed a method of manufacturing the composition, leading to the present invention.

Liquid toner composition and method of manufacturing the same


A porous shaped substrate such as a porous bead is formed from polyacrylonitrile or a copolymer thereof containing nitrile groups. The substrate has a hydrophilic surface containing amide groups constituting about 1.8 mole percent to less than about 15 mole percent of the total nitrile groups, and containing no amide or carboxyl groups. The substrate is substantially non-swellable in water and is able to resist pressures in a columnar bed of up to about 3000 psi without collapsing. In forming the amide groups, polyacrylonitrile or copolymer thereof containing nitrile groups, an alkaline catalyst such as sodium hydroxide and a nonsolvent for the substrate such as methanol are combined to form a suspension. A peroxide is added to the suspension and the suspension is heated to hydrolyze nitrile groups to amide groups. Succinylated aminoethyl groups or activated carboxyl groups can be formed on the substrate and a bioactive ligand such as p-aminobenzamidine covalently bonded to the substrate. The bound ligand can then be used to complex a biologically active substance such as an enzyme to separate the substance from solution.

Rigid non-swellable polymeric materials having neutral, hydrophilic surfaces are useful for many applications protein solutions. These include chromatography supports, membranes, carriers for immobilized enzymes or immunoassay supports. Hydration of polyacrylonitrile surfaces to form acrylamide groups is well known in the art.
Stoy, U.S. Pat. No. 4,110,529, discloses introducing reactive groups into the surface layer of beads during coagulation. Example 5 of the Stoy patent discloses the partial hydration of a polyacrylonitrile to 40 percent amide groups and then coagulating to form porous beads. However, beads prepared in this manner are highly swellable in water and contain a substantial amount of byproduct carboxylate groups in addition to the desired amide groups. Thus, the beads are not particularly useful as chromatographic supports. Their tendency to swell results in excessive pressure drops and inconsistent flow rates in chromatographic columns and the presence of carboxylate groups causes non-specific binding in separation processes not involving ion exchange. Problems also arise from the high, 40%, amide conversion rate as high conversion to amide groups results in significant losses in chromatographic flow due to loss of bead rigidity.
Other attempts to convert nitrile groups to amides in the prior art have involved treatment with strong acids or bases. Both of these techniques generally lead to some formation of surface carboxyl groups Rigopolous, U.S Pat. No. 4,143,203 discloses solid particles possessing an impermeable rigid polyacrylonitrile core with a hydrolyzed surface. The surface is hydrolyzed by heating the solid poly-acrylonitrile particles in a solution of sulfuric acid at temperatures ranging from 75.degree. to 95.degree. C. However, beads formed under these conditions are non-porous and have a substantial amount of byproduct carboxyl groups; and thus are not useful in non-ion exchange protein specific chromatographic applications.
The surface modification of polyacrylonitrile under basic conditions was studied by K. Ohta et. al., Nippon Kagaku Kaishi, 6, 1200 (1985) using surface infra red spectroscopy. After treating polyacrylonitrile films with 5 percent sodium hydroxide for 4 hours at 70.degree. C., Ohta found 4.5 percent amide and 5.7 percent carboxylate groups on the surface. Treatment of the film with 5 percent sodium hydroxide and 15 percent hydrogen peroxide (an aqueous alkaline peroxide reaction) for 4 hours at 70.degree. C. gave 2.1 percent amide and 0.7 percent carboxylate. These treatments are also not sufficiently selective.
Thus, the present state of the art still possesses serious drawbacks to the formation of highly selective non-swellable highly porous acrylonitrile polymeric beads having neutral hydrophilic surfaces. The greater surface area of highly porous beads and the narrow diameter of the polymer structure, makes it critical to accurately control the extent of hydration. Conversion of more than 10 percent of the nitrile groups to amide groups results in significant losses in flow in chromatography separations. It is difficult to accurately control the extent of reaction with acidic hydration. Acidic hydration is also known to have a strong neighboring group effect which generates a "block" polymer structure. A block polymer structure at low conversion can result in non-uniform coverage of the surface. Again, this causes problems with non-specific binding in chromatography applications. A third problem with acidic hydration is the formation of carboxyl and imide groups. The presence of carboxyl groups causes undesired ion interactions during size exclusion or affinity chromatography applications.
Surprisingly, the present inventors have found that alkaline peroxide hydration of nitriles, with careful control of the solvent can avoid these problems. The reaction selectively converts nitriles groups to amide groups without side reactions to imide or carboxyl groups. By controlling the solvent, the reaction can be easily controlled and actually stopped at low conversion. The use of solvent, preferably methanol, allows all of the surfaces of the polymer, even those present in small pores, to be converted. This results in an even distribution of amide groups on the surface of the polyacrylonitrile core. Also discovered is a method by which the amide groups, the nitrile groups, or a combination thereof can be reduced to generate amine functionality. Furthermore, a method has been found to succinylate the amine groups to generate carboxyl functionality. The attachment of a bioactive ligand by carbodimide activation of the carboxyl groups has been found to effectively form complexes with enzymes, hormones, or mixtures thereof for biological separation techniques.
Furthermore, the rigid nature of the polyacrylonitrile core is minimally effected by this mild treatment and thus, the products of this invention are substantially non-swellable in water and noncompressible. When used herein and in the appended claims the term "non-compressible" means able to resist hydrostatic pressures in columnar beds of up to about 3000 psi, without collapsing.

Porous acrylonitrile polymer substrate for bonding ligands and separating biologically active substances


There is disclosed an image communication system, and an apparatus, in which data stored in a memory are accessible in convenient manner from a remote location. The method enables erasure or revision of data in a remote station or causes the remote station to transmit such stored data, by sending a secret identification signal to such remote station.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image communication system, and more particularly such image communication system for making communication between a calling apparatus and a called apparatus, through a predetermined line and utilizing means for storing image data to be transmitted or predetermined data relating to the communication.
2. Related Background Art
There is already known, as disclosed in the U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,717,967, 4,814,890, 4,823,193, 4,789,900, 4,677,649, 4,772,955, 4,787,349 and 4,827,349 and the U.S. patent application. Ser. No. 147,224, a facsimile apparatus capable of storing image information transmitted or received, or abbreviated telephone numbers, in a memory.
In an apparatus provided with an image memory of large capacity for storing the transmitted or received image data, such buffering of image data in the memory reduces the time required for communication or the cost of communication. Also it enables data reception into the memory, even in case of function defects in the recording apparatus, for example lack of recording paper.
Also there are conducted storage of image data into the memory automatically at the transmitting or receiving operation, and registration of telephone numbers etc. according to the operation of the operator.
However, in the conventional apparatus are described above, the registration or deletion of data into or from the memory can only be conducted from the operation panel of the apparatus, so that the operator has to go to the apparatus for such operation on the memory.
In such structure, if the recording sheet is used up while the operator is absent from the office, the apparatus executes substituted reception whereby the received image data are stored in the memory. However, the memory may become full and the apparatus may become incapable of communication if the apparatus is not attended over a prolonged period.
It has therefore proposed, by remote control, to erase the image data in the memory of the apparatus or to transmit said image data by polling, but such prior technology has a drawback of eventually causing erasure of important image data, or polling of unnecessary image data, for example of a direct mail, because the image data are simply erased or transmitted.


A step-motion actuator using piezoelectric material to launch a flight mass which, in turn, actuates a drive pawl to progressively engage and drive a toothed wheel or rod to accomplish stepped motion. Thus, the piezoelectric material converts electrical energy into kinetic energy of the mass, and the drive pawl and toothed wheel or rod convert the kinetic energy of the mass into the desired rotary or linear stepped motion. A compression frame may be secured about the piezoelectric element and adapted to pre-compress the piezoelectric material so as to reduce tensile loads thereon. A return spring may be used to return the mass to its resting position against the compression frame or piezoelectric material following launch. Alternative embodiment are possible, including an alternative first embodiment wherein two masses are launched in substantially different directions, and an alternative second embodiment wherein the mass is eliminated in favor of the piezoelectric material launching itself.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates broadly to stepper motors or other step-motion actuators and mechanisms for accomplishing stepped motion. More particularly, the present invention concerns a stepper motor or other step-motion actuator that uses piezoelectric material to launch one or more flight masses, which, in turn, actuate a drive pawl to progressively engage and drive a toothed wheel or rod to accomplish stepped motion. Thus, the piezoelectric material converts electrical energy into kinetic energy of the masses, and the drive pawl and toothed wheel or rod convert the kinetic energy of the masses into the desired rotary or linear stepped motion.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is often desirable to use stepper motors or other step-motion actuators to achieve highly predictable and controllable stepped motion, particularly in micro- and nano-sized mechanisms. To that end, a variety of electrostatic, electromagnetic, and piezoelectric concepts have been devised to accomplish stepped motion within such small-scale actuators. In general, however, step-motion actuators using these concepts are in the early stages of development and still suffer from a number of problems and disadvantages. For example, energy density in these step-motion actuators is typically too low to be useful. Also, none of the current concepts have proven to be universally applicable.
Due to the above-identified and other problems and disadvantages encountered in the prior art, a need exists for an improved step-motion actuator.

Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC


A mobile terminal may be provided that includes a squeeze sensor disposed at a lateral surface of a housing to sense a pressure greater than a predetermined value being applied thereto; and a controller configured to change the location of an object displayed on a display based on a pressure applied position when the sensed pressure is greater than a predetermined value.

1. Field
The present disclosure may relate to a mobile terminal having a squeeze sensor.
2. Background
Terminals may be classified as mobile (or portable) terminals and stationary terminals based on its mobility. The mobile terminals may be further classified as handheld terminals and vehicle mount terminals based on whether (or not) the terminal can be directly carried by a user.
A terminal may be allowed to capture still images or moving images, play music or video files, play games, receive broadcast and the like, so as to be implemented as an integrated multimedia player. Improvement of structural or software elements of the terminal may be taken into consideration to support and enhance functions of the terminal.
A user may generate an input signal using a touch sensor provided on a display unit of the terminal. However, the touch sensor may be activated only when the display unit is activated, and thus the touch sensor has a limit in generating various input signals.

Mobile terminal and control method thereof


A method for creating knowledge bases comprises conducting a baseline analysis of aspects of developing a knowledge base. At least one aspect is surveyed, results developed, and a knowledge base complexity indicator is developed to demonstrate for each aspect an expected level of effort required in developing and operating the knowledge base. The results are used to define a scope of and approach for developing the knowledge base. They are input to an in-depth analysis, which may comprise a domain analysis, a reservoir analysis, and a vector analysis, and a construction and seeding plan for the knowledge base is output. The knowledge base is constructed and seeded in accordance with the plan. A deployment plan for deployment of the knowledge base is developed, and used to deploy the knowledge base. Operational processes for using, monitoring and maintaining the knowledge base are specified and implemented according to their specifications.

This invention relates generally to knowledge management systems, and particularly to the development of knowledge base systems.
One environment in which knowledge management systems are particularly useful is the computer product support industry. The computer systems on today""s desktops are complicated. They involve many products (hardware and software) from many vendors. The products may or may not operate as expected when configured into a system. In addition, the user guides and references for the products are often incomplete and not always accurate. When end users have problems with their computer systems, they often need help diagnosing and then solving the problem. The computer product support industry has developed in response to that need. When a caller into a technical support organization reports a problem with a product in a certain environment, a technical support representative, sometimes known as an agent, diagnoses and attempts to solve the problem.
However, a mountain of knowledge is necessary in order to provide support for computer products. End users"" answers might be found in a public document, or in a customer""s or vendor""s confidential information, or in a company""s bank of general or confidential knowledge. In addition, through support interactions, a company generates a vast array of knowledge, particularly in areas such as product interoperability. Knowledge is always being generated because the resolution to an end user""s problem may even need to pieced together from many sources of information, public and private combined.
A computer product support provider""s challenge is to handle the increasing technical complexity of support delivery while keeping service quality and customer satisfaction high and costs low. Companies must establish a support infrastructure that enable them to capture, refine, and publish customer service and support information with greater efficiency through a variety of support channels. Adopting a knowledge management approach is an effective means to meet urgent customer demands.
One part of the knowledge management approach is the development and maintenance of knowledge bases as a part of a company""s knowledge management system. With the proliferation of information that is needed to run businesses today, many companies are turning to knowledge base systems to store and provide access to its information. Knowledge bases provide a framework for collecting, organizing and refining the full range of information that is both collected and generated daily by a company. Knowledge bases process the new information, transforming it into actionable knowledge, present it in a consistent format, and make it readily available. They make a company increasingly effective in gathering and leveraging xe2x80x9cinstitutional memory.xe2x80x9d Thus, knowledge bases provide a company with the opportunity to reuse the knowledge that it collects and creates. Such reuse is beneficial because it allows companies to use its data to conduct is business more quickly and efficiently than previously possible.
While knowledge bases provide some real benefit to companies that invest in their creation, they are expensive in time, resources and money to develop. Many complex issues must be addressed. For example, keeping in mind the work environment in which the knowledge base will operate, developers must decide the subject areas (known as domains) that would benefit from having knowledge about them incorporated into a knowledge base. They must select from which sources should the knowledge be obtained and the extent that an order in which the knowledge base should be seeded prior to activation. In addition, the developers must develop the knowledge base""s architecture based on the information that it will hold and the use to which the knowledge will be put. They must develop operational processes for using the knowledge base and integrating it into with the other systems and processes used by the knowledge base user.
It is therefore an object to develop knowledge management systems that allow a company to manage the knowledge it collects and creates, make it available for use in conjunction with the other systems and processes used by the company, and monitor its use. It is a further object of this invention to develop and deploy a knowledge base so that it quickly contains a vast array of information. It is also an object to seamlessly integrate the knowledge base with the other systems and processes used by the knowledge base user, and develop operational processes for keeping the knowledge base updated.
In accordance with the present invention, there is described a method for creating a knowledge base. A baseline analysis is conducted of aspects of developing the knowledge base. At least one of the aspects is surveyed and a knowledge base complexity indicator is developed for each surveyed aspect. In the preferred embodiment, the complexity indicator involves an assessment of high, medium and low complexity of the aspect. In addition, a plurality of aspects are surveyed in the baseline analysis, and complexity indicators for the surveyed aspects are combined to give an overall knowledge base complexity indicator.
In the preferred embodiment, the base-line analysis is conducted in two stages. First, a high-level base-line analysis is conducted to provide an initial determination of the feasibility of developing the knowledge base and to identify costs for the developing, wherein an output of the high-level analysis is a project statement of work and a project cost estimate. If the high-level base-line analysis indicates that the developing is feasible, a full base-line analysis is conducted for each of the aspects.
The surveying results are input to an in-depth analysis, the outputs of which are a construction and seeding plan for the knowledge base, and specifications for operational processes. The specifications are for use of the knowledge base, for monitoring knowledge base operations, and for maintenance of the knowledge base.
In one embodiment, operational processes include a system for updating the knowledge base, a system for generating reports, knowledge base user and knowledge base author work flows, and knowledge base integration with systems or processes with which the knowledge base will interact or co-exist. Developing the specifications for operational processes involves conducting an integration analysis of the systems or processes with which the knowledge base will interact or co-exist, and developing specifications of a graphics user interface for the knowledge base based on an analysis of the knowledge base user and knowledge base author work flows.
Once the construction and seeding plan and operational processes specifications are developed, the knowledge base is developed by the sub-steps of constructing and seeding the knowledge base in accordance with the construction and seeding plan, developing the operational processes in accordance with the specifications for operational processes, and developing a deployment plan for deployment of the knowledge base and the operational processes. In the preferred embodiment, developing operational processes means developing software for a knowledge base user interface, for tool integration, and for reporting, and developing systems and processes for knowledge flow between the users and the authors, and between all of the beneficiaries of the use of the knowledge base. Also, developing the deployment plan involves developing schedules, resource allocation plans, pilot incentives, user documentation, and training.
Finally, the deployment is implemented by deploying the knowledge base and implementing the operational processes in accordance with the deployment plan. In one embodiment, implementing the operational processes further comprises compiling knowledge management metrics in order to monitor use of the knowledge base.
In one embodiment, conducting the in-depth analysis involves the steps of conducting a domain analysis to identify a selected domain for the knowledge base, conducting a reservoir analysis to identify and analyze the quality of sources of knowledge for the domain, and conducting a vector analysis to define a structure for the knowledge base. A selected domain is an output of the domain analysis; a reservoir map is the output of the reservoir analysis, and a knowledge base architecture is an output of the vector analysis. The selected domain, the reservoir map and the knowledge base architecture are inputs for the construction and seeding plan.

Method and system for development of a knowledge base system