Provide are a composition for forming a composite, the composition including a cellulose-based compound, a polyphenol-based compound, and a solvent, wherein an amount of the polyphenol-based compound is 1 to 40 parts by weight based on 100 parts by weight of the cellulose-based compound, a composite formed from the composition, and an orally ingestible composition including the composite. The composite has characteristics of being dissolved in a solvent in a various pH ranges depending on a mixing ratio of the cellulose-based compound and the polyphenol-based compound. Therefore, when the composite is used, a composite film may be easily prepared, and the composite film may be useful in medical or foods fields where film characteristics dependent on pH is required.

In the pharmaceutical or food field, film coating is used to acquire physical and chemical protection of active main components. Film coating in the pharmaceutical field is used to improve the quality of pharmaceutical products by protecting them from the environment, such as moisture, oxygen, or light and shielding the taste, smell, or color of active main components. Especially, film coating using a compound having acid resistance in a pH range of about 4 to 7 among compounds having pH-dependent dissolution characteristics increases resistance of a tablet against gastric juice, thereby rapidly initiating the release of the same in vivo intestinal environment. The film coating using a compound having pH-dependent dissolution characteristics as described above is called enteric coating.
If the enteric film coating is used in pharmaceutical materials, a compound, such as polymethacrylate, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose phthalate, polyvinylacrylate phthalate, cellulose acetate phthalate, or hydroxypropylmethylcellulose acetate succinate is used. And when the enteric film coating is used in some foods materials, alginates, shellac and the like are limitedly used. A film coating is formed by, for example, applying a composition containing the compound to a tablet, and drying the resultant to form a protective film.
However, the film described above, is impossible to use in some foods materials. Alginates or shellac that can be used for foods materials does not have sufficient pH dependent dissolution characteristics, thus dissolves slowly not only in the stomach but also in the intestine, not providing a satisfactory enteric quality that a user desires. In addition, there is much room for improvement for the pharmaceutical materials described above, as the pharmaceutical materials have low transparency from a quality point of view, and the pharmaceutical materials are brittle in a condition of low water concentration, and a large amount of additional excipients, such as plasticizer or talc should be used for sticky characteristics, or materials having phthalic acid have problems, such as formation of free phthalic acid.

Composition for forming complex, complex formed therefrom, and composition for oral administration including said complex


Provided is an electro-optical apparatus including a first thin-film transistor having a first gate electrode, a first gate insulating layer and a first active layer, which are respectively formed of a conductive film, an insulating film and a semiconductor film, in a pixel region of a device substrate, the apparatus including: a second thin-film transistor having a first gate electrode formed of the conductive film, a second gate insulating layer formed by removing a portion of the insulating film in a thickness direction and a second active layer formed of the semiconductor film, in a region other than the pixel region of the device substrate.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electro-optical apparatus, an electronic apparatus including thin-film transistors on a device substrate, and a method of manufacturing the electro-optical apparatus.
2. Related Art
Among a variety of electro-optical apparatuses, in an active matrix liquid crystal apparatus, for example, liquid crystal is held between a device substrate 10 shown in FIGS. 19a and 19b and a counter substrate (not shown). In the device substrate 10, a pixel-switching thin-film transistor 1c and a pixel electrode 2a electrically connected to a drain of the thin-film transistor 1c is formed in each of a plurality of pixel regions 1e corresponding to intersections between gate lines 3a (scanning lines) and source lines 6a (data lines). The alignment of molecules of the liquid crystal is controlled by an image signal applied to the pixel electrode 2a from the source line 6a through the thin-film transistor 1c in each pixel. A storage capacitor 1h having a portion of a capacitive line 3b which serves as a lower electrode 3c and an extending portion of a drain electrode 6b which serves as an upper electrode 6c is formed in the pixel region 1e and an insulating film 4 for configuring a gate insulating layer 4e of the thin-film transistor 1c is used as a dielectric layer 4c in the storage capacitor 1h (FIG. 3 of Japanese Patent No. 2584290)
Meanwhile, even in an electro-optical apparatus using the bottom-gate thin-film transistor 1c shown in FIGS. 19a and 19b, as shown in the left side of FIG. 19b and FIG. 19c, when thin-film transistors 1g and 1g′ used in a gate line driving circuit or a source line driving circuit are formed using a method of manufacturing the thin-film transistor 1c, a driving IC having the gate line driving circuit or the source line driving circuit included therein does not need to be separately used. That is, when the gate line 3a, the gate insulating layer 4e and an active layer 7a are formed and at the same time a signal line 3g for configuring a gate electrode of the thin-film transistor 1g, the gate insulating layer 4g and an active layer 7g are formed, a driving circuit may be included in the device substrate 10 with a smaller number of processes. In the driving circuit, a gate wiring 3g′ and a drain wiring 6g need to be electrically connected and, in this case, a conductive pattern 2s is electrically connected to a lower conductive layer 3s extending from the gate wiring 3g′ and an upper conductive layer 6s extending from the drain wiring 6g through contact holes 82 and 89 formed in the insulating film 4 or a passivation film 8.
However, when the active layer 7g of the thin-film transistor 1g used in the driving circuit is formed using an amorphous silicon film similar to the active layer 7a of the thin-film transistor 1c, ON current is too low compared with a case of using a polysilicon film and thus a high-speed operation in the gate line driving circuit or the source line driving circuit cannot be realized. In particular, in the thin-film transistor 1c for switching the pixel, when the thickness of the insulating film 4 used in the gate insulating layer 4e is increased for the purpose of reducing parasitic capacitance, the thickness of the gate insulating layer 4e of the thin-film transistor 1g is also increased. Thus, the ON current of the thin-film transistor 1g is too low to be used in the driving circuit.

Electro-optical apparatus, electronic apparatus, and method of manufacturing electro-optical apparatus


Content obtained from a help file containing at least two interactive links in a sequence may be displayed in a help facility. Each interactive link may be associated with at least one user-activated step in a computer software application to perform in connection with a help topic according to the sequence so that once a user activates one of these links out of sequence, an operation in the computer software application may be invoked to effect the at least one user-activated step.

Many computer software applications, such as word processors, image editors, spreadsheets, email clients, and the like, include a help facility to aid users in performing discrete operations and/or comprehensive tasks in the application. Help facilities come in many different forms including wizards, which present a sequence of steps for a user to perform to accomplish a particular task, context-sensitive help systems, which automatically display help topics relevant to the current state of the application, and conventional text-based help systems which present a user with an index that can be manually searched to look for a help topic of interest.
FIG. 1 shows a screenshot of a help facility for Adobe Acrobat®—an application for viewing, editing and creating documents in the Portable Document Format (PDF). As shown in FIG. 1, a user of the Acrobat application would be presented with a window 100 within a graphical user interface (GUI) that includes a menu bar 104 providing access to various drop-down menus, various graphical buttons 103 that, when selected, place the application in different modes and/or provide the user with access to different tools, and a workspace 105 for displaying sub-windows containing PDF documents. In this screenshot, the workspace 105 includes two sub-windows—one to display a PDF document 102 (manual.pdf), which for example the user is viewing or editing, and another window to display a PDF document 106 (Acrohelp.pdf), which is a guide containing the help information for the application. The user may invoke the help system, thereby bringing up the help document 102, by selecting the Help menu item on the menu bar 104.
Once opened, the user can navigate the help guide using various different mechanisms. For example, the user can scroll through the help guide as if reading a book by using the scrolling controls 113 for the window 106. Alternatively, the user can select a particular bookmark, such as "Annotating PDF Documents" bookmark 108, which will cause a corresponding help page 110 to be presented to the user. The user also can jump to desired locations within the help guide by selecting (e.g., clicking on) links with a help page, such as link 112 in page 110. The link 112 points to another page (for example, "Using the annotation tools") within the help guide and, upon being clicked, causes that page to be displayed in the window 106. In any event, the user can peruse the help guide to gather information about how to use various features of the application to perform operations and tasks.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Extensible help facility for a computer software application


An integrity monitoring system for monitoring degradation in a composite riser string. The system includes composite riser structures incorporating strain and vibration sensors to measure changes in the stiffness strain on a first orientation and on a second orientation. The system can also include monitoring modules attached to each individual riser and devices to transfer the data from the monitoring module to the surface controller. Additionally, the monitor system can provide for an alarm when predetermined warning limits are exceeded.

In offshore oil and gas drilling, production, and completion operations a platform at the surface of the ocean is connected to the well head on the sea floor by risers. A riser is a tubular member through which drilling tools, tubing, and other components used in oil and gas exploration pass. The current practice is to make the risers from steel. More recently, it has been proposed that the risers be made from composite materials. Risers made from a composite material offer the advantage of being lighter in weight than steel risers. Thus, composite risers have the advantage of requiring a smaller surface platform to support the same length of composite riser than would be required with a steel riser.
Offshore oil and gas exploration is progressively moving to deeper and deeper water. Thus, the weight savings advantage of the composite riser become more significant as the water depth in which wells are drilled becomes greater. Some well heads are on the sea floor more than 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.
A concern with any deep water oil and gas exploration is maintaining the integrity of the riser system. Breaches in the riser system can result in the escape of drilling muds, oil and/or gas into the sea.
The use of composite risers in actual field applications is relatively new. Thus, there is little long-term experience concerning the reliability of composite risers. Clearly, failure or breach of a riser is to be avoided. The present invention provides an apparatus and method for monitoring the integrity of composite risers by monitoring changes in the riser stiffness. Monitoring of the stiffness of the risers can allow identification of weakened risers and allow their replacement prior to failure. A change in the stiffness is monitored using strain sensors or vibration sensors.
Stiffness is defined as a measure of the amount of deformation per unit load. When a riser joint is new, it will have certain stiffness value and therefore when the joint is subjected to a certain load, the joint will deform to a certain level, which can be measured using displacement gauges or strain sensors. The strain is defined as the displacement per unit length of the section over which the displacement is measured. The virgin stiffness of a riser joint can be predicted using numerical solutions and the amount of strain when the riser joint is subjected to a specific load can also be predicted using numerical solutions such as finite element analysis. When the riser is damaged, the stiffness will be reduced and the amount of deformation for the same load will be increased.
Stiffness of the composite riser is an important design parameter because high stiffness results in high loads when the riser stretches as the platform moves and low stiffness is not desirable because it can result in clashing between different risers. The axial stiffness of the riser is related to the elastic modulus of the riser, the cross sectional area and the length of the riser string. The length of the riser string is defined by the water depth and the cross sectional area is mainly established to ensure that the riser can withstand the design loads such as pressure, tension and bending loads. The elastic modulus is affected by the fibers used to manufacture the composite riser and the layout of the different laminates. While the currently used material, steel, has a fixed elastic modulus of 30 million lb/square inch (206.85 million kPa), composite risers can have different values. The present invention can be used with composite risers, the elastic axial modulus of which is between 5 to 15 million lb/square inch (34.475 and 103.425 million kPa), and preferably a value between 10 and 14 million lb/square inch (68.95 and 96.53 million kPa). Damage to the composite riser will manifest itself by a reduction of the riser's stiffness, indicating that the elastic modulus of the riser has been reduced.
It is also noted that the composite riser joint will fail when the strain in the riser reaches a specific value. This value is in the order of 0.5% for the carbon fiber composite risers being considered for offshore applications. An object of the present invention is to monitor riser strain either (1) on a continuous basis to assess the extent of damage and also the variation of loading, or (2) by monitoring for the maximum strain experienced in the riser until it reaches a specific value which is lower than the strain at which failure is expected. This will ensure sufficient time to remove the damaged joint prior to its failure. In another aspect, the present invention provides for using the natural vibration frequency of the riser to monitor the integrity of the riser. As the stiffness of the riser changes, its natural frequency, which is a function of the riser's stiffness and mass, will change and thus the riser's vibration signature will change. Although this is a well known technique, individual testing and the generation of custom strain curves is required to characterize a specific riser because configuration, cross-section, wall thickness, material selection, etc. will affect vibration response characteristics. Monitoring the changes in a riser's vibration signature, which is commonly done using accelerometers, can provide an indication of the level of damage to that riser. Because of the complexity of the composite structure, theoretical predictions of the relationship between level of damage and changes in strains or vibration signature are difficult. Therefore, calibration curves need to be developed as part of the riser qualification program. Developing these curves involves testing some composite joints to induce damage. In one embodiment of the invention, fiber optics are used as the strain sensors and a test method is provided demonstrating the qualification of the riser when strain monitoring is used.

Composite riser with integrity monitoring apparatus and method


A vehicle seat storage system includes a center passenger seat disposed between side passenger seats. The center seat includes a seat base and a seat back. A reclining mechanism mounted to one of side frame members of the seat base allows the seat back to move relative to the seat base. Seat anchors are disposed outwardly of the side frame members for securing a child seat. The center seat has a seating condition where the center seat is attached to a vehicle floor, and a stowed condition where the center seat is unattached from the floor with the seat back folded against the seat base. A vehicle interior sidewall includes a recessed portion configured to receive the center seat in the stowed condition. A lock mechanism provided in the recessed portion releasably engages the center seat when positioned in the recessed portion.

Several vehicle types come equipped with multiple rows of vehicle seats, including a first row of seats for the vehicle driver and a front seat passenger, a second row of seats disposed immediately behind the first row, and a third row of seats disposed behind the second row of seats. Often, one or two vehicle doors are provided adjacent the second row of seats, but not adjacent the third row of seats. This necessitates occupants using the third row of seats to enter a door adjacent the second row of seats and maneuver back to the third row of vehicle seats and later maneuver forward past the second row of seats and exit a door adjacent the second row of seats. To facilitate such ingress and egress to and from the third row of seats, the second row of seats, or one or more seats thereof, can be equipped to tilt and/or slide forward to provide more access room. Additionally, the second row of seats can be provided with a gap between right-side and left-side seats allowing passengers to access the third row by passing in the gap between the seats of the second row of seats.
An auxiliary vehicle seat can be provided as part of the second row of seats and disposed in the gap between the lateral side seats of the second row of seats. This axillary seat is typically smaller than the adjacent lateral side seats and is sometimes removable. Production vehicles having removable independent second row center seats are generally not equipped with isofix seat anchors for attaching a child seat to the center seat. This is primarily because the center seat is typically not wide enough to adequately carry a child seat. Further, the removable center seat is typically folded into a stowed condition and either removed from the vehicle, placed on a cargo floor, or at least partially stowed in a sub-floor cargo space. However, a system for stowing a removable center seat configured for attachment of a child seat that would allow for the center seat to be stored within the interior cargo space, and yet not occupy any floor or sub-floor cargo space, would be desirable.


A COT control circuit used for realizing current sharing in multi-phase DC-DC converter. The multi-phase DC-DC converter has N switching circuits, N controllers, and a trimming current generator receiving N switching voltage signals of the N switching circuits to generate N trimming current signals. The N trimming current signals are respectively sent to the N controllers to regulate on time of at least one controllable switch of each of the N switching circuits so as to finally realize current sharing in the multi-phase circuits.

In power conversion applications, an interleaved multi-phase power supply is widely used in power conversion applications requiring large power and large amounts of current. The interleaved multi-phase power supply also provides small ripple and optimizes thermal and power distributions. However, due to biases of the load and element characteristics among multiple phase circuits, output current biases may thus be occurred among multiple output current signals. The output current biases may affect efficiency and stability of the whole system. For example, in a COT controlled multi-phase power supply, on time of switch of each phase may be different from each other due to biases of element characteristics. Current sharing is unable to realize in the multiple phase circuits without on time regulation.
Therefore, current sharing control is indispensable in the interleaved multi-phase power supply. It is desired to have a solution for solving the current sharing in multi-phase DC-DC converter.

Multi-phase converter and control circuit thereof

Chengdu Monolithic Power Systems Co., Ltd.


Provided is a sheet inverting apparatus wherein members, such as a roller, are not brought into contact with the printed surface of a sheet at all, and the occurrence of dirt can be prevented by eliminating friction of ink on the surface of the sheet. A first transport apparatus and a second transport apparatus each have a plurality of transport belts which move on transport tracks along sheet transport directions and a suction box which sucks the sheet on the transport belts through suction holes formed on the transport belts. A turn guide arranged between the first transport apparatus and the second transport apparatus has a plurality of guide ribs disposed between the transport belts. Each of the guide ribs coming into slidable contact with the sheet forms a curved inverting transfer surface from an inversion starting point side to an inversion end point side.

Such an apparatus of the prior art is described in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-123065. In this invention, a transport apparatus for transporting a transfer sheet includes a suction device for sucking the transfer sheet and a switching device for switching the suction force according to the stiffness of the transfer sheet.
In an apparatus described in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 5-5755, a suction duct including a suction fan is provided to suck air from the inside of an exposure house and the sucked air is exhausted in a circulating manner from an air outlet to the top surface of a sheet photosensitive material through an air supply duct extending upward along the optical axis of the exposure house.
In an apparatus described in Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 7-29074, a belt is provided for scanning in a certain direction a side of a substrate having air suction holes formed thereon, a plurality of suction ducts are extended so as to cross the scanning direction of the belt and are connected to an exhausting device, and the exhaust holes of the suction ducts are reduced in cross-sectional area as the air suction holes of the suction ducts come closer to the exhausting device.
In an apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2006-89223, the inside of a chamber is divided into two adjacent spaces by a diaphragm, air is passed through an upstream chamber to generate a suction force in a transport direction upstream from an image forming region, and air is passed through a chamber for the image forming region to generate a suction force in the image forming region and downstream of the image forming region.


An active suspension system (10) includes an electrically powered actuator (16) utilized with a height sensor (18) and a gas spring (24) controlled by a gas supply (26) that pressurizes and vents the gas spring to quickly add or remove a predetermined force as needed in assisting the electrically powered actuator.

Active suspension systems have previously been utilized to operate between sprung and unsprung masses of a vehicle instead of the more conventional steel or air (or other gas) spring systems. The previously used air suspension systems incorporate air springs and damping elements for controlling the movement of the sprung vehicle mass by reacting to force inputs through the unsprung mass as the vehicle travels along the roadway.
Active suspension systems for vehicles have more recently been introduced to reduce movement of the sprung vehicle mass by reacting to force inputs from the unsprung mass so as to be capable of adjusting for vehicle turning, crosswinds and road imperfections. Such active suspension systems have previously included an electrically powered actuator and a gas spring that cooperatively provide the support between the sprung and unsprung masses of the vehicle.


Buried backside conductive layers with increased conductive efficiency can be provided for thermally developable materials using a specific organic solvent mixture to coat a protective overcoat directly disposed over the conductive layer. This organic solvent mixture comprises an alcohol in which one or more film-forming polymers used in the formulation are soluble at room temperature. The alcohol is used in an amount of more than 10 and up to 90 weight % of the organic solvent mixture.

Silver-containing thermographic and photothermographic imaging materials (that is, thermally developable imaging materials) that are imaged and/or developed using heat and without liquid processing have been known in the art for many years.
Silver-containing thermographic imaging materials are non-photo-sensitive materials that are used in a recording process wherein images are generated by the use of thermal energy. These materials generally comprise a support having disposed thereon (a) a relatively or completely non-photosensitive source of reducible silver ions, (b) a reducing composition (usually including a developer) for the reducible silver ions, and (c) a suitable hydrophilic or hydrophobic binder.
In a typical thermographic construction, the image-forming layers are based on silver salts of long chain fatty acids. Typically, the preferred non-photosensitive reducible silver source is a silver salt of a long chain aliphatic carboxylic acid having from 10 to 30 carbon atoms. The silver salt of behenic acid or mixtures of acids of similar molecular weight are generally used. At elevated temperatures, the silver of the silver carboxylate is reduced by a reducing agent for silver ion such as methyl gallate, hydroquinone, substituted-hydroquinones, hindered phenols, catechols, pyrogallol, ascorbic acid, and ascorbic acid derivatives, whereby an image of elemental silver is formed. Some thermographic constructions are imaged by contacting them with the thermal head of a thermographic recording apparatus such as a thermal printer or thermal facsimile. In such constructions, an anti-stick layer is coated on top of the imaging layer to prevent sticking of the thermographic construction to the thermal head of the apparatus utilized. The resulting thermographic construction is then heated to an elevated temperature, typically in the range of from about 60 to about 225° C., resulting in the formation of an image.
Silver-containing photothermographic imaging materials (that is, photosensitive thermally developable imaging materials) that are imaged with actinic radiation and then developed using heat and without liquid processing have also been known in the art for many years. Such materials are used in a recording process wherein an image is formed by imagewise exposure of the photothermographic material to specific electromagnetic radiation (for example, X-radiation, or ultraviolet, visible, or infrared radiation) and developed by the use of thermal energy. These materials, also known as "dry silver" materials, generally comprise a support having coated thereon: (a) a photocatalyst (that is, a photosensitive compound such as silver halide) that upon such exposure provides a latent image in exposed grains that are capable of acting as a catalyst for the subsequent formation of a silver image in a development step, (b) a relatively or completely non-photosensitive source of reducible silver ions, (c) a reducing composition (usually including a developer) for the reducible silver ions, and (d) a hydrophilic or hydrophobic binder. The latent image is then developed by application of thermal energy.
In photothermographic materials, exposure of the photographic silver halide to light produces small clusters containing silver atoms (Ag0)n. The imagewise distribution of these clusters, known in the art as a latent image, is generally not visible by ordinary means. Thus, the photosensitive material must be further developed to produce a visible image. This is accomplished by the reduction of silver ions that are in catalytic proximity to silver halide grains bearing the silver-containing clusters of the latent image. This produces a black-and-white image. The non-photosensitive silver source is catalytically reduced to form the visible black-and-white negative image while much of the silver halide, generally, remains as silver halide and is not reduced.
In photothermographic materials, the reducing agent for the reducible silver ions, often referred to as a "developer," may be any compound that, in the presence of the latent image, can reduce silver ion to metallic silver and is preferably of relatively low activity until it is heated to a temperature sufficient to cause the reaction. A wide variety of classes of compounds have been disclosed in the literature that function as developers for photothermographic materials. At elevated temperatures, the reducible silver ions are reduced by the reducing agent. This reaction occurs preferentially in the regions surrounding the latent image. This reaction produces a negative image of metallic silver having a color that ranges from yellow to deep black depending upon the presence of toning agents and other components in the photothermographic imaging layer(s).
Differences Between Photothermography and Photography
The imaging arts have long recognized that the field of photothermography is clearly distinct from that of photography. Photothermographic materials differ significantly from conventional silver halide photographic materials that require processing with aqueous processing solutions.
In photothermographic imaging materials, a visible image is created by heat as a result of the reaction of a developer incorporated within the material. Heating at 50° C. or more is essential for this dry development. In contrast, conventional photographic imaging materials require processing in aqueous processing baths at more moderate temperatures (from 30° C. to 50° C.) to provide a visible image.
In photothermographic materials, only a small amount of silver halide is used to capture light and a non-photosensitive source of reducible silver ions (for example, a silver carboxylate or a silver benzotriazole) is used to generate the visible image using thermal development. Thus, the imaged photosensitive silver halide serves as a catalyst for the physical development process involving the non-photosensitive source of reducible silver ions and the incorporated reducing agent. In contrast, conventional wet-processed, black-and-white photographic materials use only one form of silver (that is, silver halide) that, upon chemical development, is itself at least partially converted into the silver image, or that upon physical development requires addition of an external silver source (or other reducible metal ions that form black images upon reduction to the corresponding metal). Thus, photothermographic materials require an amount of silver halide per unit area that is only a fraction of that used in conventional wet-processed photographic materials.
In photothermographic materials, all of the "chemistry" for imaging is incorporated within the material itself. For example, such materials include a developer (that is, a reducing agent for the reducible silver ions) while conventional photographic materials usually do not. The incorporation of the developer into photothermographic materials can lead to increased formation of various types of "fog" or other undesirable sensitometric side effects. Therefore, much effort has gone into the preparation and manufacture of photothermographic materials to minimize these problems.
Moreover, in photothermographic materials, the unexposed silver halide generally remains intact after development and the material must be stabilized against further imaging and development. In contrast, silver halide is removed from conventional photographic materials after solution development to prevent further imaging (that is in the aqueous fixing step).
Because photothermographic materials require dry thermal processing, they present distinctly different problems and require different materials in manufacture and use, compared to conventional, wet-processed silver halide photographic materials. Additives that have one effect in conventional silver halide photographic materials may behave quite differently when incorporated in photothermographic materials where the underlying chemistry is significantly more complex. The incorporation of such additives as, for example, stabilizers, antifoggants, speed enhancers, supersensitizers, and spectral and chemical sensitizers in conventional photographic materials is not predictive of whether such additives will prove beneficial or detrimental in photothermographic materials. For example, it is not uncommon for a photographic antifoggant useful in conventional photographic materials to cause various types of fog when incorporated into photothermographic materials, or for supersensitizers that are effective in photographic materials to be inactive in photothermographic materials.
These and other distinctions between photothermographic and photographic materials are described in Unconventional Imaging Processes, E. Brinckman et al. (Eds.), The Focal Press, London and New York, 1978, pp. 74–75, in D. H. Klosterboer, Imaging Processes and Materials, (Neblette's Eighth Edition), J. Sturge, V. Walworth, and A. Shepp, Eds., Van Nostrand-Reinhold, New York, 1989, Chapter 9, pp. 279–291, in Zou et al., J. Imaging Sci. Technol. 1996, 40, pp. 94–103, and in M. R. V. Sahyun, J. Imaging Sci. Technol. 1998, 42, 23.
Problem to be Solved
Many of the chemicals used to make supports or supported layers in thermally developable materials have electrically insulating properties, and electrostatic charges frequently build up on the materials during manufacture, packaging, and use. The accumulated charges can cause various problems. For example, in photothermographic materials containing photosensitive silver halides, accumulated electrostatic charge can generate light to which the silver halides are sensitive. This may result in imaging defects that are a particular problem where the images are used for medical diagnosis.
Build-up of electrostatic charge can also cause sheets of thermally processable materials to stick together causing misfeeds and jamming within processing equipment. Additionally, accumulated electrostatic charge can attract dust or other particulate matter to the materials, thereby requiring more cleaning to insure rapid transport through the processing equipment and quality imaging.
Build-up of electrostatic charge also makes handling of developed sheets of imaged material more difficult. For example, radiologists desire a static free sheet for viewing on light boxes. This problem can be particularly severe when reviewing an imaged film that has been stored for a long period of time because many antistatic materials loose their effectiveness over time.
In general, electrostatic charge is related to surface resistivity (measured in ohm/sq) and charge level. While electrostatic charge control agents (or antistatic agents) can be included in any layer of an imaging material, the accumulation of electrostatic charge can be prevented by reducing the surface resistivity or by lowering the charge level. These results can usually be achieved by including charge control agents in surface layers such as protective overcoats. In thermally processable materials, charge control agents may be used in backing layers that are on the opposite side of the support as the imaging layers. Another approach taken to reduce surface resistivity is to include a "buried" conductive layer incorporating conductive particles.
A wide variety of charge control agents, both inorganic and organic, have been devised and used for electrostatic charge control and numerous publications describe such agents. Metal oxides are described in conductive layers in U.S. Pat. No. 5,340,676 (Anderson et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 6,464,413 (Oyamada), U.S. Pat. No. 5,368,995 (Christian et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 5,731,119 (Eichorst et al.), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,013 (Christian et al.).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,355,405 (Ludemann et al.) describes thermally developable materials that include very thin adhesion-promoting layers on either side of the support. These adhesion-promoting layers include specific mixtures of polymers and other compounds to promote adhesion, and are also known as "carrier" layers.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,689,546 (LaBelle et al.) describes thermally developable materials that contain a backside conductive layer comprising non-acicular metal antimonate nanoparticles in the amount of from about 40 to about 55% (based on total dry weight). Conductive layers with a high metal antimonate to binder ratio useful for thermally developable materials are also described in copending and commonly assigned U.S. Ser. No. 10/930,428 (filed Aug. 31, 2004 by Ludemann, LaBelle, Koestner, Hefley, Bhave, Geisler, and Philip). Buried backside conductive layers comprising non-acicular metal antimonate nanoparticles in one or more binder polymers and a non-imaging backside overcoat layer are described in copending and commonly assigned U.S. Ser. No. 10/930,438 (filed Aug. 31, 2004 by Ludemann, LaBelle, Philip, Koestener, and Bhave).
Commercial products containing conductive zinc antimonate particles are sold under the trademark CELNAX® by Nissan Chemical Industries, Ltd. These products are a dispersion of colloidal zinc antimonate double oxide in a hydrosol or organosol containing methanol. The dispersion forms a transparent antistatic coating when formulated with resin binders in organic solvents. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,689,546 (noted above), the backside conductive layer formulations using this product can be coated out of various organic solvents with methyl ethyl ketone being the most commonly used solvent. Protective overcoat layers disposed over the backside conductive layer are also coated out of organic solvents with methyl ethyl ketone again being the most common organic solvent.
A significant advance in the art was provided by the discovery of the use of conductive formulations containing "clusters" of metal oxides of controlled sizes. This concept allows for exceptional conductivity in the "buried" backside conductive layer in thermally developable materials as described in copending and commonly assigned U.S. Ser. No. 10/978,205 (filed Oct. 29, 2004 by Ludemann, LaBelle, Koestner, and Chen).
There is, however, a continuing need in the industry to find more efficient and less costly ways to reduce electrostatic charge, particularly by using "buried" conductive layers on the backside of thermally developable imaging materials. The commercial zinc antimonate dispersions are expensive and there is also a need to achieve the same antistatic performance using lower amounts of conductive material and thinner coatings of the conductive layer.

Thermally developable materials with improved conductive layer


A positioning device is provided. The positioning device includes a movable platform and a monolithic base. Struts are attached to both the movable platform and the monolithic base. The monolithic base moves each of the attached struts to cause the movable platform to move.

The present invention relates to positioners for positioning objects, and more particularly to a deformable positioning stage.
Assembly of optic-electronic devices requires precision alignment of optical fibers with lasers or sensors and then bonding. A worker looking through a microscope at the end of a fiber conventionally executes this precision alignment and bonding process.
The alignment and bonding process can take as little as five minutes. However, if there is a misalignment of the fiber ends, this process can take as long as forty-five minutes to an hour. Misalignment often occurs because the fibers are subject to other than pure linear movement during the alignment process. Accordingly, a need exists for an improved alignment process which will reduce, if not eliminate, misalignment of a fiber end.
It is likely that in the next ten years the use of opto-electronic devices will spread to automobiles and every phone and computer manufactured in the United States, resulting in an estimated volume of 25 million units produced per year. Conventional assembly of opto-electronic devices can, as discussed above, require substantial worker time and therefore be quite costly. Accordingly, a need exists for a way to assemble opto-electronic devices which would require less worker effort and hence reduce the cost of assembly.
In other fields, delicate precision micrometer, sub-micrometer and nanometer assembly or positioning is also required. Such fields include medicine, biotechnology and electronic manufacturing. For example, individual atoms, molecules or nano-particles may be combined or separated to build materials and devices exhibiting desirable properties. Positioning devices currently available do not provide the precision and range of motion required in these and other technological fields. Accordingly, an improved technique is required for performing precision movement, often referred to as fine movement, at each of the micrometer, sub-micrometer and nanometer levels.
A planar biaxial micropositioning stage, which includes a deformable structure micro-positioning stage and which utilizes two nested cantilever flexure mechanisms facilitating movement of the stage in each of the X and Y axes has been proposed for use in precision manufacturing. A force can be applied to the proposed structure by an actuator to move the stage along the intended axis of movement. The actuator placement in this positioner is perpendicular to the axis of movement of the stage. However, the resulting movement in each of the X and Y directions is not purely linear. Rather, the proposed structure introduces a yaw which is unacceptable for precision manufacturing applications. This yaw is often referred to as a rotational cross talk error.
Known prior art positioning devices can not eliminate rotational cross talk unless additional actuators are included in the device to apply counterbalancing rotation and thereby ensure pure linear movement. These actuators add undesirable complexity and costs to the devices. Additionally, complex control algorithms must be developed and used to operate multiple actuators in concert to compensate for the cross talk.
In the proposed micro-positioning stage discussed above, as well as other proposed stages, the rotational cross talk error is inherent in the design. That is, applying a force intended to move a stage in one direction necessarily produces an unintended rotation. Accordingly, a need exists for a micro-positioner which does not impart rotational cross talk error into intended linear movement.
Control of conventional micro-positioners is performed through the use of feedback loops. At least one sensor is required to measure movement of a stage. Conventional deformable structure micro-positioners use sensors which are typically located at a position which results in inaccurate measurement of the true stage displacement. This inaccuracy due to sensor placement is commonly referred to as Abbe effect. Accordingly, a positioner is required which provides more accurate sensing.
Conventional deformable structure micro-positioners require that the actuator used to impart a force upon a movable stage be attached to the movable stage with an epoxy compound, or some other adhesive. These attachments impart a loss of force into the system. For example, when a force is applied to an epoxy connection between the actuator and the moving stage, the epoxy compresses, resulting in up to a 60 percent loss in applied force. Hence, an improved technique is required to attach an actuator to a movable stage to reduce the loss of force.
Using an epoxy or screws for the coupling, it is also difficult to obtain a pure parallel alignment of the actuator and the moving stage. Unparallel alignment results in a loss of force in the system. Furthermore, misalignment between the components may produce damaging stresses on the actuator. Accordingly, an improved coupling is required to achieve a parallel attachment between the coupling and an actuator.
Epoxy couplings are also subject to maintenance difficulties and durability limits. To remove an actuator from a deformable structure micro-positioner with epoxy couplings, the epoxy coupling must be cut using a machine tool. The two surfaces exposed by the cutting must be cleaned before they are reattached. This cutting and cleaning process may damage both the actuator and the deformable structure micro-positioner. Accordingly, a need exists for an improved technique of attaching and removing an actuator from a micro-positioner which eliminates the potentially damaging cutting and cleaning process.
Conventional deformable structure micro-positioners can be subjected to forces which may damage the individual components of a positioner. These forces may include inadvertent contact with the movable stage portion of the positioner or over-actuation of a drive used to move the movable stage. Accordingly, a need exists for a deformable structure micro-positioner which can better withstand damaging forces.
Deformable structure micro-positioners with one and two-degrees of freedom are well known. Six-degree of freedom positioners in the macro-scale are common. One type of six-degree of freedom positioner is often referred to as a Stewart platform. One familiar use of Stewart platforms is in aircraft simulators. However, a practical adaptation of macro-scale Stewart platforms to the micro-scale using a deformable structure platform has not been previously achieved.
A Stewart platform utilizes six struts to support a platform. Historically, macro-scale Stewart platform devices place drives, e.g. actuators, in each of the struts to obtain movement of the platform. In the proposed micro-scale adaptations of Stewart platforms, actuators are also placed in the struts. However, actuators of the type typically used in micro-scale positioners do not have the required range of motion necessary for use in the struts of a micro-scale adapted Stewart platform. Hence, more expensive and much larger actuators must be used in the proposed micro-scale Stewart platforms.
The February 1994 issue of NASA Tech Briefs proposed a positioner, characterized as a minimanipulator, with six-degrees of freedom. The drives which produce movement of the platform include stepping motors and rotary actuators. Each of these drives are subject to sticktion and backlash. Hence, this manipulator is not capable of achieving fine movement, since none of the actuator configurations usable in this device can produce movement without some sticktion and/or backlash. Accordingly, a need exists for an improved six-degree of freedom positioner which is capable of providing fine movement in each of the six degrees of freedom.
The conventional process for manufacturing deformable structure micro-positioning devices is costly and time-consuming. Typically, each device must be individually machined from a separate piece of material. Additionally, six-degree of freedom micro-positioners require separate manufacturing and assembly steps for each of the individual positioners. Accordingly, a need exists for a manufacturing process to produce a plurality of deformable structure micro-positioning devices, including six-degree of freedom devices, which is less costly and time-consuming.
One object of the present invention is to provide an improved technique for fine precision object manipulation in manufacturing and assembly processes.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a micro-positioning stage with precision movement on at least one of the micrometer, sub-micrometer and nanometer levels.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a micro-positioning stage with pure linear movement along an intended linear axis of movement.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a six-degree of freedom positioning stage with precision movement on at least one of the micrometer, sub-micrometer and nanometer levels.
Additional objects, advantages, and novel features of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure, including the following detailed description, as well as by practice of the invention. While the invention is described below with reference to preferred embodiment(s), it should be understood that the invention is not limited thereto. Those of ordinary skill in the art having access to the teachings herein will recognize additional implementations, modifications, and embodiments, as well as other fields of use, which are within the scope of the invention as disclosed and claimed herein and with respect to which the invention could be of significant utility.
In accordance with the present invention, a positioning device is provided. The positioning device may be used to position many different types and sizes of objects. These objects can range from large objects, which are commonly referred to as macro-scale objects, to very small objects, which are often referred to as micro-scale objects. Some objects in the micro-scale are measured in micro-meters. However, smaller objects in the micro-scale are measured in sub-micrometers. And, extremely small objects in the micro-scale are measured in nanometers. Objects at the nano-level are smaller than those measured in sub-microns. Objects in this smallest scale can include individual atoms.
The device includes a movable platform where objects to be positioned are placed for positioning. A plurality of struts are attached to the movable platform and to a monolithic base. Each strut, sometimes referred to as an extension, is attached at one end to the movable platform, and at its other end to the monolithic base.
The monolithic base is formed of a single piece, e.g. a block, of material which moves each of the struts independently, which in turn move the movable platform.
Beneficially, each of the struts can be attached to the monolithic base by a respective flexure. Each of the struts may, if desired, also be attached to the movable platform by a respective flexure. Advantageously, the plurality of struts is a total of six struts. The six struts are beneficially attached symmetrically about the movable platform. That is, the points at which the struts are attached to the movable platform are disposed equal distances from one another on the movable platform.
In accordance with other aspects of the invention, at least one sensor senses movement of the movable platform, and/or a stop member limits movement of the movable platform.
In a particularly advantageous implementation of the invention, the monolithic base includes three positioning stages. Preferably, the stages are machined into the base by removing material from the base.
Each of the three positioning stages has a portion, preferably an equal portion, of the plurality of struts attached to it. That is, the ends of each respective portion of the struts are attached to an associated one of the positioning stages, preferably at the center of the positioning stage. The portion of the struts attached to a positioning stage moves as a result of movement of that positioning stage. The movable platform moves as a result of movement of one or more of the positioning stages. Thus, the movable platform is moved by moving one, two, or all three of the positioning stages.
Beneficially, each of the three positioning stages moves in two orthogonal directions. If desired, each of the three positioning stages can be positioned independent of the positioning of any of the other positioning stages.

National Institute of Standards and Technology


In one embodiment, a method includes determining by a computing device a set of videos that a user may watch. For each video, a coefficient value is determined for each of one or more coefficient factors. At least one of the coefficient factors has a value that would be coincident with the user watching the video. A video coefficient for each video is calculated based on the coefficient values of its coefficient factors, and the videos are ranked based on their video coefficients. The rankings are then provided for presentation to the user.

An individual may be interested in watching one of a number of videos. At times, the individual does not know the video they would like to watch beforehand; at other times, the individual knows which video they would like to watch but must select the video from among the possible options. In either case, the videos currently available (or that will be available in the future) to the individual along with any corresponding descriptions of the videos are presented to the individual according to some logical format. For example, a TV guide presents videos organized by numerically-ordered TV channels available to the user and the times at which the videos will be showing.


A wind turbine includes a tower and a vortex-induced vibration (VIV) mitigation system configured on the tower. The VIV mitigation system has a rod attached to an outer surface of the tower and extending longitudinally along an axis of the tower. A plurality of strake support guides extend transversely from and are spaced apart along the rod, the strake support guides comprising a length and a shape to retain a strake supported thereon. A strake is wrapped in a helical pattern around the tower, wherein at least a plurality of wraps of the strake are laid on and supported by the strake support guides.

Wind turbine towers and other types of generally slender tower structures are subject to vortex-induced vibrations (VIV). Without mitigation and at the right wind conditions, vortices will coherently shed from alternating sides of the tower causing a fluctuating load and increasing the swaying motion of the tower perpendicular to the wind direction. For modern wind turbine towers, this motion can reach upwards of +/−2 m amplitude in the field, making continued installation of the tower and machine head essentially impossible, which can result in costly crane downtime as well as overall project delay. Also, if the vibrations continue, significant fatigue damage to the lower tower sections may result, which can drastically reduce tower lifespan. This issue will become more of a concern as the industry turns to taller, more slender, and/or less rigid towers.
VIV mitigation is thus an ongoing concern in the industry and VIV mitigation is generally recognized as a necessity for towers that exceed 100 m in height.
Various systems and methods of VIV mitigation have been utilized or suggested in the industry. For example, rolling mass absorbers, oil dampers, friction dampers, and vortex generator systems have been used on wind turbine towers for this purpose. Another system utilizes helical strakes in the form of tubes that are generally wrapped around the highest 1-3 sections of the wind turbine tower. The strakes function to disrupt the coherent vortex shedding around the tower that is required for VIV formation, thus preventing VIV before it occurs. Effective design for the helical strakes in terms of helical pitch, number, and size of strakes is based on a number of factors. However, it can be difficult to implement the designs and consistently maintain/hold the strakes in the design over time. The strakes and their associated installation cables can be quite long (e.g., 20-30 m) and heavy and tend to sag. This results in installed strake configurations that are not robust or repeatable. The strakes will lose their installed pattern over time, which can significantly degrade their function. Additionally, tensile load in the cables causes the strakes themselves to deform cross-sectionally and become too small relative to the tower diameter to be effective.
Additionally, strakes are typically installed manually by personnel on site who, for each tower section, wind the strakes around the tower can. This can occur in the horizontal configuration of the tower section where dirt and debris under the tower becomes an issue, or in the vertical configuration where the visual perspective makes it hard to assess the evenness of the strake wrapping pattern. In general, strake installations are difficult, time-consuming, and result in inconsistent arrangement of the stakes.
Accordingly, the present disclosure is directed to systems and methods for installing strakes in the field that address at least some of the practical challenges discussed above.

Method and system for attaching vortex suppression devices to a wind turbine tower


Methods, devices, and formulations for making and using synthetic hoof shoes, repairing an animal's hooves, and/or providing prophylactic measures for protecting an animal's hooves. In general a synthetic material is applied either in situ to the hoof area of a hoofed animal or is used to produce a pre-molded shoe to be attached to the hoof area of a hoofed animal.

1. Field of the Invention
This application relates generally to the field of hoof shoes. More specifically the application describes methods and apparatus for building a hoof shoe in situ on the hoof of an animal as well as methods of making and devices for attaching a molded shoe to the hoof area of a hoofed animal.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
It is well known in the art that owners of hoofed animals often shod their animals in order to protect the underside of the hoof. Excessive hoof wear can cause lameness in any hoofed animal.
Conventionally metal, pre-fabricated shoes are attached to hoofed animals, such as horses, by nails or screws which are nailed or screwed into the hoof wall (i.e. the horny casing). Disadvantageously, this methos causes damage to the hoof of the animal and may allow bacteria to penetrate the hoof area. From time to time, such shoes may become loose, come off, and in many cases, cause damage to the animal's hoof where the shoe was attached as pieces of the hoof wall are broken off. Furthermore, shod animals have been known to throw shoes off and/or rip shoes off thereby causing trauma to the hoof area.
Thus, it is an object of the preferred embodiments described herein to meet these and other needs.

Method and apparatus for in situ and molded horseshoeing


Embodiments of the present invention relate to a cholesteric liquid crystalline material which may be usable in an electro-active element for providing fail safe operation, polarization insensitivity, low electrical power consumption requirements, and a small number of electrical connections. The cholesteric liquid crystalline material may be usable in an electro-active element for providing a diffractive efficiency or focusing efficiency above 90% in an activated state of the electro-active element and a diffractive efficiency or focusing efficiency below 10% in a deactivated state of the electro-active element.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cholesteric liquid crystalline material. More specifically, the present invention relates to a cholesteric liquid crystalline material usable in an electro-active element or electro-active lens for providing an optical power in an activated state of the electro-active element or electro-active lens and substantially no optical power in a deactivated state of the electro-active element or electro-active lens.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electro-active element is a device with an optical power that is alterable with the application of electrical energy. An electro-active element may be constructed from two substrates. An electro-active material may be disposed between the two substrates. The substrates may be shaped and sized to ensure that the electro-active material is contained within the substrates and cannot leak out. One or more electrodes may be disposed on each surface of the substrates that is in contact with the electro-active material. The electro-active element may include a controller to apply one or more voltages to each of the electrodes. The electro-active element may include a power supply operably connected to the controller. When electrical energy is applied to the electro-active material by means of the electrodes, the electro-active material's index of refraction may be altered thereby changing an optical property of the electro-active element, such as its focal length or diffraction efficiency, for example.
An electro-active element may be in optical communication with a base lens. The electro-active element may be embedded within or attached to a surface of the base lens to form an electro-active lens. A base lens may be an optical substrate or a conventional optical lens. The optical substrate may be a lens blank. A lens blank is a device made of optical material that may be shaped into a lens. A lens blank may be "finished", meaning that the lens blank has both of its external surfaces shaped into refractive external surfaces. A finished lens blank has an optical power which may be any optical power including zero or plano optical power. A lens blank may be "semi-finished", meaning that the lens blank has been shaped to have only one finished refractive external surface. A lens blank may be "unfinished", meaning that neither external surface of the lens blank has been shaped into a refractive surface. An unfinished surface of an unfinished or semi-finished lens blank may be finished by means of a fabrication process known as free-forming or by more traditional surfacing and polishing. A finished lens blank has not had its peripheral edge shaped, edged, or modified to fit into an eyeglass frame.
An electro-active element may also be embedded within or attached to a surface of a conventional optical lens to form an electro-active lens. A conventional optical lens is any device or portion of a device that causes light to converge or diverge. A lens may be refractive or diffractive. A lens may be either concave, convex, or planar on one or both surfaces. A lens may be spherical, cylindrical, prismatic, or a combination thereof. A lens may be made of optical glass, plastic, thermoplastic resins, thermoset resins, a composite of glass and resin, or a composite of different optical grade resins or plastics. A lens may be referred to as an optical element, optical preform, optical wafer, finished lens blank, or optic. It should be pointed out that within the optical industry a device can be referred to as a lens even if it has zero optical power (known as plano or no optical power). The conventional optical lens may be a single focus lens or a multifocal lens such as a Progressive Addition Lens or a bifocal or trifocal lens.
The electro-active element may be located in the entire viewing area of the electro-active lens or in just a portion thereof. The electro-active element may be spaced from the peripheral edge of the optical substrate or conventional optical lens in order to allow the electro-active lens to be edged for spectacle frames. The electro-active element may be located near the top, middle or bottom portion of the lens. It should be noted that the electro-active element may be capable of focusing light on its own and does not need to be combined with an optical substrate or conventional optical lens.
An electro-active element may be capable of switching between a first optical power and a second optical power. The electro-active element may have the first optical power in a deactivated state and may have the second optical power in an activated state. The electro-active element may be in a deactivated state when one or more voltages applied to the electrodes of the electro-active element are below a first predetermined threshold. The electro-active element may be in an activated state when one or more voltages applied to the electrodes of the electro-active element are above a second predetermined threshold. Alternatively, the electro-active element may be capable of "tuning" its optical power such that the electro-active element is capable of providing a continuous, or substantially continuous, optical power change between the first optical power and the second optical power. In such an embodiment, the electro-active element may have the first optical power in a deactivated state and may have an optical power between a third optical power and the second optical power in an activated state, wherein the third optical power is above the first optical power by a predetermined amount.
Electro-active lenses may be used to correct for conventional or non-conventional errors of the eye. The correction may be created by the electro-active element, by the optical substrate or the conventional optical lens, or by a combination of the two. Conventional errors of the eye include lower order aberrations such as myopia, hyperopia, presbyopia, and astigmatism. Non-conventional errors of the eye include higher order aberrations that can be caused by ocular layer irregularities.
An electro-active element may include a liquid crystal. Liquid crystal is particularly well suited for electro-active lenses because it has an index of refraction that can be altered by generating an electric field across the liquid crystal. Lastly, the operating voltage of some commercially available liquid crystals for display applications is typically less than 5 volts. Furthermore, some liquid crystals possess bulk resistivities on the order of 1011 Ωcm or more, which reduces electrical power consumption.
The development of electro-active lens technology for ophthalmic applications places certain requirements on the technology that are critical to its success. One such requirement is that in the case of failure, the user of the electro-active lens must not be placed in a dangerous situation. Such a requirement is known as fail-safe operation. For example, a user may have electro-active spectacle lenses designed for the correction of presbyopia. Presbyopia is the loss of accommodation of the crystalline lens of the human eye that accompanies aging. This loss of accommodation first results in an inability to focus on near distance objects and later results in an inability to focus on intermediate distance objects. In the user's electro-active spectacle lenses, a conventional optic may correct for the user's far distance refractive error, if any. An electro-active element, when activated, may provide additional optical power to correct for the user's near and/or intermediate distance refractive error. When the user engages in far distance tasks such as driving, the electro-active element is deactivated thereby providing the user with proper far distance correction. When the user engages in near or intermediate distance tasks such as reading a book or looking at a computer screen, the electro-active lens is activated thereby providing the user with proper near distance correction. If the power source or the controller of the electro-active spectacle lenses should fail while the user is driving a car, it is vitally important that the electro-active element be capable of defaulting to a deactivated state so that the user is provided with proper far distance correction.
A second requirement for electro-active lens technology is that the electro-active lens must be insensitive to the polarization of the light it is meant to focus. Light is a transverse wave composed of electromagnetic field vectors which oscillate perpendicular to the light wave's direction of propagation. The path that a given field vector traces out in time (in most of optics only the electric field vector is considered) can be thought of as the polarization state (linear polarization for a linear path, circular for a circular path, etc.). The light emitted from most illumination sources (e.g. the sun, incandescent and fluorescent lamps) can be described as unpolarized or randomly polarized in which the direction of the electric field vector oscillates randomly with time. Despite the random oscillations of the electric field vector, at any given instant, the electric field vector can be broken into two orthogonal vector components, as can be done for perfectly polarized light. As is well known in the art, these vector components, by way of example only, may themselves be linearly polarized and orthogonal in a Cartesian sense, or circularly polarized, and orthogonal in that they propagate with right and left handed twists. In other instances, the electric field vector may be broken down into two orthogonal components which are elliptically polarized (of which circularly polarized is a unique form).
An effective electro-active lens technology must be insensitive to the polarization of light, i.e. it must be able to focus light having any polarization state. However, most liquid crystalline materials are birefringent (exhibit an anisotropy of the refractive index) and as such are highly polarization sensitive. Optical waves with different polarization states traveling through a birefringent medium may experience a different index of refraction depending upon their direction of travel. For liquid crystal display applications the issue of polarization sensitivity is addressed through the use of dichroic polarizing films to only allow linearly polarized light to enter the display. As mentioned above, randomly polarized light waves have an electric field vector which oscillates randomly with time. Malus' law states that the intensity of a light wave passing through a linear polarizer is proportional to cos2(θ), where θ is the angle between the light wave's polarization direction (the electric field vector's direction) and the linear polarizer's direction. Since the incoming light wave is randomly polarized, it contains all θ's at random. Therefore, the intensity of the light wave passing through the linear polarizer is the average of cos2(θ), which is 50%. Thus, using a polarizing film blocks 50% of randomly polarized incoming light making it an unattractive option for electro-active lenses since it is important to focus all incoming light.
Polarization sensitivity is addressed differently depending, in a large part, on the optical properties of the particular liquid crystal being utilized. A nematic liquid crystal is optically uniaxial and possesses a single axis of symmetry with respect to its optical properties. This axis is known as the "director". The orientation of the director varies throughout the bulk of a nematic liquid crystal layer but through the use of alignment layers, can be made, on average, to point in a single direction, called the alignment direction. An alignment layer is a thin film, which, by way of example only, may be less than 100 nanometers thick and constructed from a polyimide material. The thin film is applied to the surface of substrates that comes into direct contact with liquid crystal. Prior to assembly of the electro-active element, the thin film is buffed in one direction (the alignment direction) with a cloth such as velvet. When the liquid crystal molecules come in contact with the buffed polyimide layer, the liquid crystal molecules preferentially lie in the plane of the substrate and are aligned in the direction in which the polyimide layer was rubbed (i.e., parallel to the surface of the substrate). Alternatively, the alignment layer may be constructed of a photosensitive material, which when exposed to linearly polarized UV light, yields the same result as when a buffed alignment layer is used. Thus, in the absence of an electric field, the director of the liquid crystal molecules points in the same direction as the alignment direction. In the presence of an electric field, the liquid crystal molecules orient in the direction of the electric field. In an electro-active element, the electric field is perpendicular to the alignment layer. Thus, if the electric field is strong enough, the director of the liquid crystal molecules will be perpendicular to the alignment direction. If the electric field is not strong enough, the director of the liquid crystal molecules will point in a direction somewhere between the alignment direction and perpendicular to the alignment direction.
Uniaxial optical materials possess two unique refractive indices, an ordinary refractive index (no) and an extra-ordinary refractive index (ne). The birefringence of the uniaxial optical material, Δn, is defined as Δn=ne−no. An optical wave traveling in a direction parallel to the liquid crystal's director will experience the ordinary refractive index (no) regardless of the optical wave's state of polarization as an optical wave is a transverse wave where the electric field (the portion of the wave that experiences the phase delay due to the index of refraction) oscillates in a direction perpendicular to the direction of propagation, as is well known in the art. However, an optical wave traveling along any other path will experience a refractive index between the values of no and ne; the exact value of the refractive index depends upon the optical wave's state of polarization and its path through the material. As mentioned above, if the uniaxial material is in contact with an alignment layer and no electric field is applied, the director of the uniaxial material will be in the same direction as the alignment direction. Therefore, an incoming light wave, which is traveling in an direction perpendicular to the layer of uniaxial material (and as such is polarized parallel to the director), will experience an index of refraction between the values of no and ne, depending on the polarization state of the incoming light wave. As the electric field is increased, the director of the material begins to point in a direction somewhere between the alignment direction and perpendicular to the alignment direction. An incoming light wave, which is traveling in a direction perpendicular to the layer of uniaxial material, is no longer polarized parallel to the material's director but is not perpendicular to the director either. Therefore, this light wave will also experience a differing index of refraction depending on its polarization state. If the electric field is strong enough, the director of the liquid crystal molecules will be perpendicular to the alignment direction. In this case, incoming light waves will be traveling in a direction parallel to the director and the applied electric field and the incoming light waves will be polarized in a direction perpendicular to the director and the applied electric field. In this scenario, light waves will experience the ordinary index of refraction (no) regardless of its polarization state.
An important feature for an electro-active lens is the ability to change the focusing power of the lens. Changing the focusing power of the lens is accomplished by altering the index of refraction of the electro-active element's electro-active material. However, changing the index of refraction of a uniaxial material to an intended index of refraction between no and ne is polarization sensitive. As mentioned above, all unpolarized light waves can be thought of as being linearly polarized, where the direction of polarization changes randomly in time. Thus, for the same reason that only 50% of randomly polarized light passes through a linear polarizer, only 50% of the incoming randomly polarized light will experience the intended index of refraction. Therefore, if an electro-active lens that operates in the presence of unpolarized ambient light is constructed from a single layer of nematic liquid crystal, it will only focus half of the incident light. This will result in a drastic and unacceptable drop in visual acuity for the wearer.
A polarization insensitive electro-active lens using nematic liquid crystal that focuses all incident light typically requires the use of two layers of liquid crystal, placed in series, and arranged such that the alignment directions of the layers are orthogonal to each other. As polarized light can be broken down into two orthogonal components, the orthogonal orientation of the alignment directions ensures that the orthogonal components of light of any polarization will be properly focused by either the first layer of liquid crystal or by the second layer of liquid crystal. The drawback to this approach is that the requirements for manufacturing and operating the lens (e.g., materials, electrical connections, and electrical power consumption) will be effectively doubled.
A third requirement for electro-active lens technology is that the electrical power consumption must be as small as possible. As mentioned above, using two layers of nematic liquid crystal is not an attractive option since the power requirements effectively double. Similarly, a single layer of polarization insensitive polymer dispersed liquid crystal, as described by Nishioka, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 7,009,757, is undesirable since the operating voltages are prohibitive for spectacle lens applications.
A fourth requirement for electro-active lens technology is that the number of electrical connections per lens must be kept at a minimum. Ideally the number of electrical connections should be limited to two: one to provide a zero-voltage reference (commonly referred to as "ground") and another to provide a zero-DC bias time varying voltage (i.e., the time averaged voltage is zero, such that there is no DC offset). While this is achievable with a single layer of polarization insensitive polymer dispersed liquid crystal, the voltages required for the operation of this liquid crystal prohibit the use of the technology in spectacle lenses.
Thus, there is a need for an electro-active lens technology which meets all four of the aforementioned requirements.


A display device and method for its manufacture. In a display device with a first array of individual display elements and a second array of control transistors for the display elements, control transistors are formed from a semiconductor material with a large band gap and are transparent in the visible spectral range. The invention also comprises a method for manufacturing such a display device.

The present invention relates to display devices. Traditionally, there are two standard methods for controlling liquid crystal display (LCD) devices: passive matrix control and active matrix control. A passive matrix, in which the display elements are actuated in a line-column multiplex mode, is typically used with smaller arrays or when relatively low display quality is required. An active matrix, in which a thin film transistor (TFT) electronic element that includes amorphous or polycrystalline silicone on a glass carrier, is used with higher-quality applications.
In display devices with organic light emitters (OLEDs, organic light emitting diodes), thin film transistors can also be used to directly control the individual display elements forming the pixels.
When silicon transistors are used, unwanted currents occur in both cases during the generation of visible light due to photo-absorption, because the photon energy of the generated light is greater than the band gap of silicon. Therefore, transistors are currently used only underneath the structures, so as to not cause substantial absorption losses.

Display device and method of its manufacture


A liquid condensation system heats a liquid raw material under a decompressed circumstance and evaporates a volatile component from a liquid surface to condense the liquid raw material. Therefore, the liquid condensation system includes: liquid condensers, each of which condenses the liquid raw material; a vacuum pump that is in communication with the liquid condensers; and a warm water circulation system as a heating source that heats the liquid raw material in the liquid condensers. The volatile component evaporated in the liquid condensers is led to the outside of the liquid condensers through vapor lines. The condensed liquid that is not evaporated in the liquid condensers is led to the outside of the liquid condensers through condensed-liquid lines. Condensed-liquid-line adjusting valves are interposed on the condensed-liquid lines, and heaters are attached to the condensed-liquid lines. A control unit controls the heaters and the condensed-liquid-line adjusting valves.

The present invention relates to a liquid condensation system that condenses a liquid by evaporation from a liquid surface.
A conventional technique of condensing a liquid is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-344700. In a decompression-evaporation condensation apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-344700, a cooling condensation chamber that cools and condenses vapor supplied from an evaporation boiling can is provided above the evaporation boiling can that generates vapor of a processed liquid, so that a nonvolatile component in the processed liquid is not mixed into evaporated, condensed water. In addition, mist removing means is provided for a vapor passage so that a liquid or a solid in the evaporation boiling can does not reach the cooling condensation chamber.
Another example of the liquid condensation is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-167433. In a heating vaporization apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-167433, a double cylinder composed of an inner cylinder and an outer cylinder is provided with a liquid permeation plate at an outer circumference of the inner cylinder. The liquid permeation plate is formed by using a porous material, and a gap extending in the horizontal direction is formed under a liquid-supplied position provided at an upper portion of the liquid permeation plate. By heating the inside of the inner cylinder, a liquid supplied to an upper portion of the liquid permeation plate is vaporized.
When condensing a liquid, improvement of heating efficiency and reduction of a condensation time are required. In the decompression-evaporation condensation apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-344700, there is a possibility that a hot spot where a temperature is higher than those of surrounding areas is formed in the vicinity of a wall face of a container into which a heater is introduced. When the heat spot is formed, it is impossible to uniformly heat the inside of the container, thus reducing heating efficiency.
Further, in order to uniformly heat the inside of the container, it is necessary to reduce the container in size. However, if the container is reduced in size, an area of a vapor-liquid interface necessary for evaporation of a liquid is reduced, and an evaporation amount is decreased, thus increasing a time required for condensation. That is, it is difficult to achieve improvement of heating efficiency and reduction of a condensation time at the same time.
In the heating vaporization apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-167433, the porous liquid-permeation-plate is heated from the inside of the inner cylinder provided on an outer surface, thus improving vaporization efficiency. However, in the porous liquid-permeation-plate, there is a possibility of causing a trouble that a separated material once vaporized is mixed into a separated material in a liquid state that is supplied from a supplying pipe, and is condensed to be changed into a liquid state again, thus reducing separation efficiency.


Systems and methods are provided for implementing an analytical approach to digital volumetric laminar tomography. The volumetric data visualizations generally take the form of volumetric images which approximate the spatial distribution of an x-ray attenuation coefficient throughout the region of interest in the object, such as a person, under examination. These visualizations are produced from a set of basic two dimensional data. One numerical technique employed in this regard takes the form of a process of convolution and back projection, where the convolution function is determined through the use of various analytic and empirical techniques.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to x-ray systems and devices. More particularly, exemplary embodiments of the invention concern systems and methods for using a set of two dimensional projection data to generate information that approximates x-ray behavior in a volume of interest so as to facilitate generation of tomographic images and development of diagnostic and treatment processes.
2. Related Technology
X-ray systems and devices are valuable tools that are used in a wide variety of applications, both industrial and medical. For example, such equipment is commonly used in areas such as diagnostic and therapeutic radiology. More particularly, the use of computerized tomography ("CT") for medical imaging has resulted in many advances in medical imaging, as well as diagnostic and therapeutic radiology. With respect to these particular applications, tomographic imaging has advanced from conventional, or plain film, tomography to volumetric, or helical, computerized tomography.
In what is sometimes referred to as "classical" tomography, the x-ray source and the film, sometimes referred to as a "detector," move simultaneously in opposite directions such that any line from the x-ray source to an arbitrary point on the film pivots about a fulcrum point. The motion is chosen such that the fulcrum points of lines from the source to the film surface collectively define a plane. Objects in the subject being imaged which lie close to this fulcrum, or focus plane, are in focus on the film, while objects not near this plane are blurred. This radiographic technique is also sometimes referred to as tomography, tomo, stratigraphy, and planography.
Many known tomographic processes and equipment involve the use of various numerical techniques and associated algorithms to generate and process the data necessary to radiographic procedures. For example, reconstruction algorithms based on the Radon transformation or extensions thereof are commonly employed to implement volumetric CT imaging. Other techniques sometimes employed include the algebraic reconstruction technique ("ART"), matrix inversion, and fast Fourier transform ("FFT") techniques. Moreover, such algorithms are useful for application to a variety of physical system configurations. Examples of such physical configurations include rectilinear, fan beam, "fourth generation," spiral, cone beam, multi-source, and two-dimensional detector arrangements.
While radiographic techniques such as classical tomography have proven useful and effective in many regards, problems with such techniques nonetheless remain. By way of example, practical x-ray beams, detectors and sources have finite attributes, such as their size. Moreover, the x-ray quanta are distributed in space and energy, or frequency. As well, classical tomography is prone to the presence of aliasing and other image artifacts in the generated tomographic images.
Yet another complication with typical systems and processes is that the individual detectors may have different x-ray detection efficiencies and/or nonlinear properties, depending on the intensity of the transmitted x-rays. Further, large portions of the detected x-ray intensity may be the result of scattered radiation. The detection of such scattered radiation degrades the quality, and thus the usefulness and reliability, of the generated images. Further, known systems and techniques are typically ineffectual in correcting for known systematic errors and x-ray attenuation line integrals which are optimum for the visualization. As a result, random errors often exceed acceptable limits.
In view of the foregoing, and other, problems in the art, what is needed are systems and methods configured to enable generation and accumulation of a sufficient quanta of two dimensional x-ray attenuation data such that the data has the accuracy and precision necessary to best produce the tomographic images required. Pre-processing should be applied to the data so as to correct for known systematic errors and x-ray attenuation line integrals which are optimum for the visualization. In addition, random error must be kept to an acceptable limit. Moreover, the accumulated x-ray attenuation data should reflect a set of different directions through each volume pixel, or voxel, of a volume of interest so that the voxel geometries and corresponding weights, which reflect x-ray attenuation in the respective voxels, can be used to optimize density and spatial resolution, while minimizing image artifacts, and thereby facilitate achievement of optimum visualization.

Systems and methods for digital volumetric laminar tomography


There is disclosed an apparatus for measuring biometric information having a hand rest, which can perform precise and comprehensive measurement by measuring biometric information about an examinee taking a more comfortable position. The apparatus for measuring the biometric information having the hand rest formed in a convex curvature shape to have an examinee's hand put thereon, to contact with an examinee's palm and fingers; and a measurement part provided in the hand rest to measure the examinee's biometric information.

Recently, there have been increasing concerns and demands for medical check-up, as the living standard and health-consciousness are improving. In a typical medical check-up, a blood pressure, a pulse wave, an electrocardiogram (EKG) and body fat are measured and utilized as basic data.
For that, each of medical offices is equipped with a sphygmomanometer for measuring the blood pressure, an electrocardiograph for measuring the electrocardiogram, a body fat meter for measuring the body fat, a pressurized sphygmograph for measuring the pulse wave and a plethysmograpy for measuring the blood flow rate.
However, conventional measuring devices have following disadvantages.
First of all, a single apparatus measures one piece of biometric information and different measuring devices have to be provided to measure a variety of human information. This requires too much unnecessary space and it is difficult to repair and maintain the apparatuses. Also, an examinee has to move from one device to another device to have the measurement and he or she has inconvenience.
Second, a single device measures a single type of biometric information. Accordingly, the measured biometric information fails to be collected and it has to be inputted and utilized by a human resource. When collecting the biometric information, an error or a mistake might be generated disadvantageously.
Third, clippers having an electron installed thereon pick up a measuring area such as a finger before measurement in a conventional body fat measuring device or an electrocardiogram device. The clippers are connected with a body via a wire and the wire has concern of being twisted. Also, when examining himself or herself, it is not easy for a user to pick up another finger after picking up one of fingers alone.

Device for measurement for bionic information having hand rest

KOREA INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY