A system and process are disclosed for the controlled combustion of a wide variety of hydrocarbon feedstocks to produce thermal energy, liquid fuels, and other valuable products with little or no emissions. The hydrocarbon feeds, such as coal and biomass, are first gasified and then oxidized in a two-chamber system/process using pure oxygen rather than ambient air. A portion of the intermediate gases generated in the system/process are sent to a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process for conversion into diesel fuel and other desired liquid hydrocarbons. The remaining intermediate gases are circulated and recycled through each of the gasification/oxidation chambers in order to maximize energy production. The energy produced through the system/process is used to generate steam and produce power through conventional steam turbine technology. In addition to the release of heat energy, the hydrocarbon fuels are oxidized to the pure product compounds of water and carbon dioxide, which are subsequently purified and marketed. The system/process minimizes environmental emissions.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the conversion of hydrocarbon materials to maximize the generation of energy, fuels, and combustion products with little or no emissions. In particular, the invention relates to a combustion process and system that is arranged and designed to gasify and oxidize a variety of solid and/or liquid hydrocarbon materials for fuel and energy generation. More particularly, the invention relates to a process and system to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels through a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis process using the intermediate products from the gasification of a variety of hydrocarbon materials with little or no emissions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Gasification is a thermo-chemical process that converts hydrocarbon-containing materials into a combustible gas called producer gas. Producer gas contains carbon monoxide, hydrogen, water vapor, carbon dioxide, tar vapor and ash particles. Gasification produces a low-Btu or medium-Btu gas, depending on the process used. Producer gas contains 70-80% of the energy originally present in the hydrocarbon feedstock. The producer gas can be burned directly for heat energy, or it can be burned in a boiler to produce steam for power generation. Medium-Btu producer gas can be converted into a liquid fuel, such as methanol.
Solid/liquid hydrocarbon gasification is a two-stage process. In the first pyrolysis stage, heat vaporizes the volatile components of the hydrocarbon in the absence of air at temperatures ranging between 450° to 600° C. (842° to 1112° F.). Pyrolysis vapor consists of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane, volatile tars, carbon dioxide, and water. The charcoal (char) residue contains about 10-25% of the original feedstock mass. The final stage of gasification is char conversion which occurs at temperatures between 700° to 1200° C. (1292° to 2192° F.). The charcoal residue from the pyrolysis stage reacts with oxygen to produce carbon monoxide as a product gas.
The gasification process is, therefore, a controlled process wherein sufficient air/oxygen is provided to the gasifier to facilitate the conversion (i.e., reduction) of most tar, char, and other solid gasification products into synthetic gas (i.e., syngas), consisting primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Thus, the vast majority of products resulting from the gasification process are intermediate volatile gases. Gasification processes may use either air or oxygen to reduce the organic content of the waste. Oxygen reduction has the advantage of preventing the syngas from becoming diluted with nitrogen.
Gasification (and pyrolysis) are thermal reactions carried out to less than full oxidation by restricting the available oxygen/air. These processes always produce gas. Moreover, they can be optimized to produce mainly syngas, which has a significant fuel value. The production of dioxin is also very low in gasification due to the restricted availability of oxygen. In fact, dioxin emission in exhaust gases and its concentration in the gasification residues have proved to be below detectable limits. Gasification reactions are typically exothermic. However, syngas contains virtually all of the energy of the original hydrocarbon feedstock. For example, syngas produced through the gasification process can then be combusted at a temperature of 850° C. to provide an exhaust gas containing essentially all the energy of the original feedstock.
Current gasification technologies generally utilize processed waste or refuse-derived-fuel (RDF) containing a 6 to 7% moisture content to produce syngas. Gasification temperatures are normally maintained in the range of 600° to 1200° C. This moisture content enables hydrolysis and gasification to occur together. Conversion efficiency varies, but efficiencies as high as 87% have been reported. At high temperatures, oxygen preferentially reacts with carbon to form carbon monoxide/carbon dioxide rather than with hydrogen to form water. Thus, hydrogen is produced at high temperatures, especially when there is an insufficient oxygen/air supply to the gasifier.
The syngas produced from the gasification of 1 mole of C20H32O10 has an energy content of 7805 kilojoules (kJ). In contrast, the energy content of 1 mole of C20H32O10 that is released upon combustion is 8924 kJ. The energy required to heat the hydrocarbon feedstock to gasification temperatures accounts for this difference in available energy content. In this example, the efficiency of converting the RDF to syngas fuel is 87.5%. Based on these values, the total energy produced through gasification of the RDF would be 0.87 times the combustion value of the RDF.
The oxidation process is simply the exothermic conversion of producer gas to carbon dioxide and water. In a traditional combustion process, gasification and oxidation occur simultaneously. In the combustion process, the intermediate gasification products are consumed to produce carbon dioxide, water, and other less desirable combustion products, such as ash. For example, burning a solid hydrocarbon, such as wood, produces some pyrolytic vapors, but these pyrolytic vapors are immediately combusted at temperatures between 1500° to 2000° C. to produce carbon dioxide, water and other combustion products. In contrast, the gasification process is controlled, allowing the volatile gases to be extracted at a lower temperature before oxidation. Oxidation varies from incineration processes in that oxidation alters a compound by adding an electro-positive oxygen atom to the compound whereas incineration yields heat by reducing a compound to ash.
The invention disclosed herein optimizes the controlled environment of the gasification and oxidation processes through ingenious product recycle streams and operating conditions. The invention thus provides maximum energy generation and product utilization from a given hydrocarbon feedstock with minimal atmospheric emissions.
The underlying technologies described herein are further disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,906,806; 6,024,029; 6,119,606; 6,137,026; 6,688,318; and 7,338,563, all of which are issued to Clark and hereby incorporated by reference. This application is based upon U.S. provisional patent application No. 60/916,213, also by Clark, which is hereby incorporated by reference.

Reduced-emission gasification and oxidation of hydrocarbon materials for liquid fuel production


In a method for generation of MR exposures in an MR system, a number of under-sampled MR raw data sets are acquired with non-constant density in k-space. A density compensation is implemented dependent on the geometry of the structure to be depicted. The under-sampled MR raw data sets are translated into a Cartesian coordinate system. Fourier transformation of the translated raw data sets in classical three-dimensional space ensues to generate under-sampled MR images. An averaged MR image is generated on the basis of a number of the under-sampled MR raw data sets. The MR exposures are produced by multiplication of the under-sampled MR images with the averaged MR image.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a method for generation of temporally high-resolution MR exposures in a magnetic resonance system. The present application can in particular (but not exclusively) be used for generation of angiographic exposures by nuclear magnetic resonance.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In most MR applications it is desirable to obtain a high spatial resolution in the acquired MR images without extending the acquisition time too much. However, if the MR raw data set is acquired while adhering to the Nyquist condition (which means that the sampling rate is twice as high as the limit frequency to be depicted), the acquisition time automatically extends with increased spatial resolution since more raw data points must be collected in k-space.
In addition to the typical MR acquisition techniques, radially symmetrical k-space data acquisition techniques have also been used in order to accelerate the raw data acquisition overall.
A method in which radial k-space acquisition techniques are used for generation of angiography exposures is described in "Highly Constrained Backprojection for Time-Resolved MRI" by C. A. Mistretta in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 55: pages 30-40 (2006). A number of under-sampled MR raw data is acquired with various radial projections. The different under-sampled raw data are added and a spatially high-resolution angiography image is generated by a filtered back-projection. An unfiltered back-projection is likewise implemented for each acquisition raw data set, wherein after normalization of the signal intensity the individual under-sampled MR images are multiplied with the averaged MR image in order to acquire a number of temporally high-resolution MR images overall. However, this method exhibits a number of disadvantages. For example, the calculation of the back-projection limits the application of this described method to radial acquisition techniques. The application of this method to other acquisition techniques (such as, for example, helical acquisition techniques or other acquisition techniques) is not possible. Furthermore, the method includes the step of calculating the back-projection from the averaged MR image that is in a Cartesian coordinate system. This method step is complex and very time-consuming.

Method for generation of temporally high-resolution MR exposures


According to some embodiments, a method in a wireless receiver of compensating common phase error in a received wireless signal comprises receiving a first symbol of a wireless signal. The first symbol comprises a code division multiplexed demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) multiplexed with a length M orthogonal cover code, and a first code division multiplexed common phase error reference signal (CPE-RS) multiplexed with a length N orthogonal cover code, wherein N is less than or equal to M. The method further comprises determining M code points in the first symbol associated with a DM-RS; estimating a channel corresponding to the received wireless signal using the M code points associated with the DM-RS; estimating a first CPE-RS corresponding to the estimated channel using the first N code points of the M code points associated with the DM-RS; and compensating the estimated channel for phase error using the estimated first CPE-RS.

Communications between a wireless transmitter and receiver generally require synchronization in time and/or frequency to facilitate reliable reception of messages. In cellular systems such as Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long term evolution (LTE) or LTE New Radio (LTE NR, LTE-NX, or LTE 5G), base stations broadcast narrowband synchronization signals (PSS/SSS) regularly in time. From the synchronization signals, wireless devices accessing the system can perform an initial cell search (i.e., a synchronization procedure that includes finding carrier frequencies, time reference instants and cell identities).
An LTE device that has performed initial cell search and identified the cell identity can then complete the initial synchronization in downlink by making a fine synchronization on cell specific reference signals (CRS). CRS are transmitted over the system bandwidth more frequently in time than the synchronization signals. The device connects to the network via a random access procedure in which uplink time synchronization will be established and communications between the device and the base station can begin. Oscillator drifting at both transmitter and receiver sides may cause a wireless device to regularly perform fine frequency synchronization in downlink during communications with a base station.
LTE-NX includes a lean frame structure design without cell specific reference signals (CRS). Reference signals required for fine synchronization and demodulation of a downlink (DL) physical data channel (PDCH) are embedded into the PDCH transmission. An example of a PDCH downlink transmissions and its associated downlink control channel (PDCCH), carrying an assignment or a grant, is illustrated in FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating downlink transmissions of physical data channel and associated physical downlink control channel. Two radio subframes 10 each include four orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbols 12. The first OFDM symbol 12 of each subframe 10 includes PDCCH 14 and the following OFDM symbols 12 include PDCHs 16. As illustrated in FIG. 1, transmissions of PDCH 16 may span over multiple subframes 10 using subframe aggregation (e.g., PDCH 16a) or be confined to one subframe 10 (e.g., PDCH 16b).
A wireless device (also referred to as user equipment (UE)) detects PDCCH addressed to the wireless device. From the scheduling information in the PDCCH, the wireless device derives PDCH related information. A UE is not aware of PDCCH transmissions to other UEs where a PDCCH to one particular user is carried on a subset of OFDM subcarriers. The mapping of PDCCH can either be distributed or localized. FIG. 1 illustrates the latter. The number of OFDM symbols within a subframe is a system design parameter and may be larger than the four subframes in the illustrated example.
PDCCH and PDCH include reference signals for demodulation, generally referred to as demodulation reference signals (DMRS), but other types of reference signals may be referred to herein. The DMRS is generally transmitted early in the subframe to enable the receiver to perform early channel estimation and thus reduce receiver processing.
LTE-NX performs time-synchronization using a first reference signal (e.g., Time Synchronization Signal (TSS)) and coarse-frequency-synchronization using the same first reference signal or a second signal (e.g., Frequency Synchronization Signal (FSS)). These signals generally do not provide highly accurate synchronization, either in time or in frequency. The time-error may be handled by the cyclic-prefix in an OFDM system, and the frequency error may be handled through sufficient sub-carrier spacing. However, to prevent limiting the performance of higher rank transmissions of PDCH in conjunction with higher modulation schemes (such as 64 and 256 QAM), improved frequency-synchronization is needed. Conventional solutions (e.g., as in LTE) use demodulation reference signals for this purpose (e.g., DMRS or CRS).
In a 5G system deployment at higher carrier frequencies, the radio link exhibits some new properties compared to, for example, an LTE system deployed at lower carrier frequencies. One new property is that the common phase error scales with the carrier frequency, which introduces a need for a phase reference signal to mitigate a phase error that is common for all subcarriers within an OFDM symbol. Such a reference signal may be used both in uplink and downlink, and may be used for both fine carrier frequency-synchronization and for common phase error compensation. An example of a common phase error reference signal (CPE-RS) is illustrated in FIG. 2.
FIG. 2 illustrates example time-frequency grids containing common phase error reference signals (CPE-RS) and demodulation reference signals (DM-RS). Each grid comprises time/frequency resources 22. The horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis represents frequency. Each grid includes DM-RS 24 and CPE-RS 26.
In the illustrated example, CPE-RS 26 is transmitted time continuously and a length-8 cover code is used to create 8 orthogonal DM-RS 24 resources. DM-RS 24 resources may be enumerated 0-7 and may refer to 8 DM-RS ports. In this particular example, four CPE-RS 26 are allocated to support tracking of common phase errors originating from four different transmitters (e.g., CPE-RS 0, 1, 2, 3).
CPE-RS 26 is transmitted jointly with DM-RS 24 (and thus with the data channel PDCH) on a subset of the subcarriers allocated for DM-RS 24. DM-RS 24 may be transmitted in one (or a few) OFDM symbols early within a subframe, or within a subframe aggregation, whereas CPE-RS 26 may be transmitted in every OFDM symbol. The density of the DM-RS in the frequency domain (i.e., the set of subcarriers occupied by DM-RS 24) is significantly higher than the corresponding density of CPE-RS 26. In contrast, for radio channels that are often non-flat over the transmission bandwidth, the phase ambiguity caused by the common phase error will impact all subcarriers in a similar way. A reason to transmit CPE-RS on more than one subcarrier is to obtain frequency diversity or increase the processing gain.
Multi-layer transmission of PDCH uses a set of orthogonal DM-RS constructed via frequency division multiplexing (FDM) (e.g., interleaved FDM, also referred to as combs in LTE), via code division multiplexing (CDM), or via a combination of both. CDM may refer to orthogonal cover codes (OCC) based on, for example, Walsh-Hadamard codes, Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) codes, or any other schemes that provide orthogonality in the code domain. In LTE, OCC in time domain is used to create set of orthogonal DM-RS, but OCC in time domain might be less suitable when common phase errors need to be continuously tracked within a subframe. DM-RS needs to be transmitted in at least two OFDM symbols in order to apply OCC in time, which may not always be the case in NX. Therefore, NX deployments with excessive common phase errors may construct a set of orthogonal DM-RS, for example, in the frequency domain via combs and/or CDM.
LTE-NX may also use OFDM for uplink where it is beneficial to time-multiplex DM-RS of low cubic metric with PDCH uplink transmissions for enabling power boosting on the DM-RS and improving the channel estimation for coverage limited users. With such time division multiplexed (TDM) design of PDCH and DM-RS, no data is mapped to subcarriers within the third OFDM symbol in FIG. 1. All subcarriers may be used for DM-RS transmissions. However, subcarriers blocked by CPE-RS can limit the maximum number of available DM-RS layers.
The approaches described thus far include particular disadvantages. For example, in traditional synchronized radio systems some downlink signals are always present (e.g., PSS/SSS/CRS in LTE) enabling the UE to keep track of the time-frequency synchronization to a base station without communication with the network. Such design simplifies the time-frequency synchronization at the expense of poor energy performance and constant interference from the always-on signals.
Lean system design that removes the always-on signals is one alternative. However, a consequence of removing always-on signals, such as CRS, is that tracking and fine adjustments of the time-frequency synchronization become more complicated. Relying on DM-RS for time-frequency synchronization creates large overhead by using a large fraction of the spectrum for synchronization at the cost of decreased data rates. For example, using DM-RS for tracking common phase errors is inefficient as the needed time-density is high for accurate common phase error tracking. The DM-RS design takes frequency selectivity into account, which means that the resource density in frequency is high for demodulation performance. Thus, using the same reference signal for both demodulation and common phase error tracking results in excessively high overhead.
A common phase error reference signal (CPE-RS) may be used for tracking common phase errors. However, this creates a problem when subcarriers used for common phase error tracking are blocked (intersected) by OFDM symbols used for DM-RS, which also contain the common phase error and need a phase error reference.
The alternatives described in the Background section are not necessarily alternatives that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the alternatives described in the Background section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in the Background section.


A RF energy console controls RF energy output from a RF generator for sealing blood vessels. The energy console includes a processor that executes routines and a controller feedback circuit that, in combination, control the RF generator. Operation includes a heating stage outputting a RF ramping voltage and determining a decrease in measured current to less than a predetermined % percentage of a maximum measured and stored current value to advance to a sealing stage. Then, the voltage is controlled to maintain an increasing change in impedance until a change in current value approaches a flat curve indicating seal completion, which stops the RF generator output. To reseal or enhance a blood vessel seal, the energy console executes the same routines as in the initial sealing operation.

The use of an RF generator device in combination with a surgical tool to seal blood vessels is known as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,090,673. Further, a bi-polar electrosurgical instrument including a cutting knife in combination with jaw members for sealing and subsequently cutting a blood vessel was known. Various approaches for sealing vessels include RF generator devices that apply RF energy pulses to tissue.
In instances when sealing of a blood vessel is complete, resealing to enhance the seal can be difficult. For heating of fluid in a blood vessel to a boiling condition during a resealing operation, a maximum measured current typically has a much smaller value before boiling begins than a maximum current for a first original sealing operation. Therefore, sealing arrangements that merely compare measured values with a maximum or minimum value for one or more of: current, voltage and impedance, typically are modified by providing different algorithms or calculations for resealing a blood vessel as compared to an initial sealing process.

RF energy console including method for vessel sealing


In an information signal processing arrangement, an information signal, to which an error detecting code has been added and a part of which other than the error detecting code has been set to a code indicating a predetermined value, is received. Error detection capability is increased by detecting an error in the information signal according to the error detecting code added to the received information signal, and detecting whether or not the part of the information signal set to the predetermined value has changed.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information signal processing method and apparatus, and more particularly, to an information signal processing method and apparatus which detects an error in an information signal.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An error detection method using CRCC (cyclic redundancy check code) has been known as a method to detect an error in information data which is generated on a transmission channel in transmission or recording/reproduction of an information signal, particularly digital information data.
The principle of the error detection for information data using the CRCC comprises dividing the information data by a predetermined formula to generate a polynominal and using the remainder of the division as check data.
That is, when the transmitted information data to which the CRCC has been added are divided at the reception side, the data are divisible with a remainder "0" if no error is generated in the information data on the transmission channel, and the data are not divisible with a remainder of "0" if an error is generated in the information data on the transmission channel. Hence, by using the remainder, it is possible to detect an error in the information data which has been generated on the transmission channel.
As for the data error detection capability of the CRCC, when check data of m (m is a positive integer) bits have been added, the generation of a burst error of m bits or less can be detected with a probability of 100%, and the generation of a burst error of (m+1) bits or more cannot be detected with a probability of about 1/2.times.m.
That is, if it is assumed that a data error of any pattern is generated with the same probability, the probability that the detection of a data error becomes impossible can be considered to be about 1/2.times.m in total.
As described above, in data error detection using only the CRCC, the detection of a data error is not always possible with a predetermined probability.
Particularly, when check data comprise m bits as described above, it is impossible to detect whether or not an error is generated in data for about 1/2.times.m of the data if a burst error having a bit length longer than m bits has been generated, causing a misoperation in an apparatus at the reception side when the information data are identification information (ID) data or the like.

Information signal processing method and apparatus


A developer cartridge includes a developer cartridge case for accommodating a developer, a developing roller, a toner layer thickness control blade, and a side sealing member. The developing roller is supported by the developer cartridge case such that a circumferential surface thereof is exposed to an outside of the developer cartridge case along a width direction. The toner layer thickness control blade includes a blade body portion made of a metallic plate. A tip portion of the blade body portion is disposed at a sliding portion of the developing roller and the side sealing member so as to contact with the side sealing member. A frictional heat generated at the sliding portion is released to the outside of the developer cartridge case through the blade body portion in order restrain a leak of the developer as much as possible.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus which is configured so as to arrange fine particles of a developer in an image-wise manner at an image-forming section to form an image by the developer onto a recording medium. Further, the present invention relates to a developer cartridge (or a developer supply cartridge) removably provided (or attached) in a body frame of the image forming apparatus, the cartridge being configured so as to accommodate the developer and to be capable of supplying the developer to the image-forming section at which the fine particles of the developer is to be arranged in an image-wise manner in the body frame.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus is widely known, which is configured so as to form an image by use of a developer which is composed of fine particles having charging characteristics. The image forming apparatus is configured, by charging the developer and arranging in an image-wise manner the charged developer with electrostatic action, so as to form the image by the developer onto a certain recording medium.
A development device is accommodated in the image forming apparatus. Within a case serving as a casing of the development device, a developer accommodation chamber is formed. Within the developer accommodation chamber, the developer of nonmagnetic-monocomponent having positive charging characteristics is accommodated.
There is provided a developing chamber which communicates with the developer accommodation chamber within the case. In the developing chamber, a developing roller is rotatably supported. The developing roller is configured so as to be capable of carrying the developer on its circumferential surface. Further, a layer thickness control blade is attached to the case. The layer thickness control blade is composed of a thin plate-like member having an elasticity and is capable of controlling an amount of the developer carried on the developing roller up to a predetermined amount.
In this image forming apparatus, there may arise a problem that the developer leaks from the development device (especially, from both end portions of the developing roller), and thus an image, which is being formed, is disarranged, for instance. In order to avoid the problem, a side sealing member is provided in the development device. The side sealing member is attached at both end portions of the case by use of a two-sided tape.
As a conventional art of this type, a development device and an image forming apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (kokai) No. 2001-134080 are known. A side sealing member disclosed in the patent application includes a sponge layer and a felt member.
The sponge layer is composed of urethane sponge having a predetermined thickness, sufficient flexibility, and less permanent deformation in compression. The felt member is a member which constitutes a top layer of the side sealing member. The felt member and the sponge layer are pasted together. The felt member is pressed against the developing roller by the sponge layer with a predetermined pressing force.
In the development device and the image forming apparatus having the configuration described above, the developing roller is rotated while the felt member frictionally slides on the circumferential surface at both end portions of the developing roller during the image forming operation. In this case, the sliding portion between the circumferential surface and the felt member restrains the leak of the developer to an outside of the development device.
However, in the conventional development device and image forming apparatus described in the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (kokai) No. 2001-134080, there is a possibility that the developer enters (intrudes) into the sliding portion during repetition of the image-forming operation. If the image-forming operation is continuously performed under this condition for a long time, temperature of the sliding portion may increase due to heat caused by the friction, and whereby the developer, which has been entered into the sliding portion, may melt.
The developer which has melted due to the high temperature of the sliding portion caused by the frictional heat may become solidified with caking (sticking) onto the felt member. This may cause deterioration in a close contact condition in the sliding portion between the circumferential surface at the both end portions of the developing roller and the felt member. This deterioration in the close contact condition may cause the developer to leak from the sliding portion. That is, the developer may leak from the both end portions of the developing roller in the development device.

Image forming apparatus and developer cartridge


An automatic broadcasting system discriminating apparatus includes: a first status detecting circuit for discriminating the broadcasting system by utilizing color burst signals; a second status detecting circuit for discriminating the broadcasting system by utilizing synchronizing signals; and a third status detecting circuit for discriminating the broadcasting system in accordance with the outputs of the first and second status detecting circuit in order to discriminate automatically one of the NTSC system, PAL-M system and PAL-N systems from among the received broadcasting signals.

Generally, broadcasting systems such as NTSC (National Television System Committee), PAL (Phase Alternation by Line), and SECAM (Sequence De Couleurs Avec Memoirs) are used.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei-4-103288 (entitled "NTSC/PAL Signals Discriminating Circuit, And Active Filter Using This Discriminating Circuit") discloses a technique as described below. Large signals are generated in correspondence with an input signal, and then, based on the magnitude of the generated large signals, a discrimination is made as to whether the input signal is an NTSC sub-carrier signal or a PAL carrier signal. Then the reference discloses the technique of carrying out adjustments for the required processing under the respective NTSC and PAL modes.
However, the PAL system includes the PAL-M system, PAL-N system, PAL-B system, and PAL-I system which have different functions.
Therefore, in a number of countries in which the television broadcasting is made based on the PAL-M system and the PAL-N system, a receiving system capable of receiving television signals based on the NTSC system, PAL-M system and PAL-N system was developed in order to receive the NTSC signals transmitted from the nearby countries.
However, in such a receiving system, a mechanical mode selecting switch such as a slide switch is used in selecting the modes of the NTSC system, PAL-M system and PAL-N system, since a circuit for automatically discriminating from among the three types of broadcasting systems is not known. Therefore there is the problem that users have to switch manually from among the modes by manipulating the mode selecting switch.

Apparatus for automatically discriminating between at least three different broadcasting systems


The invention relates to a light-curing device, comprising a plurality of individual LED chips, each associated to a reflector, which LED chips are in particular each separately controllable and are arranged about a common central axis, in particular in each case at the same distance, and comprising reflection elements of the reflectors which adjoin one another, wherein the distance of the reflectors from one another is in each case substantially less, in particular less than a fifth, of the reflectors' diameter. The reflection elements (14, 16, 18, 20) are arranged like a clover leaf and are part of a common reflector body (10) which separates the reflection elements (14-20) from one another by means of dividing walls (30, 32, 34, 36), and the reflector body (10) has externally on the reflection elements (14-20) reinforcing walls (40) which—in relation to each cone (14, 16, 18, 20)—lie opposite the central axis (12).

Such a light-curing device has been known from EP 2 332 490. In such a light-curing device, a substrate is provided as a base for receiving LED chips. This is for heat dissipation, but also for mounting electrical connections with the LED chips.
Each chip comprises a reflection element, the chip extending towards the light output so starting from the chip in the manner known per se.
The chips heat up upon emission of light, which is accompanied by emission of heat, subsequently also heating the reflector body. It is possible for each of the reflectors to symmetrically expand via an expansion gap between the individual reflection elements is of the reflectors.
Basically, the solution to the problem is optically acceptable, but requires exact mounting to actually realize the gap provided in the sub-millimeter range between den reflectors. Moreover, this solution is highly complex, if significantly more than 3 LED chips are to be provided.
Therefore, reflector bodies have been suggested, extending hexagonally assembled to each other, to achieve maximum dense emission of light; in such a light-curing device, initially the assembly of chips is installed, and subsequently to this, the reflector body is superimposed in one step.
In addition, care must be taken herein for the orientation between reflector body and the individual LED chips is consistent per se.
It has also been suggested to provide individual single reflectors in substrate bodies consisting of metal. This on the one hand, results in that only minor deformations arise, which essentially do not affect the orientation of the optical axis of the individual reflectors. However, what is disadvantageous is the comparably high effort and the poor flexibility, since, for each light-curing device and/or each type of the light-curing device, a specific substrate body is required to be integrally fabricated, wherein, for chip-removing machining, typically two different types of machine tools are to be employed, i.e. a rotary machine and a milling machine. Notwithstanding, the quality of lathed reflectors is comparably poor, even if an appropriate protective coating layer is subsequently manufactured, for example by chrome-plating.
In regard of flexibility, but also quality of the reflection and optical orientation, solutions according to EP 2 332 491 are superior.


A housing with a retaining device is arranged on a base plate and comprises clamping studs which are arranged in a circle, which are radially resilient, and which have clamping surfaces facing radially outwards for gripping into a central opening of at least one disc-shaped information carrier, for example a CD. To avoid a destruction of the clamping elements in the case of impacts, rigid support studs with support surfaces facing radially outwards are provided between the clamping studs, and the diameter of the support surfaces arranged in a circle is somewhat smaller than the diameter of the central opening of the information carrier.

A housing includes a retaining device which is arranged on a base plate and which comprises clamping studs which are arranged in a circle, which are radially resilient, and which have clamping surfaces facing radially outwards for gripping into a central opening of at least one disc-shaped information carrier, for example a CD.
Such a housing is known from, for example, EP-B 0 114 631. The known housing has a central part, two lid parts hinged thereto, and base plates which can be inserted into the central part and the lid parts and which are constructed as trays in the known example. The trays each have a retaining device projecting from the tray surface with clamping studs which are arranged in a circle, which are radially resilient, and which can enter a central opening of a compact disc to be clamped by the retaining device. In alternative housings of the kind mentioned in the opening paragraph without such a central part, a lid part is hinged to a bottom part comprising a tray, which tray is capable of accommodating one or several CDs (P 196 00 874.3).
It occurs frequently that the radially resilient clamping studs of the retaining device are broken in the case of strong impacts, in particular in those embodiments in which little material was used for reasons of economy and which accordingly have comparatively thin clamping studs. A secure retention of the CD, however, is no longer safeguarded the moment one or several such clamping studs have been broken.
The above citations are hereby incorporated in whole by reference.

Housing with a retaining device arranged on a base plate


In response to a reception of a incoming signal by a receiver during operation of a turner circuit, a controller shifts a changeover switch and at the same time cause a ringing tone generator to output a ringing tone via a loudspeaker in a tuner section, thereby permitting the user listening to a broadcast to surely hear the ringing tone. In response to an operation to a control panel in a reception state of a telephone receiver, the controller causes the tuner circuit to operate and at the same time controlling a power supply switch to stop on-off switching, keeping the switch on to continuously supply electric power to the telephone section. Thus, power supply noise caused by the intermittent supply of power is prevented from affecting the tuner section, thereby checking a deterioration in the quality of broadcast voice.

a. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radio telephone set or a radio telephone set provided with broadcast receiving functions as well as radio telephone functions and, more specifically, to a radio telephone set in which the way of ring output at the time of a call termination and the way of supplying electric power at the time is adapted for the functions.
b. Description of the Prior Art
A variety of portable telephone sets have been developed and are commercially available so far. However, they are provided with only telephone functions. There have not yet been developed such an article into which a telephone and a radio set have been combined. Since tuner circuits for radio sets etc. have been developed which are very small in size, it is possible to include such tuner circuit in portable telephone sets without changing their size or weight, thereby advantageously permitting such portable telephone sets to be used also as portable radio sets.
However, in a system into which a tuner circuit for radio and a telephone circuit have been simply combined as described above, when a call is terminated while the user is listening to the radio through the headset, he or she may miss the alerting tone informing of the termination, preventing the telephone function from working.
Also, in a portable telephone set, which uses a chargeable battery or an electric cell as a power supply, the power consumption has to be held down to prolong the available time period. For this purpose, the power is saved in a wait state by means of intermittent receiving operation in which the power supply is switched on and off alternately. In this case, noises of the power supply may affect the tuner section during a power supply burst operation, possibly deteriorating the quality of the received audio signal.

Radio telephone set with broadcast receiving functions


An electronic smoking device includes a liquid supply (34) and an atomizer in a housing. The liquid supply (34) includes at least two container members (34a, 34b) attachable to one another through a connection mechanism to form a liquid supply main body. Each of the container members (34a, 34b) may have an outlet (341a, 341b) sealed by a sealing member (342a, 342b) and a second end which is closed, and an aerosol channel (343a, 343b) formed between the container members.

Many electronic smoking or vaporizing devices use an open tank system which allows the tank holding the liquid supply to be opened and refilled by the user. However, open tank systems allow any liquid to be used, which has disadvantages. Refilling also risks the liquid contacting the users hands, which is otherwise better avoided. Other electronic vaporizing devices use a closed system, where the device is either not refillable, or is refillable using a closed or sealed container, which is opened only upon installation of the container into the device. Although the closed systems avoid many of the disadvantages of the open systems, engineering challenges remain in designing liquid containers for electronic smoking or vaporizing devices that are conveniently and easily used, and which may also allow for simultaneous use of more than one type of liquid.

Liquid containers for electronic smoking device


A light-emitting module and a driving method thereof are disclosed. In this method, P light-emitting units are selected as a target group, wherein each of the P light-emitting units has N different power parameters corresponding to N sub-bands. P evaluated current values corresponding to the P light-emitting units are computed according to a target spectrum and the N×P power parameters corresponding to the P light-emitting unit in the target group. An emission-spectrum error is computed according to the target spectrum, the N×P power parameters, and the P evaluated current values. It is determined whether the emission-spectrum error conforms with the determining criteria. When the emission-spectrum error conforms with determining criteria, the P evaluated current values are set to be P driving current values corresponding to the P light-emitting units.

1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light-emitting module and a driving method thereof, and particularly to those using numerical methods to calculate driving current values.
2. Description of the Related Art
Light-emitting modules are very common illumination devices now, and light-emitting modules composed of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or other highly efficient light-emitting units have become a trend. However, it is not an easy task to use LEDs or other highly efficient light-emitting units to manufacture light-emitting modules with a specific emission spectrum. The general design scenario is repeated trials and errors by engineers with simulations to obtain an acceptable emission spectrum. Therefore, this design method of a light-emitting module with an unusual emission spectrum costs a lot of time. Meanwhile, due to the light decay of long-time usage of the LEDs or other highly efficient light-emitting units, the light emitted from an aging light-emitting module is not only weaker, but also makes a huge difference between the current emission spectrum and the originally designed emission spectrum.
Therefore, a method is needed for computing the driving current of every light-emitting unit in the light-emitting module automatically according to a target spectrum (the originally designed emission spectrum) and the emission spectra of the light-emitting units, and the method must be able to be applied to every light-emitting module.

Light-emitting module and driving method thereof


The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a cloverleaf microgyroscope containing an integrated post comprising: attaching a post wafer to a resonator wafer, forming a bottom post from the post wafer being attached to the resonator wafer, attaching the resonator wafer to a base wafer, wherein the bottom post fits into a post hole in the base wafer, forming a top post from the resonator wafer, wherein the bottom and top post are formed symmetrically around the same axis, preparing a cap with backside metallization, and attaching a cap wafer on top of the base wafer. The present invention relates further to a gyroscope containing an integrated post with on or off-chip electronics.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to an integrated all-Si capacitive microgyroscope with vertical differential Sense and Control and process for preparing an integrated all-Si capacitive microgyro with vertical differential Sense.
2. Description of Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,894,090 to Tang et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses a micromachined symmetrical leaf structure having a plurality of symmetrically disposed leaves about a defined center. At least one micromachined spring is disposed symmetrically with respect to the symmetrical leaf structure and supporting the symmetrical leaf structure, a rim/base structure to which the spring is coupled. The rim/base structure includes a plurality of sensing and drive electrodes and a circuit electrically coupled to the electrodes included within the rim/base structure. The circuit provides drive signals to the drive electrodes to oscillate the symmetrical leaf structure and to receive a sensing signal from the sensing electrodes to detect response of the oscillating symmetrical leaf structure to physical phenomena exterior to the micromachined resonator. The micromachined resonator has a manually inserted post. It shows a lack of a silicon based vacuum encapsulation. A low yield is obtained during the separation. The manufacturing of the resonator involves high fabrication costs. It shows large vibration sensitivity and no clear path to electronic integration.
The known manufacturing processes make it very difficult to manufacture a microgyroscope. The central post is inserted by hand, the device has to be vacuum packaged in a custom package and there is no ability to integrate control electronics with the silicon structure.
What is needed is a cloverleaf microgyroscope and a process for manufacturing a cloverleaf microgyroscope with an integrated central post and electronics with the resonator and vacuum package at wafer-level with a single crystal silicon construction.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Integrated all-Si capacitive microgyro with vertical differential sense and control and process for preparing an integrated all-Si capacitive microgyro with vertical differential sense


The single channel transceiver with polarization diversity is a target detion and tracking system that results from combining the well-established technology of single channel transceiver with that of microstrip polarization-diverse antenna. The single channel transceiver with polarization diversity transmits a pair of pulses of a pre-selected polarization sense toward a target object and receives two scattered pulses of orthogonal polarizations in rapid sequence. Thereupon, a second pair of pulses, this time of opposite polarization, is transmitted and, again, two scattered pulses of orthogonal polarizations from this second pair of transmitted pulses are received in rapid sequence. Thus, the single channel transceiver with polarization diversity has the capability to obtain the complete scattering matrix of a target by use of four transmitted pulses. The received scattered pulses are further processed by the transceiver to derive the polarization signature that is indicative of the nature of the object from which they scattered in reflection and thereafter used to identify the target among clutter or background.

Within the last fifty years, efforts have been expended by the Navy, Army and the Air Force to develop a system for detection and discrimination of targets among clutter (be it on the surface of the sea or in land) as well as a means for stabilizing the aimpoint of tracking radars. A typical system comprises a transmitter and a two-channel receiver where the transmitter emits radiation of a selected polarization and the receiver receives two orthogonal polarization simultaneously on a polarization-insensitive antenna.
A fully polarimetric radar system requires a transmitter that is capable of radiating both polarization senses (horizontal and vertical or, equivalently, right circular and left circular) and a receiver that is capable of receiving and processing both polarization senses of the reflected scattered energy simultaneously. A typical such system may transmit alternate radiations of vertical and horizontal polarizations, for example, by means of waveguide ferrite switches. On receive, orthomode transducers derive separate horizontal and vertical polarization senses from a common polarization-insensitive antenna. The orthogonal signals are then processed in a two-channel receiver. Such fully polarimetric radars generate an enormous amount of data which is desirable but the necessary signal processing in real-time requires ultra-complex processors.
Many applications of polarimetric signal processing in weapon systems can tolerate only limited hardware and signal processing complexity. Therefore, as a compromise, polarization-sensitive architectures that do not yield the full complement of scattering matrix are often used. These systems generally transmit only one sense of polarization with the two-channel receiver receiving and processing the co-polarized and cross-polarized back-scattered energy simultaneously. Consequently, the two channels must be phase and amplitude-tracked through the final detector, resulting in a complex and expensive radar receiver front-end for the missile seeker on which such a radar system may be mounted.
The volume and cost of smart munitions often further exclude the wide use of multi-channel receivers. However, the target data contained in both the cross and co-polarized return energy is still desirable for accurate target identification among the clutter. One solution could be using receivers which separate the orthogonal polarizations, then time-multiplexing these signals into a common receiver channel. But the orthomode transducers which are required in such a solution are generally built from hybrid waveguide structures or by the use of reflective antennas with diagonal grid polarizers--both bulky components.

Single channel transceiver with polarization diversity

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army


An apparatus for reducing the resonant type noise generated in a combustion driven heating apparatus. A dissipative device is disposed within a hot gas passageway to absorb and attenuate acoustic wave energy and thereby reducing the resonant noise level of the heating apparatus.

Combustion driven heating apparatus contain certain combinations of burners, combustion chambers heat exchangers and furnace stacks which result in resonance events that produce excessive noise levels. The natural frequency for an air column, as is present in heat exchangers and furnace stacks, is described by v=c/2L, where c is the average speed of sound in the flue gas and L is the total length of the air column. For reasons that are not completely understood, the combustion process will occasionally oscillate in phase with this frequency. This oscillation produces a standing acoustic wave inside of the heat exchanger or furnace stack in the same manner as a standing wave exists in an organ pipe. The standing acoustic wave produces harmonics in the frequency range of 50 Hertz to 300 Hertz. Intense tones in this frequency range are produced and are very difficult to treat without affecting the performance of the heating apparatus.
Combustion driven heating apparatus also produce other types of objectionable noise. One of these types of noise, known as screeching, is relevant to high velocity power burners where the sound produced is caused by frictional flow due to high rates of gas flows within the burner. This type of noise may be reduced, and sometimes eliminated, by treating it at or near the burner itself. For example U.S. Pat. No. 2,154,133 discloses a method of attenuating the noise downstream of the burner with ducting treated with acoustic insulation. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,684,424 there is disclosed a method of enclosing the burner in a housing treated with acoustic insulation to attenuate the screeching type noise. While in U.S. Pat. No. 5,017,129 there is disclosed a method of mixing two streams of air at the burner to reduce the overall frictional effects that produce the screeching noise. While these burners reduce or eliminate the frictional flow form of noise they do little to reduce the resonance form of noise produced by gas fired heating apparatus.
Another type of noise generated by combustion driven heating apparatus is broadband in nature and is a result of fluctuating density in the flame emanating from the burner itself. It is known in the industry to treat this type of noise by suppressing or eliminating through the use of acoustic insulation as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,029,462. U.S. Pat. No. 4,175,919 discloses a method of attenuating this type of noise by providing a first burner with a laminar flow and a second burner having a turbulent flow. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,344,308 a method is disclosed to treat this type of noise by providing a number of holes in the combustion chamber downstream of the burner to allow combustion type noise to escape from the combustion chamber. These inventions are also focused on reducing or eliminating noise from a specific source and therefor do little to reduce the resonance form of noise produced by a combustion driven heating apparatus. It should also be noted that the reduction or elimination of noise in the higher frequency ranges, above 300 Hertz, is somewhat easier than the reduction or elimination of resonant type noise which tends to be in the lower frequency range.
Resonant type noise in combustion driven heating apparatus has been dealt with in a variety of ways and to various degrees of success by others in the field. For instance U.S. Pat. No. 5,525,056 discloses a method of isolating the burner from the fuel supply by use of slots and acoustic baffles in the combustion chamber. These features are intended to prevent the burner from oscillating in phase with the combustion chamber. Likewise U.S. Pat. No. 4,090,558 discloses a method of treating resonance type noise at the burner itself by utilizing a separate heat exchanger having a circuitous flow path and passive resonators within the burner assembly to absorb objectionable noise. In yet another example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,435,716 treats the noise problem within the combustion chamber. In the '716 patent a method of absorbing acoustic energy is disclosed wherein a flexible membrane is installed in the combustion chamber wall. The membrane expands and contracts in response to pressure fluctuations within the combustion chamber, thereby absorbing acoustic energy.

Noise reducing device for combustion driven heating apparatus


A jump liner for a push-pull MIG welding torch includes an elongated tubular body having front and back ends. The tubular body is made of a flexible plastic material. A front adapter is disposed at the front end of the tubular body. The front adapter is fittable in a retaining head of the torch. A back adapter is disposed at the back end of the tubular body. The back adapter is fittable in a gooseneck or body block of the welding torch. The front adapter provides sealing between the jump liner and the retaining head to prevent back flow leakage of shielding gas, and the front adapter prevents deformation of the tubular body at elevated temperatures. The back adapter provides sealing between the jump liner and the gooseneck or body block.

A push-pull MIG welding system generally includes a wire feeder, and a welding torch connected to the wire feeder. Electrode welding wire (typically aluminum), shielding gas, welding current, and/or coolant are transferred inside the welding torch. The welding torch includes a handle connected at a rear end to a cable assembly and at a front end to a gooseneck which terminates in a contact tip assembly. The wire feeder includes a pushing drive roll mechanism that pushes the welding wire through the cable assembly to the handle. A pulling drive roll mechanism in the torch handle pulls the welding wire from the cable assembly and sends it forward through the gooseneck to the contact tip assembly. A tubular jump liner typically extends from the torch handle to the contact tip assembly to protect the welding wire as it travels through the gooseneck.
It is known in the art relating to push-pull MIG welding torches that the pulling drive roll mechanism in the handle of the torch is open to free space inside the handle. Thus, the inner diameter (ID) of the jump liner, inside which the electrode wire transits, is also open to the free space at this end. In order to deliver shielding gas through the gooseneck to the contact tip assembly, sealing is required between the jump liner and the gooseneck along the whole length of the jump liner. Current push-pull MIG torch designs provide adequate sealing between the jump liner and the gooseneck or body block inside the handle, but do not provide sealing between the jump liner and the retaining head or contact tip at the front end.
In order to reduce shaving between the jump liner and aluminum welding wire, most jump liners are made of plastic materials such as PTFE, nylon, and the like. One characteristic of plastic jump liners is the large dimensional variation based on factors such as temperature, humidity, and manufacturing. Therefore, significant gaps are required between a plastic jump liner and the metal parts of the welding torch to allow for expansion and contraction of the jump liner. These gaps, however, provide undesirable leakage channels for shielding gas. If a plastic jump liner is cut too short, the gap between the jump liner and the retaining head of the contact tip assembly allows for back flow of pressurized shielding gas into the jump liner and escape at the rear end of the jump liner (the end towards the pulling drive rolls inside the torch handle). On the other hand, if the jump liner is cut too long, the resiliency of the jump liner causes the front end of the jump liner to mushroom or even close. This effect is more pronounced when the front end of the torch is hot, which softens the jump liner. In any event, this results in a closing of the internal space between the jump liner and the electrode wire, eventually jamming the wire.


The present invention is related to a method for increasing utilzable surface area of a rugged polysilicon layer in a semiconductor device. The present method includes steps of: (a) providing a pre-grown rugged polysilicon layer which is composed of polysilicon with first dopants doped therein; (b) forming another polyslicon layer on the pre-grown rugged polysilicon layer; (c) removing a portion of the another polysilicon layer by an anisotropic etching process to expose an upper surface of the pre-grown rugged polysilicon layer; and (d) etching the resulting pre-grown rugged polysilicon layer which an etching selectivity ratio of the pre-grown rugged polysilicon layer to the another polysilicon layer being greater than one, to obtain the rugged polysilicon layer having increasing utilizable surface area. A semiconductor device containing the rugged polysilicon layer created according to the present invention can work well in a relatively dense and small semiconductor chip.

In a semiconductor manufacturing process, creating a rugged polysilicon layer is a popular way to increase the utilizable surface area of electrode plates of a capacitor so as to increase the charge capacity of the capacitor. It is especially often used for manufacturing storage capacitors of a dynamic random access memory (DRAM). However, when the element arrangement in a semiconductor chip is getting denser or the size of the semiconductor chip is getting smaller as is the current trend, the utilizable surface area provided by the conventional rugged polysilicon layer (refer to the structure shown FIG. 1A) will become insufficient.

Method for increasing utilizable surface of rugged polysilicon layer in semiconductor device


The present invention relates to cellulose fibers excellent in dirt removability and a method of treatment thereof. The cellulose fibers of the invention are liquid ammonia-treated cellulose fibers whose partial or entire exterior is coated with an ester of (A) a polycarboxylic acid having at least three carboxyl groups and (B) a hydrophilic polyol having an oxyethylene group or groups and at least two alcoholic hydroxyl groups and/or which fibers are impregnated with the ester.

Cellulose fibers, typically cotton, are widely used for clothes and products of fibers because of their many advantages such as high hygroscopicity and good feel. Products of cellulose fibers are soiled with oil, sebum, mud or the like due to the use and wearing and are cleaned by laundry for re-use. However, such dirt is likely to cling to cellulose fibers and products thereof and can not be easily removed by laundry. Consequently, this leads to disadvantages of stain, black smear, discolored smudge, etc. which reduce the value of clothes and the like. For this reason, a need exists for products of cellulose fibers having improved dirt-removing property (dirt removability). Dirt does not easily come off by laundry from cotton and the like which readily absorb oily and aqueous substances. So far, products of cotton free from said problem have not been found.
In such current situation, it has been proposed to attach polyvinyl alcohol as a laundry size to products of cellulose fibers. The proposed method contemplates causing the dirt to adhere to polyvinyl alcohol so that the dirt is separated, together with polyvinyl alcohol, from the product of cellulose fibers by laundry. However, the method can achieve this effect only once, and necessitates depositing polyvinyl alcohol on a product of cellulose fibers every time the product is washed. Thus the method can not be said to be means for improving dirt removability.
On the other hand, polyester, nylon and other synthetic fibers are extensively used for their numerous advantages such as high mechanical properties, chemical resistance and ease of care, but have a drawback of tending to permit accumulation of static electricity. Various antistatic agents have been used to overcome the drawback, but substantially all of them come off during laundry and are merely temporarily effective.
For practical use as clothes, products of synthetic fibers should be imparted laundry durability as well as antistatic property. As a method of giving antistatic property to a product of synthetic fibers, it is known to coat synthetic fibers with a hydrophilic polymer having double bonds by radical polymerization (Japanese Examined Patent Publication No.40,554/1985).
However, a fully crosslinked polymer needs to be formed to produce a coating film having the required washing resistance from a hydrophilic polymer. The radical polymerization of a hydrophilic polymer with double bonds for conversion to a crosslinked polymer entails a disadvantage of essentially using an ethyleneimine derivative, i.e. a highly toxic crosslinking agent or a volatile, highly toxic acrylic acid.
Said conventional procedure makes it difficult to maintain hygiene and healthy working environment, and needs special apparatus. Therefore the procedure has not been a useful technique in an ordinary processing plant which is intended to use mainly open-type equipment. Further a serious problem has been posed in that products of synthetic fibers should be subjected to a washing process of considerable scale to make the product of synthetic fibers non-skin irritable.
The accumulation of static electricity described above is due to the inherent hydrophobicity of synthetic fiber resins. The hydrophobicity of synthetic fiber resins raises another disadvantage that dirt is firmly held by products of synthetic fibers. In other words, dirt, for example, oily dirt such as oil grime and lipstick smudge is not easily removed from clothes of synthetic fibers and will not easily come off by washing. Unavoidably the dirt remains on products of synthetic fibers. However, no technique has been developed to improve the dirt removability of synthetic fiber products and to prevent dirt from permanently sticking to synthetic fiber products.

Fibers, a process for preparing the same and product thereof


A mechanism for managing failure of applications in a distributed environment is disclosed. A method includes detecting failure in an application node among a plurality of application nodes when the application node does not respond to a status message. The method further includes routing, by enterprise application nexus application processing interface (EANA) module, a first lock message to the failed application node and ancestors' nodes of the failed application node when the failed application node is an aware application node.

Typically in a distributed application environment, when an application fails to operate, the dependent layers of the application may also fail to operate. The dependent layers are one or more applications dependent on the application and on each other for execution. This causes inconsistencies in back-end storage, timeouts, erroneous responses for requests and even failure of other parts of the distributed application.
Currently many failure detection systems exist that detect failure in the distributed application system. One such known system is exception handling, which supports error detection by invoking exception when the application is in failure. An exception is an event that occurs during the execution of a program that disrupts the normal flow of instructions. The exception may be processed with handler which notifies other nodes in a distributed application. However, since the exception is application specific, it is not guaranteed that the exception may be invoked all the time. Also, when the failure occurs in hardware, exception may not be invoked and as such may not be detected by other nodes. Further, different applications use various timeouts, which complicates their unified usage.

Managing failure of applications in a distributed environment


Disclosed herein is a recording ink suitable for use in image recording together with a liquid composition containing a cationic substance, wherein the recording ink comprises a coloring material and a water-soluble polymeric compound which exhibits nonionic properties in the ink and has an alicyclic, nitrogen-containing heterocycle.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording process adapted to conduct recording with an ink set comprising in combination two liquids of different compositions, and various apparatus and members, for example, a recording apparatus and an ink set, necessary for the recording process. Namely, this invention relates to an invention in which the epochal properties of a liquid composition, which have not been predictable to date, are applied rationally and synthetically to an image-forming system, and more particularly to a liquid composition, such as an ink, to be used in a field of recording with ink, and an image-forming process and apparatus, composite system, printing system, sales system and the like using such a liquid composition, or a printer, facsimile terminal equipment, communication system, display/exhibition system and the like using the same.
The present invention also relates to an invention extremely effective for an ink-jet system using a system that an ink is ejected on a recording medium such as paper or paper for over-head projector (OHP).
2. Related Background Art
As image formation by recording with ink, there have heretofore been mainly known image formation by contact-type inking, in which an ink supply means is brought into contact with a desired portion of a recording medium to form an image on this portion, and image formation by noncontact-type inking, in which an ink is applied to a desired portion of a recording medium in a state that an ink supply means is in no contact with the recording medium, thereby forming an image. In particular, the latter image-forming process has come to be often used as an ink-jet system in recent years. This ink-jet system is roughly divided into a bubble ink-jet system making good use of thermal energy for the ejection of ink and a piezoelectric system making good use of mechanical change.
In general, inks used in these systems have been improved compositionally from a view point of the purpose of recording bright images on a recording medium such as paper or paper for OHP or of stabilizing their ejection state from an ink-jet head and their behavior in the head. With the application of the ink-jet systems to a wide variety of fields in recent years, high level of various demands have come to be made even on the performance of ink. Techniques for these improvements are also going to develop more highly. However, many of inks for ink-jet maintain their ink-jet properties by delicately balancing their various physical properties with one another. Therefore, when an improvement of a desired property is attempted, other properties may be often deteriorated. In such a case, the degree of improvement in the desired property is limited so that the degree of deterioration of the properties to be deteriorated may not become a problem from the viewpoint of practical use. As described above, improvements in ink-jet ink itself have both merits and demerits.
Various attempts have therefore been made to achieve good recording characteristics without more highly modifying the physical properties themselves of ink. For example, there has been proposed a technique for insolubilizing a coloring material in an ink on a recording medium with a view toward enhancing the water fastness of the resulting image.
Specifically, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 63-60783 discloses a method in which after a liquid containing a basic polymer is applied to a recording medium, an ink containing an anionic dye is applied thereto, thereby conducting recording. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 63-22681 discloses a recording method in which a first liquid containing a reactive chemical species and a second liquid containing a compound reacting with the reactive chemical species are mixed on a recording medium. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 63-299971 discloses a method in which a liquid containing an organic compound having two or more cationic groups per molecule is applied to a recording medium, and recording is then conducted with inks containing an anionic dye. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 64-9279 discloses a method in which after an acidic liquid containing succinic acid is applied to a recording medium, an ink containing an anionic dye is applied thereto, thereby conducting recording.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 64-63185 discloses a method of applying a liquid (insolubilizing agent), which insolubilizes a dye, to a recording medium prior to application of ink. As a method of using this insolubilizing agent, EP-A-663299 to the present applicant discloses an image-recording method capable of forming high-quality images, in which a recording ink is used in combination with a liquid composition containing a cationic or nonionic substance as an insolubilizing agent.

Ink for two-part liquid system recording, and ink set, ink container, recording unit, recording process and recording apparatus using the same


A leadless implantable device delivery apparatus that enables testing of an implantation site before permanent implantation and enables secure attachment at the site while minimizing effects of the implantation procedure. Embodiments include a delivery sheath configured to accommodate a leadless implantable device, the leadless implantable device having an anchor that includes at least one projection configured to physically attach the anchor to tissue, such as heart tissue. In addition, embodiments include an adapter that resides within the delivery sheath and is configured to impart rotational force at the distal end of the adapter that is applied to the proximal end of the adapter to rotate the anchor associated with the implantable device.

1. Field of the Invention
At least one embodiment of the invention generally relates to an apparatus for implantation of medical devices and more particularly, but not by way of limitation, relates to a leadless implantable device delivery apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Implantable medical devices may be implanted in patients in need of cardiac monitoring and if necessary, electrical stimulation. Leadless implantable devices, such as a leadless pacemaker for example have been developed to eliminate problems associated with electrode leads, which are prone to failure over time. In addition, explantation of electrode leads that have been implanted for long periods of time increases the risk of complications. Electrical energy is sensed via the implantable device and analyzed locally or with an associated implantable medical device, or external device through wireless communications for example. Therapeutic energy is provided by the implantable device, for example in a heart to ensure that the heart provides life-sustaining contractions that pump blood through the patient's body. Generally, the leadless implantable devices are physically attached to the heart in a manner that is intended to be relatively permanent, so as to ensure long term robust electrical contact with the specific heart tissue and in addition to avoid disengagement, which may lead to problems in the lungs if the leadless implantable device detaches from the tissue. Typical leadless implantable devices provide attachment mechanisms such as screws or tines that project in one way or another into the tissue of the heart.
Implantation of leadless implantable devices may be performed in a variety of ways, for example via the femoral vein. Advantages of this type of implantation include minimization of infection and reduction in the amount of X-rays in the implantation process. In addition, this type of implantation minimizes the surgical procedures involved, for example since no surgical pocket is required to house an implantable device with leads that extend to the heart. This type of implantation also minimizes the amount of time that a patient must remain in the hospital. However, the disadvantages are that the leadless implantable devices currently implanted are difficult to position at an optimal implantation site, and once implanted, generally with hooks, these types of devices are generally abandoned when their battery life is exhausted since their implantation is intended to be permanent.

Leadless implantable device delivery apparatus


A frequency shift correcting unit (25) which corrects a frequency shift of a plurality of first signal spectra within the same time range with respect to a frequency of first laser light beam and corrects a frequency shift of a plurality of second signal spectra within the same time range with respect to a frequency of second laser light beam, and a spectrum integrating unit (26) which integrates a plurality of first signal spectra corrected by the frequency shift correcting unit (25) and integrates a plurality of second signal spectra corrected by the frequency shift correcting unit (25) are provided, and a molecular concentration calculating unit (27) calculates a concentration of molecules in the atmosphere from the first and second signal spectra integrated by the spectrum calculating unit (26).

Non-Patent Literature 1 mentioned below discloses a laser radar device for calculating a concentration of molecules in the atmosphere.
This laser radar device includes light sources, one of which generates laser light at an absorption wavelength which is a wavelength absorbed by the molecule in the atmosphere, another of which generates laser light at a non-absorption wavelength which is a wavelength not absorbed by the molecule in the atmosphere. The molecule in the atmosphere has an inherent absorption spectrum, and the wavelength of the laser light at the absorption wavelength corresponds to an absorption spectrum wavelength of the molecule in the atmosphere.
The laser radar device also includes an optical antenna which emits the laser light of the absorption wavelength and the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength that are generated from the light source into the atmosphere, and receives scattered light of the laser light of the absorption wavelength and scattered light of the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength that are scattered by aerosol in the atmosphere.
Hereinafter, the scattered light of the laser light of the absorption wavelength is referred to as "absorption wavelength scattered light", and the scattered light of the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength is referred to as "non-absorption wavelength scattered light".
Furthermore, the laser radar device includes an optical coupler which combines the absorption wavelength scattered light received by the optical antenna and the laser light of the absorption wavelength and combines the non-absorption wavelength scattered light received by the optical antenna and the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength.
The optical coupler outputs combined light beam of the absorption wavelength scattered light and the laser light of the absorption wavelength and outputs combined light beam of the non-absorption wavelength scattered light and the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength.
Hereinafter, the combined light beam of the absorption wavelength scattered light and the laser light of the absorption wavelength is referred to as "absorption wavelength combined light beam", and the combined light beam of the non-absorption wavelength scattered light and the laser light of the non-absorption wavelength is referred to as "non-absorption wavelength combined light beam".
The laser radar device includes an optical receiver which detects the absorption wavelength combined light beam output from the optical coupler and outputs a reception signal of the absorption wavelength combined light beam, and detects the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam output from the optical coupler and outputs a reception signal of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam.
The laser radar device includes a signal processor for calculating a concentration of molecules in the atmosphere from the reception signal of the absorption wavelength combined light beam and the reception signal of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam that are output from the optical receiver.
When the reception signal of the absorption wavelength combined light beam is output from the optical receiver, the signal processor calculates a plurality of signal spectra of the absorption wavelength combined light beam for each time range by performing fast Fourier transform on the reception signal of the absorption wavelength combined light beam.
The signal processor integrates a plurality of signal spectra by integrating signal components of the same frequency in a plurality of signal spectra within the same time range in order to increase a signal-to-noise ratio (SN ratio).
After integrating the plurality of signal spectra, the signal processor compares signal components in the signal spectrum obtained after the integration and identifies a largest signal component among the signal components as a peak intensity of the absorption wavelength combined light beam.
When the reception signal of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam is output from the optical receiver, the signal processor calculates a plurality of signal spectra of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam for each time range by performing fast Fourier transform on the reception signal of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam.
The signal processor integrates a plurality of signal spectra by integrating signal components of the same frequency in a plurality of signal spectra within the same time range in order to increase an SN ratio.
After integrating the plurality of signal spectra, the signal processor compares signal components in the signal spectrum obtained after the integration and identifies a largest signal component among the signal components as a peak intensity of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam.
The signal processor calculates an optical depth from the peak intensity of the absorption wavelength combined light beam and the peak intensity of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam, and calculates the concentration of the molecules in the atmosphere from the optical depth.
The optical depth is a ratio of the peak intensity of the absorption wavelength combined light beam to the peak intensity of the non-absorption wavelength combined light beam in each time range.


A dual-polarized tapered slot antenna (TSA) comprising: a dielectric bracket; a first pair of conductive blades mounted to the dielectric bracket so as to define a first tapered slot between edges of the conductive blades of the first pair thereby forming a horizontally-polarized TSA; a second pair of conductive blades mounted in the dielectric bracket orthogonal to the first pair so as to define a second tapered slot between edges of the conductive blades of the second pair thereby forming a vertically-polarized TSA; and wherein at least part of each of the slot-defining edges of the conductive blades has a thickness that is non-tapered and stepwise-reduced from the thickness of a remainder of the corresponding blade.

There is a need for a broadband, high power handling, dual polarized, directional antenna. Some prior art solutions have attempted to address this need by using multiple narrower band antennas to cover the same frequency range, or by using multiple single polarization antennas. However, a multiple-antenna approach can be costly and physically large. At least one attempt has been made to address these drawbacks with a single reflector antenna with a crossed (quad) tapered slot antenna with chamfered/tapered blade edges, but this attempt yielded unsatisfactory performance.

Quad-tapered slot antenna with thinned blades

United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy


A system and method for generating architecture for a business system is disclosed. The method comprises, in one embodiment, modeling a plurality of viewpoints adapted for describing the architecture of the business system in form of a collection of views and viewpoints and creating a software organization viewpoint adapted for providing architecture guidelines. An exemplary method further comprises creating a first plurality of notations for each of the plurality of viewpoints for describing the plurality of viewpoints and creating a second plurality of notations for capturing design rationale indicative of the first plurality of notations. Furthermore, an exemplary method comprises generating the architecture of the business system using at least one of the plurality of viewpoints or the software organization viewpoint, or at least the second plurality of notations, or combinations thereof.

The design and development of an architecture for a business system typically begins with the definition of the goals and objectives of the business system.
A business system has a set of business goals and objectives to fulfill. The business system performs various business processes to fulfill these goals and objectives. The business process is an ordered series of events, which, among other things, manage the exchange of information from one or more sources to one or more destinations. Such sources and destinations may be internal, or external (e.g., customer, or partner applications), or both, and, in general, the business process is applied to control how the exchange of information is accomplished.
A large and complex business system performs multiple business processes across various geographical locations. A software implementation of such a business system automates these business processes for higher accuracy, efficiency and productivity. Accurate software implementation of such a business system requires the creation of the software architecture of the business system. The software architecture (also sometimes called architecture hereinafter) in this context is a specification that captures the structure and functionality of the software that implements the business system. The specification helps the various developers to understand and analyze different functional and quality of service aspects of the business system well before the software implementation of the business system.
Conventionally, the architecture description of a business system is captured using non-formal box and line diagrams with textual annotations. Such a description contains project and people specific idiosyncrasies. When the business system is very large and complex, it becomes extremely difficult for a reviewer to manually verify whether all of the requirements of the business system have been implemented in the architecture, and how each requirement has been implemented in the architecture, e.g., traceability of the requirements becomes very difficult. As a consequence, this informal box and diagram description approach often leads to ambiguity, misinterpretation and erroneous implementation when software developers implement the system from this description. This in turn, substantially increases the design and coding effort. As a result, higher productivity and development accuracy may not be achieved.
There have been many efforts from the researchers and practitioners of the art and science of architecture description to model various aspects of business architectures. Broadly there are two exemplary categories of languages recommended for architecture description, namely object oriented notations and languages such as the Universal Modeling Language (UML) and a class of Architecture Description Languages (ADL). There are a few prominent industry standards, such as 4+1 View, ISO RM-ODP 10746, Zachman framework, Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) 1471, that prescribe what an architecture should model. Though most ADLs are based on formal descriptions (which helps to verify and analyze the architecture models created using an ADL), there had been very little effort to standardize ADL. ADLs lack notations to capture the varying and comprehensive concepts of a business system such as the notion of architecture stakeholders, multiple views of a system, architecture rationale, and principles and so on. ISO RM-ODP prescribes a set of certain viewpoints required to describe the architecture at a very abstract level. ISO RM-ODP does not identify the views, architecture rationale and principles. Also, ISO RM-ODP does not describe how the architecture description may be handed off to a downstream development team for further implementation. The Zachman framework is subjective and not formal and has views that are generally not backed by notation.
While UML does allow some modeling of implementation details of an architecture, questions remain if UML 1.x is the right language for architecture description. For example, it has been argued that UML in its current form does not provide adequate support to describe an architecture as an interconnection of coarse grained components where it is possible to model hierarchical decomposition, various communication aspects, architecture styles, non-functional properties and where it is possible to perform a number of architectural analyses.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved and standardized technique of modeling architecture for a business system.

System for modeling architecture for business systems and methods thereof


Aspects of the disclosure provide replacement and/or augmentation of automated audio menus of automated communication platforms with interactive digital menus. A digital menu of options associated with an automated communication platform may be provided in response to a call from a communication device to the automated communication platform having an automated audio menu for interaction with such a platform. The digital menu can include options that correspond to options in the automated audio menu, and can be displayed at the communication device via interactive buttons or other actionable indicia. The digital menu also can include options representing shortcuts for specific responses to the automated communication platform and/or options for responses customized to the communication device and the automated communication platform. Shortcuts and/or customized options can be displayed at the communication device with indicia distinctive from other options corresponding to the automated audio menu.

Businesses and other organizations generally rely on automated response telephony systems in order to serve a large segment of customers while containing costs. Such systems usually utilize automated audio menus or scripts that can be played back when a call is established between a calling device, such as a mobile phone, and an automated response telephony system. Playback of the automated audio menus typically provides the available menu options relatively slowly and sequentially. In addition, automated audio menus are sometimes altered, so a previously familiar selection via a touch-tone telephone (e.g., pressing number 1) directs the caller to a different branch of an automated menu tree than it did last time it was selected.


A field programmable gate array (FPGA) includes configuration RAM (CRAM) including at least one non-hardened portion and at least one hardened portion having an SER resilience greater than an SER resilience of the non-hardened portion.

The present invention relates to field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and more specifically, to FPGAs resistant to soft errors.
FPGAs are programmable devices that are customizable by users to program particular logic into the FPGAs. FPGAs are composed of configurable logic blocks (CLBs) connected by an interconnect structure and surrounded by configurable I/O blocks (IOBs). Each CLB may include configuration memory cells to control the functions performed by the CLB. The configuration memory cells may include lookup tables (LUTs), or truth tables implementing combinational logic.
In memory circuits, including FPGAs, soft errors affect memory when one or more energetic particles bombard one or more transistors to switch on the transistor for a short period of time. In addition, the energetic particles may change a stored value. When a soft error occurs in configuration logic, the logical operation performed by the configuration logic may be changed.

International Business Machines Corporation


A pipeline processing unit includes a fetch unit that fetches the instruction for the thread having an execution right, a decoding unit that decodes the instruction fetched by the fetch unit, and a computation execution unit that executes the instruction decoded by the decoding unit. When the WAIT instruction for the thread having the execution right is executed, an instruction holding unit holds instruction fetch information on a processing target instruction to be processed immediately after the WAIT instruction. An execution target thread selection unit selects a thread to be executed based on a wait command and, in response to a wait state started from the execution of the WAIT instruction being canceled, processes the processing target instruction from decoding thereof based on the instruction fetch information on the processing target instruction held in the instruction holding unit.

The disclosure relates to a processor and a pipeline processing method in which a WAIT instruction is executed when performing pipeline processing, or pipelining.
A processor performs pipeline processing in order to improve the processing speed. Pipeline processing is processing in which instructions are fetched, decoded, and computation is executed and in which fetching of a instruction B is started at the same time as decoding is started for a previously fetched instruction A.
That is, in pipeline processing, instructions are processed in parallel. The instructions may be stored in a instruction memory configured separately from the processor and associated with given addresses.
In pipeline processing, depending on the result of an executed instruction, the order and operation of the subsequent instructions may sometimes change. In the case of a change in subsequent instructions, it may become necessary to perform an operation of flushing the instructions being processed in the pipeline processing in a pipeline flush operation. One example of when a pipeline flush operation may become necessary is in a case of processing a WAIT instruction.
When a WAIT instruction is executed in the middle of pipelining, the pipelining temporarily stops any computation processing, performs a pipeline flush operation, and waits. Specifically, the instruction immediately following the WAIT instruction is not executed until the wait state expires or is externally canceled. Upon return (start) from the wait state, the processing of the following (next) instruction is started from a instruction fetch operation.
Conventional pipeline processing by a processor involving executing a WAIT instruction is described with reference to FIG. 8. In FIG. 8, FE denotes instruction fetch, DE denotes decoding, EX denotes instruction execution, and WB1 and WB2 each denote data write to a register.
For example, in a pipeline processing environment, when an instruction C1 starts being decoded after being fetched, a wait instruction WAIT starts being fetched at the same time. However, when decoding of the WAIT instruction WAIT begins, processing is suspended and instruction C3 is flushed from the pipeline. When the WAIT instruction expires, or is otherwise canceled, the instruction C3 may be re-fetched, decoded and executed.
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-299740 discloses a processor, which executes a WAIT instruction. The disclosed processor decodes the WAIT instruction and transitions to a wait state in which the processing in the processor is stopped or suspended, while the WAIT instruction is valid. In response to receiving a signal indicative of the end of the wait state, the processor exits the wait state and resumes executing the processing from a instruction indicated by a program counter.

Processor and pipeline processing method for processing multiple threads including wait instruction processing