A method for auditing ballots cast in an election, wherein each ballot is associated with a group. A subset of groups from which sample ballots will be chosen is identified. An identifier is printed on each ballot in the subset. Each ballot has a different identifier than every other ballot in its group. A check is performed to determine whether the identifiers were printed correctly on the ballots. If so, a machine re-count of ballots in each group in the subset is performed and the results are compared to the initial tally of ballots associated with the group. If there is a mismatch, a further investigation is triggered. If there is a match, manual verification is performed on sample ballots from each group. The audit may begin prior to completion of voting from all precincts by estimating the number of samples that will be necessary.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of election auditing.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Security analyses of computerized voting systems, including DREs and optical scan machines, have exposed numerous vulnerabilities that could compromise the integrity of elections performed using these devices. See Kohno, T., Stubblefield, A., Rubin, A., and Wallach, D., "Analysis of an electronic voting system," Proc. 2004 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pp. 27-42; Feldman, A., Halderman, J. A., and Felten, E., "Security analysis of the Diebold AccuvoteTS voting machine," Proc. 2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop (EVT '07). One proposed defense against such attacks is to produce voter-verified paper records and audit them to ensure that they support the totals claimed by the machines.
The most common auditing method is the precinct-based audit, in which workers count all paper ballots from selected precincts and compare the results to the reported precinct tallies. See Appel, A. W., "Effective audit policy for voter verified paper ballots in New Jersey," February 2007; Rivest, R. L., "On estimating the size of a statistical audit," November 2006; Rivest, R. L., "On auditing elections when precincts have different sizes," April 2007; Saltman, R. G., "Effective use of computing technology in vote tallying," Tech. Rep. NBSIR 75687, National Bureau of Standards, March 1975. Unfortunately, performing precinct-based audits can require considerable time, labor, and expense. These costs are multiplied by the complexity of the ballots in many elections, which may include dozens of contests. In a trial recount of a DRE paper trail performed in Cobb County, Ga., workers took an average of 5 minutes per ballot to audit 976 votes at a total cost of nearly $3,000. Dunn, S., "Voter verifiable paper audit trail pilot project," Cobb County, Georgia, November 2006. Unless efficiency can be improved, performing a similar recount of 3% of precincts in New Jersey could cost more than $200,000. Slow, expensive manual recounts limit the level of confidence that can be achieved within a fixed election budget, and they may delay the detection of errors until well after election results have been announced and losing candidates have conceded.
Statistical "ballot-based" audits are an alternative to manually recounting every ballot from selected precincts. Workers sample from all the paper ballots in all precincts and use the sample to assess the accuracy of the original count. Ballot-based audits tend to be more efficient than traditional precinct-based audits, since fewer ballots need to be recounted to achieve the same level of confidence in the result. Neff, C. A., "Election confidence: A comparison of methodologies and their relative effectiveness at achieving it," December 2003. For example, in a statewide race in New Jersey, fewer than one ballot per precinct (4,599 ballots total) would need to be sampled to achieve 99% confidence that the outcome had not been shifted by more than 0.2%. By contrast, over 150,000 ballots (6.9% of precincts) would need to be recounted using standard precinct-based audits (e.g., Stanislevic, H., "Random auditing of voting systems: How much is enough?," August 2006) to achieve the same confidence.
Neff and Johnson were among the first to propose combining ballot-based audit techniques with electronic voting. See Johnson, K. C., "Election certification by statistical audit of voter verified paper ballots," October 2004. Neff assumes that the voting machines link each paper ballot to its electronic counterpart using, for example, a unique identifier printed on the paper ballot and stored with the electronic ballot. When voting is complete, each precinct commits to its set of electronic ballots, then demonstrates that the paper ballots in a given random sample match the corresponding electronic ballots.
The primary weakness of this method is that it establishes the link between electronic and paper ballots at the time that votes are cast. This raises problematic voter privacy issues. For example, if the ballots are linked using sequentially increasing serial numbers, observers could correlate votes with the order in which they were cast, which can reveal the identity of voters. While a cryptographic link might protect privacy, opaque, random-looking identifiers printed on ballots may provide covert channels for leaking voter identities. Even if used securely, they might aid malicious parties who seek to intimidate voters by undermining their confidence in the secrecy of the ballot. Our audit strategy postpones linking paper and electronic records until the recount phase, which allows it to achieve equivalent confidence without jeopardizing privacy or resorting to cryptography.
Johnson alternatively proposes delaying both vote tallying and serial number printing until after all ballots are submitted, allowing voting machines to be simple, memory-less ballot printers. Voters submit their ballots, which, once polls close, are randomized and scanned/tallied. The tallying machine is therefore able to print serial numbers while scanning without privacy risk. Unlike Johnson, we assume that the voting machines maintain an electronic tally, which helps deter traditional attacks against paper-based voting, such as ballot-box stuffing, and, as we will show, provides opportunities for improving the efficiency of the audit.

System and method for machine-assisted election auditing


A method of evaluating a sheet metal stamping simulation is provided. The method may include defining elements of a finite-element mesh representing a stamped panel, operating on the elements to simulate deformation of the panel during stamping to generate, for each of the elements, incremental differential major and minor plastic strain values, applying a weighting factor to temporally adjacent pairs of the values to generate smoothed values, deriving, from the smoothed values and for each of the elements, a plurality of plastic strain incremental ratios representing plastic flow direction of the elements during the deformation, and altering colors of a map based on the ratios to represent changes in severity of plastic deformation of the stamped panel.

Sheet metal stamping is a process in which a sheet of metal (e.g. blank) is formed by deforming the material between a set of dies within a press. The stamping process is limited by buckling, wrinkling, tearing, and other phenomena that are detrimental to producing a quality part. Creating a set of dies capable of producing quality parts may require several design changes to the set of dies after multiple trials, the cost and time associated with developing the set of dies is significant.
Accurate computer simulation of the stamping process may eliminate all or a portion of the cost and time required to produce one or more finished sets of dies. Finite element analysis (FEA) is one method of simulating sheet metal forming operations to determine whether a proposed die design will produce quality part, free of tearing and minimize buckling, wrinkling, etc. FEA analysis begins by generating a mesh to divide the sheet metal part into hundreds of thousands of individual elements. In addition to dividing the parts into hundreds of thousands of elements, the simulation time is broken down into many time steps.

Method for predicting plastic strain ratio from stamping simulation


A technique for realizing a snapshot function is provided, which can reduce data transfer between a server system and a storage subsystem which is necessary during data copy operations between storage devices and reduce the degradation of data access performance of the storage device in operation. In a storage system, a command processed by a CPU of a storage subsystem includes a COPY and WRITE command for performing a data copy process and a data storage process in accordance with a predetermined sequence, and a server system issues the command to the storage subsystem. After receiving the command, the storage subsystem executes a data copy process from a first disk drive to a second disk drive, and subsequently executes a data storage process to the first disk drive, thereby keeping a snapshot of the data stored in the first disk drive.

According to studies performed by the inventor of the present invention, the following techniques are examples of known techniques for realizing a snapshot function in a conventional storage system.
For example, as the use of information systems has been expanding, the capacity of storage devices for storing the data thereof has also been increasing. Also, the value of the data stored in the storage devices has increased, and the destruction of data due to unauthorized accesses to data or erroneous operations in the storage devices has resulted in a great loss in the management of information systems. Therefore, data protection functions become more and more important for the purpose of the prevention of data destruction and recovery when data is destroyed.
A snapshot function is often used as a data protection function of storage devices. By using a snapshot function, a snapshot which is a still image of the data in an operating storage at a certain point can be created and kept. The snapshot can be accessed by means different from that of the storage in operation, and the data at the point of the creation thereof can be referenced. Therefore, when the data in the storage devices in operation is destroyed, the data at the point of snapshot creation can be recovered.
The methods for realizing the snapshot function can generally be classified into two methods, i.e., a method utilizing the functions of a server system for processing and controlling the data, and a method utilizing the functions of a storage subsystem for storing data.
In the method utilizing the functions of a server system, the software which operates in the server system is utilized. For example, there is a method of creating a snapshot by the use of a function of an OS (e.g., "LVM HOWTO" by A J Lewis, which can be accessed at ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/pdf/LVM-HOWTO.pdf). A storage volume in operation (operation volume) and another storage volume for creating a snapshot (differential volume) are prepared. When the OS is instructed to create a snapshot of the operation volume, it becomes possible to reference a snapshot which is an image of the operation volume at that point. When the operation volume is updated after the snapshot has been created, the data in the operation volume before the update is copied to the differential volume. Then, when the data address of the snapshot is referenced, the data is returned if the data has been copied to the differential volume, or the data in the operation volume is returned if the copy has not been performed. As described above, a snapshot image is kept by storing the data at the time of snapshot creation in the differential volume.
Further, another prior art approach is a method of utilizing the functions of a storage subsystem (e.g., Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-118413). Also in this case, a storage volume in operation and another storage volume for snapshot creation are prepared. Then, from the server system connected to the storages or a control console of the storage volumes, an instruction for creating a snapshot of the storage volume in operation is given to the storage subsystem. When the storage volume in operation is updated after the snapshot creation, the storage subsystem copies the data in the storage volume in operation before the update to the storage volume for snapshot creation. When the address of the data having the snapshot in the storage subsystem is referenced, the data is returned if the data has been copied to the storage volume for snapshot creation, or the data is returned from the storage volume in operation if the copy has not been performed. As described above, an image of the storage volume in operation at the point of snapshot creation is kept by storing the data at the point of snapshot creation in the storage volume for snapshot creation in the storage subsystem.

Method for keeping snapshot image in a storage system


A new and distinct cultivar of Helenium plant named ‘Salsa’, characterized by its compact and upright plant habit; moderately vigorous to vigorous growth habit; freely flowering habit; inflorescences with dark red-colored ray florets with yellow-colored bases giving a “halo” effect around the disc; and strong peduncles that hold the inflorescences above the foliar plane.

The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Helenium plant, botanically known as Helenium hybrida and hereinafter referred to by the name 'Salsa'.
The new Helenium plant is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Zuidwolde, The Netherlands. The objective of the program is to create and develop new compact Helenium plants with attractive ray and disc colors.
The new Helenium plant originated from an open-pollination in 2008 of Helenium hybrida 'Ruby Tuesday', disclosed in U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,234, as the female, or seed, parent with an unknown selection of Helenium hybrida as the male, or pollen, parent. The new Helenium plant was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant within the progeny of the stated open-pollination in a controlled environment in Zuidwolde, The Netherlands in 2011.
Asexual reproduction of the new Helenium plant by terminal cuttings in a controlled greenhouse environment in Heerhugowaard, The Netherlands since 2011 has shown that the unique features of this new Helenium plant are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.


A pallet arrangement intended for one-time use only, includes an upper deck plate, bottom runners and spacer elements located between the deck plate and the bottom runners and functioning as pallet feet. The spacer elements include supportive tubular elements which are fixed in position relative to the deck plate against locking flaps that are folded down around circular fold lines punched in the deck plate. In turn, the locking flaps are firmly clamped between the tubular spacer elements and locking tubes that are inserted from above through openings that were formed in the deck plate by folding down the locking flaps. A method of manufacturing the pallet is also provided.

Several different types of recoverable paperboard pallets are at present commercially available. All of these pallets have a good bearing capacity and quality, to a greater or lesser extent. Because of increasing demands with respect to the recovery of materials, there will be needed within the near future a pallet or load carrier that is both recoverable and possesses the capacities of a wooden pallet. These requirements include four-way handling, i.e. a facility which enables the pallet to be handled with a lifting implement from four different directions. Another requirement is that the pallet shall be able to withstand outdoor climates for long periods of time and capable of managing a load of ten tonne. Finally, it shall be possible to drive over the bottom runners of the pallet with a pallet trolley, for instance from one long side. It is seldom that the disposable pallets at present available commercially fulfill these conditions.

Pallet and method of manufacturing the pallet


An inductively coupled plasma (ICP) generating apparatus includes an evacuated reaction chamber, an antenna installed at an upper portion of the reaction chamber to induce an electric field for ionizing reaction gas supplied into the reaction chamber and generating plasma, and an radio frequency (RF) power source connected to the antenna to apply radio frequency power to the antenna, wherein the antenna has a plurality of coils having different radiuses, at least one of the coils being a serpentine coil bent in a zigzag pattern. Capacitors are connected between the RF power source and a matching network and between the matching network and the antenna, in parallel with the antenna, to induce a LC resonance phenomenon. With the ICP generating apparatus having the above structure, it is possible to reduce antenna inductance, suppress capacitive coupling, and improve plasma uniformity. It is also possible to discharge and sustain plasma efficiently using the LC resonance phenomenon.

This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2002-62701, filed on Oct. 15, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for generating inductively coupled plasma (ICP), and more particularly, to an ICP generating apparatus incorporating an antenna with a structure that can improve uniformity of plasma.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, plasma technology is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices and flat display panels. Plasma is used for etching or depositing certain materials on the surfaces of wafers for fabricating semiconductor devices, or substrates for fabricating liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. Particularly, in etching or thin film deposition processes for manufacturing highly integrated semiconductor devices, the use of plasma equipment is increasing. Therefore, development of plasma generating apparatuses appropriate for etching, deposition, or other processes is important for the development of semiconductor manufacturing processes and equipment. The most important factors in the development of plasma equipment for semiconductor manufacturing processes are the capability to operate on large substrates in order to enhance production yield, and capability to perform processes for fabricating highly integrated devices. Specifically, in accordance with a recent increase in wafer size from 200 mm to 300 mm, enhancing uniformity of wafer treatment processes as well as keeping high plasma density have become very important.
Various types of plasma equipment have been used in conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes, e.g., a capacitive coupled plasma (CCP) type, an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) type, a helicon type, an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) type, and a hybrid type combining two or more of the foregoing types. Among the various types of plasma equipment, the ICP type equipment is considered to be the best equipment for the 300 mm large-size wafers because the ICP equipment can generate plasma with high density and high uniformity and has a simple structure compared to the other types of plasma equipment. However, development of ICP equipment for 300 mm wafers is not easily achieved by simply changing the dimensions of existing ICP equipment for 200 mm wafers. There are plenty of limitations due to difficulties in designing antennas that are essential to ICP discharges.
FIG. 1 shows the structure of a conventional ICP generating apparatus. As shown in FIG. 1, the ICP generating apparatus includes a reaction chamber 10 including a space for generating plasma. An electrostatic chuck 12 for supporting a substrate, e.g., a wafer W, is provided at a lower portion within the reaction chamber 10, and a dielectric window 16 is formed in an upper cover 11 of the reaction chamber 10. A gas supply port 14 for supplying reaction gas into the reaction chamber 10 is formed at a sidewall of the reaction chamber 10, and a plurality of gas distribution ports 15 connected to the gas supply port 14 are provided within the reaction chamber 10. A vacuum suction port 18 is formed at the bottom of the reaction chamber 10 and connected to a vacuum pump 19 for evacuating the inside of the reaction chamber 10. Further, a coil antenna 20 for generating plasma within the reaction chamber 10 is provided above the dielectric window 16.
The coil antenna 20 is connected with a power source (not shown) for supplying radio frequency (RF) current. As the RF current flows in the coil antenna 20, a magnetic field is produced around the coil antenna 20, and in accordance with variation of the magnetic field as a function of time, an electric field is induced within the reaction chamber 10. At the same time, the reaction gas is supplied into the reaction chamber 10 through the gas distribution ports 15, and is ionized by collisions with electrons accelerated by the induced electric field to generate plasma within the reaction chamber 10. The generated plasma chemically reacts with the surface of the wafer W so that the wafer W is subject to a desired process, e.g., etching. Meanwhile, an additional RF power source (not shown) is generally connected to the electrostatic chuck 12 for supplying a bias voltage to increase the energy of ions derived from the plasma and collided with the wafer W.
FIG. 2 shows an example of a conventional spiral coil antenna, and FIGS. 3A and 3B show electric field distribution and density of plasma generated within the reaction chamber shown in FIG. 1 by the spiral coil antenna shown in FIG. 2, respectively. As shown in FIG. 2, the spiral coil antenna 30 is typically comprised of a single spirally wound conductive coil. However, the spiral coil antenna 30 has a disadvantage in that the intensity of the electric field induced thereby is not uniform. That is, as shown in FIG. 3a, the electric field is relatively weak at the edge portion of the spiral coil antenna, and is relatively strong at the center portion thereof. Therefore, the density of the plasma generated is lowest at the edge portion of the reaction chamber.
The most densely generated plasma at the center portion of the reaction chamber is diffused toward a wafer placed near the bottom of the reaction chamber. Consequently, the density of the plasma in an area near the wafer surface where reaction between the plasma and the wafer occurs is high at the center portion of the area near the wafer surface, and is low at the edge portion of the area near the wafer surface.
Such irregular plasma density distribution causes a problem of the depth to which the wafer or substrate is etched or the thickness to which a material is deposited on the wafer or substrate being non-uniform over the surface thereof. As the diameter of the reaction chamber is increased to accommodate larger wafers, this non-uniformity problem becomes more serious. Further, in order to keep the plasma density sufficiently high within the reaction chamber, the radius of the antenna 30 and the number of turns of the coil should be increased to conform to the increased size of the ICP equipment. However, increasing the number of turns of the coil causes another problem in that the self-inductance of the antenna increases, and accordingly, the efficiency of the plasma discharges is degraded. If the self-inductance of the antenna 30 increases, the antenna 30 requires a higher voltage, and capacitive coupling easily occurs. The capacitive coupling increases the kinetic energy of ions too high, thereby making it difficult to precisely control processes. In addition, as the ions with such high kinetic energy collide very strongly against the inner wall of the reaction chamber, undesirable particles are separated from the inner wall. Further, the capacitive coupling lowers the efficiency of the plasma discharges.
FIGS. 4A and 4B show the distribution of radial direction components of magnetic fields produced by a conventional circular coil antenna. The left photograph images in FIGS. 4A and 4B show the structure of the antenna as well as the distribution of the radial direction components Br of magnetic fields produced thereby, and the right graphs show the magnitude of the radial direction components Br of the magnetic fields as function of distance from the center of the antenna. In particular, the right graphs is the results of a simulation using Vector Fields, which is electromagnetic field analysis software, on the distribution of the radial direction components Br of the magnetic fields produced 5 cm below the center of the cross-section of the antenna coil, where current distributions in coils forming the antenna are assumed to be uniform across the entire cross-section of the coils.
The antenna shown in FIG. 4A includes three concentric coils having a radius of 7 cm, 14 cm, and 21 cm, respectively. Each coil has a 6×6 mm square cross-section. Current flows in the same direction through each coil.
When current flows in the same direction through each coil, the magnitude of the magnetic fields appear to be higher near the center portion of the antenna. Plasma generated at a strong magnetic field portion diffuses over the entire the reaction chamber. In a reaction chamber with such a magnetic field distribution, plasma density decreases from the center to the edge portion.
The antenna shown in FIG. 4B has the same structure as the antenna of FIG. 4A. However, current flows in opposite directions through adjacent coils. When current flows in opposite directions through adjacent coils as in the antenna of FIG. 4B, the inductance of the antenna drops by about 50% with respect to the inductance of the antenna of FIG. 4A, as illustrated in FIG. 13. However, due to a peak magnetic field intensity near the center of the antenna of FIG. 4B, it is unlikely to attain highly uniform plasma density.
FIGS. 5A through 5D show various antennas proposed to solve the problems of the above-described coil antennas. FIG. 5A shows an antenna 40 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,346,578, which includes a domed upper cover 44 for a reaction chamber 42, and a spiral coil wound around the upper cover 44 in dome shape. Advantageously, the geometry of the antenna 40 offers highly uniform plasma density.
However, it is difficult to manufacture such a domed upper cover 44, and the domed upper cover 44 is likely to suffer from stress to thermal expansion due to the antenna 40. In addition, because the coil is long enough to spirally wind the upper cover 44, from the upper portion to the lower portion, the inductance of the antenna 40 is increased. Accordingly, lower RF frequencies are required. For larger equipment manufactured to accommodate 300-mm wafers, the number of turns of the coil and the diameter of the antenna 40 increase. As a result, the above-described problems become more serious.
FIG. 5B shows an antenna 50 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,401,350, which includes a spiral coil antenna 50a formed on a top surface of a reaction chamber 52 and a solenoid type antenna 50b wound around an outer sidewall of the reaction chamber 52. The antenna 50 of FIG. 5B can compensate for the problem of low plasma density at the edge portion of a reaction chamber with the conventional spiral coil antenna described above. However, the antenna of FIG. 5B still has other problems with the conventional spiral coil antenna. Further, since the antenna of FIG. 5B requires two independent RF power sources, there are many process parameters to externally control. In practice, ICP generating apparatuses with the antenna of FIG. 5A or 5B utilizes considerably lower frequencies than a standard frequency of 13.56 MHz.
FIG. 5C shows an antenna 60 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,291,793, which includes a plurality of spiral coils 62, 64, and 66 branching off in parallel. The multiple and parallel type antenna shown in FIG. 5c is advantageous in that the self-inductance of the antenna 60 can be lowered as the number of branching off coils 62, 64, and 66 increases. However, such a multiple and parallel type antenna has no distinctive feature ensuring satisfactorily uniform plasma density distribution.
FIG. 5D shows an antenna 70 disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,288,493, which includes a plurality of circular coils 71, 72, 73, and 74 branching off in parallel and a variable capacitor 76 connected to the plurality of circular coils to induce LC resonance between the circular coils 71, 72, 73, and 74. The antenna shown in FIG. 5D is advantageous in that highly uniform plasma density distribution can be achieved because the magnitude and phase of current are adjustable and that the inductance of the antenna is low due to the parallel structure. The antenna of FIG. 5D is regarded as the most advanced one among circular coil type antennas developed so far. However, if a LC resonance occurs between the parallel branching off antenna coils 71, 72, 73, and 74, an excess amount of current flows along the outermost coil 74 and arcing occurs at a point 75 from which the outermost coil 74 branches off.
Due to the problems described above, the conventional antennas disclosed so far have shortcomings in adequately conforming to variations in process conditions to obtain high plasma uniformity. Particularly, as wafers become larger, it is more difficult to maintain uniform plasma density near the edge portions of the wafers using the conventional antennas, and as a result, the quality and yield of semiconductor devices are seriously deteriorated.

Inductively coupled plasma generating apparatus incorporating serpentine coil antenna


The present invention is directed toward estimating certain operating parameters of an earth moving machine. Advantageously, the present invention utilizes a Kalman filter to estimate the pitch, pitch rate and ground speed of the earth moving machine as a function of the sensed pitch and ground speed signals. By estimating the pitch and ground speed, the present invention overcomes the prior problems of sensing signal noise and bias. The present invention overcomes these problems by combining pitch, pitch rate and ground speed, and determining an estimate of pitch and ground speed by using a sensor measurement model, machine process model and Kalman filter update equations.

It is desirous for an implement of an earth moving machine, such as a bulldozer, to be operated in a manner that results in the greatest productivity. Oftentimes, manual control of an earth moving implement, such as a bulldozer blade, is inefficient. Consequently, modern day earth moving machines include electronic sensors that deliver signals indicative of various operational parameters of the earth moving machine to microprocessor based controls in order to automatically control the implement.
Unfortunately, the sensors produce signals that are corrupted with noise and bias. Thus, many times the sensed signal does not represent a precise measurement.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming one or more of the problems as set forth above.

Method and apparatus for determining pitch and ground speed of an earth moving machines


A self-contained pen computer is provided that is capable of acquiring data representative of written strokes of the stylus of the pen and then recognizing the symbols associated with these pen strokes, or compacting these strokes. These recognized symbols or compacted strokes are stored in a memory contained in the pen and are transmitted via a transmitter contained in the pen to a host computer.

This invention relates to a device for collection and assimilation of data, and more particularly, relates to a self-contained writing device that collects, recognizes or compacts data symbols, stores such symbols and transfers those symbols to a host computer.
Prior art data collection and recognition devices generally employ some sort of special writing surface on which a special stylus is applied and is limited to a particular character set or symbol set. Such prior devices are generally not very light in weight nor are they self-contained. Further, they require some sort of fixed physical interconnection with a host computer in order for them to be able to satisfactorily perform.
However, Texas Instruments has recently (summer of 1991) provided a commercial product that is approximately the size of a hand-held calculator and contains a small writing surface upon which handwriting may be sensed and recognized. This device also contains a screen that displays the recognized characters or symbols as they are written on the small writing surface. The recognized symbols may then be downloaded via a high speed RF or IR transmitter to a host computer for processing, and storage as an electronic audit trail. In addition, it contains a conventional numeric keyboard for performing arithmetic functions. Including the battery, this so-called audit terminal weighs about one pound.
There are various peripherals associated with personal computers such as keyboards, for example, which are cordless. That is, the keyboard is not physically connected to the host computer and does not require a physical wire for the keyboard to provide input to the computer. However, such cordless keyboards require constant monitoring of the screen of the computer with which they are to be used to ensure that the information that is being entered via the keyboard is being accurately and completely transmitted to the computer. There are also cordless pointers for computer generated displays used during a conference or meeting.
In addition, there are devices, such as a so-called mouse and/or track ball that are employed with a computer to enable a user to quickly move a cursor or piece of information at one location on a screen to another location. The mouse generally requires the directional movement of the mouse's roller across some flat surface and outputs a distance and direction traveled to the computer to move an element or cursor a corresponding distance on the screen. A track ball on the other hand is normally mounted on some fixed surface, such as an open area of a keyboard, and allows a user to manipulate or roll the ball with their fingers. In this manner, the amount of rotation of the track ball in a particular direction produces a corresponding directional movement of the cursor or material on the screen. The cordless pointer discussed hereinbefore, may include a small track ball for moving the cursor (or pointer) on the display.
There are also commercially available XY digitizing pads. In general, these XY pads require a physical wire between the pad and the computer with which they are to be used. These pads may employ bit mapped or vector techniques to convert the symbols written on their active surface area to signals that may be processed by a computer to determine what characters or data the written symbols represent. In addition, small such XY pads may be built into a portion of the surface of small hand-held calculators, or other devices (such as the foregoing described Texas Instruments device).
These and other disadvantages of the prior art are overcome by the present invention, however, and a new self-contained pen computer for the acquisition of, recognition or compaction of written data, and storage and transmission of such data is provided.

Writing tip position sensing and processing apparatus


A writing operation selecting circuit is provided for selecting a temporary writing operation having a prescribed writing time for a memory cell transistor element and an additional writing operation for the memory cell transistor element. A writing time control circuit is provided for controlling an additional writing operation time by an output signal of the writing operation selecting circuit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor nonvolatile storage device in which data can be electrically erased or written.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a usual semiconductor nonvolatile storage device, an EEPROM will be described below as an example by referring to the drawings.
FIG. 23 shows a block diagram of a usual EEPROM (semiconductor nonvolatile storage device) which decreases time necessary for wiring data from a host device. FIG. 24 shows a threshold voltage distribution diagram in the erasing state and the writing state of the usual EEPROM (semiconductor nonvolatile storage device).
As shown in FIG. 23, a structure including an interface circuit 101 for an EEPROM, an EEPREOM 1400, an interface circuit 1301 for a SRAM and a SRAM 1300 is employed as one example of a structure for shortening the time necessary for writing data from the host device.
In FIG. 23, the EEPROM 1400 includes a memory cell transistor array 110, a sense amplify circuit 120, a write data latch circuit 130, an address decoder circuit 140, a high voltage control circuit 150 and a control circuit 160. The SRAM 1300 includes a memory cell transistor array 1310, a sense amplify circuit 1320, an address decoder circuit 1340 and a control circuit 1360.
Now, a writing operation in the EEPROM 1400 will be described below.
For a writing instruction from the host device, data is temporarily written at high speed in the SRAM 1300 through the interface circuit 1301 for the SRAM. After the writing instruction from the host device is completed, the data stored in the SRAM 1300 is written in the EEPROM 1400 through the interface circuit 1301 for the SRAM and the interface circuit 101 for the EEPROM. The SRAM 1300 and the EEPROM have usual ordinary structures.
In order to read the data of the SRAM 1300 for a reading instruction from the host device, the data is read through the interface circuit 1301 for the SRAM. Similarly, in order to read the data of the EEPROM 1400, the data is read through the interface circuit 101 for the EEPROM.
In accordance with these operations, after the data is temporarily written in the SRAM 1300 at high speed upon writing the data, the data is written in the EEPROM 1400 so that the nonvolatile characteristics of the stored data are realized. (for instance, see Patent Document 1.).
[Patent Document 1]
Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei-4-291644
[Patent Document 2]
Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. Hei-4-337666
The above-described usual semiconductor nonvolatile storage device has needed to include an auxiliary memory (SRAM or the like) capable of writing data at high speed to shorten time necessary for writing data from a host device.
As described above, when the auxiliary memory (SRAM or the like) is disposed in an LSI as a semiconductor nonvolatile storage device, the increase of the area of the LSI cannot be avoided. Thus, the cost of the semiconductor nonvolatile storage device has been inconveniently greatly increased.

Semiconductor nonvolatile storage device

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A bearing (91), more particularly a radial anti-friction bearing, including a bearing ring (61) with a lateral surface (63) formed by at least one undercut (65), and at least one sealing element (93) having an elastomer portion (103) and an elastic retaining lip (99), wherein the elastomer portion of the sealing element is received in the undercut at least in some portions, wherein the lateral surface of the undercut has a contour (67) with a contact portion (69) for axially securing the elastic retaining lip, as well as an axial contact surface (71), on which an axial contact surface (101) of the elastomer portion of the sealing element lies flat, is provided.

A rolling bearing is used to support components which are movable with respect to each other. It generally includes two bearing rings which have integrated raceways. Rolling elements which roll on the raceways are situated between the bearing rings. To protect a rolling bearing, or the bearing interior between the bearing rings, against contaminants, spray water and an excessive loss of lubricating grease, at least one sealing element is usually inserted between the bearing rings of the rolling bearing.
To accommodate and fasten a sealing element, the bearing ring conventionally has a correspondingly designed lateral surface, with which the sealing element makes contact in the inserted state. In addition, an axial securing of the sealing element on the lateral surface of the bearing ring is necessary. After the sealing element is inserted, strict requirements are imposed, in particular on the dimensional accuracy and the dimensional stability of the bearing hole and the outer diameter of the bearing ring. A positioning of the sealing element on a bearing ring, which is largely free of shape and size tolerances in both the axial and radial directions, is desirable.


A method for rewriting document references such as URLs located in an included document, when an include operation is performed. The include operation may be performed by the server at any time, for example, when the including and included documents are stored on the server. One aspect of the invention is a process for inserting a second document into a first document, where the second document has a reference to a third document. The reference may be a link to the third document or may be an instruction to insert the third document. In this process, the second document is parsed to identify a relative reference to the third document with respect to the second document. An effective base reference for the second document is determined. In an HTML document, the effective base reference is the effective base URL. The relative reference to the third document is converted to an absolute reference using the determined effective base reference of the second document. An effective base reference for the first document is determined. The absolute reference to the third document is then converted to a new relative reference with respect to the first document, using the effective base reference of the first document. The second document is then inserted within the first document while replacing the relative reference to the third document with respect to the second document with the new relative reference to the third document with respect to the first document.

An on-line information system typically includes one computer system (the server) that makes information available so that other computer systems (the clients) can access the information. The server manages access to the information, which can be structured as a set of independent on-line services. The server and client communicate via messages conforming to a communication protocol and sent over a communication channel such as a computer network or through a dial-up connection.
Typical uses for on-line services include document viewing, electronic commerce, directory lookup, on-line classified advertisements, reference services, electronic bulletin boards, document retrieval, electronic publishing, keyword searching of documents, technical support for products, and directories of on-line services. The service may make the information available free of charge, or for a fee, and may he on publicly accessible or private computer systems.
Information sources managed by the server may include files, databases, and applications on the server system or on an external computer system. The information that the server provides may simply be stored on the server, may be converted from other formats manually or automatically, may be computed on the server in response to a client request, may be derived from data and applications on the server or other machines, or may be derived by any combination of these techniques.
The user of an on-line service uses a program on the client system to access the information managed by the on-line service. Possible user capabilities include viewing, searching, downloading, printing, editing, and filing the information managed by the server. The user may also price, purchase, rent, or reserve services or goods offered through the on-line service.
An on-line service for catalog shopping, which is an exemplary of application of this technology, might work as follows. A user running a program on a client system requests a connection to the catalog shopping service using a service name that either is well known or can be found in a directory. The request is received by the server employed by the catalog shopping service, and the server returns an introductory document that asks for an identifier and password. The client program displays this document, the user fills in an identifier and password that were assigned by the service in a previous visit, and the information is sent to the server. The server verifies the identifier and password against an authorization database, and returns a menu document that is then presented to the user. Each time the user selects a menu item, the selection is sent to the server, and the server responds with the appropriate new page of information, possibly including item descriptions or prices that are retrieved from a catalog database. By selecting a series of menu items, the user navigates to the desired item in the catalog and requests that the item be ordered. The server receives the order request, and returns a form to be completed by the user to provide information about shipping and billing. The user response is returned to the server, and the server enters the order information into an order database.
On-line services are available on the World Wide Web (WWW), which operates over the global Internet. The Internet interconnects a large number of otherwise unrelated computers or sites. Similar services are available on private networks called "Intranets" that may not be connected to the Internet, and through local area networks (LANs). The WWW and similar private architectures provide a "web" of interconnected document objects. On the WWW, these document objects are located at various sites on the global Internet. A more complete description of the WWW is provided in "The World-Wide Web," by T. Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau, A. Luotonen, H. F. Nielsen, and A. Secret, Communications of the ACM, 37 (8), pp. 76-82, August 1994, and in "World Wide Web: The Information Universe," by Berners-Lee, T., et al., in Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy, Vol. 1, No. 2, Meckler, Westport, Conn., Spring 1992.
Among the types of document objects in an on-line service are documents and scripts. Documents that are published on the WWW are written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This language is described in HyperText Markup Language Specification--2.0, by T. Berners-Lee and D. Connolly, RFC 1866, proposed standard, November 1995, and in "World Wide Web & HTML," by Douglas C. McArthur, in Dr. Dobbs Journal, December 1994, pp. 18-20, 22, 24, 26 and 86. Many companies also are developing their own enhancements to HTML. HTML documents are generally static, that is, their contents do not change over time unless modified by a service developer. HTML documents can be created using programs specifically designed for that purpose or by executing a script file.
The HTML language is used for writing hypertext documents, which are more formally referred to as Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) documents that conform to a particular Document Type Definition (DTD). An HTML document includes a hierarchical set of markup elements; most elements have a start tag, followed by content, followed by an end tag. The content is a combination of text and nested markup elements. Tags, which are enclosed in angle brackets (`<` and `>`), indicate how the document is structured and how to display the document, as well as destinations and labels for hypertext links. There are tags for markup elements such as titles and headers, text attributes such as bold and italic, lists, paragraph boundaries, links to other documents or other parts of the same document, in-line graphic images, and for many other features.
The following lines of HTML, briefly illustrate how the language is used:
Some words are bold, others are italic. Here we start a new paragraph.
Here's a link to PA1 the Microsoft Corporation  home page. PA1 Some words are bold, others are italic. Here we start a new paragraph. PA1 Here's a link to Microsoft Corporation home page. PA1 "scheme" identifies the access protocol (such as HTTP, FTP or GOPHER); PA1 "host" is the Internet domain name of the machine that supports the protocol; PA1 "port" is the transmission control protocol (TCP) port number of the appropriate server (if different from the default); PA1 "path" is a scheme-specific identification of the object; and PA1 "search" contains optional parameters for querying the content of the object.
This sample document is a hypertext document because it contains a hypertext "link" to another document, in the line that includes "HREF=." The format of this link is described below. A hypertext document may also have a link to other parts of the same document. Linked documents may generally be located anywhere on the Internet. When a user is viewing the document using a client program called a Web browser (described below), the links are displayed as highlighted words or phrases. For example, using a Web browser, the sample document above might be displayed on the user's screen as follows:
In the Web browser, the link may be selected, for example, by clicking on the highlighted area with a mouse. Typically, the screen cursor changes when positioned on a hypertext link. Selecting a link will cause the associated document to be displayed. Thus, clicking on the highlighted text "Microsoft Corporation" would fetch and display the associated home page for that entity.
The HTML language also provides a mechanism (the image or "IMG" element) enabling an HTML document to include an image that is stored as a separate file. When the end user views the HTML document, the included image is displayed as part of the document, at the point where the image element occurred in the document.
Another kind of document object in a web is a script. A script is an executable program, or a set of commands stored in a file, that can be run by a server program called a Web server (described below) to produce an HTML document that is then returned to the Web browser. Typical script actions include running library routines or other applications to fetch information from a file or a database, or initiating a request to obtain information from another machine, or retrieving a document corresponding to a selected hypertext link. A script may be run on the Web server when, for example, the end user selects a particular hypertext link in the Web browser, or submits an HTML form request. Scripts are usually written by a service developer in an interpreted language such as Basic, Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) or Tool Control Language (Tcl) or one of the Unix operating system shell languages, but they also may be written in more complex programming languages such as "C" and then compiled to produce an executable program. Programming in Tcl is described in more detail in Tcl and the Tk Toolkit, by John K. Ousterhout, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., USA, 1994. Perl is described in more detail in Programming in Perl, by Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, Calif., USA, 1992.
Each document object in a web has an identifier called a Universal Resource Identifier (URI). These identifiers are described in more detail in T. Berners-Lee, "Universal Resource Identifiers in WWW: A Unifying Syntax for the Expression of Names and Addresses of Objects on the Network as used in the World-Wide Web," RFC 1630, CERN, June 1994; and T. Berners-Lee, L,. Masinter, and M. McCahill, "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)," RFC 1738, CERN, Xerox PARC, University of Minnesota, December 1994. A URI allows any object on the Internet to be referred to by name or address, such as in a link in an HTML document as shown above. There are two types of URIs: a Universal Resource Name (URN), and a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URN references an object by name within a given name space. The Internet community has not yet defined the syntax of URNs. A URL references an object by defining an access algorithm using network protocols. An example of a URL is "http://www.microsoft.com". A URL, has the syntax "scheme://host:port/path?search" where
URLs are also used by web servers and browsers on private computer systems, Intranets, or networks, and not just for the WWW.
There are generally two types of URLs that may be used in the hypertext link: absolute URLs, and relative URLs. An absolute URL includes a protocol identifier, a machine name, and an optional HTTP port number. A relative URL does not include a protocol identifier, machine name or port, and must be interpreted relative to some known absolute URL called the base URL. The base URL is used to determine the protocol identifier, machine name, optional port and base directory for a relative URL. For further discussion of URL format and usage, see the document "Uniform Resource Locators", Internet Request for Comments (RFC) 1738, by T. Berners-Lee, L. Masinter, M. McCahill, University of Minnesota, December 1994. For further discussions of relative URL format and usage, see "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", RFC 1808, by R. Fielding, University of California, Irvine, June 1995.
A hypertext link to an electronic document is specified by one of several HTML elements. One of the parameters of an HTML, element for a hypertext link is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that serves as the identifier for the target of the link. An HTML, document may have a base element defining an absolute URL that specifies the base URL for that document. If the document has no base element, then the absolute URL of the document is used as the base URL. The base element provides a base address for interpreting relative URLs when the document is read out of context.
For example, FIG. 1 shows text with a document URL 100, a base element 110, a hypertext link with an absolute URL 120, and a hypertext link with a relative URL 130, which is evaluated with respect to base URL 110 to produce a resulting URL, 140. As an additional example, FIG. 2 shows text with a document URL 200, no base element, a hypertext link with an absolute URL 220, and a hypertext link with a relative URL 230, which is evaluated with respect to document URL 200 to produce a resulting URL 240.
A site at which documents are made available to network users is called a "Web site" and must run a "Web server" program to provide access to the documents. A Web server program is a computer program that allows a computer on the network to make documents available to the rest of the WWW or a private network. The documents are often hypertext documents in the HTML language, but may be other types of document objects as well, and may include images, audio, and/or video information. The information that is managed by the Web server includes hypertext documents that are stored on the server or are dynamically generated by scripts on the Web server. Several Web server software packages exist, such as the Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics) server or the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) server. Web servers have been implemented for several different platforms, including the Sun Sparc II.TM. workstation running the Unix operating, system, and personal computers with the Intel PENTIUM.TM. processor running the Microsoft MS-DOS.TM. operating system and the Microsoft Windows.TM. operating environment.
Web servers also have a standard interface for running external programs, called the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). CGI is described in more detail in How to Set Up and Maintain a Web Site, by Lincoln D. Stein, Addison-Wesley, August 1995. A gateway is a program that handles incoming information requests and returns the appropriate document or generates a document dynamically. For example, a gateway might receive queries, look up the answer in a database to provide a response, and translate the response into a page of HTML so that the server can send the response to the client. A gateway program may be written in a language such as "C" or in a scripting language such as Perl or Tcl or one of the Unix operating system shell languages. The CGI standard specifies how the script or application receives input and parameters, and specifies how output should be formatted and returned to the server.
For security reasons, a Web server machine may limit access to files. To control access to files on the Web server, the Web server program running on the server machine may provide an extra layer of security above and beyond the normal file system and login security procedures of the operating system on the server machine. The Web server program may add further security rules such as: (a) optionally requiring input of a user name and password, completely independent of the normal user name and passwords that the operating system may maintain on user accounts; (b) allowing groups of users to be identified for security purposes, independent of any user group definitions of the operating system; (c) access control for each document object such that only specified users (with optional passwords) or groups of users are allowed access to an object, or so that access is only allowed for clients at specific network addresses, or some combination of these rules; (d) allowing access to the document objects only through a specified subset of the possible HTTP methods; and (e) allowing some document objects to be marked as HTML, documents, others to be marked as executable scripts that will generate HTML documents, and others to be marked as other types of objects such as images. Access to the on-line service document objects via a network file system would not conform to the security features of the Web server program and would provide a way to access documents outside of the security provided by the Web server. The Web server program also typically maps document object names that are known to the client to file names on the server file system. This mapping may be arbitrarily complex, and any author or program that tries to access documents on the Web server directly would need to understand this name mapping.
A user (typically using a machine other than the machine used by the Web server) who wishes to access documents available on the network at a Web site must run a client program called a "Web browser." The combination of the Web server and Web browser communicating using an HTTP protocol over a computer network is referred to herein as a "web architecture." The Web browser program allows the user to retrieve and display documents from Web servers. Some of the popular Web browser programs are: Navigator.TM. browser from NetScape Communications Corp., of Mountain View, Calif.; Mosaic.TM. browser from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA); WinWeb.TM. browser, from Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. of Austin, Tex.; and Internet Explorer.TM. from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Web browsers have been developed to run on different platforms, including personal computers with the Intel Corporation PENTIUM.TM. processor running Microsoft Corporation's MS-DOS.TM. operating system and Microsoft Corporation's Windows.TM. environment, and Apple Corporation's Macintosh.TM. personal computers.
The Web server and the Web browser communicate using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) message protocol and the underlying transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) data transport protocol of the Internet. HTTP is described in Hypertext Transfer Protocol--HTTP/1.0, by T. Berners-Lee, R. T. Fielding, H. Frystyk Nielsen, Internet Draft Document, Oct. 14, 1995, and is currently in the standardization process. In HTTP, the Web browser establishes a connection to a Web server and sends an HTTP request message to the server. In response to an HTTP request message, the Web server checks for authorization, performs any requested action, and returns an HTTP response message containing an HTML document in accord with the requested action, or an error message. The returned HTML document may simply be a file stored on the Web server, or may be created dynamically using a script called in response to the HTTP request message. For instance, to retrieve a document, a Web browser may send an HTTP request message to the indicated Web server, requesting a document by reference to the URL of the document. The Web server then retrieves the document and returns it in an HTTP response message to the Web browser. If the document has hypertext links, then the user may again select one of the links to request that a new document be retrieved and displayed. As another example, a user may fill in a form requesting a database search. In response, the Web browser will send an HTTP request message to the Web server including the name of the database to be searched, the search parameters, and the URL of the search script. The Web server calls a search program, passing in the search parameters. The program examines the parameters and attempts to answer the query, perhaps by sending the query to a database interface. When the program receives the results of the query, it constructs an HTML document that is returned to the Web server, which then sends it to the Web browser in an HTTP response message.
Request messages in HTTP contain a "method name" indicating the type of action to be performed by the server, a URL indicating a target object (either document or script) on the Web server, and other control information. Response messages contain a status line, server information, and possible data content. The Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) specification defines a standardized protocol for describing the content of messages that are passed over a network. HTTP request and response messages use MIME header lines to indicate the format of the message. MIME is described in more detail in MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions): Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies, Internet RFC 1341, June 1992.
One of the problems with the HTML language is that there is no general facility for one HTML document to include a second HTML document, except when the second document is a graphical image. It is important to solve this problem, because it is often convenient, e.g., when managing large and complex web sites, to have the capability to include one document as part of another document. This feature allows a document fragment commonly used in many pages within a web to reside in one place for easy maintenance. For example, there may be a document fragment comprising a copyright notice, which should be included in each document on the Web site. If the copyright notice must be changed, the change can be made in one place without having to change every occurrence of the copyright notice on all of the pages on which it is included. Additionally, a file providing a navigation bar, or, a combination of images and links to corresponding documents, is easily maintained in the same way.
One solution to this problem is an include facility that is built-in to the Web server. Several HTTP servers, including the public domain National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) server, a public domain server from Apache, and a commercially available server from Netscape, Inc., use this approach. The process performed by such an include facility is shown in FIG. 6. Instead of just returning the requested HTML document to the client, these servers have an option to parse an HTML document, interpret commands within the document, and return a new HTML document to the client based on the results of those commands. One of the possible commands is a request that the server include a second HTML document at the location of the include command. This solution works for included documents that include other documents, to any level of recursion. In particular, the process of FIG. 6 involves parsing an input document in a step 300. While reading and parsing the input document, the following steps are recursively performed until an end of the file is reached, as indicated in a step 302, after which, the include process or the recursive call thereto is terminated in a step 301. First, the program reads a token from the input document (step 300); for an HTML document, a token is either an HTML tag, an include directive in the form of an HTML comment, some other HTML comment, or a string of text without HTML tags. If as determined in a step 304, the token is an include directive specifying that a second document should be included in the current location, then the included document is recursively processed according to the procedure described in FIG. 6, at a step 314. During the processing of the included document, results are copied to the output document. The processing of the included document is primarily to determine only if other documents are included therein. If the token is not an include directive, processing continues with a step 308, which provides for copying the token to the output document.
One problem with using the server side include facility to include one HTML document within another is that in currently available servers with this capability, the relative URLs within the included document are not properly adjusted to reflect the new environment of the including document. The final HTML document produced by the server contains the text of the original document and the included text, but the relative URLs in the included text have not been modified correctly to indicate the new document location. The included text is simply copied into the including document without any modifications.
For example, FIG. 3A shows a document "test1.htm," which is intended to be used with the NCSA 1.5 server side include facility. It has a document URL 260. This document includes, via an include directive 250, a second document, "subdir/include1.htm," shown in FIG. 3B. The second document contains a fragment of HTML, and the fragment contains a hypertext link 270 to a third document, "link.htm." When the client requests document test1.htm and if the server determines that the server side include facility is operating, the server makes a copy of document test1.htm and replaces the include directive with the contents of the included document. The resulting document is then returned to the client. Since the implementation of the server side include facility simply copies the included document without rewriting the relative URLs contained in the included document, the resulting document has a relative URL for "link.htm" that is incorrect. The URL, for link.htm is now interpreted relative to the including document, to give an absolute URL of http://www.microsoft.com/link.htm, whereas the original interpretation of the URL for link.htm was relative to the included document giving the absolute URL http://www.microsoft.com/subdir/link.htm. Therefore when the client receives the resulting document "test1.htm," and the user attempts to use the hypertext link to the document "link.htm," the link will incorrectly point to the wrong location.
The above example illustrates one problem with the server side include facility. If the including document and the included document reside in different directories on the server, and if neither document has a base element for the base URL, then the relative URLs in the included document will be incorrectly interpreted in the resulting document.
In general, the including document and the included document each have an effective base URL, which is established by a base element in the document, or if there is no base element, is set to the absolute URL of the document. A more general statement of the problem is that if the including document and the included document have different effective base URLs, then the relative URLs in the included document will be incorrectly interpreted in the resulting document.
Another possible solution to the problem of having one HTML document include another HTML document is to have the server execute a program through the CGI mechanism. The program parses the including document, replacing any include directives with the included documents. However, this solution suffers from the same problem, namely that a straightforward copy of the included documents into the resulting document yields incorrect results for relative URLs in the included document.

Computer system and computer-implemented method for interpreting hypertext links in a document when including the document within another document


Packaging, especially for the extemporaneous mixing of two products, includes two bottles separated by a connector (8) bearing a removable stopper. The connector means (8) includes two separate parts, a first part (80) bearing the top (88) of a central hollow shaft supporting the stopper (10) which can be screwed in leaktight fashion onto the base of the first bottle, a second part (82) fitted onto the first bottle, which forms a bottom of the central hollow shaft, bearing means (29) which assist in expelling the stopper so that the products can be mixed, and an anti-rotation device for preventing the second part (82) from rotating with respect to the first (80).

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to packaging and particularly to packaging for products which are extemporaneously mixed. The invention is particularly suited to products such as those used in the field of hair colouring, where it is necessary to package a colorant solution intended for dyeing the hair and an oxidizing agent where the solution and the agent are not mixed until the product is to be used.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical package used for products that are to be mixed before use includes a first bottle with a detachable stopper provided in its base, a second bottle, and connecting means for connecting the two bottles to each other so that their respective contents can be mixed within the two bottles. For example, patent FR 2,680,357 discloses packaging of this type in which the connecting means consist of a band shaped connecting piece which fulfils a number of functions. The connecting piece supports the stopper, provides a leaktight attachment between the first bottle and the second bottle and defines the outer trim for the region of connection between the two bottles. The connecting piece is snap-fastened onto the base of the first bottle, sealing being provided by force-fitting a portion of the connecting piece onto the first bottle. The sealing achieved by this type of fitting may sometimes prove insufficient, especially when the skirt formed by the base of the first bottle is of relatively large diameter, i.e. approximately 3 to 5 cm. The problem is that the quality to which such a bottle can be produced, and the tolerances on the dimensions exceed those of a conventional bottle, especially those made of thermoplastic. The precariousness of this type of seal is made all the worse by the fact that in the vertical position, the sealing region is immersed in the liquid, and this may unfavourably alter the properties of the thermoplastic, thus having an appreciable effect on the seal.
Furthermore, for such a connecting part to be threaded is precluded if the packaging, especially in the vicinity of the connecting piece, is of non-circular cross-section, such as an oval cross-section. This is because, owing to manufacturing tolerances, it would be impossible to guarantee an angular position which is precise enough to achieve alignment between the skirt-like trim and the exterior surface of the first bottle and thereby achieve leaktight clamping of the connecting part onto the first bottle.

Packaging for the extemporaneous mixing of two products


A rotary position sensor featuring a robust and simply constructed magnetic field assembly which provides a uniform magnetic field in the working air gap for a conventional mangetosensitive device located thereinside. The magnetic field assembly includes a plastic casing having a blind hollow, magnet pocket located at the blind end of the hollow, and a pair of diametrically opposed pole piece pockets oriented in upstanding relation to the magnet pocket. A permanent magnet is snapped into the magnet pocket, and a pole piece is respectively snapped into each of the pole piece pockets. The pole pieces may be rectangular or arc shaped, wherein the space therebetween forms the working air gap into which the magentosensitive device is placed. The magnetic field established in the working air gap is transverse to the axis of the blind hollow, and is generally uniform.

The present invention relates to rotary position sensors used to sense rotary movement using a sensor including a magnetosensitive device, such as a Hall effect device, and more particularly to a magnetic assembly therefor.
Rotary position sensors utilize a magnetic field and a magnetosensitive device, such as a Hall effect device or a magnetoresistor located within the magnetic field. To detect rotational movement as between a first article (such as for example a rotatable throttle shaft of an air control valve) and a second article (such as for example a stationary base), the magnetic field is oriented transverse in relation to the axis of rotation of the first article, and the magnetosensitive device is located inside the magnetic field. The member providing the magnetic field is connected to one of the articles, and the magnetosensitive device is connected to the other article. As the articles rotate relative to each other, the magnetosensitive device is caused to change its angular position relative to the magnetic field direction, resulting in a change of output signal from the magnetosensitive device responsive to its angle with respect to the magnetic field direction. This change in signal is indicative of the angular position as between the first and second articles.
FIGS. 1 and 2 depict a typical configuration of a prior art rotary position sensor 10. A shaft 12 supports a magnetic assembly 14 including two mutually opposed permanent magnet arcs 16, 18 and a keeper ring 20. A working air gap 22 is provided between the magnet arcs 16, 18, wherein a magnetic field B is provided therebetween having a direction D locally defined by the magnetic lines L. The magnet arcs 16, 18 are glued or bonded into place on the keeper ring 20. A magnetosensitive device 24 (as for example an AISC chip, such as a Melexis MLX90215 or Alegro ATS635LSB) is placed into the working air gap 22, and is connected to a base 26 by at least one peg 28. FIG. 3 depicts the magnetic field strength as a function of distance along the cross-section line 30. and indicates the magnetic field is nonuniform in that it drops in field strength on either side of the center of the working air gap.
What remains needed in the art is a magnet assembly for a rotary position sensor which is robust, yet simply constructed, and which provides a uniform magnetic field in the working air gap.
The present invention is a rotary position sensor featuring a robust and simply constructed magnetic field assembly which provides a uniform magnetic field in the working air gap for a conventional mangetosensitive device located thereinside.
The magnetic field assembly according to the present invention includes a plastic casing having a blind hollow, magnet pocket located at the blind end of the hollow, and a pair of diametrically opposed pole piece pockets oriented in upstanding relation to the magnet pocket. A permanent magnet is snapped into the magnet pocket, and a pole piece is respectively snapped into each of the pole piece pockets. The pole pieces may be rectangular or arc shaped, wherein the space therebetween forms the working air gap into which the magentosensitive device is placed. The magnetic field established in the working air gap is transverse to the axis of the blind hollow, and is generally uniform.
The aforesaid snapping feature is provided preferably by a plurality of nibs located at the periphery of the magnet and pole piece pockets which interferingly engage the respective magnet and pole pieces so as to retain them fixedly seated with respect thereto.
The casing may be configured to interface with either a stationary or rotatable article, as for example via a shaft cavity for being press-fit onto an end of a shaft.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a rotary position sensor including a simply constructed, snap together magnet assembly.
This and additional objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become clearer from the following specification of a preferred embodiment.


A wine rack for holding a plurality of bottles is configured to follow the contour of a curvilinear structural wall, whether convex or concave. The wine rack has a frame for holding open-ended elongated compartments. The compartments are loosely attached together at their respective first ends. Unattached second ends of the wine bottle compartments are free to flex laterally such that their ends generally follow the contour of the curvilinear structural wall.

Racks for holding bottles of wine have been used for centuries. They can be as simple as a frame with horizontal shelves spaced apart sufficiently to hold bottles lying on their sides. Dividers are generally used to keep the bottles from contacting one another, thus reducing breakage. The dividers tend to be rigid slats or other structures designed to fit into the frame. They often are permanently attached. The dividers typically are positioned to create a set of individual compartments, each sized to hold one wine bottle lying on its side. Further, each compartment is uniformly configured to extend straight backwards. Wine racks tend to be box-shaped with a flat back wall. The typical wine rack, whether for commercial use or residential use, is designed to fit flush with a straight wall or with another box-shaped wine rack. Residential wine racks tend to be more aesthetically pleasing to the eye with a polished steel construction or perhaps a varnished wood construction. Regardless, all are designed to fit along a straight wall.
More modern architectural building styles allow walls which are curved, either convexly or concavely. A curvilinear wall may be only a few feet long such as in an entryway. It may also be several feet long to create a more dramatic appearing room for entertaining purposes. As can be readily imagined, a conventional box-shaped wine rack with its straight back side when placed along a curvilinear wall looks very out of place. This is especially true for a very long wall with a pronounced curvature. Forming a wine rack with a curved back side would create a structure which is more aesthetically pleasing, but would leave a problem of how to redesign dividers or compartments for the wine bottles. The uniform configuration of wine compartments with their substantially parallel walls simply cannot neatly fit into a curved frame.
It is apparent that while designing a frame with curved back and front sides to conform to a curvilinear wall is feasible, more is needed. The time is ripe for a wine rack which can be positioned to set flush with a curvilinear wall and hold a plurality of wine bottles in an orderly manner. Necessarily, the wine rack's overall appearance must appear sturdy as well as attractive.
In accord with a need, I have developed a wine rack which is made to conform to a curvilinear wall. The wine rack holds a plurality of bottles, e.g. well over 1,000 bottles if desired. The wine rack of the invention is aesthetically pleasing as well as sturdy enough to hold the plurality of bottles in a manner where each individual bottle can be conveniently removed as needed. It can, if desired, have the inherent ability to inhibit and suppress the growth of microbes.

Wall conforming wine rack for a plurality of bottles


A pivoting plug adapter provides a conductive connection between first and second plugs. The adapter includes a pair of sub-assemblies attached to one another in a pivotal mechanical connection with each sub-assembly housing conductive elements. One plug extends from one sub-assembly and the other plug extends from the other sub-assembly. A central conductive sleeve extends between the respective sub-assemblies coaxial to the axis of rotation. A bias member is positioned between sub-assemblies to bias them away from one another. Another bias member is positioned within a sub-assembly as a member of the conductive path between the plugs. One or more of the bias members may be wave washers. The sub-assemblies are pivotal about the central axis to vary the position of the plugs relative to one another while maintaining conductive communication.

The present disclosure relates to a signal plug adapter. More particularly, the disclosure relates to a signal plug adapter for transmitting an audio signal with a pivoting arrangement between a first side and second side.
Audio signal cables and adapters have been used for many years for musical instrument amplification, sound reinforcement and high fidelity signal transmission. These adapters are typically coaxial, with a central signal conductor surrounded by insulation, a ground conductor, and a covering.
In certain contexts within which audio components are positioned very closely to one another, it is preferable to have an adapter for connecting adjacent components that omits a lengthy cable. One such context is in effects pedals used for altering the sound characteristics of instruments (usually electric guitars). Users will connect the output of one effects pedal to the input of the next pedal in a chain of effects pedals that a guitarist or other instrumentalist may use to create various different sound effects or alterations. Such effects pedals are usually foot actuated and commonly mounted with numerous other pedals on a "pedal board." An adapter cable can be used to connect adjacent pedals to one another, with preference to short cables due to the proximity of the pedals. There is no standardization with regards to the size and shape of effects pedals.
If the respective input and output jacks of adjacent pedals were always aligned with one another and/or users had no desire to move pedals, then a straight coupler could be used to connect adjacent pedals. But most pedal jacks do not align like this, requiring users to use cables to interconnect the pedals.
No matter how short the cable, there is usually a build-up of cable wire between pedals that must be managed, creates an unappealing aesthetic appearance and may prevent pedals from being mounted very close to each other. In an effort to replace cables, manufacturers have created flatter patch plugs that have very low profile, right angle plugs and flat cable so that the user can mount his pedals much closer together. These lower profile options carry drawbacks, including poor adjustability for use with pedals having a variety of input and output locations.
It would thus be useful to provide a plug adapter with a low profile within which the locations of the plugs are adjustable.


The invention relates to a display device for rendering gray tone images on a monitor (31) controlled by s electron rays, wherein a correction unit (33) is provided for generating s output image signals As, which comprise gray tone values forming part of a set K of correction gray tones, from an image signal (34) which comprises gray tone values forming part of a set M of original gray tones (23), and the s output image signals As, after a D/A conversion, are fed each to one electron ray for a brightness-corrected rendering of a gray tone in one pixel of the monitor (31) for the purpose of adapting the brightness distribution of the monitor to the optimum perceptional brightness distribution.

The invention relates to a display device for displaying gray tone images with a monitor driven by s electron rays.
Images used, for example, for diagnostic purposes are usually displayed as gray tone images in medical technology. The smallest details are important in the display of these medical images. The object is accordingly to achieve an optimized display with a large number of brightness levels which are distinguishable by the human eye.
WO 96/19899-A3 describes a monochromatic monitor which is driven with three electron guns (triple gun). These three electron rays are imaged in a single point. The image information with which these electron rays are fed, however, is always the same. The generation of a pixel by means of three electron rays achieves a high brightness and a high sharpness.
Monitors have a representation curve which differs from the optimum perceptional representation curve. Typical monitor curves show an insufficient resolution of the individual gray tones in the low or darker gray tone region. The insufficient resolution of the gray tones in this region means that different gray tones cannot be distinguished or that several different gray tones are displayed as only one gray tone value. To render these differences in gray tones visible or to correct them, a correction in the brightness distribution of the monitor representation curve is to be carried out.
In prior-art correction arrangements, the same number of gray tone values is assigned to a corresponding number of gray tone values. The assignment instruction for correcting the brightness distribution of the monitor, or the representation curve thereof, thus assigns the same gray tone values of the output video signal to several gray tone values of an input video signal, which leads to a loss in displayable gray tone values.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a simple device for adapting the brightness distribution of the monitor to the optimum perceptional brightness distribution.
According to the invention, this object is achieved in that a correction unit is provided for generating s output image signals As, which comprise gray tone values forming part of a set K of correction gray tones, from an image signal which contains gray tone values forming part of a set M of original gray tones, and in that said s output image signals As, after a D/A conversion, are designed to be supplied each to an electron ray of the monitor for a brightness-corrected display of a gray tone in a point of the monitor.
Each monitor has an individual brightness distribution where the problems mentioned above in the representation of an image signal occur. It is accordingly necessary to adapt the image signal with its coded image information to the brightness distribution of the monitor so as to achieve a perceptionally optimized rendering. The image signal comprises, for example, a coded medical image in its original recorded form, which is supplied to the correction unit. The correction unit receives this image signal, which contains gray tone values from a set M of original gray tones. This set M of the original gray tones is associated with the set K of the correction gray tones in dependence on the brightness distribution of the monitor. This leads to the generation of s digital output image signals which are each subjected to a digital/analog conversion.
The monitor is driven by a number s of electron rays, s being a given natural number. The s analog output image signals are each supplied to one of the s electron rays which drive the monitor. The s electron rays are imaged in one point of the monitor, so that a mixing of several gray tone values takes place here. The original gray tone, which does not correspond to the perceptionally optimized representation, is displayed with brightness correction owing to this mixing of the s electron rays in one point.
In this arrangement according to the invention, input gray tones are assigned to several output gray tones in a correction unit. Each of the several output gray tones is supplied to an electron ray for displaying the output gray tones on the monitor. The several electron rays are imaged in one point of the monitor, so that a mixing of the several output gray tones is achieved. Thus a different gray tone is mixed for each input gray tone from several output gray tones, and a perceptionally optimized display of the image signal on the monitor is created.
The n-bit wide image signal is capable of containing 2n different gray tone values. These original gray tones are assigned to s correction sets of 2n gray tone values each in the correction unit. The number of the correction sets is determined here by the number s of electron rays. Each correction set, for example, comprises 2n different correction gray tones. Each original gray tone is associated with a gray tone value from each correction set, so that s output image signals are generated. The assignment of s correction gray tone values to each original gray tone value achieves the adaptation of the brightness distribution of the monitor to the optimum perceptional brightness distribution.
The number of possible gray tones which can be displayed is increased through the assignment of several correction gray tones.
In a further embodiment of the invention it is found to be advantageous to arrange a photosensor in the vicinity of the monitor, which sensor influences the correction unit in dependence on the ambient light. The use of such a photosensor involves the use of several correction tables for different ambient brightness values. Depending on the value measured by the ambient light sensor, the corresponding correction table is then selected during operation of the device.
To determine the brightness distribution of the monitor, calibration measurements are carried out with a luminance sensor. The luminance curves are measured individually for each electron ray and collectively for all electron rays. The luminance sensor measures the brightness of the pixels directly on the surface of the picture tube of the monitor. The luminance curves thus determined are supplied to the correction unit for calculating the correction tables.
It is advantageous to use a photosensitive sensor first for determining the luminance curves. After the luminance curves have been laid down, this sensor is utilized as an ambient light sensor through a change in its orientation.
In an alternative embodiment of the invention, the luminance curves of the monitor are synthetically generated through a parameter description. Since the brightness distribution of the monitor also depends on user-specific settings, it is very cumbersome to measure all possible settings in advance and then to associate the original gray tone values with the correction gray tone values in accordance therewith. The luminance curves can be approximated with a very good degree of correspondence by a simple parameter description through the creation of a calculation instruction in which the luminance values depend on the brightness and contrast values. The brightness distributions or luminance curves are then calculated, and subsequently the assignation of the original gray tone values to the correction gray tones is carried out in the look-up table so as to set a display mode which is perceptionally optimized.
In a further embodiment of the invention, it is found to be advantageous in a triple-gun monitor, which is driven by three electron rays, to assign three correction sets of gray tones to the set of original gray tones of the image signal in the correction unit for generating three output image signals. One gray tone value from each of the three correction sets is then assigned to each gray tone value from the original gray tones. These three output image signals, after a digital/analog conversion, are each supplied to a respective electron ray of the triple-gun monitor and are imaged in a common point on the monitor with a corrected gray tone value for each original gray tone value to be pictured.
It is an advantage of this invention that three-channel graphic cards for color monitors can be used. These three-channel graphic cards are complemented with a suitable correction unit for adapting the brightness distribution of the monitor to the optimum perceptional brightness distribution. This means that no new hardware need be developed.
It is advantageous that the n-bit wide image signal is supplied to s correction sets Ks in the correction unit, which sets have a bit depth smaller than n. The assignment of s correction sets with corresponding gray tone values renders it possible to provide the correction sets with fewer gray tone values than the original number of gray tones, thanks to the subsequent mixing of the electron rays. When the three output image signals As are mixed, a theoretical number of gray tone values is possible corresponding to the permutation of the three gray tones of the correction sets, so that the quantity of the correction gray tones can be smaller than the quantity of the original gray tones. The digital/analog conversion may accordingly be designed to have a processing width smaller than n as well.
Such gray tone images are recorded by means of X-ray devices, computer or magnetic resonance tomography devices, or ultrasound devices.

Display device with improved representation of the shades of grey


A method for forming a multi-color, clustered dot-off-dot halftone screen, includes defining a range of density values for pixels of a first color and assigning those density values to positions along a pixel growth curve; defining a range of density values for pixels of a second color and assigning those density values to positions along the pixel growth curve; and defining the pixel growth curve, such that a plurality of consecutively filled pixels form a cluster along the curve and such that pixels widely separately along the curve are also widely separated within the halftone cell. Density values for pixels of third and fourth colors may be sequentially assigned to positions along the pixel growth curve.

A contone printer uses a combination of dithering or halftoning and printing at different levels of intensity to produce different colors and different shades of lightness and darkness. Contone printers can lay down ink at only a few different levels of intensity (usually only two, ink or no ink). To produce the full range of colors that can be perceived by the human eye, contone printers must also use dithering techniques. Dithering or halftoning creates the illusion of new colors and shades by varying the pattern of black and white dots.
Each pixel value of an array of contone pixels within an area is compared to one of a set of preselected thresholds stored in a repetitive pattern as a halftone matrix or halftone cell. A number of different threshold patterns may be used to describe a halftone cell or dot. These threshold patterns indicate the order in which pixels are switched from white to black to form dots of varying gray density. Typically, a threshold pattern can be classified as either a disperse dot or a cluster dot.
Color halftoning has typically used a dot-on-dot method with rotated halftone screens. The screen pattern for each ink color is rotated at a different angle from the others, with angles chosen to minimize moiré. Much effort has been invested in finding compatible halftone screen patterns, frequencies and angles. The dot-on-dot method achieves different colors by printing one color on top of another. An alternative is a dot-off-dot halftone. Dot-off-dot printing produces different colors by the placement of the dots in side by side relationship. Dot-off-dot methods use a single basic halftone structure and thus eliminate the problem of finding a compatible screen set. They also typically produce a larger color gamut, which is desirable. One problem, however, is that the dot-off-dot approach is sensitive to printer registration. Another issue is a method for creating a desirable clustered-dot screen pattern when there are more than two inks.
There are printing technologies where dot-off-dot methods are practical. Inkjet markers can have excellent registration and can support dispersed dot patterns. Highlight printing using tri-level xerography has perfect registration and uses only two inks. However, other technologies may find dot-off-dot an option in the future as printer registration is improved by better feedback/control methods and/or by electronic registration. Even when the marking technology does support the dot-off-dot approach, there is still the question of how to design a halftone pattern that can be used by three, four or even more colorants. Each colorant must be able to grow to cover the cell area as a clustered dot, yet the overlap must be minimized (the separation maximized).
In printing multi-colored halftoned images it would be desirable to construct the halftone dots with minimal overlap between colors since this gives the largest color gamut. It would also be desirable to separate the colored dots as much as possible to minimize the effects of misregistration. Using a single halftone growth pattern is needed, both to avoid overlap of the dots and to eliminate any moiré effects. Some printing technologies require well formed, compact clustered dots, and a method of achieving these goals for clustered dots when more than two colors are used.

Method for multi-color, clustered, dot-off-dot halftoning


User interfaces for selecting content for presentation or other actions is described in this disclosure. Using a small number of input controls a user may quickly and easily navigate content available for presentation from one or more content providers. Additional information may be presented to the user to facilitate selection of the content. Users may select content using one or more of a graphical user interface, or voice input.

A wide variety of content is available to users for access electronically. This content may include television programming, eBooks, music, movies, games, and so forth. The content may be delivered using broadcast, cable, satellite, Internet, playback by streaming or retrieved from a local media device such as a digital versatile disk ("DVD"), compact disc ("CD"), flash memory, hard disk drive, and so forth. Users may consume this content by watching, listening, reading, playing, and so forth.
Certain implementations will now be described more fully below with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which various implementations and/or aspects are shown. However, various aspects may be implemented in many different forms and should not be construed as limited to the implementations set forth herein. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout.