The invention relates to a device for integrating electrodes (12) characterizing the flow of a multiphase fluid in a tubing (10). The device includes a tube section (14) made out of an electrically insulating material and bearing the electrodes on its external surface. A metal compensation sheath (16) encircles the section (14), being separated from the latter by an insulating and incompressible fluid. An annular chamber (18) outside the sheath communicates with the inside of the tubing (10). The sheath (16) is fixed on seal rings (29) inserted at the ends of the section (14), by reinforcement for example.

A device for characterizing the flow of a multiphase fluid flowing inside a tubing is described in documents FR-A-2 780 499 and FR-A-2 806 799. This device comprises several sets of electrodes positioned on the tubing, in such a way that the fluid flows between the electrodes. In such a device, the electrodes measure very weak currents and impedances. They should therefore not be in direct contact with the fluid and should be electrically insulated from the tubing. In addition, the fluid should be confined to flow through the middle of the group of electrodes. Therefore the latter should be an integral part of the tubing. However, the tubing in which measurements are performed often operate in environments such as are found in oil wells in which particularly harsh conditions prevail. For example, the temperature may attain several hundred degrees and the pressure may be larger than 1,000 bar in an environment containing H2S. The device for integrating the electrodes into the tubing should there fore withstand such conditions without reducing the internal diameter of the tubing.

Device for integrating electrodes characterizing the flow of a multiphase fluid in a tubing


The invention relates to a system for determining blood flow within a blood vessel (18). A fluid infusion unit (4, 10, 11) continuously infuses a fluid into the blood vessel, and a temperature values determining unit (14, 21) determines simultaneously a first temperature value at a first location and a second temperature value at a second location such that the first temperature value is indicative of the temperature of the fluid and the second temperature value is indicative of the temperature of a mixture of the fluid and the blood. The blood flow is determined based on the measured first and second temperature values and the infusion rate. This kind of determining the blood flow leads to an increased accuracy and is less cumbersome than known techniques requiring a movement of a temperature sensor for measuring temperatures at different locations.

The article "Measurement of Coronary Sinus Blood Flow by Continuous Thermodilution in Man" by W. Ganz et al., Circulation, American Heart Association, volume 44, pages 181 to 195 (1971) discloses a continuous thermodilution technique for determining coronary sinus blood flow, wherein a fluid is continuously injected into a blood vessel, wherein the temperatures of i) the blood, ii) the injected fluid and iii) the mixture of the blood and the fluid are measured and wherein these temperatures are used for determining the blood flow.
US 2004/0054293 A1 discloses a catheter comprising an elongate catheter body having a distal end and a proximal end, wherein the elongate catheter body includes an indicator lumen and an insulating lumen and wherein the indicator lumen has a restricted cross-sectional area adjacent the distal end of the elongate catheter body. The catheter further comprises a dilution sensor connected to the elongate catheter body and a guidewire extending through the restricted cross sectional area of the indicator lumen to project from the distal end of the elongate catheter body.
The article "Continuous infusion thermodilution for assessment of coronary flow: Theoretical background and in vitro validation" by M. van't Veer et al., Medical Engineering & Physics, volume 31, pages 688 to 694 (2009) discloses a continuous infusion thermodilution technique for determining intravascular blood flow. An indicator fluid having a relatively cold temperature, i.e. a temperature being lower than the temperature of the blood, is continuously infused into an artery by using a catheter, thereby generating a mixture of the fluid and the blood. A guidewire with a thermistor at its tip is then used to measure the temperature of this mixture at a certain distance from the catheter, while the fluid is infused into the artery with a constant infusion rate. This constant infusion rate is used together with the temperature of the mixture, the temperature of the blood and the temperature of the indicator fluid for determining the arterial blood flow, i.e. the volumetric flow of the blood within the artery. Thus, this technique allows for a determination of a blood flow, but the accuracy of this determination can be rather low.


The present invention provides a process for producing an α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal represented by Formula (II):

As processes for producing an α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal, a process for allowing an aliphatic aldehyde to react with formaldehyde in the presence of a basic catalyst is known. Examples of the basic catalyst used in the process include hydroxides such as sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, and calcium hydroxide, containing an alkali metal or an alkaline-earth metal; carbonates, such as sodium carbonate, potassium carbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, and potassium hydrogen carbonate, containing an alkali metal or an alkaline-earth metal; tertiary amines; and solid basic catalysts such as basic ion exchangers (see, for example, Japanese Published Examined Patent Application No. 20965/1977, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 263141/1987, Japanese Published Examined Patent Application No. 55181/1992, U.S. Pat. No. 3,312,736, and West Germany Patent No. 2,507,461).
In the production of the α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal, the yield of the α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal is low in general when the ratio of formaldehyde to the aliphatic aldehyde is less than or equal to a stoichiometric ratio, that is, the amount of formaldehyde used is 2 mol or less with respect to 1 mol of the aliphatic aldehyde. Therefore, processes in which two moles or more of formaldehyde is allowed to react with one mole of the aliphatic aldehyde are disclosed (see, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 135717/1979 and Japanese Published Examined Patent Application No. 55181/1992). However, the processes disclosed in these patent documents are not cost-effective because a large amount of formaldehyde remains after the completion of the reaction and complicated operations for separating and/or recovering the remaining formaldehyde must be performed. Furthermore, if a reaction product is subjected to a step such as an oxidation step or hydrogenation step without removing the remaining formaldehyde, the processes have problems such as a necessity for an excessive amount of reactants and a heavy load of a step of refining a product.
On the other hand, a process in which formaldehyde is allowed to react with an aliphatic aldehyde at a stoichiometric ratio is also disclosed (see, for example, Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 209323/1999). However, an example disclosed in this patent document shows that the conversion of formaldehyde is below 90% and a step of removing formaldehyde is necessary. If formaldehyde is not removed, there is a problem that the load of a refining step becomes heavy.
Accordingly, a process for producing for enhancing the conversion of formaldehyde to produce an α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal efficiently has been demanded.

Process for producing α,α-bis(hydroxymethyl)alkanal

Abstract: (wherein R represents an alkyl group, a cycloalkyl group, or an aryl group) which comprises reacting an aldehyde represented by Formula (I):R—CH2—CHO   (I)(wherein R has the same meaning as defined above) with formaldehyde in the presence of a basic catalyst and a phase-transfer catalyst.


It is an object of the present invention to provide a material having a high Tg and a wide energy gap. The present invention provides a spirofluorene derivative represented by General Formula 1. (In the formula, R1 is any one of hydrogen, an alkyl group having 1 to 4 carbon atoms, or a group represented by General Formula 2. Each of R2 and R3 is either hydrogen or an alkyl group having 1 to 4 carbon atoms and may be identical or different. R4 is an aryl group having 6 to 15 carbon atoms. Each of R5 and R6 is any one of hydrogen, an alkyl group having 1 to 4 carbon atoms, or an aryl group having 6 to 15 carbon atoms and may be identical or different.)

A light-emitting device using a light-emitting element which includes a layer containing an organic material between a pair of electrodes and emits light when current flows between the electrodes has been developed. Such a light-emitting device has the advantage of being thin and light, compared with other display devices which are now called thin display devices. Such a device also has high visibility since it is a self light-emitting element, and has a fast response speed. Therefore, this kind of light-emitting device has been actively developed as a next-generation display device, and has partly come into practical use.
The layer containing an organic compound provided between electrodes may have either a single layer structure including one light-emitting layer or a layered structure including layers having different functions from each other; however, the latter, a function-separated type layered structure, is often employed. As an example of the function-separated type layered structure, a structure where a hole injecting layer, a hole transporting layer, a light-emitting layer, an electron transporting layer, and an electron injecting layer are sequentially stacked over an electrode serving as an anode is typical, and each layer is formed using a material specific to each function. Note that a layer having two or more kinds of these functions such as a layer having both functions of a light-emitting layer and an electron transporting layer or a layer having another function such as a carrier blocking layer may be used.
Materials used for these functional layers are required to be materials specific to functions each layer serves and to have high heat resistance, since the heat resistance of the material itself greatly affects heat resistance of the light-emitting element. The materials are also required to be materials which do not adversely affect another layer when forming a layered structure, and research has been carried out to seek better materials. For example, because 4,4′-bis[N-(3-methylphenyl)-N-phenylamino]biphenyl (abbrev.: TPD) which is conventionally used as a hole injecting material or a hole transporting material has a low glass transition temperature (Tg) of 67° C. and has low heat resistance, 4,4′-bis[N-(1-naphthyl)-N-phenylamino]biphenyl (abbrev.: NPB), which is formed by substituting a methylphenyl group in TPD for a naphthyl group so as to increase the Tg to 96° C., has been proposed and is widely utilized (for example, Reference 1: S. A. Van Slyke, C. H. Chen, and C. W. Tang, "Organic electroluminescent devices with improved stability", Appl. Phys. Lett. 69 (15), 7 Oct. 1996).
However, while NPB has a higher glass transition temperature (Tg), its energy gap is lower. Accordingly, TPD emits light of the violet region, whereas NPB emits light of the blue region. In other words, NPB can be said to be a material that has gained a better Tg than TPD by sacrificing its energy gap. NPB and TPD are often used for a hole transporting layer, and in many cases are provided adjacent to a light-emitting layer. In such cases, if the energy gap of the hole transporting layer provided adjacently is small, there is a risk that excitation energy will be transferred to the hole transporting layer from a light-emitting material or a host material excited in the light-emitting layer. When excitation energy is transferred from the light-emitting layer to the adjacent layer, light-emitting efficiency of the light-emitting element is degraded, or color purity is reduced. Degradation of light-emitting efficiency and reduction of color purity in a light-emitting element cause increase of power consumption and degradation of display quality respectively, in a light-emitting device or an electronic device using the light-emitting element. Therefore, a layer in contact with a light-emitting layer desirably has as large an energy gap as possible.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Spirofluorene derivative, material for light-emitting element, light-emitting element, light-emitting device, and electronic device

Semiconductor Energy Laboratories Co., Ltd.


An electronic wireless locking system comprising an external assembly and an internal assembly disposable on respective sides of a door or drawer. The external assembly includes a cover housing, a knob having a shaft, a card/credential reader, a status indicator, a wireless communication capability, a wire harness and a jump port plug. The internal assembly comprises a rotation link matable with the external shaft, a latch bolt, a circuit board and controller, and a locking mechanism including a rack and pinion gear set linking the rotation link with the latch bolt. A blocker inhibits the latch bolt from unlocking until authorized to rotate 90°, permitting the latch bolt to be withdrawn from a strike plate by manual rotation of the knob. An optional mechanical key override feature may also be provided. The system may further include a preload sensor and a device locked sensor.

Locking systems for securing cabinet/locker doors and drawers are well known in the prior art. Typically, such a system may comprise a simple spring latch actuated by manual turning of a key in an associated barrel lock.
More sophisticated door locking security systems are known wherein an electro-mechanical latching apparatus may be actuated by a card reader or key pad. The electromechanical mechanism is known to be mounted on either the cabinet/locker door or drawer or within the frame surrounding the cabinet/locker door or drawer. In either embodiment, the latching mechanism is actuated by a linear solenoid or small DC motor powered by an external DC supply, which is difficult for either a door-latching or drawer-latching application wherein the locking mechanism is mounted on the movable member.
Many prior art devices cannot easily be installed to engage with a mating part located above or to the side of the movable member. Most devices in the prior art cannot communicate with a centrally located access control system in a wireless mode. None of the prior art units have the capability of delaying the unlock signal until any preload on the release mechanism has been removed. In that case, the person trying to get into the cabinet or drawer would have to re-enter their code or re-swipe their card after the preload had been removed.
Also, none of the prior art devices have the ability to sense the presence of the locking member in its mating part which is mounted in the top or side wall of the cabinet. Finally, few if any prior art devices have a mechanical key override.
What is needed in the art is an electronic cabinet/locker lock system wherein the mechanism and circuitry are powered only by resident batteries which can be recharged by inductive power transfer, and the system can communicate wirelessly with a remote access control system.
Additionally, the art needs a lock which can be mounted in any of four positions relative to the door/drawer and frame; can sense a preload condition and delay the activation signal until the preload has been removed; sense the presence of the locking member in its locked position; and provide a key override.
It is a principal object of the present invention to securely lock a cabinet/locker door or drawer, and to make such a locking apparatus releasable by card reader or a keypad. Additionally, this lock system could be used on standard entry doors.


A semiconductor device includes an opening, a metal nitride layer, a bilayer metal layer and a conductive bulk layer. The opening is disposed in a first dielectric layer. The metal nitride layer is disposed in the opening. The bilayer metal layer is disposed on the metal nitride layer in the opening, where the bilayer metal layer includes a first metal layer and a second metal layer which is disposed on the first metal layer and has a greater metal concentration than that of the first metal layer. The conductive bulk layer is filled in the opening.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a semiconductor device, and more particularly, to a semiconductor device having a plug structure with low resistance capacitance (Rc).
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the fabrication of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs), semiconductor devices are generally connected by several metallic interconnecting layers commonly referred to as multi-level interconnects, and a damascene process is a convenient and predominant method for forming the multi-level interconnects. To meet the need of high integration and high processing speed of semiconductor integrated circuits of nano-scale generations, copper interconnect technology has become an effective solution. In comparison with aluminum or other metals, copper has relatively lower resistivity and fewer reliability concerns, such as electromigration, which may further cooperate with low permittivity (low-k) dielectric materials between those metal interconnects, so as to reduce cross talk and/or resistance-capacitance (RC) delay thereof. Thus, copper interconnect technology has been widely in use in single damascene structure and dual damascene structure processes.
One concern with the use of copper as interconnect material is its diffusion property. To prevent copper from diffusing into the ILD layer, the copper core of the damascene structure is typically encapsulated with a diffusion barrier metal. Typical diffusion barrier metals include tantalum (Ta), tantalum nitride (TaN), titanium nitride (TiN) or titanium (Ti) for encapsulating a copper core. Among these barrier materials, tantalum is more prevalent than others in the semiconductor industry because of its relatively higher thermal reliability and ability to prevent copper diffusion. As the line width shrinks to 65 nm or 45 nm node, it is desirable to form a diffusion barrier with reduced thickness and resistance, while maintaining the ability to prevent copper diffusion. Consequently, how to improve the semiconductor integrated circuit for obtaining efficient performance is still an important issue in the field.

Semiconductor device having bilayer metal layer


This vehicle control device is provided with: an external sensor which detects a vehicle stop position present ahead of a host vehicle in the travel direction; and a remaining distance calculation unit which calculates the remaining distance to the detected vehicle stop position from the host vehicle. The vehicle control device is further provided with a medium-term trajectory generation unit and a short-term trajectory generation unit which use a predefined setting method to set a target speed for decelerating the host vehicle in accordance with the calculated remaining distance.

As disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 4646990, a vehicle control device that performs automated driving or assisted driving of a vehicle (host vehicle) detects a vehicle stop position and performs stopping control to decelerate and stop the host vehicle at this vehicle stop position.
However, the vehicle stop position detected by a camera or the like of the host vehicle can include detection errors due to the camera having poor recognition, missing a stop line, or the like. In particular, when the host vehicle is far from the vehicle stop position, the ability to identify the position (reliability of the information) drops and the errors become large. Furthermore, even when the vehicle stop position is acquired from detection results of the host vehicle location and map information of a navigation apparatus or the like, detection errors and calculation errors occur.
Therefore, at the point where it is possible to accurately recognize the vehicle stop position, the host vehicle is relatively close to the vehicle stop position, and if the velocity of the host vehicle is high at this point, the host vehicle cannot stop at the vehicle stop position or requires sudden braking. In other words, there is a desire for the stop control to stop the host vehicle more stably and comfortably at the vehicle stop position.


A method of treatment of osteo-articular disease which includes administering an effective amount of a pharmaceutical composition containing a compound of specified formula and an excipient to a patient in need of such treatment. The compounds of specified formula have a phosphonate group on one end and a silanol or silanol precursor on the opposite end, and can inhibit serine proteases.

The compounds containing biologically active silicon are organo silicon compounds and more especially silanols bearing numerous Si--OH bonds. Silanols are described in the state of the art as constituting a form of silicon assimilable by the organism, given that they have the property of existing as soluble oligomer form in aqueous solution with a low molecular weight (EP-0 289 366).
Numerous complexes of silanols having interesting pharmaceutical properties have already been described in the past. The French special patent on drug N.degree. 6.871 M which has been registered on Dec., 23rd, 1996, describes an organo silicic complex used as drug against all inflammatory phenomena. FR-A-2725207 describes silanols precursors which are compounds made of silicon bearing biologically hydrolyzable bonds notably in contact with alive tissue and enabling the release of oligomers having biologically active Si--OH functions.
Silanols, thus obtained in vivo are pharmaceutically usefull, particularly for the treatment of arthritis, for the restructuration of micro-vessels, for the treatment of the sportsman tendinitis, for the treatment of asthenia, for the treatment of cataract, for the treatment of arteriopatia such as notably arteriosclerosis and more generally for their anti-inflammatory, anti-edematous, anti-glycation, antiradical, analgesic, regenerating and repairing activities.
Silanols of the anterior art are administered via general, orally or paranterally, and act in a non specific way.
To notably remedy this drawback, the main goal of the present invention is to propose a pharmaceutical composition, capable of inhibiting serine proteases, containing a compound made of biologically active silicon capable of aiming in the organism a tissue or a specific organ, such as particularly the osseous or cartilaginous tissue, or cutaneous tissue and exhibit on these tissue a pharmacological activity.

Compositions containing biologically active silicon


A four-cycle engine of the present invention comprises a gas exhaust outlet that is formed on an upper region of a crankcase to exhaust a gas from the interior of the crankcase to outside; and a rotatable shaft disposed in close proximity to the gas exhaust outlet in the interior of the crankcase. The gas exhaust outlet is configured to open toward a region in the interior of the crankcase, the region extending from a line segment connecting the gas exhaust outlet to a rotational center axis of the shaft, in a rotational direction of the shaft at a cross point where the line segment crosses an outer peripheral surface of the shaft.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a four-cycle engine and a motorcycle comprising the four-cycle engine. More particularly, the present invention relates to a construction that enables efficient separation of a blow-by gas from oil.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, in four-cycle engines mounted in motorcycles, a blow-by gas in some cases flows from a combustion chamber into a crankcase through a gap between a piston and an inner wall of a cylinder block. An internal pressure of the crankcase rises because of the presence of the blow-by gas, and becomes resistance to downward movement of the piston. This undesirably increases a pumping loss and reduces an output in a high-output and high-speed engine. Accordingly, in order to lower the internal pressure of the crankcase, the crankcase is conventionally provided with a gas exhaust outlet to exhaust the blow-by gas to the outside of the crankcase (e.g., Publication of Japanese Examined Patent Application No. Hei. 1-16323).
In general, in four-cycle engines, oil is fed to a journal portion of the crankshaft for lubrication to enable the journal portion and a mounting wall portion mounting the journal portion to smoothly slide relative to each other. Further, the oil is injected to a back surface of the piston to cool the piston. Since the oil fed to these components scatters toward a surrounding region, a gas-oil mixture of the blow-by gas and oil mist is filled in the crankcase. Therefore, if the blow-by gas is exhausted from the interior of the crankcase in order to lower the internal pressure of the crankcase, the oil mist is undesirably exhausted together with the blow-by gas.
In a crankcase that accommodates a transmission along with the crankshaft, a primary gear with a relatively large diameter is mounted on an input shaft end of the transmission, and a gas exhaust outlet is provided at a location (side wall portion of the crankcase) opposite to a side surface of the primary gear. In such a construction, since the primary gear covers a region near the gas exhaust outlet, it is possible to inhibit the oil from mixing into the blow-by gas exhausted from the gas exhaust outlet. Furthermore, in order to remove some oil contained in the blow-by gas exhausted from the gas exhaust outlet, it is known that the gas-oil mixture is guided to a gas-liquid separating chamber to separate the blow-by gas from the oil.
However, in engines having a limited width, such as a four-cycle engine mounted in a motorcycle, it is difficult to provide the gas-liquid separating chamber laterally of the crankcase. So, in many cases, the gas-liquid separating chamber must be located in an extra space distant from the gas exhaust outlet provided on the side wall portion of the crankcase. In these cases, an elongate gas passage is formed in the side wall portion of the crankcase by using a gun drill, or a hole is formed to penetrate the side wall portion of the crankcase to form a gas exhaust outlet, and a gas pipe extends from an outer opening of the gas exhaust outlet of the side wall portion so that the blow-by gas is guided to the gas-liquid separating chamber.

Four-cycle engine and motorcycle comprising four-cycle engine


A touch pen for a capacitive touch screen is provided. The touch pen includes a signal receiver conductor, a signal detecting and adjusting circuit, and a signal transmitter conductor. The signal receiver conductor receives a first touch signal from the capacitive touch screen. The signal detecting and adjusting circuit enlarges the first touch signal to a second touch signal having a standard intensity with a first magnification factor, a second magnification factor and a third magnification factor. The signal transmitter conductor issues the second touch signal to the capacitive touch screen. According to the second touch signal, the capacitive touch screen senses a position of a touch point of the touch pen.

Nowadays, the commercially available touch screens are classified into several types, including a resistive touch screen, an acoustic wave touch screen, an infrared touch screen and a capacitive touch screen. When an external force is exerted on the resistive touch screen, a voltage is generated and a command is recognized according to the voltage. Moreover, acoustic waves or infrared rays pass over the surface of the acoustic wave touch screen or the infrared touch screen. By touching the surface of the acoustic wave touch screen or the infrared touch screen, the travelling path of the acoustic wave or the infrared ray is blocked and thus the corresponding command is recognized. When the human body is contacted with the capacitive touch screen, the capacitance value of the touch point of the capacitive touch screen is subjected to a change. According to the change of the capacitance value, the position of the touch position is recognized. In views of the touch accuracy and the fabricating cost, the capacitive touch screen is widely adopted.
For complying with the utilized function of the capacitive touch screen, a capacitive touch pen is introduced into the market. Hereinafter, the structure of a conventional touch pen will be illustrated with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a schematic cross-sectional view illustrating a conventional touch pen. A conductive rubber tip 11 of the conventional touch pen 1 is used as a contact terminal. The conductive rubber tip 11 is sheathed around a fixing post 13, which is contacted with a metallic pen tube 12. Consequently, the conductive rubber tip 11 and the metallic pen tube 12 are combined together. When the conductive rubber tip 11 touches the capacitive touch screen, the electric energy of the human body is transmitted to the conductive rubber tip 11 through the metallic pen tube 12 and the fixing post 13. Consequently, the capacitance value of the touch point between the capacitive touch screen and the conductive rubber tip 11 is changed. According to the change of the capacitance value, a position of the touch point can be accurately judged by the capacitive touch screen.
However, if the diameter of the conductive rubber tip 11 is smaller than 5 mm, the contact area is very small. Under this circumstance, the capacitive touch screen fails to accurately realize the position of the touch point. For preventing the small conductive rubber tip from causing the poor sensing problem, the diameter of the current conductive rubber tip is usually in the range between 5 mm to 8 mm. Since the larger conductive rubber tip may hinder the line of vision of the user, it is difficult for the user to precisely perform the touch control.
Therefore, it is an important issue to reduce the contact terminal of the capacitive touch pen with respect to the capacitive touch screen while allowing the capacitive touch screen to accurately judge the position of the touch point.


A method and system for testing a media server is provided. The media server is capable of delivering prompts simultaneously to a plurality of devices. According to various embodiments, these prompts are present as one or more chunks on the media server. The media server is prepared for testing by generating signatures for each chunk and storing these signatures in a chunk signature database. Thereafter, the testing of the server performed, in which a series of requests are sent to the media server. The media server provides the chunked prompts in response to these requests. These chunked prompts are used to generate signatures, which are compared with the signatures stored in the chunk signature database, to verify whether the media server is operating correctly.

1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to media servers for delivering media-based services. More specifically, various embodiments of the invention relate to testing media servers.
2. Description of the Background Art
The use of packet-based networks, in particular Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks, has increased in the last decade. Further, service providers have been striving to provide improved service and value-added features to their customers. They provide services, such as text messaging, Voice Mail (VM) and Interactive Voice Response (IVR), among others.
Nowadays, these services are increasingly being used for complex applications. For example, an IVR server may be used to collect responses from viewers of a television quiz contest, which would award the first hundred correct responses. When the telephone number is flashed on the television, the telephone lines are simultaneously opened for accepting the viewers' responses. Thereafter, the IVR server works at or near its maximum capacity of the total number of calls that it can handle. This puts the software infrastructure of the server under a lot of stress, since it has to differentiate between the responses of the various viewers and accordingly provide the correct prompts to the viewers. However, it is not always easy to verify whether the correct and complete prompts were provided to all the viewers. According to another example, a voice mail server may be used to collect and replay voice mails in an office. In this case, the number of prompts being provided by the voice mail server may be very large. These prompts may include digits like 'one', 'two', 'fifty'; and menus like 'press one to delete mail'. These prompts may become complex if two or more prompts are combined, for example 'you have', 'thirty five', 'new mail messages'. In addition, each user may have an option to change his prompts. Furthermore, if the office employs people from different regions of the world, the server may be required to provide the prompts in more than one language, which causes the number of prompts to increase manifold. If a majority of these employees reach office after a weekend and access their voice mails, the number of requests reaching the server may be very large, causing the voice mail server to work at or near its maximum capacity, where the performance of the server may start deteriorating. Therefore, simulators are used to test these servers for reliable operation and measure the point wherefrom they break down.
According to a conventional method of testing, the prompts are replaced with unique tone sequences. These tone sequences enable the simulator to identify the prompt. However, these tone sequences are meaningless for the test engineer configuring or verifying the simulator. In light of this, the testing becomes cumbersome and error-prone.
According to another conventional method, unique tone sequences are added on to the end of the prompts. While this technique solves the problems arising in the previous method, it gives rise to two new problems. The special prompts are now longer than the original prompts, which means the performance of the server in actual conditions may not be completely ascertained. In addition, since there is no verification of the portions of the prompts that did not contain the tones, the simulator is no longer able to verify the original portion of the prompt. Therefore, problems in the server's playback mechanism might go unnoticed and uncorrected.
According to another conventional scheme, speech or pattern recognition techniques may be used. The incoming prompt is digitally processed and then compared with a collection of patterns to match the prompt. These techniques are computationally intensive and therefore, require larger processing and memory infrastructure.
According to still another conventional scheme, a brute-force comparison of each prompt is carried out. In this scheme, the simulator maintains copies of all prompts and a pre-specified sequence in which the server will send the prompts. The prompts received are systematically compared against the expected prompts to verify the performance of the server. However, the required computational effort increases considerably if the prompts received are fragmented as the server is pushed to work up to its maximum limits. In such a case, the simulator's performance measuring criteria may not be accurate.

Method and system for testing audio server


An integrated circuit structure includes a conductive layer, a first dielectric layer overlying the conductive layer, a second dielectric layer overlying both the first dielectric layer and the conductive layer and a planarizing layer overlying the second dielectric layer. The conductive layer has a lateral dimension which is greater than a corresponding lateral dimension of the first dielectric layer. Thus the conductive layer and the first dielectric layer form a stepped, pyramidal shaped island. As a result of the stepped, pyramidal shape, the overlying planarizing layer forms with a more planar upper surface than if the sidewall of the island had a vertical profile. In one preferred embodiment of the present invention, the conductive layer is formed from tungsten-silicide, and both of the dielectric layers are either silicon dioxide or silicon nitride.

The present invention relates generally to integrated circuits, and more particularly, to self-planarizing layers formed on an integrated circuit.
During mass production of integrated circuits, a number of well defined regions of a semiconductor wafer become individual, yet circuits normally involves forming one or more layers over the semiconductor wafer, and then patterning these layers. Since the desired integrated circuits are identical, fabrication is made efficient by forming these layers over the entire semiconductor wafer and then performing subsequent processing steps simultaneously to each integrated circuit. These processes are often repeated until all the elements necessary are formed on each integrated circuit.
Wafer etching is a processing step used at many points in mass production of integrated circuits. The general term etching is used to describe techniques by which material can be removed from layers formed over a semiconductor wafer. The etching process, in conjunction with masking and cleaning processes, is often used to pattern layers of a semiconductor wafer.
As is well known to those of skill in the art, etching is typically divided into two categories; wet etching and dry etching. Dry etching, rapidly becoming the most popular etching method within the industry, involves removal of material by momentum transfer from ion bombardment, subjection of the wafer to a reactive chemical species, or a combination of the two. The dry etch process which combines both methods is known as reactive ion etching. In reactive ion etching, the semiconductor wafer is exposed to a plasma and a bias voltage is forced on the wafer to accelerate ions present in the plasma towards the wafer. The plasma is typically formed from an inert gas and the chemically reactive species.
FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art reactive ion etcher 10. The reactive ion etcher 10 includes etchant chemical plumbing 12 and control valves 14, coolant plumbing 16 and a corresponding control valve 18, a radio frequency (rf) generator 20, and a housing chamber 22. A showerhead 24 and chuck 26 are both internal to the chamber 22. Typically a semiconductor wafer 28 is mounted on the chuck 26. Additionally, the walls of the chamber 22 and either the chuck 26 or the showerhead 24 are electrically coupled to ground. When operating, the rf generator 20 creates a positive charge (hence creating an anode) on the larger electrode and a negative charge (hence creating a cathode) on the smaller electrode. As should be apparent, the electrode which is attached to the walls of the chamber 22 (either the chuck 26 or the showerhead 24) is the electrode of large area.
The etching process often includes a non-powered step and a powered step. In the non-powered step, the chamber 22 is filled with etchant chemicals according to a specific etch recipe while the rf generator 20 is off. Once the chamber 22 is prepared, the rf generator 20 is turned on and then causes oscillations in the plasma cloud 30 creating ions and free electrons. The positive ions accelerate towards the cathode 26, thereby anisotropically etching the surface layers of the wafer 28.
During etching, the temperature of the semiconductor wafer 28 rises due to exposure to the plasma 22. In order to prevent overheating and maintain control of the etching process, a small amount of gaseous helium coolant is bled underneath the wafer 28 by way of the coolant chemical plumbing 16 and the corresponding valve 18. By way of explanation, the temperature of the wafer 28 may directly effect many of the etch parameters such as etch rate, undercut, and selectivity. Therefore it is desirable to control this temperature.
Prior art etch recipes include carbon chemicals, such as CHF.sub.3 and C.sub.2 F.sub.6. As is well know to those skilled in the art, etching processes which use reactive chemicals high in carbon are "dirty". Because of carbon residue left by such high carbon chemicals, maintenance tasks such as cleaning the etching chamber must be performed regularly in order for the chamber to function properly. This results in costly downtime for critical machinery.
As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, reactive ion etching is primarily an anisotropic etching method. That is, reactive ion etching removes material in primarily one direction, as opposed to removing material uniformly in all directions.
FIG. 2 shows a cross-sectional view of a prior art integrated circuit structure 40 which was fabricated in part by a prior art recipe using CHF.sub.3 and C.sub.2 F.sub.6. The integrated circuit structure 40 includes a semiconductor substrate 42, an island 43 comprised of a conductive layer 44 and an oxide layer 46, an inter-level dielectric (ILD) layer 48, and a spin-on glass (SOG) layer 50. While only one island 43 is shown in FIG. 2, typically the integrated circuit structure 40 has a plurality of islands 43, and the integrated circuit structure 40 is one of a plurality of integrated circuit structures formed on a single semiconductor wafer. The islands 43 are preferably formed by standard photolithography patterning processes.
Typical prior art etch recipes create a plurality of islands 43 formed from portions of the oxide layer 44 and the conductive layer 46, with each layer of a particular island 43 having lateral dimensions which are substantially the same. Hence, the sidewall profile of each island 43 is vertical. Note that FIG. 2 shows only a two-dimensional cross-sectional view of the island wherein the lateral dimensions of the conductive layer 44 and the oxide layer 46 are substantially the same. In actuality, the integrated circuit structure 40 has a depth dimension (i.e. the dimension which is perpendicular to the page), and the depth of each layer would also be substantially the same.
After the islands 43 are formed, two layers, an ILD layer 48 and a SOG layer 50 are applied over the oxide layer 46 where the ILD layer 48 is for insulation purposes and the SOG layer 50 serves to planarize the surface of the wafer for subsequent processing steps. In some cases a boron phosphate silicate glass (BPSG) planarizing layer may be used in lieu of the SOG layer 50. In either case, once the ILD layer 48 and the SOG layer 50 (or BPSG layer) have been formed, the integrated circuit structure 40 typically undergoes additional fabrication steps. Often additional layers are formed and are in turn patterned. In order to perform these subsequent steps, the upper surface 52 of the SOG layer 50 must be substantially planar. However, as can be seen from FIG. 2, the topography of the upper surface 52 is not substantially planar, rather it is especially "bumpy" in the area over the island 43. Consequently, a planarizing step such as polishing might have to be performed in order to form a planar upper surface 52 on the SOG layer 50. These additional processing steps are expensive and time consuming, and may result in reduced yield of functional integrated circuits.

Method of making an integrated circuit structure with planarized layer


The invention relates to a method for producing fungi, especially mushrooms, using a casing material comprising granules and/or agglomerates of granules of a mineral fibre structure, and to a casing material notably for the use in the production of fungi as well as a method for the preparation of a casing material. The invention furthermore relates to a casing spawn used for the inoculation of a casing material.. The mineral fibres may be stone wool fibres, glass wool fibres, slag wool fibres, naturally occurring mineral fibre materials such as wollastonite and the like. The casing material may contain a binding agent, a nutrient source, a mineral source, a wetting agent, a pH-adjusting agent, a liming material, a fertilizer, a chelating agent and/or other excipients.. The casing material for use according to the invention establishes favorable and lasting physical conditions for the growth of the mycelia of the fungi manifested by a longer cropping period as well as a higher yield and a better quality of fruiting bodies harvested, compared to the traditional method of growing fungi using casing materials based on peat.

Traditionally, the production of fungi such as mushrooms proceeds in a series of steps as follows:
providing a preparation of a solid nutritive medium (compost); PA1 optionally pasteurisation of the nutritive medium; PA1 inoculating the optionally pasteurized nutritive medium with fungal mycelia (spawn); PA1 arranging the inoculated nutritive medium in a growing environment; PA1 applying a substantially continuous layer of a casing material on the inoculated nutritive medium; PA1 allowing a colonization of the substantially continuous layer of the casing material with the mycelium of fungi; PA1 allowing the mycelium to form primordia of fruiting bodies and subsequently fruiting bodies from the substantially continuous layer of casing material; PA1 harvesting fruiting bodies of the fungi from the substantially continuous layer of casing material. PA1 Carbon about 64% PA1 Hydrogen about 5% PA1 Nitrogen about 1% PA1 Sulphur about 3% PA1 Oxygen about 27% PA1 i) loading of a mixer with a substantially dry raw material of mineral fibres; PA1 ii) optionally pre-mixing of the raw material of mineral fibres; PA1 iii) mixing of the raw material of mineral fibres with a simultaneous and controlled supply of a liquid to obtain a substantially flowable and non-dusting casing material, the supply of the liquid being controlled in such a manner that the raw material of mineral fibres, when sampled, is moisturized to an extent that a substantially homogeneous and flowable material of granules and/or agglomerates of granules of a mineral fibre structure is obtained.
The casing material will establish the conditions necessary for the growth of mycelia, and will support the formation of fruiting bodies of fungi, without a casing material. The formation of fruiting bodies has up to now been considered impossible.
Casing materials used in a traditional production lay-out of fungi, such as mushrooms, are normally based on peat.
Peat is not considered being a sterile material, and may, like any natural organic material consisting mainly of partly decomposed organic material such as sphagnum moss, contain pathogens harmful to the crop of fungi such as Trichoderma sp.
Peat has a natural low pH which must, in order to reduce the risk of attack of pathogens harmful to fungi, be increased to a pH of 7 or above by mixing a liming material into the peat casing. Being a natural organic material and due to the need of mechanical handling, the structure of peat will tend to break down and collapse in use, and as a result hereof the pore space within the peat casing material available for mycelial growth and/or water will be reduced. Moreover, as a result of a structural disintegration, water logged conditions will be established in the peat casing. This will lead to a poor gas exchange to and from the peat casing which in turn will lead to a reduced formation of fruiting bodies and thereby to financial losses for the grower.
Normally, very large quantities of peat, over 100,000 m.sup.3 per year in e.g. the United Kingdom alone, is used for the preparation of casing material in the production of fungi, and because peat is one of nature's resources it is likely that sources of peat (peat bogs) will be depleted or that availability will be restricted due to the legislation protecting the sites where peat is excavated.
Some attempts have been made to optimize the production of fungi using materials as casing layer that could reduce one or more of the above mentioned identified problems associated with the use of peat as a casing material as well as reduce the amount of a casing material used in the production of fungi.
Furthermore, there is an increasing need for the development of improved methods for growing fungi involving the application of alternative casing materials on a solid nutritive medium. Such casing materials having improved characteristics over known casing materials thereby being able e.g. to obtain a better yield and/or quality of produce.
Surprisingly, the present inventor has found that it is possible to establish mycelial colonization, pinning of fruiting bodies of mushrooms and subsequent formation of fruiting bodies in a casing material comprising granules or agglomerates of a mineral fibre structure arranged on a solid nutritive medium.
The following provides a review of the literature relating to the production of fungi and disclosing compositions containing mineral fibres used in the production of fungi.
Kokai (Japanese Patent Publication) No. 3-123417 discloses the use of a culture medium of "stone wool" (mineral fibres) having capillary action, immersed in a culture solution. Cultivation is conducted on the culture medium to fruit body of mushroom. It is stated that the liquid medium contains glucose, polypeptone, yeast extract, mono potassium phosphate, magnesium sulphate, calcium chloride, and trace amounts of other elements and water.
When the level of nutrients is lowered by the consumption of the mycelia, it is replaced by adding fresh culture solution to the culture medium.
However, this method is performed in an artificial environment, all organic nutritional matter being supplied via a liquid.
WO 89/05574 defines a casing material as a material which supports mushroom fruiting and a non-casing material as a material which will not support mushroom fruiting. According to the disclosure in WO 89/05574 "stone wool", in the form of a pad, had been inoculated with mushroom spawn and supplied with a nutrient source, but no colonization of the pad had been obtained. The "stone wool" tested is therefore a non-casing material which is used as a layer isolating the compost layer from the surrounding environment.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,842 describes a synthetic casing for mushroom beds provided by a formulation consisting of a water absorptive material selected from paper plant waste, spent mushroom compost and cotton seed hulls. The water absorptive material has been mixed with activated carbon, water and lime stone. The paper plant waste is said to be an example of a fibrous material which has little or no value and which may replace the costly peat as a casing material.
EP 0 284 421 discloses a synthetic substrate for the support of the growth and development of filamentous fungi. The substrate is comprised of a nutrient in a hydrated hydrogel matrix forming a capsule. In a preferred embodiment, the capsule is said to have an irregular external surface to allow filamentous fungi to adhere thereto.
H. R. Visscher in Proceedings of the 5th international congress on soilless culture, Wageningen 18-24 May 1980, pages 395-410, discloses a casing material based on lime-cakes, which is a clayey byproduct of sugar extraction from sugar beets, obtained as a CaCO.sub.3 precipitate, after clearing the hot sugar sap, and strained off as a slurry and afterwards pressed or weathered in the open in large basins. It is stated that studies had revealed that the lime-cakes must be a year old, turned and weathered; otherwise yield reduction will occur. To the lime-cake based casing material granulated "stone wool" has been added in amounts of 25 and 50% by volume, and tested as a casing material. However, it is stated that the yield obtained in such casing materials could not supersede yield obtained from peat.


The present invention is a method including: receiving an input key string; comparing the input key string with a stored key string; and granting access to a boundary scan chain when the input key string matches the stored key string, the boundary scan chain being at least one of: a Boundary Data Register of at least one Joint Test Action Group (JTAG)-compliant device; or, a plurality of communicatively coupled JTAG-compliant devices.

A number of today's highly integrated, multi-layer circuit boards with fine pitch integrated circuits are virtually impossible to access physically for testing. Some traditional testing methods, such as functional test, only access a board's primary I/Os (input/outputs), thereby providing limited coverage and poor diagnostics for board network faults. Other traditional testing methods, such as in-circuit testing, involve physically accessing each wire on the board via "bed of nails" probes and testers, and may be expensive to implement. To alleviate the growing costs of designing and producing digital systems, boundary scan was developed as a way to test interconnects (i.e., thin wire lines) on a printed circuit board without using physical probes. However, along with providing functional and interconnect testing capabilities, boundary scan may also be utilized to provide built-in self test procedures. Boundary scan has basically transformed a number of extremely difficult PCB (printed circuit board) testing problems into problems that can be dealt with via software control.
Boundary scan provides the above-referenced capabilities by providing an interface into embedded digital electronics. Boundary scan may be utilized to provide various functions, such as board test, chip test, and system debug functions. However, with current implementations of boundary scan, such functions require extensive access to hardware and software throughout a system, thereby making it difficult to ensure protection of critical or sensitive information from unwarranted access.
Therefore, it may be desirable to have a system and method for providing secure boundary scan interface access which addresses the above-referenced problems and limitations of the current solutions.

System and method for providing secure boundary scan interface access


A portable, elongated bag with two opposing ends closeable through the operation of at least one zipper extended from a first end to a second end includes a first padded insert and a second padded insert, each conformed to one of the two opposing ends and the first padded insert comprising a series of at least two concentric, affixed and removable padded portions such that removal of a first of the portions creates an opening of a first size and removal of the second portion enlarges the opening to a second size, both for protective storage of fragile apparatus within the portable, elongated bag.

Field
This disclosure relates to shipment, storage, and transport of fragile apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Various bags and shipping containers have been devised for the shipment and/or storage of fragile apparatus. Examples of fragile apparatus include scientific apparatus (e.g. experimental apparatus, beakers, flasks, vials, glass pipes for use in chemistry, and the like), glassware, glass and porcelain tobacco smoking apparatus such as hookahs or water pipes, musical instruments, hunting equipment, and various other fragile apparatus.
Most containers are designed for shipping and thereafter are thrown away. Some are designed for transport of a particular item and are, therefore, specifically crafted with the item in mind. That is, where protective elements are employed near the fragile apparatus, the protective material is pre-formed with the fragile apparatus in mind so as to carefully protect the apparatus when stored or being transported. Often these containers are formed of a so-called "hard-sided" material such as metal or plastic to resist shocks such as by dropping or being hit.
Throughout this description, elements appearing in figures are assigned three-digit reference designators, where the most significant digit is the figure number and the two least significant digits are specific to the element. An element that is not described in conjunction with a figure may be presumed to have the same characteristics and function as a previously-described element having a reference designator with the same least significant digits.

Shipment, storage, and transport bag for fragile apparatus


A new automatic bathroom door and toilet flushing system for automatically raising the door and flushing the toilet when a user is finished. The system includes a housing secured to a ceiling between a pair of walls. The housing has an opening in a lower end thereof. A door is rotatably disposed within the housing. The door is disposed on a central shaft. The central shaft is coupled with an electric motor. The electric motor selectively raises and lowers the door with respect to an opening between the pair of walls. An electric sensor is in communication with the electric motor and an electrical system of an existing toilet. The electric sensor is disposed within one of the pair of walls adjacent to the handle of the manual pulley system.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to power operated doors and more particularly pertains to a new automatic bathroom door and toilet flushing system for automatically raising the door and flushing the toilet when a user is finished.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The use of power operated doors is known in the prior art. More specifically, power operated doors heretofore devised and utilized are known to consist basically of familiar, expected and obvious structural configurations, notwithstanding the myriad of designs encompassed by the crowded prior art which have been developed for the fulfillment of countless objectives and requirements.
Known prior art power operated doors include U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,227 to Toenjes; U.S. Pat. No. 4,956,938 to DeMent; U.S. Pat. No. 5,247,232 to Lin; U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,880 to Burgess; U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,443 to Sim; and U.S. Pat. No. Des. 283,923 to Henry et al.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives and requirements, the aforementioned patents do not disclose a new automatic bathroom door and toilet flushing system. The inventive device includes a housing secured to a ceiling between a pair of walls. The housing has an opening in a lower end thereof. A door is rotatably disposed within the housing. The door is disposed on a central shaft. The central shaft is coupled with an electric motor. The electric motor selectively raises and lowers the door with respect to an opening between the pair of walls. An electric sensor is in communication with the electric motor and an electrical system of an existing toilet. The electric sensor is disposed within one of the pair of walls adjacent to the handle of the manual pulley system.
In these respects, the automatic bathroom door and toilet flushing system according to the present invention substantially departs from the conventional concepts and designs of the prior art, and in so doing provides an apparatus primarily developed for the purpose of automatically raising the door and flushing the toilet when a user is finished.

Automatic bathroom door and toilet flushing system


A remote-controlled mobile triangle sign includes a triangle sign having at least one surface with a reflective area; a remote controller configured to transmit control signals; and a remote-controlled car. The remote-controlled car includes a power supply module; a drive motor powered by the power supply module; and a remote control receiving and execution module for receiving the control signals. The triangle sign is mounted on top of the remote-controlled car, and the remote control receiving and execution module is electrically connected to the drive motor and provides output signals.

With people's standard of living gradually improved, cars have become the most important means of transport in people's daily lives. More and more people buy cars, but the numbers of road accidents are also on the rise, especially rear-end collisions accounting for a relatively large proportion of accidents, often causing heavy casualties and economic losses.
Most rear-end collisions are generally caused by, after a front vehicle involved in an accident or breakdown, advance-warning not being promptly given, which cause following vehicles to have rear-end collisions to create more and severer traffic accidents. The rear-end collisions are also caused by the poor visibility and closeness to the accident scene of the warning equipment of the vehicle involved in the accident, the following vehicles do not have sufficient response time or response distance, causing severer traffic accidents. Thus, as required by transportation authorities, after a road accident, an advance-warning device must be used to warn the following vehicles, at a distance of 100˜250 meters.
Currently, an advance-warning device is often a triangle sign placed in car trunk. The triangle sign typically has a reflective region. When the vehicle is breakdown or in accident, the triangle sign is placed in the rear of the vehicle to warn the oncoming cars from behind. For example, on a highway with 110 km/h speed limit, when a vehicle breaks down at night, the driver needs to get out of the vehicle and takes the warning triangle sign out of the trunk, walks at least a safe distance behind the breakdown vehicle, and then places the warning triangle sign to warn the oncoming vehicles. Afterward, the driver needs to retrieve the warning triangle sign.
According to the traffic regulations, the safe distance of 250 meters, which means that the driver is required to walking back and forth twice, at least 1000 meters. Due to human laziness, under the on-site emergency and hazardous situation, people usually do not follow the regulations to place the triangle sign. Even when people follow the regulation to place the triangle sign, it may take a long time to place it, i.e., a slow placement. The study showed that: the probability of occurrence of the secondary accident, or two or more car rear-end accident after more than 10 seconds, is proportional to the time for placing the triangle sign. That is, the shorter the placement time, the smaller the probability of occurrence of the secondary accident.
In addition, when the driver walk on the roadway by foot to place the car triangle sign, especially at night, rain, fog, snow and other inclement weather without clear line of sight, it may lead to more severer traffic accidents, not to mention traffic accidents occurred under these weather conditions account 82.5% of total accidents. Furthermore, when the existing triangle signs are used under the rain and fog weather or at night, their visibility is very low, the warning distance is short, and the effect is not desired.


A container for holding a plurality of disposable pipette tips which are to be installed to a pipette rack for a pipetting apparatus is disclosed. The container includes an upper panel having a plurality of aligned openings into which the disposable tips are to be inserted, respectively, and a lower panel for regulating swing movement of the respective disposable tips held by the upper panel. The lower panel is separated from the upper panel so as to be freely movable between a first position at which the lower panel is spaced from the upper panel and a second position at which the lower panel is close to the upper panel. The container further includes four tabs which support the lower panel thereon at the first position. The tabs are formed on side panels which are connected to the upper panel. According to the container, it is possible to install the container which holes the pipette tips to the pipette rack without applying any specific force. Further, a package which accommodates two containers as described is also disclosed. The package includes a packaging box in which the two containers are to be removably accommodated. According to the package, it is possible to ship or transport many pipette tips by one package.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a container for holding disposable pipette tips, and relates more particularly to a container for holding a plurality of disposable pipette tips for use in a pipetting apparatus, which can hold a plurality of pipette tips upright in a predetermined aligned pattern and therefore install the aligned pipette tips to a pipette rack for the pipetting apparatus with the tips being held on the container. This invention further relates to a package accommodating the container, and relates more particularly to a package which accommodates two containers each holding the pipette tips so as to be able to ship or transport many disposable pipette tips with one package without being received any damage during the shipment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a pipetting apparatus which is used in chemical analysis and laboratory testing, many disposable pipette tips are used for supplying an object to be analyzed or a reagent to aligned many test tubes. In such a pipetting apparatus, a pipette rack having many aligned apertures to which the disposable pipette tips are to be installed is used. In use of the pipetting apparatus, the disposable tips which have been installed in the pipette rack are attached to sampling nozzles of the apparatus and then sample the object to be analyzed or reagent through the disposable tips and pipette it to the test tubs automatically.
In the meantime, conventionally, disposable pipette tips are taken out from a vinyl bag or carton in which many tips are contained at random and then they are installed in the apertures of the pipette rack one by one manually. For example, if the number of the apertures of the pipette rack is ninety, ninety tips are taken out from the bag and then they are inserted into the apertures of the pipette rack one by one manually. However, this operation is very troublesome, and further if the number of tips to be installed is too large, it takes so long time to complete the operation.
Further, conventionally, when pipette tips are forwarded or shipped to users such as laboratories or hospitals from a manufacturer, a large number of disposable pipette tips are shipped under the condition that they are contained in a vinyl bag or a carton at random as described above. However, since the disposable tip is formed of a plastic material which is easily deformed, there is a case that some of the disposable tips are deformed when the bag or carton is pressed during the shipment.
In view of these problems, a package for unitizing and shipping pipette tips has been proposed, which is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,057,282.
The proposed package includes a container for holding a plurality of pipette tips upright in a predetermined array pattern, and an open-topped box which can accommodate the container.
The container includes an upper array holding panel having a plurality of openings therethrough in a predetermined array pattern, and a lower array holding panel lying beneath and spaced from the upper array holding panel. The lower array holding panel also has a plurality of openings therethrough that substantially match in vertical alignment and in array pattern the plurality of openings in the upper array holding panel. Between the upper and lower array holding panels, there is formed side panels which connect the lower array holding panel to the upper array holding panel. At the fold lines between the lower array holding panel and the side panels, there are formed frangible connections which are fractured by a compressive force exerted on the upper and lower array holding panels causing them to move toward each other. The frangible connections are formed from perforated fold lines which can be relatively easily to separate the lower panel from the side panels when the compressive force is exerted on the upper and lower array holding panels.
Further, the open-topped box is constituted so as to be able to accommodate the container which holds the tips. The container is removably accommodated in the open-topped box. The open-topped box further includes an integrally formed cover which covers the accommodated container. In the accommodated condition, tip portions of the tips are protruded into a hollow space defined in the box and movements of the tips are regulated by the array holding panels. Therefore, there is less possibility that the tips are damaged during the shipment thereof.
In use of the package at the point of use, first the container with many tips is removed from the box. Next, the container is placed onto a pipette support having many aligned apertures which are positionally corresponding to the openings of the array holding panels in such a manner that each of the tips is inserted into the corresponding aperture in the pipette support. Thereafter, the operator press the container against the pipette support until the perforated fold lines are torn. When the perforated fold line are torn, the lower array holding panel is brought into contact with the upper panel and then the pipette tips are installed onto the pipette support through the overlapped panels.
The proposed package for unitizing and shipping pipette tips are convenient since it is not necessary to perform such operation that installs the pipette tips into the apertures of the pipette support one by one manually. Further, there is less possibility that any damage is suffered during the shipment.
However, the conventional proposed package requires in use to press the container against the pipette support until the perforated fold lines are torn, which requires a certain force which is suitable to tear the perforated fold lines. If given force is too large, there is a possibility that some of the tips which are held in the container fall out from the container due to the reaction which would be caused when the upper array holding panel abut with the pipette support after the perforated fold lines are torn. Therefore, it is required to determine a suitable force for tearing the perforated fold lines when used. Furthermore, in the conventional proposed package, it is necessary to form the perforated lines to a blank of the container in the manufacturing process thereof. However, the process which forms the perforated lines is relatively troublesome. Moreover, in the conventional proposed package, the number of pipette tips which can ship with one package is limited because only one container is accommodated in the package.

Container for holding disposable tips and package accommodating the container


A method comprising receiving media data in a compressed, digital domain, analyzing motion vectors associated with the received media content while in the compressed digital domain and identifying one or more objects in the received media data based, at least in part, on the motion vector analysis.

The present invention relates to the field of image processing and, more particularly, to a system and related methods for analyzing compressed media content.
With recent improvements in processing and storage technologies, many personal computing systems have the capacity to receive, process and render multimedia objects (e.g., audio, graphical and video content). The Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG), under the auspices of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), have developed a number of standards digitizing and compressing multimedia to accommodate high bandwidth (MPEG-1 and MPEG-2), and low bandwidth (MPEG-4) applications.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that in order to accurately represent a multimedia object in the digital domain requires a vast amount of data. Accordingly, it is common to xe2x80x9ccompressxe2x80x9d the digitized multimedia object to satisfy storage media and/or communication bandwidth requirements. The MPEG coding includes information in the bit stream to provide synchronization of audio and video signals, initial and continuous management of coded data buffers to prevent overflow and underflow, random access start-up, and absolute time identification. The coding layer specifies a multiplex data format that allows multiplexing of multiple simultaneous audio and video streams as well as privately defined data streams.
The basic principle of MPEG system coding is the use of time stamps that specify the decoding and display the time of audio and video and the time of reception of the multiplexed coded data at the decoder. The basic scheme of MPEG is to predict motion from frame to frame in the temporal direction and then to use Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients to organize the redundancy in the spatial directions.
In general, MPEG encodes video data into three types of frames, each frame comprising blocks of data and groups of blocks or macroblocks. A first frame type is an intra (I) frame. The I frame is a frame coded as a still image, not using any information from previous frames or successive frames. It is the first frame in the bit stream and contains texture and color information for the video sequence. A second frame type is a predicted (P) frame. The P frames in the bit stream are predicted from the most recently reconstructed I or P frame. Each block in the P frame can either have a vector and difference DCT coefficients or it can be intra coded, like the I frame. A third frame type is a bidirectional (B) frame. The B frame is predicted from the closest two I or P frames, one previous frame and one successive frame, in the bit stream.
When coding a compressed video sequence, the compression engine uses a forward vector and a rearward vector. The compression engine interpolates between two blocks of two frames to code the block currently being coded. If this is not possible, the block is intra-coded. The sequence of frames in a bit stream typically appears as IBBPBBPBBPBBIBBPBBPB . . . .
There are typically twelve frames from I to I. This is based on a random access requirement; typically, a starting point is needed at least once very 0.4 seconds. Providing an I frame every twelve frames correlates to starting with an I frame every 0.4 seconds. To decode the bit stream, the I frame is first decoded followed by the first P frame. The two B frames in between the I frame and the P frame are then decoded. The primary purpose of the B frames is to reduce noise in the video by filling in or interpolating a three dimensional video signal, between the I and the P frames, typically over a 33 or 25 millisecond picture period without contributing to the overall signal quality beyond that immediate point in time.
The B frames and P frames contain the motion information. The I frame has no motion values and stores the DCT information of the original frame of the video sequence.
As alluded to above, the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards were developed to accommodate high-bandwidth applications (e.g., high definition television (HDTV)), while MPEG-4 was developed for lower bandwidth applications, e.g., interactive video systems. An interesting aspect of the MPEG-4 standard, necessary to support such interactive features, is that a video frame is actually defined as a number of video objects, each assigned to their own video object plane (VOP). Accordingly, once an MPEG-4 video frame is decompressed, a number of independently manipulatable video objects may be identified through any of a number of prior art video analysis techniques.
When the compressed multimedia object is accessed for use, it is decompressed in accordance with the compression scheme used to compress the multimedia object, e.g., using the inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT). Once decompressed further analysis of the multimedia objects may then be performed.
The standardization of such coding and compression techniques has fostered growth in multimedia peripherals and applications. An example application of such technology provides for the identification and manipulation of video objects extracted from video content. For example, in a video sequence depicting a person running across the street, it may be desirable to identify and manipulate the image of the person (or any other video object within the video sequence). Typically, to identify and manipulate a video object, the video sequence is received/retrieved, decompressed (e.g., using the IDCT) and analyzed in a decompressed digital domain. More particularly, the application analyzes the decompressed digital representation of the video content to identify the person walking across the street, making that video object available for further manipulation by an end-user. These prior art techniques, while effective, have a number of inherent limitations.
First, the decompressed video objects are represented by an extremely large amount of data (as compared to the same video object(s) in the compressed digital domain). Not only does this large amount of data require a large amount of storage space (e.g., Random Access Memory (RAM)), it increases the computational complexity of the identification and manipulation process. Second, the decompression process is lossy, i.e., filters are typically employed to eliminate coding artifacts and to smooth the resultant image. Accordingly, such prior art multimedia applications were typically limited to high-end computing systems with advanced processors, large storage capacity and fast bus speeds executing sophisticated applications.
Thus, a system and related methods for analyzing multimedia objects is required, unencumbered by the above limitations commonly associated with the prior art. Indeed, what is required is a system and related methods that enable more moderate computing systems to benefit from recent advances in multimedia technology. Just such a system and related methods are presented in the pages to follow.
This invention concerns a system and related methods for analyzing media content in the compressed digital domain. According to a first implementation of the invention, a method comprising receiving media data in a compressed, digital domain, analyzing motion vectors of the received media data while in the compressed digital domain, and identifying one or more objects in the received media content based, at least in part, on the motion vector analysis. It is to be appreciated that identification of the one or more objects, i.e., dominant objects and subordinate objects, facilitates a host of applications to track and manipulate individual objects while in the compressed, digital domain.

System and related methods for analyzing compressed media content


The invention relates to a water treatment apparatus, method and system for use in the treatment of wastewater or contaminated water, the apparatus including an energisable material or base platform configured and arranged for placement in the flow of wastewater, the platform having a substantial surface area with a media layer suitable for use in hosting bacterial cultures, and further including an energisable layer attachable to the media layer which, when energized with an electrostatic negative voltage charge from a direct current power source, can attract suspended solids in the wastewater and bond aerobic bacterial cultures to the media layer, and whereby additional media can be introduced into the area about the energisable material or layer that can also attract suspended solids thereto.

The treatment of water, and recycling water for reuse, commonly involves a variety of stages and various systems for effective treatment to increase the quality of the water. With water treatment, the removal of impurities, suspended solids and the like is desirable, but often involves a number of stages. Wastewater systems generally comprise a number of chambers such as a primary chamber(s) used for anaerobic breakdown and a secondary chamber(s) for aerobic breakdown of waste products, with wastewater being swiftly moved from one chamber to another, and then from the final chamber(s) into say a subterranean dispersal field.
Such a system may not be as thorough as desired, particularly in respect of the treatment of suspended solids before being discharged into a dispersal field.
It is a non-limiting object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for the treatment of wastewater that overcomes at least some of the above mentioned problems, or which provides the public with a useful choice.
It is a further non-limiting object of the present invention to provide a method of treatment of wastewater that overcomes at least some of the above mentioned problems, or which provides the public with a useful choice.
It is a further non-limiting object of the present invention to provide a system for the treatment of wastewater that overcomes at least some of the above mentioned problems, or which provides the public with a useful choice.

Water treatment system, apparatus and method


A developer carrying member includes a substrate, the surface of which is covered with a conducting layer. The conducting layer contains a binder resin and conducting spherical particles dispersed therein having a number average particle diameter of from 0.3 .mu.m to 30 .mu.m and a true density of 3 g/cm.sup.3 or below.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a developer carrying member used when an electrostatic latent image formed on an electrostatic latent image bearing member such as an electrophotographic photosensitive member or an electrostatic recording dielectric material is rendered visible by development. It also relates to a developing assembly, an image forming apparatus and process cartridge using such a developer carrying member.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an example of developing assemblies for visualizing electrostatic latent images formed on a photosensitive drum serving as an electrostatic latent image bearing member by the use of a magnetic toner as a one component type developer, such an assembly as shown in FIG. 6 is known, in which a developer container 53 holds a magnetic toner 54 as the one component type developer, and electric charge having a reverse polarity to the electric charge of the electrostatic image formed on a photosensitive drum 51 and to the development standard potential is imparted to magnetic toner particles by the friction between particles of the magnetic toner and the friction between a developing sleeve 58 as a developer carrying member and the magnetic toner particles. The magnetic toner thus charged is very thinly coated on the developing sleeve 58 by means of a magnetic blade 52 and then transported to the developing zone, D, defined by the photosensitive drum 51 and the developing sleeve 58. In the developing zone D, the magnetic toner is attracted by the action of a magnetic field formed by a magnet 55 stationarily set on the developing sleeve 58 to visualize the electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive drum 51. In the drawing, letter symbols A and B denote the directions of rotation of the developing sleeve 58 and the photosenitive drum 51, respectively. Reference numeral 59 denotes a development bias means for applying a development bias voltage at the time of development; and 60, denotes an agitating element for agitating the magnetic toner 54 inside the developer container 53.
When, however, such a one component type developer is used, it is difficult to control the toner charging. Although various means have been considered in connection with developers, the problems concerning non-uniformity of charging and running stability of charging are not completely solved.
Especially when the developing sleeve is repeatedly rotated on, the toner coated on the developing sleeve comes to have a too large of a charge quantity due to contact with the developing sleeve, so that the toner and the developing sleeve surface attract each other on account of the reflective force and the toner turns immobile on the surface of the developing sleeve. This phenomenon is called "charge-up", which especially tends to occur in an environment of low humidity. Once such charge-up has occurred, the toner forming an upper layer on the sleeve is difficult to charge so that the quantity of toner participating in development is lowered, raising such problems that line images are made thinner or solid-image density is reduced.
Moreover, the toner layer may be formed in a different state at image areas (where toner is consumed) and non-image areas to have been charged in different conditions, and hence, for example, if the position where a solid image with a high image density has been once formed by development comes to the development position on the next rotation of the developing sleeve and a latent halftone image is developed at that position, a mark of the solid image may appear on the image. Such a phenomenon, which is called "sleeve ghost", is liable to occur.
Recently, in order to make electrophotographic image quality much higher, toners have been made to have smaller particle diameters and made finer. For example, in order to improve resolution and sharpness and faithfully reproduce latent images, it is common to use toners with a weight average particle diameter of about 6 to 9 .mu.m. Also, for the purpose of making a copying time shorter and power consumption smaller, there is a tendency toward lower fixing temperatures. Under such circumstances, the toner is more liable to electrostatically adhere onto the developing sleeve and when external physical force is applied, the surface of the developing sleeve may be contaminated and the toner may be melt-adhered.
As a method to prevent such phenomena, it is proposed to use in a developing assembly a developing sleeve having a metal substrate provided with a coat layer formed of a resin in which a solid lubricant and a conductive fine powder such as carbon powder are dispersed. The use of this method can be seen to greatly reduce the occurrence of the above phenomena. In this method, however, the surface shape of the developing sleeve is uneven and hence uniform charging still cannot be achieved sufficiently, leaving such problems on durability or running performance that the coat layer may become brittle.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 3-200986 discloses a developing sleeve comprising a metal substrate provided with a conductive coat layer formed of a resin in which a solid lubricant, a conductive fine powder such as carbon powder and also spherical particles are dispersed. In this developing sleeve, the shape of the developing sleeve surface is made uniform, the charging is uniform and wear resistance is improved. However, even in this developing sleeve, its running performance is sought to be more improved, e.g., in wear resistance of the conductive coat layer and prevention of toner contamination and melt-adhesion of toner when the sleeve has worn.

Developer carrying member, developing assembly, image forming apparatus, and process cartridge


An arrangement for supporting a building wall, such as a foundation wall, against inward movement caused by shifting of adjacent soil or by hydrostatic forces or other forces acting on the exterior surface of the wall to push it inwardly. The support arrangement includes upper and lower jacking members that each engage respective upper and lower sections of a support beam that is placed vertically against the surface of the wall to be supported. Each jacking member includes a respective jackscrew that is rotatable for applying a wall holding or a wall restoring force to either or both of the upper and lower sections of the wall.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a supporting arrangement for supporting a building wall, such as a foundation wall, against externally-caused forces tending to move the wall, or a part of the wall, inwardly toward the interior of the structure of which the wall is a part. More particularly, the present invention relates to a wall support that includes upper and lower jacking members for acting against upper and lower portions of a beam that is positioned against the interior surface of the wall to be supported, for transferring supporting forces from the jacking members to the interior surface of the wall, either to support the wall or to push the wall outwardly from an inwardly-deflected position.
2. Description of the Related Art
Building walls, such as foundation walls that are below ground level, are subjected to external forces that act against the wall outer surface. For foundation walls, such forces result from the pressure of the surrounding earth that abuts the outer surface of the wall. Additionally, hydrostatic forces caused by water in the ground adjacent to the wall, either from rainfall or other sources, can add significantly to the inwardly-directed forces that act on the outer surfaces of foundation walls. Further, the roots of foundation plants and trees, that enlarge and spread over time, can also exert pressures against foundation walls by slowly expanding toward the wall outer surface, acting against the wall outer surface by direct contact, or indirectly by expanding and pushing the earth surrounding the roots against the wall surface.
As a result of forces applied to their exterior surfaces, foundation walls can bow, deflect, or shift inwardly, or they can crack or progressively fracture over time, causing water leaks and adversely affecting the structural integrity of the building or structure of which the wall is a part. Accordingly, some means of interiorly-positioned support is desirable to control or limit inward wall deflection to avoid collapse of the wall.
A number of different wall supporting arrangements have been devised to overcome inward movement or inward deflection of foundation walls. Some of the previously-devised support arrangements involve externally-positioned, in-ground anchors placed in the ground adjacent to the outer surface of the wall. Those arrangements generally include a rod that is suitably anchored in the earth at an outer end and is connected to or extends through the wall to serve as a stop to limit inward movement of the wall. Other support arrangements that are intended to be positioned adjacent the interior surface of the wall are of a large and complex nature and protrude into the interior space to such an extent as to significantly limit the useable area of that interior space. It is therefore desirable to provide a wall support arrangement that is effective to limit inward movement of a building wall, that is readily adjustable to respond to changed wall loading conditions and deflection, and that does not excessively intrude into the adjoining interior space.


A temperature measuring device using an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor is proposed, which includes: an optical fiber wound one or more times on a ring part, which has a preset diameter by rotating a part of the optical fiber once, thereby maintaining a predetermined shape; a housing in which the optical fiber is arranged; and an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor provided in a straight line part of the optical fiber, and thus the present invention prevents deformation of the optical fiber and the optical fiber Bragg grating sensor, which are arranged to be spaced apart at a predetermined distance in the housing, even when deformation occurs in the housing according to a change in the outside temperature, thereby accurately measuring temperature without distortion.

In general, an optical fiber sensor refers to a sensor that estimates an amount to be measured by using changes in the intensity of light passing through an optical fiber, the refractive index, length and mode of the optical fiber, a polarization state, and the like.
The optical fiber is mainly formed of quartz glass, and composed of a core part serving as a center of the optical fiber added with germanium to slightly increase the refractive index, and a cladding part serving as an overlapping layer for protecting the center.
Light incident to the optical fiber core is reflected at an interface between a core layer having a high refractive index and a cladding layer having a low refractive index and propagated along the core part of the optical fiber.
The optical fiber sensor is classified into intensity type, phase type, diffraction grating type, mode modulation type, polarization type, and distribution measurement type according to a used effect, and provides various measured values such as voltage, current, temperature, pressure, strain, rotation rate, sound, and gas concentration.
The fiber optic sensor facilitates an ultra-precision broadband measurement, is not influenced by electromagnetic waves, is easily measured remotely, does not use electricity in a sensor unit, and has an excellent corrosion resistance due to a silica material, so there is no limit in usage environments.
A representative of the optical fiber sensors is a fiber Bragg grating sensor (hereinafter referred to as 'FBG sensor') type optical fiber sensor.
The FBG sensor refers to a sensor that uses properties in which several fiber Bragg gratings are engraved on a strand of the fiber by predetermined lengths, and then a wavelength of light reflected from each Bragg grating varies according to changes in external conditions such as temperature or intensity.
Accordingly, as a light refraction change is triggered in the grating when the grating is deformed due to an action of physical force onto the optical fiber formed with the gratings, the FBG sensor measures a strain rate of the optical fiber by measuring the above refraction change, thereby measuring the strain rate of a structure to which the optical fiber is fixed, so that loads and stresses acting on the structure may be outputted.
In addition, the FBG sensor is used as a sensor that detects strain rate, angle, acceleration, displacement, temperature, pressure displacement, and the like by using the principle of total reflection in which light within a predetermined angle is entirely reflected from an interface therebetween when the light proceeds from a material having a high refractive index to a material having a low refractive index in the optical fiber.
For example, the applicant of the present invention has disclosed and submitted the application and obtained the registration on a technology using the FBG sensor which are described in patent documents 1 and 2 as below.
Meanwhile, according to a measuring device using an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor in the related art, an optical fiber arranged with an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor is inserted into a straight protective tube, and the optical fiber is fixed to both ends of the protective tube by coupling fixing members, so that the fixing members may prevent the optical fiber inside the protective tube from being deformed by external stress.
Accordingly, in order to facilitate an accurate measurement in the measuring device using an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor according to the related art, the external temperature is required to pass through the protective tube and be transmitted only to the optical fiber therein, and only the optical fiber of the protective tube is required to be deformed according to temperature changes.
In general, the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor has a very fine deformation range between −0.5 nm and +0.5 nm.
However, in the measuring device using an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor according to the related art, since the protective tube expands or contracts according to changes of the external temperature and the optical fiber is fixed by the fixing members, the optical fiber also expands and contracts in association with the changes in expansion and contraction of the protective tube.
Accordingly, when the optical fiber is elastically deformed, an error value due to the expansion and contraction is added in addition to a deformation value due to the external temperature. Thus, the measured value has an error.
FIG. 1 is a view showing a configuration of a measuring device using an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor according to the related art. FIG. 2 is a view illustrating a state in which an optical fiber is bent.
In order to solve the above problems, as shown in FIG. 1, patent document 3 discloses a configuration of a measuring device including a protective tube including at least one bent part, an optical fiber spaced apart from an inner wall of the protective tube, and an optical fiber Bragg grating sensor arranged on one side of the optical fiber to measure a temperature.
Meanwhile, the optical fiber is also required to be bent to have the same curvature as that of the bent part in order to arrange the optical fiber inside the bent part formed in the protective tube.
To this end, when a strand of the optical fiber is bent, there is a limit in the curvature capable of maintaining the optical fiber in a bent state even when the optical fiber is maximally bent, because the optical fiber has inherent stiffness and elasticity.
As shown in FIG. 2, even when both ends of the optical fiber are fixed, the bending curvature of the bent optical fiber may increase due to the elasticity applied outward of the bent optical fiber in the arrow direction shown in FIG. 2, that is, due to the elasticity of the optical fiber applied in the vertical direction, so that a diameter of the curved optical fiber may increase.
Accordingly, when the measuring device is manufactured by bending a strand of the optical fiber, it is difficult to miniaturize the measuring device to have a size smaller than a critical diameter for maintaining the optical fiber in a bent state.
In particular, when an actual curved optical fiber is installed inside the protective tube, the optical fiber cannot maintain the inverse-U shape.
Accordingly, it is difficult to apply patent document 3 to an actual product.
In addition, according to the measuring device using the optical fiber Bragg grating sensor in the related art, since the measuring device is connected to only one end of both ends of the optical fiber, the temperature cannot be measured using both ends of the measuring device.
(Patent Document 1) Korean Registered Patent No. 10-1057309 (Published on Aug. 16, 2011)
(Patent Document 2) Korean Registered Patent No. 10-0992628 (Published on Nov. 5, 2010)
(Patent Document 3) Korean Registered Patent No. 10-1504028 (Published on Mar. 18, 2015)

Temperature measuring device using optical fiber Bragg grating sensor