The present application is directed to an electrical system including a housing configured to hold electrical components within an internal volume. In one aspect the electrical system is a power transformer. A sensor is mounted to the housing and is configured to sense a parameter associated with one or more electrical components during operation of the electrical system. A control system including a communication unit and a data processing unit is operable for analyzing the sensed parameter and comparing the sensed parameter to a predetermined minimum or maximum threshold value.

Electrical housings for electrical power generation, power control, power transmission and power transformers or the like are difficult to repair, transport and/or replace. Prior art systems have certain deficiencies with respect to monitoring of internal mechanical and electrical components such as windings, cables, supports and connectors during operation. Typically, the electrical housing must be taken offline and de-energized when inspection and/or maintenance is required. This requires draining insulating fluids for certain electrical housings, such as those of power transformers before an inspector is able to enter into the housing to inspect or repair the internal components. Some existing systems have various shortcomings, drawbacks, and disadvantages relative to certain applications. Accordingly, there remains a need for further contributions in this area of technology.

Systems and methods for monitoring components in a power transformer or the like


Automatic programming apparatus includes: a material shape data input unit that receives input of data of material shape; a processing program storage unit that stores therein data of material shape and processed unit data; a processed unit data input part that receives an input of other-processed-unit-reference-type processed unit data referencing processed region shape data contained in the processed unit data; a processed region shape generating unit that generates processed region shape data in the processed unit data for partial processing, based on data of material shape and processed region shape data referenced by other-processed-unit-reference-type processed unit data; and a control command generating unit that generates control command data, based on processed unit data for partial processing containing processed region shape data.

Conventional examples of automatic programming apparatuses configured to receive an input of processed unit data or machining unit data that is used for performing partial processing or partial machining and contains data indicating a processed region shape or a machined region shape, a processing method or a machining method, tools to be used, and processing conditions and to generate control command information to operate a machine tool based on the input processed unit data include an automatic programming apparatus that uses, as a method for defining processing or machining such as a chamfering process, a method by which the shape of a target part of the processing or the machining is directly specified by using a shape element such as a line or an arc (see, for example, Patent Document 1) and an automatic programming apparatus that generates an intermediate workpiece shape prior to a chamfering process or chamfering machine based on a Numerical Control (NC) computer program (hereinafter, "NC program") up to a time before the chamfering process is performed and automatically extracts a target part of the chamfering process from the generated intermediate workpiece shape (see, for example, Patent Document 2).

Automatic programming apparatus and automatic programming method


An automotive seat air-conditioning system includes a vehicle seat 1 having a seat portion 1b used by an occupant and a seatback 1a against which the occupant rests his/her back, and a blower 22 for sucking in the air-conditioning air 8 flowing in the compartments. Further, the air-conditioning air 8 is sucked in by the blower 22 from the air inlet 6 formed on the surface of the seatback 1a. At the same time, the air-conditioning air 8 is blown out from a surface portion of the vehicle seat 1 other than the air inlet 6.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an automotive seat air-conditioning system in which an air flow is formed, by a blowing means, through the seats.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional automotive seat air-conditioning system of this type described in Japanese Examined Patent Publication No. 10-504977 (FIG. 2) is known. This conventional automotive seat air-conditioning system which comprises a main exchanger fan for sending the air to the seatback of a seat through the air path in the seat, and in which temperature-controlled air is blown to a seated occupant.


Examples described herein include systems and methods for retaining information about bad memory pages across an operating system reboot. An example method includes detecting, by a first instance of an operating system, an error in a memory page of a non-transitory storage medium of a computing device executing the operating system. The operating system can tag the memory page as a bad memory page, indicating that the memory page should not be used by the operating system. The operating system can also store tag information indicating memory pages of the storage medium that are tagged as bad memory pages. The example method can also include receiving an instruction to reboot the operating system, booting a second instance of the operating system, and providing the tag information to the second instance of the operating system. The operating system can use the tag information to avoid using the bad memory pages.

Over the lifetime of a computing system, memory chips or disks can wear out. Most operating systems keep track of bad memory regions to avoid data corruptions and general system instability. This information gets lost during a system reboot, which increases the vulnerability of the machine after a reboot.
During runtime an operating system keeps track of pages that the memory controller or the system firmware, such as the Basic Input/Output System ("BIOS") or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface ("UEFI"), reports as having errors. These pages are considered retired by the operating system because they are not allowed to be allocated to applications, the operating system kernel, or virtual machines running on the operating system. This page retire information is lost when the operating system reboots, so it is only temporarily available.
Memory errors can be classified as correctable errors, which can be fixed via error-correcting code ("ECC"), or uncorrectable errors in which case the contents in memory have been compromised and consuming content from that part of memory can compromise the integrity of the operating system kernel, application, or virtual machine consuming that portion of memory.
For correctable errors, typically most operating systems use some form of heuristics to determine when to retire a page—for instance, several thousand correctable errors in a region of memory in quick succession can be a cause of concern and the operating system may retire that portion of memory. This prevents the system from encountering uncorrectable memory errors in that portion of memory later on. For uncorrectable errors, the operating system reacts far more aggressively by either crashing the application, virtual machine, or the operating system itself. After terminating the affected service, the page is retired immediately to avoid further impact.
Page retirement information is crucial for the reliability of an enterprise class cloud operating system; however, this information is available only transiently and only during the uptime of the operating system. When an operating system is rebooted, this information is lost and the operating system needs to rely on the system firmware to either scrub bad memory during system boot or recreate its view of bad memory during its runtime, leading to a decrease in the reliability of the operating system.
Not being able to keep this information across reboots has many drawbacks. For example, even if some hardware or firmware performs memory checks after powering on the machine, not all memory failures can be detected. For instance, data corruption may only occur after the memory region has not been accessed for a while or may depend on the memory access pattern by workloads running on the operating system or the operating system itself. During a hardware or firmware scan it is not possible to use heuristics like the operating system does to detected bad memory regions. As a result, the firmware may not be able to identify the right pages of memory to retire or hide from the operating system. Additionally, checking all memory pages is very time intensive and becomes prohibitive as memory sizes increase.
Additionally, modern hypervisors provide mechanisms to skip the hardware initialization during a system soft reboot to reduce the time it takes to reboot the machine. As a result, no memory checks are performed at all in those circumstances.
As a result, a need exists for retaining information about bad memory pages across an OS reboot, regardless of the type of reboot.

Saving page retire information persistently across operating system reboots


A forehead band attaches to a head band of an interior fitting assembly of a protective helmet is described. The forehead band includes a strip-shaped support which is provided with a holder for removably fixing the forehead band to the head band. The support is covered with a sweat-absorbing overlay. The holder has tubular supporting connection pieces integrally formed on the support and designed to engage into openings of the head band. The overlay has complementary longitudinal edges and is provided with openings for releasably receiving the supporting connection pieces. The overlay is washable with or without the support. The entire forehead band is designed so that the overlay or its support or both can be readily replaced.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a forehead band to be attached to a head band of an interior fitting assembly of a protective helmet.
2. Description of the Rotated Art
A protective helmet and an interior fitting for a protective helmet are known from the documents DE 10 2010 027 012 A1 or DE 10 2010 027 014 A1 which both go back to the applicant. According to the illustration in the accompanying FIG. 10 showing the interior fitting from the latter document a support cage 42′, a head band 44′, and a neck band 46′ together form an interior fitting assembly 40′ fixable to a helmet shell for supporting and retaining a protective helmet on the head of a wearer. On the inner side of the head band 44′, i.e. on the side facing the forehead of a wearer, obviously, a forehead band 20′ is attached to the head band 44′ which, however, is not mentioned anywhere in the texts of the two abovementioned documents. The length of the forehead band 20′ is determined so that it covers two joints 56′ through which the head band 44′ is respectively connected to a part of the neck band 46′ with its two free ends. It is feasible that the forehead band 20′ consists of a piece of padding material as mentioned elsewhere in the documents in connection with the support cage 42′ and a support shell. There is no information about the type of fixation of the forehead band 20′ to the head band 44′ to be found in the two documents since the forehead band 20′ is not even mentioned there. However, it is possible that the forehead band 20′ is, as usually, releasably attached to the head band 44′ with the aid of a hook-and-loop tape. The inner side of the head band 44′ adjacent to the forehead of the wearer is probably the section of the interior fitting assembly 40′ most significantly exposed to sweat because on the human head sweat formation is usually the most distinct on the forehead. If the forehead band 20′ is, as assumed, a piece of padding material it will become soaked with sweat which may give rise to the risk of a frontal sinusitis or other impairment to health at changing temperatures in the area of the head band 44′ if the helmet is repeatedly put on and taken off. Intense sweat flow may, in addition, result in a premature failure of the holder of the forehead band 20′ so that the forehead band 20′ will be lost and the protective helmet will then have to be worn with the blank head band 44′.
From the JP 2004-270040 A a forehead band is known which is attached to a head band of a helmet. An auxiliary band of the helmet is covered by a sweat-absorbing component.


A method and an apparatus to re-calibrate a polarimeter without a standard source with known polarization. An input electromagnetic wave is sequentially transformed into many electromagnetic waves, all having substantially the same degree of polarization and at least three of the electromagnetic waves having different states of polarization. All the electromagnetic waves are measured by the polarimeter. The method then calculates a calibration factor which, when applied to the measured signals, generates substantially the same calculated degree of polarization for all the electromagnetic waves. A birefringent material, such as a wave-plate, can be used to generate the electromagnetic waves from the input electromagnetic wave. If the input electromagnetic wave is an optical wave, then loops of optical fibers or an electro-optic material, such as a LiNbO.sub.3 crystal, is used as the birefringent material.

The present invention relates generally to the calibration of a polarimeter and more particularly to a method and an apparatus to re-calibrate a polarimeter without the need for an electromagnetic wave with known polarization.
All polarimeters, which are instruments for measuring the polarizations of electromagnetic waves, have to be calibrated. After calibration, polarimeters drift over time. They have to be regularly re-calibrated especially when they are making accurate measurements. In a typical re-calibration, a polarimeter measures an electromagnetic wave with known polarization generated by a standard source. A relationship is then calculated to adjust the measured signals so that they indicate the polarization of the wave. Unfortunately, any practical standard source drifts over time. Unless the source is tuned back to its correct value, which can be a tedious task, the drifted source leads to erroneous recalibrations.
The standard source not only has to be stable, its wavelength has to be known. After re-calibration, the polarimeter can accurately measure the polarization of a wave with nearly the same wavelength as the standard source. If the wavelength is substantially different than that of the standard source, the accuracy of the measurement is significantly degraded. Thus, to make an accurate polarization measurement, the wavelength of the wave to be measured must be as close as possible to the wavelength of the standard source.
There is a need for a way to re-calibrate a polarimeter with a method that does not depend on a stable standard source. The re-calibrated polarimeter should be able to measure the polarization of waves without the need for knowing their wavelengths accurately. The re-calibration process should be fast and easily accomplished especially when the polarimeter is used for making accurate measurements.

Polarimeter re-calibration method and apparatus


An AC/DC adapter having a main body for converting AC power into DC power and a DC power cable connected to the adapter main body. A power supplying jack is provided at an end of the DC power cable and connected to a connection port of one of a plurality of electronic devices constituting an electronic system to supply DC power therethrough. At least one grounding cable branches off from the DC power cable and forms a grounding path. A grounding jack is provided at an end of the grounding cable and is connected to a connection port of another electronic device of the plurality of the electronic devices to connect the grounding cable and a grounding area of the another electronic device of the plurality of the electronic devices.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an AC/DC adapter and a notebook computer using the same, and more particularly to an AC/DC adapter having an additional grounding jack and a notebook computer using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
An AC/DC adapter is generally used to convert AC power into DC power and supply DC power to various electronic devices such as a notebook computer. As shown in FIG. 4, a conventional notebook computer 110 has a computer main body 111 mounted with a central processing unit (CPU) (not shown). A docking station 121 is detachably connected with the computer main body 111 to expand a computer system and cooperate with the computer main body 111. A connection port 113 and 123 is selectively connected to a power supply jack (not shown) of an AC/DC adapter 130 to supply DC power through a power cord 135 from the AC/DC adapter 130. Additionally, the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121 are electrically connected by a connector 127. The connector 127 receives/sends data between the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121.
Thus, to use a notebook computer 110, a user may connect the power supply jack of the AC/DC adapter 130 to either of the connection ports 113 and 123 of the computer main body 111 or the docking station 121.
In a notebook computer system 110 in which the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121 each constitute an independent system, it is very important that the potential difference between the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121 is removed to reduce EMI(electromagnetic interference).
Here, if the AC/DC adapter 130 is connected only to the connection port 123 of the docking station 121 and not to the grounding area 115 of the computer main body 111, the ESD (electrostatic discharge) current generated from the computer main body 111 is discharged to the earth 129 through the grounding area 115 of the computer main body 111, the connector 127, the grounding area 125 of the docking station 121, and the AC/DC adapter 130.
In the conventional notebook computer, each grounding area of the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121 is connected, but only by the connector 127, so that the grounding connection is not adequate with regard to EMC (electromagnetic compatability). That is, the grounding connection between the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121 through the connector 127 is not sufficient to remove the electromagnetic interference. Further, in the conventional notebook computer, the ESD current generated from the computer main body 111 is discharged to the earth 129 through the long grounding path formed through the connector 127, the docking station 121 and the AC/DC adapter 130, thereby causing damage to each of the circuit systems of the computer main body 111 and the docking station 121.

AC/DC adapter and notebook computer using the same


An optoelectric converting substrate includes a substrate, at least one honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide embedded in the substrate and having two ends exposed through the substrate, a plurality of optoelectronic elements disposed on the substrate and coupled with the two ends of the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide, and a plurality of IC driving elements disposed on the substrate and electrically connected with the optoelectronic elements by conductive wires to drive the optoelectronic elements such that optical signals are transmitted through the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide. The optoelectric converting substrate can be easily fabricated at a low cost and effectively increases the displacement tolerance of the optoelectronic elements in substrate packaging.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optoelectric converting substrate, and more particularly, to an optoelectric converting substrate having a honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide.
2. Description of Related Art
With the development of optical communication technology and optical networking, optical interconnection technology has attracted more and more attention. Compared with the electrical interconnection, transmission over optical lines is much faster. The optical interconnection can be applied to device-to-device links (video to PC) and within computers (e.g. CPU to memory or CPU to CPU connections) for high speed signal transmission. As a result, optoelectric converting substrates have been developed which can enable fast communication between ICs of a multiple chip module (MCM), for example.
Referring to FIG. 6, a sectional view of an optoelectric converting substrate 3 according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,603,915 is shown. An optical waveguide 32 is formed inside a silicon substrate 31 for signal transmission between optoelectronic elements 33 located on the silicon substrate 31. However, to form such a structure, the silicon substrate 31 needs to be etched first, and then a cladding layer 321 and a core layer 322 are sequentially grown on the substrate 31, thereby resulting in a complicated fabrication process. In addition, such technique is incompatible with current fabrication process of the printed circuit boards currently in wide use.
Referring to FIG. 7, a sectional view of an optoelectric converting substrate 4 according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,389,202 is shown. Optical radiation 40 is passed through an optical waveguide 41 and then reflected to an optoelectronic element 43 by a reflecting board inclined at 45 degree relative to the optical waveguide 41. However, such a reflecting board inclined at 45 degree is hard to be fabricated and it is also difficult to optically couple the optical radiation 40 with the optoelectronic element 43. Thus, such a structure is incompatible with current fabrication process of the printed circuit boards as far as optical alignment precision is concerned. In addition, the optoelectronic element 43 in such a structure has limited displacement tolerance in packaging the optoelectric converting substrate 4.
Accordingly, a honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5 (referring to FIG. 8) can be applied to printed circuit boards to overcome the drawback of the prior art. Although such a structure has been applied in image transmission (referring to Martijn A. Van Eijkelenborg, "Imaging with microstructured polymer fibre", 2004), it has not yet been applied to the field of printed circuit boards (or substrates).
Referring to FIG. 8, the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5 comprises a high-refraction cylinder 51 and a plurality of holes 52. The high-refraction cylinder 51 is made of high temperature resistant plastics and thereby meets the requirements for printed circuit board fabrication. The plurality of holes 52 are honeycomb-shaped and configured to contain air. The refractive index of the high-refraction cylinder 51 is approximately 1.5, and that of air is approximately 1, thus the absolute value of the difference between the two aforesaid refractive indexes is 0.5. The higher the absolute value is, the less is the attenuation of optical transmission in the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5. In addition, the smaller the bendable angular radius of the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5 is, the easier it is to bend the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5. Therefore, the honeycomb-shaped micro-structured optical waveguide 5 can be applied to the optoelectric converting printed circuit boards for optical signal transmission. It should be noted that light is transmitted through the high-refraction cylinder 51 instead of the plurality of holes 52.

Industrial Technology Research Institute


A system and method of logless atomic data movement. An internal transaction is started within a multi-level storage architecture, the internal transaction to merge data from the first level storage structure to the second level storage structure. Committed data is read from a first level storage structure of the multi-level storage architecture as specified by the internal transaction. The committed data from the first level storage structure is inserted into a second level storage structure in a bulk insertion process, and the committed data is marked as being deleted from the first level storage. The internal transaction is then committed to the multi-level storage architecture when the committed data has been inserted into the second level storage structure.

Data management in modern business applications is one of the most challenging topics in today's software industry. Not only is data driving today's business but also provides the foundation for the development of novel business ideas or business cases. Data management in all the different flavors has become a core asset for every organization. Also, data management has gained significant attention at senior management level as the core tool to drive and develop the current business. On the system side, data management scenarios have become extremely complex and complicated to manage. An efficient, flexible, robust, and cost-effective data management layer is the core for a number of different application scenarios essential in today's business environments.
Initially, classical enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems were implemented as the information processing backbone that handles such application scenarios. From the database system perspective, the online transactional processing (OLTP) workload of ERP systems typically requires handling of thousands of concurrent users and transactions with high update load and very selective point queries. On the other hand, data warehouse systems—usually considered as the counterpart to OLTP—either run aggregation queries over a huge volume of data or compute statistical models for the analysis of artifacts stored in the database. Unfortunately, applications like real time analysis to identify anomalies in data stream or ETL/information integration tasks add to the huge variety of different and in some cases absolutely challenging requirements for a data management layer in the context of modern business applications.
Some have postulated that traditional database management systems are no longer able to represent the holistic answer with respect to the variety of different requirements. Specialized systems will emerge for specific problems. Large data management solutions are now usually viewed as a zoo of different systems with different capabilities for different application scenarios. For example, classic row-stores are still dominating the OLTP domain. Maintaining a 1:1-relationship between the logical entity and the physical representation in a record seems obvious for entity-based interaction models. Column-organized data structures gained more and more attention in the analytical domain to avoid projection of queried columns and exploit significantly better data compression rates. Key-value stores are making inroads into commercial data management solutions to cope not only with "big data"-volumes but also provide a platform for procedural code to be executed in parallel. In addition, distributed file systems that provide a cheap storage mechanism and a flexible degree of parallelism for cloud-like elasticity made key-value stores a first class citizen in the data management arena. The plethora of systems is completed by triple stores to cope with schema-flexible data and graph-based organization. Since the schema comes with the data, the system provides efficient means to exploit explicitly modeled relationships between entities, run analytical graph algorithms, and exhibit a repository for weakly-typed entities in general.
Although specialized systems may be considered a smart move in a first performance-focused shot, the plethora of systems yields tremendous complexity to link different systems, run data replication and propagation jobs, or orchestrate query scenarios over multiple systems. Additionally, setting up and maintaining such an environment is not only complex and error prone but also comes with significantly higher total cost of ownership (TCO). From a high-level perspective, the following observation of motivations underlying the current situation can be made:
Usage perspective: SQL is no longer considered the only appropriate interaction model for modern business applications. Users are either completely shielded by an application layer or would like to directly interact with their database. In the first case, there is a need to optimally support an application layer with a tight coupling mechanism. In the second case, there is a need for scripting languages with built-in database features for specific application domains. There is also the need for a comprehensive support domain-specific and proprietary query languages, as well as a huge demand for mechanisms to enable the user to directly address parallelism from a programming perspective.
Cost awareness: There is a clear demand to provide a lower TCO solution for the complete data management stack ranging from hardware to setup costs to operational and maintenance costs by offering a consolidated solution for different types of workloads and usage patterns.
Performance: Performance is continually identified as the main reason to use specialized systems. The challenge is to provide a flexible solution with the ability to use specialized operators or data structures whenever possible and needed.
Different workload characteristics do not fully justify using the zoo of specialized systems. Our past experience of handling business applications leads us to support the hypothesis for a need of specialized collections of operators. There exists a bias against individual systems with separate life cycles and administration set-ups. However, providing a single closed system is too limiting, and instead a flexible data management platform with common service primitives is preferred.
Different workload characteristics—ranging from high volume transaction processing via support of read-mostly analytical DWH workloads to high-update scenarios of the stream processing domain do not fully justify going for the zoo of specialized systems. Experience with handling business applications leads to the need of specialized collections of operators.
In addition to pure data processing performance, the lack of an appropriate coupling mechanism between the application layer and the data management layer has been identified as one of the main deficits of state-of-the-art systems. Further, individual systems with separate life cycles and administration set-ups are more difficult to set up and manage, while a single closed system is usually too limiting. What is needed is a flexible data management platform with common service primitives on the one hand and individual query execution runtime environments on the other hand.


A communication apparatus includes a processor configured to access memory of the communication apparatus; communicate with a second apparatus; detect an access request generated by the communication apparatus; determine whether an address of access targeted data indicated in the detected access request is an address allocated to the memory of the communication apparatus; and perform control for selecting and executing based on a determination result, any one among a process of accessing the memory of the communication apparatus based on the access request and a process of communicating with the second apparatus based on the access request.

A technique conventionally exists that executes distributed processing while sharing data among terminal apparatuses such as portable apparatuses. For example, a technique of sharing data among multiple apparatuses is disclosed that connects, for example, a server side terminal and a portable terminal, acting as a client, through a wireless connection to share data so as to efficiently utilize a limited storage area in the portable terminal (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-260274).
Another technique is disclosed that realizes the sharing of a data file without making a disclosure request to reduce the burden placed on the user for sharing data when data is shared by portable terminals (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-250572).
In another disclosed technique, for example, when program code is transferred to another core, a classification for determining whether data is transferred is given so that a startup time of a program is shortened by transmitting program code requested at the time of startup (see, e.g., Published Japanese-Translation of PCT Application, Publication No. WO2008/001671).
For a technique of controlling the transfer of data to be shared, for example, a technique is disclosed that additionally allocates available space within an area of a distributed shared memory to an area significantly lacking distributed shared memory (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-305201).
With regard to a method of distributing data to multiple apparatuses, a technique is disclosed that causes a server to terminate data distribution to multiple control apparatuses when a line or an apparatus has a failure and to resume the data distribution at the normal time or at regular intervals (see, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-325007).
However, since a file is formed when communication is performed in each of the techniques above, if small-sized data is frequently communicated, the file formation and deployment processing problematically causes overhead in the distributed processing.

Communication apparatus, communication method, and computer product for sharing data


The invention relates unsaturated polyester resins for the manufacture of subzero flexible, weather-resistant products. The liquid unsaturated polyester resin comprises a linear unsaturated polyester obtained by reacting 5-30 mol % of one or more ethylenically unsaturated dicarboxylic acids (A), 20-45 mol % of one or more other aliphatic or aromatic acids (B) and 40-60 mol % of two or more polyhydric alcohols and 30-60 wt % of one or more reactive monomers. The linear unsaturated polyesters have a cone and plate viscosity (I.C.I.) of 2 ps/125xc2x0 C.-20 ps/125xc2x0 C. and a molecular weight Mw of 20,000-100,000. The invention also relates to a process for the manufacture of such unsaturated polyester resins and to the use of them in applications wherein good adhesion to supporting material and flexibility at ambient and especially at low temperatures are needed.

The invention relates to unsaturated polyester resins and in particular to weather-resistant unsaturated polyester resin based products with excellent flexibility and to the use of the said resins in applications, such as concrete sealants and flooring resins. Additionally, the invention relates to a process for the manufacture of such unsaturated polyester resins.
Flexible unsaturated polyesters for coating, water-proofing and sealing applications have been traditionally processed from dicarboxylic acid and polypropylene oxides or polyethylene oxides. Part of the acid has to be unsaturated in order to have curing properties with normal peroxides or other radical initiators.
A method and a resinous product adapted for sealing pores in porous metal articles are disclosed in GB 792 854. More specifically, this patent describes a method for sealing pores in porous metal articles by impregnating the metal with a water-dispersible polymerizable impregnating composition comprising water-dispersible polyester and a polymerizable aryl monomer. The water-dispersible polyester comprises the product of esterifying a glycol with an ethylenically unsaturated dicarboxylic acid. The polymerizable aryl monomer is styrene or vinyl toluene and it is present in an amount from one-third to one time the total weight of the polyester.
An unsaturated polyester resin used as waterproof lining material of a roof floor and indoor floor and as filling material of a cable joint portion is described in KR 9411772. The unsaturated polyester resin is produced from diethylene glycol, propylene glycol, phthalic acid, maleic acid and benzoic acid with conventional additives.
Japanese patent application JP 04 253 717 discloses the use of polyglycols in a combination with aromatic dicarboxylic acids, such as isophthalic or terephthalic acid, and maleic acid. The resins are diluted with styrene to 40% and cured with methyl ethyl ketone peroxide and Co-naphtenoate to obtain a flexible unsaturated polyester resin for use as coating in engineering and construction.
Another Japanese patent application JP 05 186 572 A2 describes the preparation of waterproofing materials with good flexibility. The resin is composed of adipic acid, fumaric acid and Bisphenol A combined at the second stage with a maleic acid-DCPD derivative. The resin is diluted with styrene and cured as described in the preceding reference.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,696,225 describes a three step method of processing a flexible resin. At the first stage, an acid-terminated polyester is prepared, the chains are extended at the second stage with polypropylene oxides and, at the third stage, the compounded resin is diluted with styrene and cured with a peroxide/Co-naphtenoate system. This publication also refers to trials to improve flexibility, weather-resistance and duration of good performance. Typical improvements relate to variations of monomers and by copolymers, e.g. blending unsaturated polyester with vinyl esters and epoxy resins.
A major problem with prior art unsaturated polyester resin products is high water absorption, which affects the product by reducing flex strength and elongation at room temperature and at temperatures down to xe2x88x9220xc2x0 C., which cause loss of flexibility and affect severely the stability of the product. Thus, there is a need for resins that would perform well, when cured, in demanding weather-conditions and retain flexibility and stability also at very low temperatures.
An object of this invention is to provide a linear unsaturated polyester with a high molecular weight and an unsaturated polyester resin for the manufacture of subzero flexible, weather-resistant unsaturated polyester based products. Another object of this invention is the use of the unsaturated polyester resin in applications wherein good chemical resistance, weather-resistance, subzero flexibility and water resistance are needed and high impact resistance is required, such as concrete sealants, flooring resins, coating resins, in gelcoats or as such combined with reinforcement to form flexible reinforced plastic parts. A further object of this invention is to provide a method for the manufacture of a linear unsaturated polyester with a high molecular weight and of an unsaturated polyester resin for the manufacture of a subzero flexible, weather-resistant unsaturated polyester based products.
The characteristic features of the linear unsaturated polyester, of the unsaturated polyester resin, the use thereof and the method for the manufacture thereof are set forth in the claims.
It has been surprisingly found that in processing of linear unsaturated polyesters and unsaturated polyester resins for the manufacture of a subzero flexible, weather-resistant, unstaurated polyester based products, the use and the combination of glycolic components play an important role in order to achieve a linear unsaturated polyester with a high molecular weight, and so do also extended processing periods in order to achieve very low acid values.
The linear unsaturated polyesters are prepared by allowing a combination of (A) ethylenically unsaturated dicarboxylic acid, such as maleic acid, maleic anhydride, fumaric acid or mixtures thereof, preferably maleic acid, maleic anhydride or fumaric acid, and of (B) another aliphatic or aromatic acid, such as phthalic acid, phthalic anhydride, isophthalic acid, terephthalic acid, 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid, 1,4-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid or adipic acid, preferably phthalic acid, phthalic anhydride, isophthalic acid or terephthalic acid or mixtures thereof, to react with a slight excess of (C) two or more polyhydric alcohols. The choice of poly-hydric alcohols is crucial for obtaining a flexible, weather-resistant cured product. Thus, polyhydric alcohols, such as ethylene glycol, 1,2-propylene glycol, 1,3-propylene glycol, 1,4-butanediol, 1,6-hexanediol, diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, tripropylene glycol, 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-propanediol, 2-methyl-1,3-propanediol, 2-butyl-2-ethyl-1,3-propanediol, 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol, hydroxypivalyl hydroxypivalate, Bisphenol A, trimethylol ethane, trimethylol propane, polyethylene glycol or derivatives thereof, polypropylene glycol or derivatives thereof, polyethylene oxides, polypropylene oxides or tri-methylol propane polymers having an overall hydroxy functionality of 2-4 per molecule and a molecular weight of 300-12,000 are suitable. Preferred polyhydric alcohols are selected from a group consisting of triethylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, tripropylene glycol, Bisphenol A, trimethylol ethane, trimethylol propane, polyethylene oxides, polypropylene oxides and trimethylol propane polymers having an overall hydroxy functionality of 2 or 3 per molecule and a molecular weight of 400-1500, and mixtures thereof. At least two of the required polyhydric alcohols belong preferably to the group consisting of polyethylene glycol, polypropylene glycol, derivatives of polyethylene glycol and derivatives of polypropylene glycol, which include the polymerization products of oxirane and methyl oxirane with itself and/or with alcohols. Particularly preferably at least two of the polyhydric alcohols are selected from the group consisting of polypropylene glycol and derivatives thereof, such as trimethylol propanexe2x80x94polypropylene glycol derivatives and poly-propylen glycol. The ratio of difunctional compounds to trifunctional compounds plays also an important role, and a preferred ratio is 60-80 mol % of diols to 20-40 mol % of triols, but in certain cases only diols are used. Preferred conditions are achieved so that the component comprising triols is used in an amount of 50 mol % at the maximum calculated from the amount of all the polyhydric alcohols. Additionally, an inhibitor known in the art is needed for the prevention of solidification and geleation, the preferred inhibitor being hydroquinone, toluhydroquinone, hydroquinone monomethyl ether, mono-tert-butyl hydroquinone, di-tert-butyl hydroquinone, tri-tert-butyl hydroquinone and butyl toluhydroquinone. The weight-average molecular weight Mw of the linear unsaturated polyester obtained is 20,000-100,000 and the cone and plate viscosity (I.C.I.) of the linear unsaturated polyester is 2 ps/125xc2x0 C.-20 ps/125xc2x0 C. Preferably the Mw range is 40,000-100,000 and I.C.I. viscosity range is 5 ps/125xc2x0 C.-15 ps/125xc2x0 C. A linear unsaturated polyester with an extremely high molecular weight can thus be obtained and surprisingly it can be readily solubilized and diluted with monomers in a manner similar to that of conventional polyesters, and thus the workability of the liquid base resin is retained.
In order to manufacture liquid base resins the obtained linear unsaturated polyesters are diluted with a reactive monomer or mixtures thereof to obtain mixtures containing 30-60 wt %, preferably 35-55 wt % of a reactive monomer. Reactive monomers suitable for use in the invention include vinyl aromatic monomers, vinyl esters of carboxylic acids, acrylic and methacrylic acid esters, acrylamides and methacrylamides, acrylonitrile and methacrylonitrile, alkyl vinyl ethers, allyl esters of aromatic di- and polyacids, and the like, and mixtures thereof. Preferred reactive monomers are vinyl aromatic monomers, acrylic and methacrylic acid esters, and diallyl esters of aromatic di- and polyacids. A particularly preferred reactive monomer is styrene.
The resulting liquid base resin comprises linear unsaturated polyester obtained by reacting 5-30 mol-% of (A) one or more ethylenically unsaturated dicarboxylic acids, 20-45 mol % of (B) one or more other aliphatic or aromatic acids and 40-60 mol % of (C) two or more polyhydric alcohols, and 30-60 wt %, preferably 35-55 wt % of one or more reactive monomers. The liquid base resin is curable using conventional unsaturated polyester promoter systems (Co-octoate or other systems well known in the art) and as an initiator 1-3 wt % of MEKP, BPO or another suitable peroxide known in the art. The cured product has excellent flexibility also at subzero conditions, and its elongation at break is 150-460%, preferably 300-460% at 20xc2x0 C. and 20-460%, preferably 150-460% at xe2x88x9220xc2x0 C.
The loss of elongation properties after a 21-day boiling water test with the cured high molecular weight unsaturated polyester based resin product decreases by 10% at the maximum measured at room temperature and by 50% at the maximum measured at xe2x88x9220xc2x0 C. corresponding to retention of flexibility greater than 90% and greater than 50% at xe2x88x9220xc2x0 C., respectively. The retention of flexibility following the severe boiling water tests also speaks for the good stability of the product, and the overall mechanical properties of the product do not change upon exposure to severe conditions, such as boiling water or sub-zero temperatures, even before and after exposure to boiling water. The properties of the products according to the invention resemble those of polyurethanes, which are far more expensive.
The method for the manufacture of the linear unsaturated polyesters and of the unsaturated polyester resins in accordance with the invention is described in the following.
5-30 mol %, preferably 10-20 mol % of (A) one or more ethylenically unsaturated dicarboxylic acid, preferably maleic acid, maleic acid anhydride or fumaric acid, 20-45 mol %, preferably 30-40 mol % of (B) one or more other aliphatic or aromatic acids, such as phthalic acid, phthalic anhydride, isophthalic acid, terephthalic acid, 1,2-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid, 1,4-cyclohexane dicarboxylic acid or adipic acid and preferably phthalic acid, phthalic acid anhydride, isophthalic acid or terephthalic acid and 40-60 mol %, preferably 45-55 mol % of (C) one or more polyhydric alcohols, such as ethylene glycol, 1,2-propylene glycol, 1,3-propylene glycol, 1,4-butanediol, 1,6-hexanediol, diethylene glycol, triethylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, tripropylene glycol, 2,2-dimethyl-1,3-propanediol, 2-methyl-1,3-propanediol, 2-butyl-2-ethyl-1,3-propanediol, 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol, hydroxypivalyl hydroxypivalate, Bisphenol A, trimethylol ethane, trimethylol propane, polyethylene oxides, polypropylene oxides or trimethylol propane polymers having an overall hydroxy functionality of 2-4 per molecule and a molecular weight of 300-12,000, and preferably triethylene glycol, dipropylene glycol, tripropylene glycol, Bisphenol A, trimethylol ethane, trimethylol propane, polyethylene oxides, polypropylene oxides or trimethylol propane polymers having an overall hydroxy functionality of 2 or 3 per molecule and a molecular weight of 400-1500 and particularly preferably at least two of the required polyhydric alcohols belong to the group consisting of polyethylene glycol, polypropylene glycol, derivatives of polyethylene glycol and derivatives of polypropylene glycol or mixtures thereof are allowed to polymerize at an elevated temperature as follows:
In the first process stage the acid/acids (B) and at least two polyhydric alcohols (C) are allowed to polymerize at an elevated temperature in a reaction vessel in the presence of a metal catalys, preferably tin catalyst for an extended period of time until an acid value of 5-35, preferably less than 20 is achieved. In the second process stage the ethylenically unsaturated acid (A) is added and the reaction is carried out at an elevated temperature for an extended period of time until the acid value of 5-35, preferably below 20 is achieved. Vacuum is applied if necessary. The process is carried out in a reactor in the presence of an inhibitor, such as hydroquinone. The generated water is removed during the reaction in a suitable manner, such as through a separation column. When linear unsaturated polyesters with extremely high molecular weight of 70,000-100,000 are manufactured the starting materials are allowed to be polymerized for an extended period of time until an acid value of preferably less than 10 and a cone and plate viscosity (I.C.I.) of more than 10 ps/125xc2x0 C. are achieved at the end of the process.
The ethylenically unsaturated carboxylic acid/acids (A) may alternatively be charged to the reactor in the first process stage or the charging of the ethylenically unsaturated carboxylic acid can be also performed in two steps; one portion of it may be charged with other starting materials and the other portion of it may be added after a selected period of processing.
The thus obtained linear unsaturated polyesters are diluted with reactive monomers to obtain liquid base resins containing 30-60 mol %, preferably 35-55 mol % of a reactive monomer or a mixture thereof, preferably styrene.
It has been surprisingly found that the process with extended processing time until low acid values are achieved yields linear unsaturated polyesters that have very high molecular weights, surprisingly good solubility and improved retention of elongation properties are obtained in the respective cured products. The compounding of polyesters especially from polypropylene glycol derivatives, such as polyoxides allows the exceptionally extended processing times. Usually an extended period of processing time causes geleation which prevents the continuation of the processing. However, according to the invention two different polyhydric alcohols, such as polypropylene glycol derivatives are used in connection with an inhibitor and a metal catalyst and thus the condensation reaction can be continued until very low acid values are achieved thus enabling the manufacture of linear unsaturated polyesters with very high molecular weights. The unsaturated polyester based cured products manufactured of unsaturated polyester resins according to the invention exhibit exceptionally good physical properties such as good subzero flexibility, good elongation properties and good normal flexibility. A further advantage in the use of high molecular weight unsaturated polyester resins according to the invention is that if additional tensile strength is needed in the cured product, the polyester is readily dilutable to higher styrene contents while still retaining good workability of the resin.
The liquid base resin may be used as such, reinforced with glass or with other reinforcing materials known in the art, filled or unfilled, with or without thickeners and optionally blended with other types of resins, e.g. epoxy resins, urethane resins, vinyl esters, or blended with conventional unsaturated polyester resins in order to achieve desired properties in the cured products, such as suitable hardness, UV-resistance, subzero flexibility and weather-resistance.
The unsaturated polyester resins in accordance with the invention can be applied to sealing of concrete elements, to concrete coatings as well as to flooring of structural materials, such as roofs and parking house floorings. The resins in accordance with the invention are well suited for various subzero flexible, weather-resistant applications where good adhesion to supporting material, good flexibility at low temperatures and high impact resistance are needed together with good chemical resistance, water resistance and weather-resistance. Examples of such applications are flexible adhesive resins and sealants, coating resins for metals or lining resins in lining films, insulation materials, resins for laminating flexible moulds and adhesive resins for ceramic plates, window attachments or decorative windows. The resins can also be used as water-proofing resins and multipurpose resins, and to certain specific applications where thick layers of 2-12 mm thickness with high flexibility are needed. The unsaturated polyester resins in accordance with the invention can also be used as such or with reinforcing agents such as glass fibre, as laminating agents and as a base resin for manufacturing of gelcoats for various applications. The resins as such are suitable for sculpturing, pultrusion and extrusion applications.

Unsaturated polyester resin and the use of it


The present invention relates to an opaque, white UV-stabilized low-flammability film with a thickness of from 10 to 500 μm whose principal constituent is a crystallizable thermoplastic. It also comprises at least barium sulfate as pigment, at least one flame retardant, at least one UV stabilizer as light stabilizer and at least one optical brightener. The barium sulfate and/or the optical brightener and/or the flame retardant and/or the UV stabilizer here is either incorporated directly into the thermoplastic when the polymer is prepared or fed to the thermoplastic as a masterbatch during film production. The novel film is particularly suitable for interior decoration, for constructing exhibition stands, for exhibition requisites, for displays, for placards, for labels, for protective glazing of machines or of vehicles, in the lighting sector, in the fitting out of shops or of stores, as a promotional requisite or a laminating material, or in applications associated with food or drink, and also for outdoor applications, such as roofing systems, external cladding, protective coverings, applications in the construction sector, or illuminated advertising profiles, or in the transport sector, or else for electrical applications.

Opaque films with a thickness of from 10 to 500 μm are well known. None of the known films comprises any type of soluble flame retardant or any UV stabilizer as light stabilizer or any optical brightener, and neither the films nor items produced from them are therefore suitable for outdoor applications. In outdoor applications these films yellow, even after a short period, and their mechanical properties become impaired as a result of photooxidative degradation of the thermoplastic by sunlight. The films also fail to comply with the fire tests of DIN 4102 Part 2 and Part 1, and also fail the UL 94 test.
EP-A-0 620 245 describes films with improved heat resistance. These films comprise antioxidants suitable for scavenging free radicals formed in the film and for degrading any peroxide formed. However, this specification makes no proposal as to how the UV resistance of films of this type may be improved.
DE-A 23 46 787 describes a low-flammability polymer. Besides the polymer, the claims also cover the use of the polymer to give films and fibers. However, when films were produced from this phospholane-modified polymer the following shortcomings were apparent:
The polymer is very susceptible to hydrolysis and has to be very thoroughly predried. When the polymer is dried using dryers of the prior art it cakes, and if production of a film is possible at all it is possible only under very difficult conditions.
The films produced, under extreme and uneconomic conditions, embrittle at high temperatures, that is to say their mechanical properties decline sharply as a result of substantial embrittlement, making the film unusable. This embrittlement arises after as little as 48 hours at high temperature.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Opaque, white UV-stabilized low-flammability film with low transparency made from a crystallizable thermoplastic


Disclosed are a plate-crystalline tungsten carbide-containing hard alloy which comprises 4 to 40% by volume of a binder phase containing at least one of iron group metals selected from Co, Ni and Fe as a main component; and the balance of a hard phase comprising tungsten carbide alone, or tungsten carbide and 50% by volume or less of a compound with a cubic structure selected from at least one of carbide and nitride of the 4a (Ti, Zr and Hf), 5a (V, Nb and Ta) or 6a (Cr, Mo and W) group element of the periodic table and mutual solid solutions thereof, and inevitable impurities,. wherein when peak intensities at a (001) face and a (101) face in X-ray diffraction using K.alpha. rays with Cu being a target are represented by h(001) and h(101), respectively, the tungsten carbide satisfies h(001)/h(101) .gtoreq.0.50, a composition for forming a plate-crystalline tungsten carbide, and a process for preparing the plate-crystalline tungsten carbide-containing hard alloy.

This invention relates to a hard alloy having excellent hardness, toughness, wear resistance, fracture resistance, plastic deformation resistance and thermal cracking resistance, in which plate-crystalline tungsten carbide (hereinafter abbreviated to "platy WC") is crystallized, specifically to a platy WC-containing hard alloy suitable as cutting tools such as an insert, a drill and an end mill, a base material of a coating super hard tool, plastic working tools such as a drawing mold, a die mold and a forging mold and shearing tools such as a punching mold and a slitter, a composition for forming platy WC and a process for preparing the platy WC-containing hard alloy.
In general, hardness, i.e., wear resistance and strength and toughness, i.e., fracture resistance of a hard alloy can be changed by a particle size of WC, a Co content and an addition amount of other carbide so that the hard alloy can be widely used for various purposes. However, there is a problem of antinomy tendency that if wear resistance is heightened, fracture resistance is lowered, while if fracture resistance is heightened, wear resistance is lowered.
As one course for solving this problem, there may be mentioned a means obtained by paying attention to anisotropy of mechanical characteristics due to crystal faces of WC, specifically, for example, a means relating to a hard alloy in which platy WC exists, which platy WC has a shape represented by a triangle plate or a hexagonal plate and has a (001) face preferentially grown in the direction of the (001) face since the (001) face of WC crystal shows the highest hardness and the direction of a (100) face shows the highest elastic modulus, or a process for preparing the same.
As representative examples of prior art techniques relating to platy WC, there may be mentioned Japanese Patent Publications No. 23049/1972 and No. 23050/1972 and Japanese Provisional Patent Publications No. 34008/1982, No. 47239/1990, No. 51408/1990, No. 138434/1990, No. 274827/1990 and No. 339659/1993.
Among the prior art techniques relating to platy WC, in Japanese Patent Publications No. 23049/1972 and No. 23050/1972, there has been described a process for preparing a platy WC-containing hard alloy by using mixed powder which comprises colloidal tungsten carbide powder containing a porous agglomerate for growing platy WC and powder of Fe, Ni, Co or an alloy thereof.
In Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 34008/1982, there has been described a process for preparing twin tungsten carbide in which (001) faces are bonded as a twin face by adding a small amount of an iron group metal salt to mixed powder of strongly pulverized W and C and then carbonizing the mixture under heating.
Further, in Japanese Provisional Patent Publications No. 47239/1990 and No. 138434/1990, there has been described a process for preparing a hard alloy by using, as a starting material, a solid solution of (W,Ti,Ta)C in which tungsten carbide is contained in a super-saturated state and crystallizing platy WC at the time of sintering under heating.
Next, in Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 274827/1990, there has been described a process for preparing an anisotropic hard alloy by subjecting a used hard alloy to oxidation, reduction and then carbonization to obtain powder, molding the powder and then subjecting the resulting molded compact to sintering or hot pressing.
In addition, in Japanese Provisional Patent Publication No. 339659/1993, there has been described a process for preparing a hard alloy containing platy WC by subjecting mixed powder comprising WC with a size of 0.5 .mu.m or less, 3 to 40% by weight of a compound with a cubic structure and 1 to 25% by weight of Co and/or Ni to sintering at 1,450.degree. C. or higher.
In the hard alloys or the hard alloys obtained by the preparation processes described in these 8 publications, the growing rate of the (001) crystal face of WC is low, all of the a axis length, c axis length and c/a ratio of the WC crystal are small and the ratio of platy WC contained is low, whereby there is a problem that all of various characteristics of the hard alloy, particularly hardness, wear resistance, strength, toughness and fracture resistance cannot be improved. Also, in the preparation processes, there are problems that it is difficult to control a particle size, it is difficult to heighten the ratio of platy WC contained, said processes can be applied only to a hard alloy in which compositional components are limited, and preparation cost is high.

Plate-crystalline tungsten carbide-containing hard alloy, composition for forming plate-crystalline tungsten carbide and process for preparing said hard alloy


A roof spoiler mounting bracket assembly for mounting a roof spoiler to a roof panel of an automotive vehicle. The mounting bracket assembly comprises a vehicle-side bracket having upper and lower sides extending longitudinally between first and second ends and laterally between first and second edges. A spoiler-side bracket having upper and lower sides extends longitudinally between first and second ends and laterally between first and second edges. The spoiler-side bracket has a unitary recessed section for receiving the vehicle-side bracket at least partially therein and the spoiler-side bracket is fixedly secured to the roof spoiler, A first mounting bolt extends from the lower side of the vehicle-side bracket for fixedly securing the vehicle-side bracket to the roof panel.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to roof spoilers for automotive vehicles. More particularly, the present invention relates to a mounting system for securing a spoiler to a roof panel on an automotive vehicle.
2. Brief Description of Related Art
By way of background, roof spoilers are commonly attached to a rear end of a vehicle roof panel such that the roof spoiler is positioned directly above and overhanging a rear window. The purpose of the roof spoiler is primarily aesthetic. However, the roof spoiler may also provide some aerodynamic benefits by "spoiling" unfavorable air movement as the air passes over the roof panel, which can reduce drag and increase fuel efficiency.
Typically, roof spoilers are secured to the roof panel using two-sided adhesive tape and/or mounting bolts. Both of these attachment methods have drawbacks. Two-sided adhesive tape will eventually break-down, allowing the roof spoiler to come unsecured from the vehicle. If the roof spoiler comes unsecured from the vehicle during operation, this will present a safety issue to other vehicles travelling behind. On the other hand, mounting bolts extend through the roof spoiler into the roof panel to securely connect the roof spoiler to the vehicle. Bolt heads, however, are aesthetically unappealing and must generally be hidden from view in a recess formed in the roof spoiler that is covered over with an access panel. In addition, since holes must be drilled in the roof panel to receive the standard mounting bolts, there is a possibility that water will leak into the vehicle.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide a mounting system for securing a roof spoiler to a roof panel on an automotive vehicle that reduces or eliminates the above drawbacks.


An interactive I/O terminal supplies information to a user and inputs information based on operations of the user in accordance with the information supplied to the user. The interactive I/O terminal includes an I/O display panel for displaying a predetermined screen having a display area on which messages are to be displayed and operation keys for outputting signals corresponding to the operation keys operated by the user; a first controller for controlling the I/O display panel so that messages are displayed on the display area in the screen formed on the I/O display panel, a second controller for controlling the I/O display panel so that the screen is maintained on the I/O display panel until operations corresponding to a plurality of messages displayed on the display area are completed, and a processing unit for performing processes corresponding to the signals supplied from the I/O display panel based on operations of the user.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an interactive I/O terminal such as an automatic teller machine (ATM), and more particularly to an interactive I/O terminal in which user operability is improved.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Automatic teller machines (ATMs) have been provided by banks to facilitate 24-hour account availability. A user (a customer) faces the automatic teller machine (hereinafter simply referred to as an ATM) and operates keys in accordance with instructions displayed on a display panel, so that transactions, such as deposits in the bank and withdrawals from the bank, are executed. To more quickly and easily complete the transactions, it is necessary to improve the user operability of the ATM.
The ATM can be considered as an interactive I/O terminal having a display unit with a screen for displaying information and a touch panel for inputting instructions. The touch panel has transparent switches and covers the screen of the display unit. The instructions required for performing a transaction is displayed on the screen of the display unit. Key marks (hereinafter simply referred to as keys) are also displayed on the screen of the display unit at positions corresponding to the transparent switches of the touch panel covering the screen.
In a conventional ATM, to complete one transaction, a user must perform a plurality of steps in sequence to operate the ATM. Thus, a screen display on the display unit is switched step by step. A screen display in each step is provided, for example, with keys and a message requesting the user to do a predetermined operation. The user operates some of the keys in the screen display in accordance with the message.
For example, screen displays for requesting insertion of a card, insertion of a bankbook, input of a personal identification number, input of an amount in the transaction, and confirmation of the input amount are successively switched on the display unit. The user carries out a corresponding operation in each of the above screen displays on the display unit. As a result, one transaction corresponding to the input amount is executed.
In the above conventional ATM, an entire screen display is switched on the display unit. Thus, when a screen display is switched, the message and keys in the screen display disappear in an instant and a new message and keys appear in the next screen display. As the message and keys disappear in an instant as described above, the user must confirm the positions of the new message and keys in the new screen display every time a screen display is switched. Due to the confirmation of positions of the message and keys, operations on the display unit are delayed.
In addition, the switching of a screen display and the corresponding operation are alternately carried out. Thus, there are large intervals between the carrying out of operations, so that an inordinate amount of time is required to complete one transaction.


The present invention provides a portable cylinder contribution tester for an electronic diesel engine, the diesel engine including a plurality of cylinders. The tester comprises a plurality of switches, each of the plurality of switches coupled to and for controlling one of the plurality of cylinders and a case for mounting the plurality of switches. When an abnormal diesel engine operation is detected each of the plurality of switches can be activated. When one of the plurality of switches is activated and the diesel engine does not decrease in performance it is indicated that the associated cylinder is malfunctioning. Existing test equipment for most electronic diesel engines is PC based and available to franchised dealers only, as well as not being portable for drive testing. Through the use of a cylinder contribution tester in accordance with the present invention, these type of repairs could be available to many independently owned non-franchised facilities. A cylinder contribution tester in accordance with the present invention is electromechanical, stand alone, self contained, and portable on the vehicle for driver testing.

Diesel engines utilized in automobiles and the like include a plurality of cylinders for operation. When one or more of the cylinders are not operating properly, the engine will act abnormally, such as engine roughness, loss of power, lower engine speed, etc. Typically, when these problems occur in a diesel engine, the engine must be tested. These diesel engines are typically controlled by an on-board computer system. Accordingly, known test equipment for diesel engines is personal computer based and available to franchised dealers. Typically, the diagnostic test equipment is sophisticated electronic equipment that interfaces with the electronics of the modem automobile, truck, or the like. Accordingly, this test equipment is very expensive and costly to maintain. Oftentimes the problems associated with poor cylinder operation are intermittent in nature and can only be determined when the vehicle utilizing the diesel engine is in normal operation. That is, for example, during driving of a diesel powered automobile, the engine loses power, but when the automobile is brought to the service station and tested the engine does not lose power. However, known test equipment is typically resident only in a franchised service station.
Accordingly, it would be useful to provide a system which can be utilized during the normal operation of a diesel powered vehicle such as an automobile or the like. The system should be easy to implement, cost effective and adaptable to existing diesel powered vehicles. The system should be useful particularly for automotive vehicles which include on-board computer based control systems. The present invention addresses such a need.

Portable cylinder contribution tester for a vehicle which includes a diesel engine which is controlled by an electronic circuit


A rotor mast including an outer member defining a channel therethrough and an inner member disposed in the channel through the outer member, wherein the inner member is configured to apply a compressive force to the outer member.

In order for rotorcraft masts to handle the large and varied loads they are subjected to, they are generally fabricated from steel. However, steel often includes latent flaws in the material. As such, rotor masts fabricated from steel may include latent flaws within the steel that may result in crack propagation under tensile loads. In order to prevent this, the exterior surface of traditional steel rotor masts are shot peened to plastically deform the outside surface causing a residual compressive stress thereon. While this aids in preventing crack propagation on the exterior surface, where crack propagation is most likely to occur, it does not prevent crack propagation on the interior surface of the rotor mast or within the material itself. Because rotor masts do not have redundant structure, and failure of a rotor mast would be catastrophic, traditional steel rotor masts are designed with a very large safety factor to avoid failure caused by a latent flaw in the material. Therefore, traditional rotor masts are much heavier than they would need to be if the risk of crack propagation could be further reduced.


A system is described herein for providing environmental management of a physical location using a sensor network having a plurality of environmental sensors and at least one primary actuator configured to provide an environmental change to the physical location. The system includes a communications module that operates to access the plurality of environmental sensors of the sensor network, and an application module that operates to: a) commission the plurality of environmental sensors of the sensor network; control an operation of the at least one primary actuator to provide environmental management of the physical location based on the commission of the plurality of environmental sensors of the sensor network; and c) provide a graphical layout of an environmental condition of the physical location based on both the commission of the plurality of environmental sensors and the control of the at least one primary actuator.

A data center may be defined as a physical location, for example, a room that houses one or more components, such as computer systems, that are capable of generating heat. The computer systems may be arranged in a number of racks. These racks are configured to house a number of computer systems which typically include a number of printed circuit boards (PCBs), mass storage devices, power supplies, processors, micro-controllers, and semi-conductor devices, that dissipate relatively significant amounts of heat during their operation.
Increases in system-level compaction of data centers have resulted in increases of server-level and rack-level power densities and dissipations that place significant pressure on traditional data center thermal management systems. Conventional data center thermal management involves traditional systems that use computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units to pressurize a raised floor plenum of a data center with cool air that is passed to equipment racks via ventilation tiles distributed throughout the raised floor. Temperature is typically monitored and controlled based on a single sensory feedback signal, which acts as a global indication of the heat being dissipated in the data center, at the hot air return of the CRAC units away from the equipment racks. This conventional mode of operation allows no local flexibility in how the cooling is delivered to the servers or computers in the data center, and there is no local state feedback information from different areas of the data center. Consequently, due primarily to a lack of distributed environmental sensing, traditional thermal management systems often operate conservatively with reduced computational density, added operational expense, and unnecessary redundancy due to poor utilization.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


An umbrella that when folded functions as a conventional flashlight, and when opened functions as an umbrella with a two-way flashlight handle. The flashlight handle contains two lamps/reflectors. One is located in the side of the umbrella handle. The other is positioned in the base of the handle. The handle also serves as a battery compartment for a plurality of "AA" size batteries. The lamp/reflector at the base of said handle is intended to produce the illuminating power of a conventional flashlight. The lamp/reflector at the side of said handle is intended to provide illumination for the forward path of the umbrella user when the umbrella is fully extended. The side lamp/reflector is positioned to direct light onto the forward path of the user when the handle is held vertically. Either lamp may be activated at a time via a two-way switch, located on side of said handle, when said umbrella is either folded or fully extended. With the umbrella opened and the handle held vertically, activation of the side lamp provides the user lighting to his forward path while activation of the lower lamp illuminates the ground near the user's feet. With the umbrella folded and held horizontally, only the base lamp is normally activated for operation consistent with that of a conventional flashlight.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to umbrellas, and more specifically to an umbrella design which integrates a conventional style flashlight and an umbrella into a dualpurpose product, with some special benefits afforded by the synergism. The benefits are primarily the enhanced safety for the umbrella user provided by the attached two-way flashlight system, and the usefulness of having a conventional flashlight and an umbrella contained within a single entity.
2. Background and Description of Prior Art
In the prior art, illuminating umbrellas have been designed primarily to enhance the safety of the umbrella user when walking at night. These designs have incorporated either illuminating handles with small manuverable flashlights attached to or concealed within the handle base, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,860,179 of Mui, 4,881,154 of Tseng, et.al., and 4,788,995 of Rushing, or with lamps attached to the top of the umbrella canopy to improve both visibility and safety such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,020,858 of Wilson, 4,031,381 of Carver, and 2,373,471 of Campbell. The prior art has not yet produced an umbrella product that is, in effect, transformable; one that, when folded, functions as a conventional flashlight, and when extended, as an umbrella with a forward directed light. Since umbrellas and flashlights are both considered useful devices to have on hand, they are frequently stored in handbags, briefcases, automobile trunks or glove compartments and the like. By integrating a conventional flashlight and an umbrella into a single product having the full functionality normally associated with each product individually, space efficiency and convenience are two primary synergistic benefits. In addition, the safety and lighting advantages associated with an illuminating umbrella are also realized.


A method for preparing (1S)-amino-(2R)-indandiol substantially free of its stereoisomers is presented. The method comprises culturing indene with Rhodococcus sp. ATCC 55805, recovering the indandiol and subjecting the indandiol to chiral specific crystallization, treatment with strong acid and reverse ion pair extraction.

The present application is related to U.S. Pat. No. 60/023,944, filed Aug. 14, 1996, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention is concerned with a process for synthesizing intermediates for compounds which inhibit the protease encoded by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and in particular certain oligopeptide analogs, such as Compound J in the Examples below. These compounds are of value in the prevention of infection by HIV, the treatment of infection by HIV and the treatment of the resulting acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). These compounds are also useful for inhibiting renin and other proteases.
The inventions described herein concern the conversion of indene to (2S)-amino-(1R)-indanol as illustrated by the following Scheme I. ##STR1##
A retrovirus designated human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the etiological agent of the complex disease that includes progressive destruction of the immune system (acquired immune deficiency syndrome; AIDS) and degeneration of the central and peripheral nervous system. This virus was previously known as LAV, HTLV-III, or ARV. A common feature of retrovirus replication is the extensive post-translational processing of precursor polyproteins by a virally encoded protease to generate mature viral proteins required for virus assembly and function. Inhibition of this processing prevents the production of normally infectious virus. For example, Kohl, N. E. et al., Proc. Nat'l Acad. Sci., 85, 4686 (1988) demonstrated that genetic inactivation of the HIV encoded protease resulted in the production of immature, non-infectious virus particles. These results indicate that inhibition of the HIV protease represents a viable method for the treatment of AIDS and the prevention or treatment of infection by HIV.
The nucleotide sequence of HIV shows the presence of a pol gene in one open reading frame Ratner, L. et al., Nature, 313, 277 (1985)!. Amino acid sequence homology provides evidence that the pol sequence encodes reverse transcriptase, an endonuclease and an HIV protease Toh, H. et al., EMBO J., 4, 1267 (1985); Power, M. D. et al., Science, 231, 1567 (1986); Pearl, L. H. et al., Nature, 329, 351 (1987)!. The end product compounds, including certain oligopeptide analogs that can be made from the novel intermediates and processes of this invention, are inhibitors of HIV protease, and are disclosed in EPO 541,168, which published on May 12, 1993. See, for example, Compound J therein, also illustrated in the Examples below.
The present application discloses an improved process to make, in substantial stereoisomeric purity, 1 (S)-amino-2(R)-hydroxy indan of the structure ##STR2## which is a sidechain group of Compound J, which is a potent inhibitor of HIV protease.
Previous attempts at synthesis involve inefficient production of the racemate 1 (.+-.)-amino-2(.+-.) hydroxy indan from the racemic indene oxide. Other attempts at synthesis involve bioconversion of indene with a fungal haloperoxidase to give predominantly trans-(2S, 1 S)-bromoindanol, which is then subjected to various chemical steps to give (1S)-amino-(2R)-indanol. Another bioconversion process involves contacting toluene dioxygenase with indene to give a cis-indandiol, which by chemical process affords (1S)-amino-(2R)-indanol. Still other attempts at synthesis relate to chemical synthesis with racemic epoxidation as an intermediate step, followed by resolution with L-tartaric acid.
The present invention provides needed improved alternatives. In the processes of the present invention, the tartaric acid resolution step is eliminated by combining stereoselective bio-oxidation of substrate indene to trans -(1 (R),2R)-indandiol. Further chemical treatment gives (1S)-amino-(2R)-indandiol, e.g. treatment with a nitrile in the presence of aqueous acid according to the Ritter reaction, followed by either reverse ion pair extraction or cation exchange chromatography.
In the processes of the present invention, indene is converted by the action of the enzyme monooxygenase (and perhaps other enzymatic activities, e.g., epoxide hydrolase) to a mixture of trans indandiols containing predominantly the desired (1R,2R) stereoisomer. The desired (1R,2R) stereoisomer is isolated using purification steps, e.g., adsorption, extraction, crystallization to yield substantially pure crystallized trans(1R,2R)-indandiol.
An enantiomeric excess of over about 99% (from indene to the substantially pure trans-(1R,2R)-indandiol) is typical of the processes of the present invention.

Conversion of indene to (1S)-amino-(2R)-indanol free of any steroisomer by combination of fermentation of Rhodococcus sp. ATCC 55805 and chemical steps


A vehicle simulator has three video monitors which display three respective windows, i.e., sectors, of a simulated space. Each of the monitors is held in a respective housing, and each housing is mounted on the simulator. Also, a respective video controller is associated with each monitor, and each controller is mounted on the housing of the associated monitor.. One of the controllers is a master controller which calculates a reference position representative of the position of the simulated vehicle in a simulated space, based upon user-generated control signals. A signal representing the reference position is transmitted from the master controller to the two slave controllers. Based upon the reference position, each of the controllers generates a video display of a predetermined sector of the simulated space and causes its associated monitor to present the predetermined sector. The sectors that are displayed on the monitors which are associated with the slave controllers are offset by a predetermined angular amount from the sector displayed by the monitor of the master controller, so that the sector displayed by each monitors is congruent with the physical position of its respective monitor. The predetermined sector calculated by each slave controller can be relatively easily changed by appropriately changing the value of the angular offset which is established for the controller.

The use of vehicle simulators which simulate the operation of vehicles, such as race cars and aircraft, for entertainment is becoming widespread. Also, apparatus which simulate the operation of vehicles are increasingly being used as training devices for government and industry vehicle operators. Such apparatus can be programmed to realistically simulate the motion of a vehicle through two or three-dimensional space, and can also provide relatively realistic simulation of the control of the vehicle. Importantly, it is safer and more cost effective for a person to be entertained or trained on a video simulator, as compared with a real vehicle. It is to be understood that for purposes of the present invention, a "simulator" may be a conventional simulator, which presents a visual model of a simulated space, or a simulator which presents an image of a so-called "virtual reality" or "artificial reality". Such a simulator can stimulate one or more of the five human senses to present a more complete model of a "true" reality.
Typically, a vehicle simulator has a computer which displays on a monitor a constantly changing video picture of a simulated three dimensional space. The "window" presented on the monitor is ordinarily the view of the simulated space as would be seen from the driver's seat of the simulated vehicle. Thus, as the simulated vehicle "moves" through the simulated space, the video display is constantly updated by the computer to model the motion of the vehicle.
Whether the vehicle simulator is to be used for training or entertainment, it is desirable to provide the operator of the simulated vehicle with a panoramic display of the simulated space through which the simulated vehicle is to travel. This is to provide a more effective simulation of the view that an operator of a vehicle to be modelled would see from the driver's seat of the actual modelled vehicle.
Not surprisingly, devices have been proposed which use more than a single video monitor to provide a panoramic "window" of the simulated space. Representative of these devices is the invention disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,996,672 to Osofsky et al., which describes an aircraft simulator that uses three video monitors to display a panoramic window of a simulated space. As the simulated aircraft described in the Osofsky et al. patent moves through the simulated space, the images presented on the video monitors are updated as appropriate to model the motion of the aircraft.
As envisioned by the Osofsky et al. simulator, each of the three monitors is spatially congruent with the sector of simulated space displayed on the monitor. More specifically, the images presented on each monitor have the same perspective to the viewer as would the corresponding real-world objects that would occupy the same sector of space as that presented by the particular monitor.
While effective for its intended purpose, it is unfortunately the case that to coordinate the windows presented by each monitor to display a panoramic view of the simulated space, the monitors of the Osofsky et al. flight simulator require relatively powerful video drivers to relay the video commands from the controller to each of the three monitors. As a further consequence, relatively powerful electrical drivers are required to drive the relatively larger electrical harnesses to conduct the video commands from the controller to each of the three monitors.
As is well-known in the art, such electrical harnesses can, when energized, induce electromagnetic signals that can interfere with the operation of nearby electrical equipment. Besides being technically undesirable, such interference may not comport with governmental regulations regarding acceptable levels of electromagnetic interference. Accordingly, relatively lengthy electrical harnesses typically must be electrically shielded. Unfortunately, shielding of harnesses increases driver power requirements, which in combination with the shielded longer harnesses increases the expense of the apparatus, as compared to apparatus that use short harnesses with energy contents that do not require shielding. Further, depending on a variety of factors, such shielding may not be completely effective in preventing electromagnetic interference.
In addition to the above-mentioned drawbacks, it is the case that the video monitors many, if not most, multi-monitor simulators cannot be easily relocated from one position on the simulator to another, and still maintain spatial congruence between the relocated monitor and the "window" presented on the monitor. This is unfortunate, because it may be desirable, depending on the application of the particular simulator, to move the location of a monitor on the simulator as utilization requirements dictate, while maintaining congruence between the monitor and the sector of simulated space displayed on the monitor. For example, in an automobile simulator, it may be desirable to present a view of the simulated space behind the position of the driver, to support practicing driving the simulated automobile in reverse.
The present invention recognizes that it is possible to provide a multi-monitor simulator in which one or more of the monitors can relatively easily be relocated on the simulator, and still maintain congruence between the monitor and the sector of simulated space displayed on the monitor. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a multi-monitor vehicle simulator in which one or more of the monitors can relatively easily be relocated on the simulator, while maintaining congruence between the relocated monitor and the sector of simulated space displayed on the monitor.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a multi-monitor vehicle simulator which does not require comparatively powerful video drivers.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a multi-monitor vehicle simulator which does not require the use of relatively lengthy electrical harnesses and concomitant peripheral equipment which would otherwise be required to reduce electromagnetic interference from the harness.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a multi-monitor vehicle simulator which is relatively easy and effective to use, and comparatively cost-effective to manufacture.
The present invention is accordingly a compact multichannel simulator which, because of its compact nature, can be used in many existing training and entertainment facilities.


A solar cell module 100 comprises a light reflection member 12 placed on the light receiving surface of a n-type semiconductor substrate 11 and having a light reflecting surface 12A facing the light receiving surface protection member 2. The light reflection member 12 is positioned on an opposite side to the n-side connecting electrode 14n across the n-type semiconductor substrate 11.

Solar cells are expected as new energy sources owing to their capability of directly converting clean and inexhaustibly-supplied sunlight into electricity. In general, the output power per solar cell is several watts. Accordingly, for use of such a solar cell as a power source (energy source) for a house, a building, or the like, a solar cell module is used which is capable of providing higher output power by use of a plurality of solar cells electrically connected to each other.
In this respect, a so-called back junction solar cell has been proposed in which a plurality of n-side fine-line electrodes and a plurality of p-side fine-line electrodes are alternately formed on a back surface of a semiconductor substrate for the purpose of enlarging a light receiving area (see Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-11869). The plurality of n-side fine-line electrodes are connected to an n-side connecting electrode formed on one end portion of the semiconductor substrate. The plurality of p-side fine-line electrodes are connected to a p-side connecting electrode formed on the opposite end portion of the semiconductor substrate. One solar cell and another solar cell next to the one solar cell are electrically connected in series with the n-side connecting electrode of the one solar cell and the p-side connecting electrode of the next solar cell connected to each other through a wiring member.
In a case where a semiconductor substrate is of a first conductivity type, however, the connecting electrode of the first conductivity type has a problem of poor efficiency of collecting majority carriers.
Specifically, in a solar cell including an n-type semiconductor substrate, for example, many of holes (minority carriers) generated around the n-side connecting electrode are recombined with electrons (majority carriers) before being diffused into the p-side fine-line electrodes. As a result, the number of electrons collected by the n-side connecting electrode is reduced.
Since the first conductivity side connecting electrode cannot efficiently collect carriers as described above, incident light falling on a region of the light receiving surface on an opposite side to the first conductivity side connecting electrode cannot utilized effectively.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problem, and an objective thereof is to provide a solar cell module including solar cells capable of effective use of incident light, a solar cell and a solar cell module manufacturing method.

Solar cell module, solar cell and solar cell module manufacturing method

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


A method and system for realizing number association are provided. The method includes that a Proxy Call Session Control Function (P-CSCF) acquires number information of A user; the P-CSCF parses and stores the number information to realize number association. With the method that a P-CSCF acquires number information of A user, and then parses and stores the number information, number association is realized, wherein the format of the number may be either SIP or TEL. The method and system can simplify and optimize service processing, thus improving efficiency and reducing cost.

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is a standard defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for the next-generation network, and its distinguishing features are that the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) system is adopted, communication is unrelated to access, and multiple capabilities, such as separation between a multimedia service control function and a bearing capacity, separation between a call and a session, separation between an application and a service, separation between a service and a network, and service convergence of a mobile network and Internet, can be provided.
The presentation of IMS complies with the trend of integrative development of a communication network; a network architecture of the IMS is shown in FIG. 1, including: a piece of User Equipment (UE)/access equipment, a Proxy Call Session Control Function (P-CSCF), an Interrogating Call Session Control Function (I-CSCF), a Serving Call Session Control Function (S-CSCF), a Home User Server (HSS) and an Application Server (AS) which is not shown in FIG. 1.
A Public User Identity (PUI) is an identity for a user to communicate in the IMS network. For meeting requirements of some service applications in specific scenarios, a concept of alias group is introduced into the IMS, wherein the alias group is information about which specific numbers of a user are aliases to each other, for example, PUI 1 and PUI 2 are aliases to each other, namely PUI 1 and PUI 2 represent the same user.
A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) in the same alias group has the following features: belonging to the same implicit registration assembly, subscribing the same service, and having completely same configuration in each service scenario.
In an IMS architecture, an S-CSCF can acquire alias group information by acquiring user data information from an HSS; the specific flow is shown in FIG. 2, including the following steps:
S201: UE sends a registration request to an P-CSCF, wherein the registration request carries a PUI;
S202: when receiving the registration request, the P-CSCF locates local user data; the P-CSCF finds an I-CSCF through a Domain Name System (DNS) or other ways, and forwards the registration request to the I-CSCF;
S203: the I-CSCF sends an S-CSCF assignment request (UAR) to the HSS to require assigning the S-CSCF;
S204: the HSS returns an S-CSCF assignment answer (UAA) to the I-CSCF, wherein the S-CSCF assignment answer includes an S-CSCF address/name assigned to the user, and user data including alias group information of the user;
S205: the I-CSCF sends a registration request message to the selected S-CSCF;
S206: the S-CSCF sends a user data acquisition request (SAR) to the HSS to acquire the user data;
S207: the HSS returns a user data acquisition answer (SAA) carrying the user data, wherein the user data includes the alias group information of the user;
S208: the S-CSCF processes correspondingly, and returns a registration success response, like 200OK, to the I-CSCF, wherein the response includes PUI information; at the same time, the alias group information of the user is stored locally;
S209: the I-CSCF forwards the registration success response to the P-CSCF;
S210: after receiving a registration response message, the P-CSCF stores the user data locally, that is, storing the PUI information locally; and
S211: the P-CSCF forwards the registration success response to the UE.
Through the alias group technology, the S-CSCF can associate different numbers. For example, PUI 1 and PUI 2 are associated numbers to each other, wherein PUI 1 is sip: +firstname.lastname@example.com; PUI 2 is tel: +861013813812345. For some functions, it is required to use associated numbers. By taking a monitor function for example, it is supposed the PUI 1 is monitored, then, since PUI 1 and PUI 2 have the same number service and the same nature, it is necessary to monitor PUI 1 and PUI 2 simultaneously for preventing missing monitoring. For the S-CSCF, the alias group technology can solve the number association problem and realize simultaneous monitoring of PUI 1 and PUI 2.
At present, the P-CSCF has neither number association information nor alias group information. When some functions, such as a monitoring function, are implemented on the P-CSCF, it is needed to monitor all number forms of a user in order to efficiently prevent missing, which is complicated to operate and costs too much.

Number association realizing method and system