An improved centrifugally-cast tube is provided, along with a related method and apparatus of making the tube. The tube includes a plurality of grooves and bosses that are mechanically machined into an interior surface of the tube, such as by a broaching process. The profile of grooves and bosses may be defined by a plurality of intersecting concave and convex radii. The tube is resistant to creep, carburization and metal dusting. The tube also has an enhanced heat transfer rate, and a desirable surface roughness. A method of making the tube is also provided. The method essentially consists of mechanically deforming the interior surface of the tube by passing a series of cutting inserts on support rings having incrementally-differing dimensions over the interior surface. An apparatus is also provided which includes a telescoping shaft upon which is mounted at least one cutting tool that has a plurality of cutting inserts and is adapted to form a plurality of grooves and bosses in the interior surface of the tube. The grooves and bosses may be straight or spiraled.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to furnace equipment for use in petrochemical plants, and more particularly, to improved centrifugally-cast tubes for use in such equipment and to a method and apparatus of making such tubes.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is well known that there are two basic types of furnaces used in petrochemical plants, one being "steam cracker" furnaces, and the other being "steam reformer" furnaces. Steam cracker furnaces are mainly used to make ethylene, and steam reformer furnaces are mainly used to make hydrogen. Both types of furnaces include a number of tubes, generally arranged vertically, that form a continuous flow path, or coil, through the furnace. The flow path or coil includes an inlet and an outlet. In both types of furnaces, a mixture of a hydrocarbon feedstock and steam are fed into the inlet and passed through the tubes. The tubes are exposed to extreme heat generated by burners within the furnace. As the feedstock/steam mixture is passed through the tubes at high temperatures the mixture is gradually broken down such that the resulting product exiting the outlet is ethylene in the case of a steam cracker furnace and hydrogen in the case of a steam reformer furnace.
The petrochemical industry has in the past recognized at least three desirable features in a steam cracker or steam reformer furnace. First, it is important to maximize the heat transfer rate from the furnace burners through the walls of the tubes and into the mixture of hydrocarbons and steam in order to increase the efficiency of the furnace. Second, it is important to make furnace tubes from materials that are resistant to what is known in the metallurgical arts as "creep". Third, it is important to make furnace tubes so as to be resistant to corrosion, carburization and metal dusting.
With regard to the second important feature, "creep" is basically the gradual elongation of a metal when placed under stress and subjected to high temperatures. Various creep-resistant alloys are known to those of skill in the art. Two main methods have developed within the industry of making furnace tubes with creep-resistant alloys, one being to extrude the tube, and the other being to centrifugally cast the tube. A centrifugally-cast tube is one formed by pouring an alloy in liquid form into a tubular mold that is rotating at a high speed. The alloy is allowed to cool so as to form the centrifugally-cast tube. The internal bore of the tube is then mechanically-machined by boring to achieve the desired inner diameter, resulting in a cylindrical tube having a circular cross section with a generally constant inner and outer diameter. The industry has discovered, however, that centrifugally-cast tubes exhibit superior creep properties in comparison to extruded tubes. In particular, upon inspecting cross-sections of extruded and centrifugally-cast tubes, the industry has discovered that extruded tubes have a very fine grain metallurgical structure, whereas centrifugally-cast tubes have much larger, and columnar, grains. Further, extruded tubes have a lower carbon content when compared to the carbon content of centrifugally-cast tubes. The larger, columnar grains and higher carbon content are what give the centrifugally-cast tubes superior creep properties in comparison to the fine grain microstructure and lower carbon content of extruded tubes.
One approach to achieving two of the above-identified objectives is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,250,340 ("the '340 patent"). In particular, the '340 patent discloses a method of modifying a centrifugally-cast tube by adding a series of longitudinally-disposed fins and valleys in the typically-circular internal bore of the tube. In this manner, the internal surface area of the tube is increased, thereby increasing the heat-transfer rate therethrough. As such, the '340 patent results in a tube that is resistant to creep (since it is centrifugally cast from a creep-resistant alloy) and has an increased heat transfer rate (by virtue of its modified internal profile). A key drawback to the tube disclosed in the '340 patent, however, is that it is not resistant to corrosion, carburization or metal dusting. This is because the tube in the '340 patent is made using an electrochemical machining (ECM) method, as opposed to a mechanical machining process (e.g., the boring process traditionally used to provide the desired diameter in a centrifugally-cast tube). As is known in the art, use of the ECM method results in an electropolished surface and does not provide adequate deformation and/or orientation of the subsurface or material lattice of the inner surface of the tube. In this regard, it is well known that an electropolished surface is not resistant to corrosion, carburization or metal dusting. See, e.g., MATERIALS AND CORROSION, Carburization, Metal Dusting and Carbon Deposition, ISSN 0947-5117, Vol. 49, No. 4/5, April/May 1998, pp. 221-225 and 328-335. These articles compare the effect of machining or any other surface deformation (e.g., grinding, blasting, peening, honing, etc.) to electropolishing and clearly show the advantage of conventional machining over electropolishing on resistance to carburization and metal dusting. An additional drawback to the ECM process is that it results in a tube having an interior surface with an inferior surface roughness and dimensional accuracy when compared to the interior surface that has been prepared by mechanical machining. A still further drawback to the ECM process is that it is more expensive relative to the cost of mechanical machining.
As such, there remains'a need in the art for a centrifugally-cast tube, and method and apparatus of making same, that (1) has an increased heat-transfer rate, (2) is resistant to creep, (3) is resistant to corrosion, carburization and metal dusting, (4) has a desirable surface roughness and dimensional accuracy, and (5) is cost-efficient. The present invention has been developed to overcome the foregoing deficiencies and meet the above-described needs.

Apparatus for making centrifugally-cast tube


A variation of a poker game is shown, with a unique deck of cards. The deck inserts two additional values (11 and 12), and un-suits two values (10s and 11s). The play is substantially equivalent to that of Texas Hold 'Em except that the unsuited cards cannot be used to make flushes or straight flushes, and both hole cards must be used to make a straight, flush, or straight flush.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the game of poker, and more specifically to a new variation of a hold 'em style poker game.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Poker is a card game that has been around for nearly two hundred years in many variations, and is well-known throughout the world. Although some variations are more distinct than others, generally speaking, players wager on their own hands—the player with the highest ranking hand who participated in the last such wager, winning the wagered money of the other players. The ranking of the hands is based on collecting cards of matching value, a run of cards of consecutive values, and/or a set of cards of the same suit. Although some variations of the game involve different rankings of hands, it will be assumed that the general ranking of the hands (straight flush, four-of-a-kind, full house, flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two pairs, one pair, high card only) is well known to those of ordinary skill in the art of poker, and will not be elaborated upon further.
Of the numerous variations of the game, there is a particular genre of the game, known as "hold 'em" games, which have become extremely popular in recent years. Hold 'em games involve some cards being dealt to each player ("hole cards"), and a series of community cards dealt on "the board," the latter belonging to all players. The object of hold 'em games is to make the best possible hand out of a combination of a player's hole cards and the community cards. The precise rules for the number of hole cards dealt to each player and how those cards may be combined with the community cards, differ with each hold 'em variation.
The most popular variation of hold 'em games is Texas Hold 'Em, which is currently the game with the largest purse at the World Series of Poker®. Texas Hold 'Em involves each player receiving two hole cards each. After an initial round of wagering, three community cards (known as "the flop") are dealt on the board, followed by another round of wagering. A fourth ("the turn") and a fifth ("the river") card are dealt on the board with the a round of wagering after each. Following the final round of wagering, the pot of collected wagers is awarded to the player with the highest ranking hand. A player's hand is determined by the best five-card poker hand that could be made using neither, either, or both of his hole cards together with an appropriate complement of board cards. Thus, if the board has a royal straight flush from the five community cards, then each player remaining will have the same exact hand regardless of his or her hole cards.
Texas Hold 'Em has major flaws with its inherent odds that often produce unfair results. A recent explosion in the popularity of poker has dramatically increased the number of amateur players competing in major games and tournaments. Numerous popular professionals have spoken out about the undesirable results produced in Texas Hold 'Em by the sheer volume of players who, through ignorance, do not act according to logic. One such professional, Daniel Negraneu, who was the 2004 Player of the Year, wrote that the prestige of the World Series of Poker has suffered for this exact reason.
Because of its odds, Texas Hold 'Em has an undesirable level of randomness. Whereas in an ideal game, the presence of ignorant play would lead to consistently profitable results for skilled players who capitalize on their strategic edge, the reality of Texas Hold 'Em is that in many situations the odds are too close between a player with a superior hand and one with a hand that is currently weak to dissuade the player with a weaker hand from making a bad decision to call when there are still community cards to be dealt; even when mathematics would dictate that folding is the most intelligent choice. When the player does call inappropriately, the odds of that player being rewarded by success are too considerable to be fair. This is especially true when more than one player calls illogically and compounds the chance that the superior hand of a skilled player will be caught. If three players each with only a 20% chance of winning a hand call against a player who has an 80% chance against any one of them, the combined chance of one of the three with 20% odds catching the precise card or cards needed to win is about 60% against the player with the dominant hand. In this case, the dominant hand becomes an underdog.
Proof that there are flaws in Texas Hold 'Em can be seen in the results of major tournaments in the 2005 World Series of Poker®. The final tables of events that featured Texas Hold 'Em where dominated by amateur players, whereas the final tables of other variations of poker such as Seven Card Stud and Omaha Hold 'Em, which do not suffer the same degree of inherent flaws, featured a much higher percentage of professionals at the final table. Increasingly as major Texas Hold 'Em poker games (and tournaments) are made more accessible to the masses, the professionals are catching more "bad beats" or situations where the odds dictated they should win, but they were caught on the turn or river by an inferior hand. Because of this, the top professionals are winning far less consistently in Texas Hold 'Em than when the entire field was largely comprised of skilled players. This is not true with other games.
Those who promote the game of poker, either for television ratings or in order to attract players to casinos, are vested in keeping poker at the highest levels accessible to the masses. However, the professionals, especially at this year's World Series of Poker®, advocated raising entry fees to discourage the kind of players who inject too much randomness into the game by calling when they ought to fold. A better solution is remedying Texas Hold 'Em to produce a more equitable result. Doing so appeals to both professionals who want fairness and those who wish to make poker accessible to anyone who wants to play. Thus, there is a need for variations to be introduced into Texas Hold 'Em to make it a more equitable game.
In game theory for poker, a skilled player makes decisions based upon the long-term success of that decision when weighed against various mathematical factors such as the odds of players having certain opposing hands, the odds of their own hand improving or maintaining its strength, and the size of the pot. There are many occasions in Texas Hold 'Em, especially, but not limited to smaller limit games and tournaments where players who rely on pure luck will have a chance to cripple a skilled opponent because the penalty for making bad calls is not sizable enough due to the relative odds. One major example is a flush draw. Even if an unskilled player makes a severely bad decision to match a large bet of a player with a made hand (and the size of the bet made by the person with the superior hand was strategically correct according to mathematical game theory), the inferior player will be rewarded for the mistake of a poor call nearly 40% of the time in Texas Hold 'Em. Other major mistakes are rewarded with similarly close odds. In Texas Hold 'Em, it is quite simply difficult for the skilled players to price poor players out of hands that they should not be involved with to begin with. The problem is compounded as multiple poor players call at the same time, further reducing the value of the made hand.
Another flaw in Texas Hold 'Em is that it encourages less skilled players to call with a straight draw or flush draw on the turn or the river, even when proper strategy based on pot odds (the mathematical expectation of what a player should win based on the amount in the pot, the cards he or she holds, and the number of remaining cards in the deck that will improve the hand) would dictate folding. Thus it is often difficult for more skilled players to price less skilled players out of a pot when the more skilled player has a significantly better hand. The less skilled player may then hit on the turn or the river, winning a pot they should never have been playing. Roughly 40% of the time the less skilled player will reap the benefit of his or her ignorant play.
Thus, there is a need for a variation of Texas Hold 'Em in which the outcome is based more on the skill of the player and less on the luck of the river card. It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a new variation of Texas Hold 'Em that will fill this need.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a unique deck of playing cards that will enable the creation of such a variation of Texas Hold 'Em.

Hold'em poker game and deck of cards for playing same


A padlock comprises a shackle having a first end and a second end and an arm, the arm being extendable along an axis of the arm. The arm further includes a locking mechanism having an axle pivotally connected to the second end and a plurality of tumblers sleeved into the axle, in which the axle defines an inner channel; and a movable connection component having a head and a shaft connected to the head, and when the locking mechanism is in a first position, the head is attached to the first end and when the locking mechanism is in a second position, only the movable connection component is movable along the axis of the arm and the head is detached from the first end.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a padlock, and more particularly, to a padlock having a shackle and a lock.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past, the conventional shackle has been secured and fixed in position by utilizing a spring or a screw. Unfortunately, this method is often ineffective because most people are able to easily unlock or remove the shackle. A locking mechanism needs to be installed to limit the accessibility of the shackle to a certain number of people.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,415,634 to Luquire, incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference, discloses a padlock adapted for one-handed operation. Typically having a laterally asymmetric shackle, the lock includes an arm connected thereto to pivot when the locking mechanism is disengaged. After the locking mechanism is disengaged, a spring or other component facilitates the latching of the device by biasing the arm toward an exposed end of the shackle. In addition to one end of the arm that is pivotally connected to the shackle, the other end of the arm includes a stop. Furthermore, the stop is received by a recess formed on the shackle and is utilized when the locking mechanism is in a closed position. Consequently, the structure surrounding the recess is unavoidably weakened as a result of the formation of the recess and thereby affecting the overall efficiency of the lock.


A search query for a search engine may be improved by incorporating alternate terms into the search query that are semantically similar to terms of the search query, taking into account information derived from the search query. An initial set of alternate terms that may be semantically similar to the original terms in the search query is generated. The initial set of alternate terms may be compared to information derived from the original search query. One example of such information is a set of documents retrieved in response to a search performed using the initial search query. One or more of the alternate terms may be added to the original search query based on their relationship to the information derived from the original search query.

A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to information location and, more particularly, to search engines that locate information on a network, such as the World Wide Web.
B. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web ("web") contains a vast amount of information. Locating a desired portion of the information, however, can be challenging. This problem is compounded because the amount of information on the web and the number of new users inexperienced at web research are growing.
People generally surf the web based on its link graph structure, often starting with high quality human-maintained indices or search engines. Human-maintained lists cover popular topics effectively but are subjective, expensive to build and maintain, slow to improve, and do not cover all esoteric topics.
Automated search engines, in contrast, locate web sites by matching search terms entered by the user to a pre-indexed corpus of web pages. Generally, the search engine returns a list of web sites sorted based on relevance to the user's search terms. Determining the correct relevance, or importance, of a web page to a user, however, can be a difficult task. For one thing, the importance of a web page to the user is inherently subjective and depends on the user's interests, knowledge, and attitudes. There is, however, much that can be determined objectively about the relative importance of a web page. Existing methods of determining relevance are based on matching a user's search terms to terms indexed from web pages. More advanced techniques determine the importance of a web page based on more than the content of the web page. For example, one known method, described in the article entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine," (1998) by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, assigns a degree of importance to a web page based on the link structure of the web page.
A search query, entered by a user is typically only one query of many that express the information that the user desires. For example, someone looking to buy replacement parts for their car may pose the search query "car parts." Alternatively, however, the search queries "car part," "auto parts," or "automobile spare parts" may be as effective or more effective in returning related documents. In general, a user query will have multiple possible alternative queries that could be helpful in returning documents that the user considers relevant.
Conventionally, additional search queries relating to an initial user query may be automatically formed by the search engine based on different forms of a search term (e.g. "part" or "parts") or based on synonyms of a search term (e.g., "auto" instead of "car"). This allows the search engine to find documents that do not contain exact matches to the user's search query but that are nonetheless relevant.
One known technique that finds alternative search queries related to the search query entered by the user is based on the concept of stems. A word stem is an underlying linguistic form from which the final form was derived by morphological linguistic processes. Techniques for identifying the stem of a word are well known in the field of computational linguistics. One such technique is described by Porter, M. F., 1980, An Algorithm For Suffix Stripping, Program, Vol 14(3):130-137. Words with the same stem, such as congress and congressional, tend to describe similar concepts. Stemming allows a search engine to match a query word to various morphological variants of that word. The search engine can use each of these variants in formulating the search query.
A second known technique that finds alternative search queries related to the search query entered by the user is based on the matching of query terms to their synonyms (e.g., car to automobile). The synonyms may be determined by looking up the terms in a thesaurus.
One serious problem with the stem-based and synonym-based techniques for finding additional search queries is that two words may have similar semantics in some contexts, but not in other contexts. For example, "automobile" has similar semantics to "car" in the query "Ford car", but not in the query "railroad car." As a result, these techniques often produce search queries that generate irrelevant results. For another example, if the query "jaguars" was stemmed to the word "jaguar," the query semantics may have been changed from that of animal to that of a popular car.
A third known technique that finds alternative search queries related to the search query entered by the user is based on finding additional terms that occur frequently in documents matching the original query, and adding one or more of the additional terms to the query. One serious problem with this technique is that it may introduce terms that change the focus of the query. For example, the word "drive" may be present in many documents matching the query "Ford car", but it would not be an appropriate addition to the query.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to more effectively expand search queries to find alternate search terms that encompass the semantic intent of the original search query without unduly changing its focus.

Search queries improved based on query semantic information


A gas cushion proportioning microsystem to proportion liquid volumes in the microliter and sub-microliter ranges, comprising a liquid reservoir including a storage space for the liquid being proportioned the boundary line of which is broken through by an outwardly leading liquid passage and a gas passage, a gas displacement system which has a micropump to pump a gas and a connection to the gas passage, and a proportioning control in an operative communication with the micropump to generate a negative pressure or positive pressure by actuating the micropump and to apply the negative pressure or positive pressure to the liquid reservoir in order to receive liquid in the storage space through the liquid passage or to deliver it from said space.

This invention relates to a gas cushion proportioning microsystem to proportion extremely small liquid volumes in the microliter and sub-microliter ranges.
In the known proportioning systems, a rough distinction is made between pipettes, dispensers, and multi-functional proportioners. Pipettes will redischarge the liquid volume received in one step. In dispensers, the discharge of the liquid volume received is performed stepwise. Multi-functional proportioners allow for both modes of operation. All of the system types also exist in a multi-channel design and permit to simultaneously perform several identical proportioning operations.
Conventional reciprocating-piston pipettes are designed as fixed-volume or adjustable-volume pipettes and operate in a volume range from somewhat less than 1 xcexcl up to about 10 ml. A piston is displaced in a cylinder, which moves a gas cushion in order to draw a liquid specimen into a pipette tip or to eject it therefrom. This has the advantage that the liquid does not come into contact with the reciprocating-piston pipette, but only contaminates the pipette tip. Therefore, this one mostly is designed as an expendable article (a xe2x80x9cdisposablexe2x80x9d), particularly in plastic, and will be exchanged against a clean pipette tip after use.
Proportioning by means of reciprocating-piston pipettes is burdened with various system-related errors. In adjustable-volume reciprocating-piston pipettes, a pipetting error arises by the fact that the weight of the liquid column xe2x80x9cis suspendedxe2x80x9d from the gas cushion and stretches it differently depending on the liquid volume adjusted. It is particularly for minor volumes being proportioned that proportioning accuracy is significantly affected because the pipette tip is wetted by the liquid being proportioned. Moreover, reciprocating-piston pipettes are incapable or only of a restricted capability of using open jets for small volumes being proportioned. No complete liquid discharge in an open-jet is reached already if the volumes being proportioned are of a few microliters and less. In addition, it is just for small volumes being proportioned that the reception of liquid considerably depends on the depth of immersion of the pipette tip into the liquid and the alignment of the reciprocating-piston pipette. This can be a significant source of errors especially in hand-operated pipettes. As a result, conventional reciprocating-piston pipettes are able to pipette small volumes only to a limited extent and at a relatively high imprecision and incorrectness.
Conventionally designed proportioning systems operating according to the direct-displacement principle include tips referred to as xe2x80x9csyringesxe2x80x9d with an integrated piston which is coupled to a driving device of the proportioning system. They are employed in a volume range from about 1 xcexcl to 50 xcexcl. Since there is no gas cushion and the piston is in a direct contact with the specimen being pipetted direct displacers are employed particularly if liquid of high vapour pressures, high viscosities or high densities is proportioned. This system type avoids the error resulting from the varying stretch of the gas cushion. However, proportioning small volumes at the accuracy required will be possible at best down to about 1 xcexcl. Also, direct-displacement syringes which can proportion such liquid volumes in an open jet are relatively expensive.
From WO 99/10099, a proportioning microsystem is known which comprises a reservoir, a membrane micropump the inlet of which is joined to the reservoir, an open-jet proportioner the inlet of which is joined to the exit of the membrane micropump, a proportioning port joined to the exit of the open-jet proportioner, and a proportioning control disposed in an operative communication with the membrane micropump and the open-jet proportioner. The membrane micropump is capable of pumping liquid into the open-jet proportioner from the reservoir. The open-jet proportioner is capable of dispensing the pumped-in liquid in an open jet. The open-jet capability makes it possible to proportion volumes being proportioned without no carry-over in the range of 1 nl up to a few microliters at high proportioning accuracies. If proportioning is to be made with another liquid this direct-displacement proportioning microsystem either needs to be cleaned to avoid carry-overs or to needs to be exchanged against a clean proportioning microsystem.
The same document has made known a microproportioning apparatus which has a membrane micropump which displaces a column of auxiliary liquid which, by means of a pipette piston, draws liquid into a pipette tip through a proportioning port or ejects it therefrom. The desired volume being proportioned is reached via the control of the known stroke volume of the membrane micropump. After a proportioning operation, the pipette tip and some of the column of auxiliary liquid may be discarded. In this system, the liquid flows off through the proportioning port and may be deposited on a substrate. It is impossible to deliver liquid in an open jet. Errors may occur particularly owing to wetting effects and, further, by differing depths of immersion and alignments. Therefore, its usability for proportioning extremely small liquid volumes is limited. In addition, there is a risk of contaminations because the pipette tip and the substrate contact each other.
Accordingly, it is the object of the invention to create a proportioning microsystem to proportion extremely small volumes in the microliter and sub-microliter ranges at an increased accuracy and a reduced risk of contamination and carry-over.
The object is attained by a gas cushion proportioning microsystem according to claim 1. Advantageous aspects of the system are indicated in the sub-claims.
The inventive gas cushion proportioning microsystem to proportion liquid volumes in the microliter and sub-microliter ranges comprises
1.1 a liquid reservoir including a storage space for the liquid being proportioned the boundary line of which is broken through by an outwardly leading liquid passage and a gas passage.
1.2 a gas displacement system which has a micropump to pump a gas, and a connection to the gas passage, and
1.3 a proportioning control disposed in an operative communication with the micropump to generate a negative pressure or positive pressure by actuating the micropump, and to apply the negative pressure or positive pressure to the liquid reservoir in order to receive liquid in the storage space through the liquid passage or to deliver it from said space.
A proportioning microsystem in the sense of the present application is a proportioning system which serves for proportioning small liquid volumes in the microliter range and sub-microliter range (from abt. 50 xcexcl to abt. 1 nanoliter). What is characteristic of such proportioning microsystem is micropumps which are designed in the microsystem technology. Their manufacture in the microsystem technology specifically comprises the use of the following materials: semiconductors and/or plastic and/or glass and/or ceramics and/or metals. Those are processed by means of appropriate manufacturing techniques of the microsystem technology or by microstructuring them, e.g. by lithography and etching processes (for semiconductors) or LIGA processes (for metals, plastics, and ceramics).
The micropump concerned may specifically be a membrane micropump. A membrane micropump in the sense of the present application is a pump with a cavity which is defined by at least one membrane with which an actuator (a drive) is associated. The actuator may specifically be a piezoelectric actuator. However, other actuators may be employed as well, e.g. thermal-action actuators. A membrane micropump may be with no valve so as to act as a displacement device to displace a volume during a stroke. However, it may be equipped with valves which are switched in such a way that several successive strokes of the membrane produce a volume flow. Passive-response valves, which are controlled by the pressures applied, generally allow of a unidirectional operation of the membrane micropump, i.e. a volume flow in one direction only. Active-response valves which are purposefully switched by a control device also allow of a bidirectional operation of the membrane micropump, i.e. a volume flow in different directions.
Other designs of the micropump may also be employed, particularly a gear micropump, an impeller micropump or a diffusion air micropump.
The invention is based on the displacement of a gas cushion (particularly an air cushion) by means of a negative-pressure or positive-pressure gas discharge. In the proportioning microsystem, to this end, a gas reservoir is xe2x80x9cproducedxe2x80x9d by a negative pressure or positive pressure, which may be some 100 mbar, by means of a gas-delivering micropump. The negative pressure or positive pressure may precisely be controlled via the pumping rate (i.e. the volume flow delivered) of the micropump or the volume displaced thereby. The dependence of the pumping rate or the volume displaced on micropump actuation is known or can be determined also for other designs of the micropump.
Generally, the negative pressure or positive pressure generated by the micropump may act directly on the liquid reservoir. The connection between the gas displacement system and the liquid volume may be designed with no valve means here. i.e. may be permanently continuous. Then, the negative pressure or positive pressure will be applied to the liquid reservoir by actuating the micropump. The micropump may be designed without valves or with valves here. A high positive pressure or negative pressure may be provided for specifically by an appropriately sized effective displacement area (e.g. a membrane area) of the micropump (on one or several membranes, for example). It is preferred that the connection has valve means. A particularly high negative pressure or positive pressure may be developed by blocking the valve means and actuating the micropump. If the valve means are opened the liquid reservoir may be acted on by the negative pressure or positive pressure, which causes liquid to be received in or to be delivered from the liquid reservoir. The valve means inside the connection or more valve means in an ventilation duct branching off therefrom may be active-response valves of the micropump at the same time.
Preferably, a gas reservoir of the gas displacement system is xe2x80x9cchargedxe2x80x9d by the micropump with a negative pressure or positive pressure. The gas reservoir may specifically be formed in the micropump and/or separately from it. Charging is performed prior to the reception or discharge of liquid. It is preferred that this is accomplished by several membrane strokes of a membrane micropump. Valve means disposed in the connection between the gas displacement system and the liquid reservoir separate the gas reservoir from the liquid reservoir and control pressure discharge into the liquid reservoir.
Unlike in conventional air cushion proportioning systems, proportioning is possible at a very high accuracy because the marginal conditions have been chosen to be particularly favourable and can be fixed precisely: The level of the negative pressure or positive pressure and its precise controllability, namely, make it possible to ensure that wetting or capillary effects the inherent pressures of which are small as compared to the negative pressure or positive pressure are overcome during the reception and discharge of liquid and, therefore, do not impair it. In addition, the positive pressure can be controlled so that liquid discharge may be effected in an open jet and exactly that liquid volume which need to be delivered will be delivered. Inherent variations in the gas filling temperature which are caused by gas discharge are uncritical with respect to the environment because of the differential pressure exclusively causing the reception and discharge. Moreover, this will avoid contaminations and carry-overs because the system operates with a gas cushion and discharge may be effected in an open jet without any contact with the substrate.
For accuracy in proportioning, it is advantageous that the system allows of a precisely timed control in applying the negative pressure or positive pressure to the liquid reservoir, which creates favourable conditions for liquid reception or liquid discharge. In a system using no valve means, this can be reached by controlling the micropump. In a system using valve means, the start of pressure application may be precisely controlled by opening the valve means. Terminating or relieving the negative pressure or positive pressure is possible particularly by closing the valve means because pressure compensation in the low-volume gas cushion still remaining above the liquid volume may be effected very rapidly and may be taken into account in determining or controlling the volume being proportioned. Preferably, the negative pressure or positive pressure may be relieved by opening a valve means in a ventilation connection of the gas displacement system to the environment. Further, it is possible to relieve the negative pressure or positive pressure acting on the liquid volume by means of an oppositely acting negative pressure or positive pressure which may be applied, in particular, by pumps or by connecting an appropriately xe2x80x9cchargedxe2x80x9d gas reservoir.
It is preferred that the liquid reservoir is abruptly applied to by the negative pressure or positive pressure or that the negative pressure or positive pressure is abruptly relieved, which makes it possible to attain that the advantageous pressure conditions prevail from the start to the end of the proportioning operation. The abrupt application or relief of the pressure conditions may be attained, in particular, by an abrupt membrane deformation or an abrupt opening or closure of valve means. Preferably, the negative or positive pressure gas discharge is performed in a pulselike manner and, therefore, is also termed xe2x80x9cpulse pressure methodxe2x80x9d. The pulse pressure method permits an increased accuracy in proportioning by employing an increased negative pressure or positive pressure the level which is precisely controllable, in a precisely determinable period of time.
After the abrupt relief of the negative pressure or positive pressure, the abrupt termination of the suction or discharge of liquid is caused by the forces which counteract the inertia forces of the liquid volume. This may be contributed to, in particular, by the frictional forces of the vessel walls of the liquid reservoir which act on the liquid volume as well as by interfacial forces between the boundary of the liquid reservoir and the liquid volume. This can be favoured, in particular, by the conformation, dimensions, and choice of materials for the liquid reservoir. However, it is also possible to cause the abrupt termination of the suction or discharge by applying an additional negative or positive pressure which counteracts the inertia forces and can be provided by means of a pump or gas reservoir. Thus, suction can be abruptly terminated by abruptly relieving the negative pressure and applying a positive pressure, and discharge can be terminated by abruptly relieving the positive pressure and applying a negative pressure. Once the liquid volume is stopped the additional positive or negative pressure may be relieved again. Thus, it is for the first time that it becomes possible to pipette, dispense, and handle extremely small liquid volumes in the microliter and sub-microliter ranges (particularly from 0.1 to 10 xcexcl) by means of a gas cushion system at a high accuracy (e.g. at a proportioning accuracy of 1%). Since the liquid exclusively comes into contact with the liquid reservoir this one may be advantageously designed as a relatively simple disposable which can be replaced with a clean liquid reservoir after use, which avoids carry-overs. By the way, discharging liquid in an open jet makes it possible to transfer liquid volumes with no contact between the system and the substrate, and avoids contaminations. A considerable reduction in reagent consumption is possible as compared to the initially mentioned classico-mechanical pipettes and dispensers and the initially mentioned proportioning microsystem. The invention permits applications especially in filling microtitration plates with extremely small reception volumes, feeding analytical microfluid systems (e.g. for capillary electrophoresis), applying reagents to biochips, etc.
The system is adapted to be used for both receiving and discharging liquid volumes. In an advantageous manner, however, it is adapted to be used exclusively for receiving or exclusively for discharging liquid volumes, e.g. if a determined liquid volume is destined for being processed in the system or gets into the system in another way. Hence, the invention also includes systems which enable both applications or only one thereof.
Each of the liquid volume which is received or discharged may be determined or controlled in different ways. Thus, it is possible to determine by tests under which system conditions (e.g. the level of the negative pressure or positive pressure, the points of time to switch the valve means, the operation or rest of the micropump, the pumping rate or volume displacement of the micropump) a certain volume of a certain liquid will be received or will be discharged by the system. The system may repeat the reception or discharge of this liquid volume at a high accuracy if it is operated under the same system conditions.
Thus, for example, the negative pressure in the gas displacement system and/or the period for which the valve means will open for the pipetting of a desired liquid volume may be controlled just so that the desired liquid volume is received. Further, the positive pressure and the opening period may be controlled just so that this certain liquid volume may be safely discharged in an open jet. At this point, the positive pressure may continue to be applied until the liquid volume is completely ejected. However, it is also possible to control the negative pressure in the gas reservoir and the opening period of the valve means in such a way that at least the liquid volume to be received will be received and, afterwards, to control the positive pressure and the opening period in such a way that exactly the preset liquid volume will be discharged. The latter approach may also be made in dispensing, in which process at least the sum of all liquid volumes to be discharged requires to be received initially. In addition, it may be possible to find the system conditions for the reception or discharge of several determined liquid volumes or determined volumes of several different liquids and to reference to them for the precise reception and discharge of appropriate liquid volumes.
According to an advantageous aspect, the system comprises a pressure sensor which preferably is compensated in temperature to detect the pressure in the gas displacement system with which the proportioning control is in an operative communication in order to determine the liquid volume received or discharged or to control it to a preset value. Thus, the sensor may determine a variation in the negative pressure or positive pressure after the valve means is opened, and may utilize the proportioning control, while making recourse to Boyle""s law or another gas condition equation, possibly in conjunction with equations describing the flow behaviour of the gas in the proportioning microsystem, for the calculation of the gas volume change which corresponds to the liquid volume received or discharged. Such determination of the liquid volume, however, may be influenced by fabrication-related variations and, hence, unknown variations of the gas volume in the system. According to the above aspect which is based on the determination by tests of the system conditions for the reception and discharge of determined liquid volumes, this aspect also can solely relate to the reception or discharge or to the reception and discharge of determined liquid volumes.
Particularly advantageous is an aspect according to which the proportioning control regulates the negative pressure or positive pressure in the gas displacement system in drawing in or discharging liquid by detecting the pressure prevailing therein by means of the pressure sensor and controlling the pumping rate or volume displacement of the micropump to a preset value and determines the liquid volume received or discharged via the pumping rate or volume displacement of the micropump which is known at this pressure. This aspect is based on the consideration that the gas volume delivered by the micropump for keeping constant the negative pressure or positive pressure in the gas displacement system corresponds very accurately to the liquid volume received. This makes it possible to advantageously utilize the regulation of the negative pressure or positive pressure to a preset value for the determination or control of each liquid volume which is received or discharged. At this point, the accuracy in proportioning is essentially determined by the accuracy in pressure detection by means of the pressure sensor. According to the above aspects, this aspect also can relate only to the reception or discharge or to the reception and discharge of determined liquid volumes.
The liquid volume to be received or discharged may be firmly predetermined or may be adjustable.
According to another advantageous aspect, the liquid reservoir has a liquid passage which is formed as a nozzle. The nozzle favours the attainment of a speed in the outlet which leads to the formation of an open jet. In addition, the cross-section in the storage space may be dimensioned to be so large that the flow of liquid essentially is of a stopple profile there and residual liquid will not be caused to remain by adhesion on the wall of the storage space. Further, intensified frictional forces may act on the liquid in the region of the nozzle which if the negative pressure or positive pressure is relieved will outweigh the inertia forces of the liquid and suppress any further reception or discharge of liquid. Further, the outlet port of the liquid reservoir, particularly on a nozzle, may be designed to be so small in cross-section that if the surface is hydrophobic the capillary forces will prevent the penetration of liquid into the outlet port up to a significant depth of immersion by a mere immersion thereof into the liquid. This makes it possible to achieve an independence of liquid reception on the depth of immersion that, specifically, is sufficient for portable units. In addition, a hydrophobic surface may avoid any adhesion that possibly exists in the nozzle while liquid is being discharged.
Apart from the micropump, one or several further components of the system may be designed in a microsystem technology, particularly the gas reservoir, the valve means, the proportioning control, the pressure sensor, the further valve means, the liquid reservoir, and all of the connections between the components or between these and the environment. This favours a miniaturization of the system and cost-efficient series production. Besides, the microsystem technological design may ensure that the components work at the desired speediness. In addition, extremely fine structures of a microsystem technological design may be manufactured at the accuracy which is required. It is particularly advantageous to arrange one or more components of the system on a microfluid board which may also comprise connections between the components or with the environment.
Miniaturizing the gas-carrying components of the system, e.g. by a microsystem technological design, is also advantageous because of the reasons which follow: While a negative pressure or positive pressure is applied to the liquid reservoir the negative pressure or positive pressure will abruptly drop because it has spread onto the liquid reservoir from the gas displacement system. This pressure drop should turn out to be as small as possible. In addition, it is also advantageous to design the gas reservoir with a small volume because it will then be easier for the pressure sensor to detect a change in the negative pressure or positive pressure due to liquid reception or discharge and, thus, the determination or control of the liquid volume received or discharged can be carried out more precisely. For these reasons, the dead volume, i.e. that air cushion volume which has spread over several components of the system, preferably will be dimensioned to be approximately equal to the maximum liquid volume to be received.


Methods and compositions for modulating development and defense responses are provided. Nucleotide sequences encoding defensin proteins are provided. The sequences can be used in expression cassettes for modulating development, developmental pathways, and defense responses. Transformed plants, plant cells, tissues, and seed are also provided.

Disease in plants is caused by biotic and abiotic causes. Biotic causes include fungi, viruses, bacteria, and nematodes. An example of the importance of plant disease is illustrated by phytopathogenic fungi, which cause significant annual crop yield losses as well as devastating epidemics. Plant disease outbreaks have resulted in catastrophic crop failures that have triggered famines and caused major social change. All of the approximately 300,000 species of flowering plants are attacked by pathogenic fungi; however, a single plant species can be host to only a few fungal species, and similarly, most fungi usually have a limited host range. Generally, the best strategy for plant disease control is to use resistant cultivars selected or developed by plant breeders for this purpose. However, the potential for serious crop disease epidemics persists today, as evidenced by outbreaks of the Victoria blight of oats and southern corn leaf blight. Molecular methods of crop protection have the potential to implement novel mechanisms for disease resistance and can also be implemented more quickly than traditional breeding methods. Accordingly, molecular methods are needed to supplement traditional breeding methods to protect plants from pathogen attack.
A host of cellular processes enable plants to defend themselves against diseases caused by pathogenic agents. These defense mechanisms are activated by initial pathogen infection in a process known as elicitation. In elicitation, the host plant recognizes a pathogen-derived compound known as an elicitor; the plant then activates disease gene expression to limit further spread of the invading organism. It is generally believed that to overcome these plant defense mechanisms, plant pathogens must find a way to suppress elicitation as well as to overcome more physically-based barriers to infection, such as reinforcement and/or rearrangement of the actin filament networks near the cell's plasma membrane.
Thus, the present invention solves needs for enhancement of the plant's defensive elicitation response via a molecularly based mechanism which can be quickly incorporated into commercial crops.

Defensin polynucleotides and methods of use


There is disclosed an anti-kinking device having a neck portion having a threaded internal surface; and a coil portion connecting the neck portion and a terminal portion; wherein the coil portion has a central coil axis and comprises a plurality of spaced apart windings with open spaces between each winding in a relaxed state, each winding having a substantially cylindrical inner wall, a substantially cylindrical outer wall, and sidewalls connecting the inner and outer walls, the sidewalls having planar angled portions with respect to the coil axis. In an aspect, the device can have a terminal portion having a threaded internal surface. There is also disclosed a hose system comprising a hose inserted through the disclosed device. The device can prevent kinking of the hose.

Flexible hose has been manufactured for many years, first out of natural rubber and more recently out of petrochemical derivatives such as synthetic rubber, thermoplastic rubbers or plastics. "Kinking" occurs when the hose is doubled over or twisted. Kinking also occurs due to the routine movements of the user. A consequence of kinking is that the fluid flow through the hose can be either severely restricted or stopped. Kinking is a nuisance, causing the user to waste time unkinking the hose.
Current garden and other types of water hoses may be provided with wire springs or solid plastic "wrenches" in an attempt to prevent kinking. However, when the hose is pulled hard at an angle, thereby putting strain on the hose, the hose kinks at the end of the spring. This also happens with the wrenches.
The conventional wire springs are attached to the ferrule of a garden hose by decreasing the diameter of the first coil of the spring. However, this makes it difficult to attach and remove from the ferrule. Additionally, the rigid wire springs are prone to corrosion because they are subjected to the outside elements, e.g., temperature and weather changes.

Anti-kinking device for garden or water hose


An apparatus for enhancing the selectivity for spectroscopic measurements of analytes in a turbid medium is described. In one example, spatial filters are used to select only certain radii from the medium to be imaged. This selection is accomplished by placing an optical obstruction on the surface of the medium or at an image plane of the surface later in the optical imaging system. In one implementation, this is achieved by placing a fiber bundle at an image plane of the collecting optical system and then using a spacer of appropriate size at the center of the fiber bundle to act as a central obstruction.

1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to increasing the spatial selectivity and/or sensitivity of spectroscopic measurements, for example as can be used to make non-invasive measurements of analytes in biological organisms.
2. Background and Relevant Art
Many attempts have been made to create appropriate apparatus for the non-invasive measurement of significant substances within biological organisms. The importance of such measurement capability arises not only from the need to observe biochemical reactions in such organisms without disturbance to the system but also in order to help control chronic diseases such as diabetes, where it is highly desirable to measure the patients blood glucose levels much more frequently than is practical, when puncturing the skin is required. Molecular spectroscopy has been proposed to make such measurements; however, the blood and interstitial fluids contain a very great number of compounds which must be distinguished. Absorption spectroscopy in the visible or near infrared suffers from the difficulty that the spectrum of many compounds that are present in the blood and other tissues substantially overlap in this region. Mid-IR spectroscopy produces spectra which are considerably more unique to individual molecules but suffers from two serious problems: (1) Detectors must be operated at very cold temperatures if they are to be sufficiently sensitive and (2) Water absorbs mid-IR radiation very strongly and such radiation can only penetrate a few tens of microns into an organism.
Raman spectroscopy has been proposed to obviate some of these difficulties. In Raman spectroscopy a scattering spectrum is produced, at frequencies which are at the difference of the input radiation, and the characteristic spectral frequencies of the molecule. The resulting spectral signatures are advantageously particular to the analytes of interest. However, the cross-sections for Raman scattering are very small, and the resulting signals are very weak. Weak signals can also arise from spectroscopies that use other non-linear processes, or where the available power from the light source is small. Other representative examples would include four wave mixing, frequency doubling, and multiphoton fluorescence.
The difficulties arising from the weakness of the signal can be greatly exacerbated if the analyte of interest is primarily located at some depth away from and/or below the surface of the sample, and if the sample otherwise produces a large amount of scattering of the optical signal (turbid medium). A further complication arises when the material, which comprises the layers that are near the surface, consists of compounds whose spectra have substantial overlap with that of the analyte. Even if the aperture of the optical system which collects the light is large, the signal of interest may be dominated by the compounds near the surface, and the signal produced by the analyte will be obscured. A large optical aperture for the system will inevitably give rise to large optical collecting elements such as lenses or mirrors whose function is to separate light having a multiplicity of optical wavelengths into its constituent spectral components. The size of and cost of the whole apparatus will therefore scale positively with the aperture size.

Enhancing selectivity and/or sensitivity of spectroscopic measurements in media


Disclosed is an apparatus for testing an array of optical fibers. According to the invention, modulated light is projected through individual fibers of a fiber array onto a photo-sensitive position sensor. The photo-sensitive sensor will provide position information relative to the position of the light projected upon its surface to a system computer. The positions of the optical fibers within the array relative to each other may thus be found. A loop is introduced into the optical fibers to lower the wavelength at which the fiber is multi-moded. The actual positions of the optical fibers are compared to desired positions and the fiber array is accepted or rejected based on whether it meets predetermined limits.

Communications network providers are rapidly converting from coaxial and other hardwire based networks to fiber optic technology. Literally thousands of miles of electric cables are being replaced by optical fibers. Among the advantages that fiber optic technology provides are greater bandwidth, less power consumption, greater reliability, and vastly increased signal carrying capacity.
During the installation of optical fibers, it is often necessary to mate two different optical fibers which are only a few microns in diameter. With optical fibers this small, special technology is used to ensure that the fibers mate up properly. If a particular coupling is off center by so much as a single micron, then part of the light signal traveling through the coupling may be lost, resulting in a loss of power and a weakened signal.
One technology used to couple optical fibers is a fiber array. A fiber array is contained in a rectangular device comprising two separate silicon halves with grooves running lengthwise formed on one side of each half. The silicon halves are sandwiched together such that the grooves mate up. An optical fiber which usually comprises a core and a cladding is encased between each mated pair of grooves. An epoxy substance is then injected in the spaces left between the optical fiber and the mated pair of grooves which holds the optical fiber in place and acts as an adhesive holding the two silicon halves together, with the optical fibers extending out of the rear end of the fiber array. The front of the fiber array is then polished so that it may be mated with opposing fiber optics.
If the front polished face of the fiber array is examined, one can observe the alignment of the optical fibers encased between the silicon halves. Ideally, the centers of the optical fibers should fall along the same horizontal centerline at predetermined points or vertical centerlines intersecting the centerline at equally spaced intervals. It is desirable that the centers of the optical fiber cores line up with their respective vertical and horizontal centerlines to within a tolerance of approximately one half of a micron.
In practice the placement of the optical fibers along the centerlines within a tolerance of a one half of a micron is very difficult to achieve. There are a multitude of inaccuracies that may be introduced during the manufacture of optical fiber, the cladding, and the silicon halves, as well as the ultimate assembly of the fiber array.
In particular the outer diameter of the optical fibers may not be perfectly round or the proper size, being more elliptical in shape. The core of the optical fiber may not be concentric with the center of cladding of the optical fiber. Also, the groove width may be imprecise resulting in mismatches between the grooves in the opposing silicon halves. Additionally, inaccuracies may be introduced in the assembly process where debris may be encased in the fiber array with the epoxy substance, forcing the optical fibers off center.
The end result of these problems either singly or in combination may be that the center of the fiber optic core will not fall at the location of the intersection of the horizontal and vertical centerlines as desired. Consequently, a defective fiber array may be created and placed into use that does not meet the 0.5 micron tolerance. When in use, these defective fiber arrays will not align properly with an abutting fiber array and energy will be lost as part of transmission signal will not transmit across the connection.
In order to determine those fiber arrays which are acceptable for use in a fiber network, an inspection process is employed with high precision equipment. The typical machine employed features a microscope which views the front face of the fiber array which is clamped to a movable stage. The front face of the fiber array is oriented so as to be perpendicular with the center axis of the microscope. The microscope is used to view the placement of the optical cables relative to each other. A single cable is examined at a time as the stage is moved such that the optical fibers are scrolled past the objective lens of the microscope. The movement must be of high precision and is measured so that the location of the optical fibers in the array may be determined relative to each other.
Among the drawbacks of this inspection apparatus is the fact that it is extremely difficult to ascertain the placement of the optical fibers within the array to within a tolerance of 0.5 microns. In particular, the moveable stage may not be able to position itself to within a tolerance of 0.5 microns, thereby compromising the accuracy of the inspection. The construction of the stage must be accomplished according to extremely tight tolerances, making such equipment extremely expensive. Also, the front face of the fiber array must be perfectly perpendicular to the axis of the objective lens in order to ensure the accuracy of the positioning data. These problems and more will result in inaccurate inspection of fiber arrays. Consequently, fiber arrays may pass inspection which should not, and others will not pass inspection when they should. Ultimately, losses are experienced in the field where defective arrays are employed, as well as the fact that useable arrays are rejected.
The foregoing shows there is a need to accurately measure the placement of the optical fibers within the fiber array to avoid these problems.


An integrated circuit transformer. A substrate supporting multiple layers of materials of an integrated circuit is provided with a first metallization layer comprising a first set of turns of a primary winding of a transformer, and a second set of turns of a secondary winding of the transformer. A insulation layer is deposited over the first metallization layer, and a second metallization layer bearing a second set of turns of the primary winding, and an optional third set of turns of a second secondary winding. A via connection connects one end of the first set of turns of the primary winding to the second turns of the primary winding located on the second metallization layer. The result is a transformer structure where the primary winding is provided on multiple layers and each secondary winding is confined to a single layer.

The present invention relates to microwave components used in radio and telephone communications. Specifically, an integrated circuit transformer is disclosed which can be used as a multi-winding balun transformer in radio frequency applications.
SiGe integrated technology has been used to manufacture integrated circuits to implement RF receivers as well as RF transmitters in wireless personal communications systems. Radio frequency signal circuits typically require inductances or transformers having multiple windings to perform standard radio frequency circuit functions. Wireless telephones, for instance, require receivers which have tuned circuit inductors and transformers in the first RF section, and have mixer circuits which use transformers for converting the received microwave signals into intermediate frequency signals. Compared to other passive circuit components, the integration of inductances and transformer elements for performing these functions is considerably more difficult in VLSI technology. Specifically, whereas micro-strip components may be used to create inductances and transformer windings, attempts to integrate them in VLSI technology has been limited by the high losses that substrate dielectrics present to a micro-strip component.
Attempts have been made to implement a transformer windings in multi-layer metallization surfaces separated by a silicon oxide insulation layer. These attempts, however, have been unsuccessful in controlling the high parasitic capacitance which occurs between windings on different metallization layers of a VLSI circuit. The high parasitic capacitance is especially troublesome when using a transformer in a differential mode application since the parasitic capacitance degrades common mode rejection which is desired in circuits which are intended to operate in a differential mode.
The present invention is directed to improvements in transformer designs for such VLSI applications.

Integrated circuit transformer for radio frequency applications

International Business Machines Corporation


In a CATV return channel between a transmitter and a headend receiver, the transmitter is provided with a precoder having programmable but fixed coefficients. The receiver is provided with an ingress rejection filter (IRF) having programmable but fixed coefficients. A non-precoded training sequence is sent from the transmitter to the receiver during a training interval. A multipath and an ingress in the CATV return channel are estimated at the receiver based upon the training sequence sent by the transmitter and received by the receiver. The precoder coefficients and the IRF coefficients are calculated and the precoder and the ingress rejection filter are programmed with the calculated coefficients, respectively. The precoder and the ingress rejection filter use the respective calculated coefficients during a data transmission interval to simultaneously compensate for undesirable effects of multipath and ingress noise in the CATV return channel during data transmission from the transmitter to the headend.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for combatting ingress and multipath in a digital CATV return channel, and more particularly, to the use of a precoder in the transmitter of user equipment and an ingress rejection filter in the receiver of headend equipment.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
The Cable Television (CATV) return channel (alternatively referred to as the upstream cable channel) has become the focus of significant attention recently as is evidenced by IEEE 802.14 standardization activity. Typically, CATV was designed to provide a broadband access from a headend to a consumer in a tree network, i.e., a group of homes would be serviced by one node, which in turn gets serviced along with another set of such nodes, and so on, until the terminal node is the headend. A provision for a "return" transmission from the consumer to the headend was also provided. However, a lack of services on the CATV return channel has resulted in the design of a CATV network such that the CATV return channel is not as "clean" as the CATV forward channel. At this time, digital data promises to provide two-way services, for example, cable telephony, internet access, video conferencing, etc.. As a result of existing CATV networks and the corresponding CATV return channels, two-way digital data services are undesirably degraded and less than optimal.
The CATV return channel is characterized by the frequency band between 5-50 MHz. The CATV return channel is plagued by ingress noise resulting due to a poor shielding of cable used at different cable locations. In addition to ingress noise, multipath caused by microreflections can also deteriorate the quality of the channel for digital data transmission. As a result, the reliability of digital data transmitted over the CATV return channel is compromised and not ensured.
Currently, physical layer proposals submitted to the IEEE 802.14 deal with the problem of ingress noise by avoidance in several different ways. In a Frequency Agile Multi-Modem (FAMM) proposal, the method involves finding regions in the spectrum which do not have appreciable ingress noise and transmitting in those regions only. In multicarrier proposals Discrete Wavelet Multi-tone (DWMT) and Discrete Multi-tone (DMT), the method does not use carriers that are corrupted by ingress noise for data transmission. In a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) proposal, the method uses as spreading vectors only those eigenvectors of the ingress noise that have low variance. In each of the mentioned proposals, the methods disadvantageously sacrifice bandwidth in order to avoid ingress noise. In other words, the presence of ingress noise limits an available bandwidth for transmission since the proposed methods seek to avoid regions in the spectrum where the ingress noise is dominant.
Typical scenarios of digital data transmission over the CATV return channel may involve a combination of Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) and Time-Division-Multiple Access (TDMA) schemes, as was observed in most of the Media Access (MAC) layer protocols proposed in the November 1995 meeting of IEEE 802.14, held in Montreal, Canada. FDMA is just a fancy name for subdividing the entire frequency band between 5-50 MHz into smaller equal-sized bands, typically of 6 MHz bandwidth. Within each 6 MHz band, TDMA is used, i.e., users that need to transmit data are assigned time slots within a TDMA frame. These time slots can be fixed for every user, which can be quite wasteful depending on the traffic model assumed for each user. Another strategy that can also be used is a reservation based policy in which the time slots are dynamically assigned to each user. Depending on which strategy is chosen, it can be assumed in general that transmission of data from slot to slot may or may not be from the same user (i.e., from the same TDMA transmitter). Thus, it can be seen that for the CATV return channel, a TDMA transmitter will transmit only in short bursts of time.
In order to assure reliability and maintain high integrity, digital TDMA transmission must be robust in the presence of ingress noise and multipath. This situation of digital TDMA transmission over a CATV return channel is complicated by the fact that each return path will have a different multipath characteristic. See for instance FIG. 1, in which a CATV system 10 having a return channel for multiple system users 12.sub.(1-N) is shown. System users 12.sub.(1-N) are each connected to headend 14 via a corresponding return channel, wherein each return channel has a different corresponding multipath characteristic (1-N). Fortunately, ingress noise can be assumed generally to have the same frequency domain characteristics during the period of one frame of transmission, since the headend receiver observes the sum of all ingress noise from all TDMA transmitters at any instant. It is, however, possible that the ingress will have somewhat different characteristics when different transmitters are active. This latter situation can occur since ingress is a result of the amount of atmospheric signals absorbed by an unshielded cable, which in turn depends on the voltage characteristics of the signal travelling through the cable.

Method and apparatus for combatting ingress and multipath in a CATV return channel


This invention relates to a ground level loading universal trailer comprising a U-shaped frame; a support bed being pivotally connected to either side and near the rear end thereof to the frame which is mounted upon two stub axles having wheels mounted thereupon; a pair of clevis-like members fixedly attached to the sides and near the forward end of the support bed to receive a portion of the frame to lock the support bed in a transport mode with locking pins; a tongue device having a first tongue extension member fixedly attached to and extending forward the frame and having a second tongue extension member hingedly attached near a central portion thereof to the outer end of the first tongue extension member; and a winch mechanism mounted upon an upright elongate support member fixedly attached to the second tongue extension member for lowering and raising the support bed without any part of the tongue device being disconnected and with ease and convenience for a lone user, in particular.

The present invention relates to a ground level loading universal trailer which is generally drawn behind a vehicle and which is used to transport, in particular, wheeled means.
Different types of trailers capable of being lowered to the ground are known in the art. However, upon review of the prior art, none describe or suggest the ground level loading universal trailer of the present invention.
One known prior art is a GROUND LEVEL LOADING TRAILER, U.S. Pat. No. 3,788,675, which comprises a load support for lying flat on the ground; and a U-shaped lifting device straddling the load support and pivoted on wheels with the lifting device inclined relative to the horizontal for lowering the load support to the ground level. To place the trailer into a transportation mode, the user must manually urge the lifting device downward into a generally horizontal locking position with the hitch.
Another known prior art is a SELF LOWERING TILT BED TRAILER, U.S. Pat. No. 2,990,966, which comprises a bed, wheels to either side of the bed, wheel arms supported on stub shafts, springs on the wheel arms, upwardly extending bed supporting plates, a tongue structure with tongue plates extending upwardly therefrom, and latches on the tongue plates to engage receiving holes in the bed supporting plates to hold the bed and tongue in a horizontal plane.
Also, another known prior art is a UNIVERSAL TRAILER, U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,855, which comprises an outer frame defining the tongue and sides of the trailer with wheels on either side of the outer frame; a bed secured intermediate the outer sides with at least three link members rotatably secured to the bed, which allow the bed to move from a position within the frame to a generally parallel position below the frame; and a lifting device for raising and lowering the bed with the frame.
Further, another known prior art is a LIFT/TILT-BED TRAILER, U.S. Pat. No. 5,137,414, which comprises a U-shaped frame mounted upon wheels and connected to a hitch extending forward thereof; four tracks pivotally mounted about the inside of the frame; a trailer bed with rollers fixedly attached about the bed and slidably mounted in the four tracks; and a winch means having a cord attached thereabout and connected to the front end of the trailer bed which can be lowered to the ground with the rollers sliding along the tracks.
Also, another known prior art is a VEHICLE BED UNLOADING DEVICE, U.S. Pat. No. 2,408,862, which comprises a longitudinally extending frame with a rear section rearwardly tiltable; a bed disposed above and supported by the main frame; a load engaging member for movement lengthwise; and a power actuating means connected to the load engaging member to move the load engaging member in selective opposite directions.
Yet, another known prior art is a TRANSLATABLE TILT-BED TRAILER APPARATUS, U.S. Pat. No. 5,137,414, which comprises an elongated support bed which is rollably mounted on the top side of a dual axle; a wheeled undercarriage provided with a manually operable mechanical brake system and a front-to-rear spring equalizing system; and a lockable articulated tongue connectable to a hitch on a vehicle and connected to the support bed which, when an item is locked, is rolled rearward upon the undercarriage which is locked, an tilted toward the ground for a vehicle to be moved upon the support bed.
There is a definite need for a ground level loading universal trailer which has a novel tongue means to lower and raise the support bed relative to the ground and which allows a lone user to quickly and conveniently load the trailer and which is not described or suggested by any of the prior art.


Portable device for time measurement that counts with the basic functions of time and date, alarm, Timer, Stopwatch, Fixed Interval Timer function, as well as a Variable Interval Timer function. This Variable Interval Timer function allows the user to program multiple different workout or rest intervals, each with a different established time, and without limitation to an amount of fixed and unalterable workout and rest rounds. The user is able to program intervals in order to increase or decrease the workout or rest time. In the same way the user may decide to create intervals of different exercises, some of them for a short time and some of them for a longer time, as well as the rest time. Finally, the user may program the watch to alert them that a change of interval is coming using several different alarms for the different intervals.

1. Field of the Invention
The following invention refers to a workout cycle employed in a time measurement portable device and the device that employs it, and specifically, the invention relates such devices as personal digital watches employed for sport trainings.
2. Description of Related Art
Nowadays there is a lot of favorable information and, thus, many followers of exercise and interval training. It is believed that training by alternating intervals of workout and rest time, or alternating cycles of intense workout and rest, or intense workout cycles and less intense workout cycles, provides equal, if not even better results in much less time than a session of middle intensity and long duration.
Current basic personal watches have only Timer and Stopwatch functions. The Stopwatch function allows starting the meter at the beginning and stopping or pausing it at the end or interruption of the activity, in order to have the total time of the session as a reference. The Timer function performs a regressive countdown starting at the time one designates until reaching zero, used for a session of exercise for limited time.
There are no other available tools for interval workout for gym clients or smartphone users apart from the limited personal watches with the Timer and Stopwatch functions, some smartphone apps and big special wall clocks for gyms, with the capacity of programming one kind of interval workout that allows to program X seconds of workout and Y seconds of rest by Z amount of fixed rounds. We will 5 denominate this as Fixed Interval Timer (FIT).
Although great strides have been made in head coverings, considerable shortcomings remain.

Workout cycle employed in a time measurement portable device


Embodiments of the invention provide a LCD panel and a display device, the LCD panel comprises an array substrate and a color filter substrate, the array substrate comprises a first transparent substrate, a data line and a pixel electrode disposed on an inner side of the first transparent substrate, the color filter substrate comprises a second transparent substrate, a color resin, a first black matrix and a common electrode overlaying the color resin and the first black matrix, wherein the first black matrix comprising a flat bottom layer and a protrusion formed on the flat bottom layer, the protrusion has slant surfaces near a boundary between the non-pixel region and the pixel region of the second transparent substrate.

A Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display (TFT-LCD) comprises an array substrate, a color filter substrate and a liquid crystal layer disposed between the array substrate and the color filter substrate. In the color filter substrate, pixel regions comprising color resins of three colors of red, green and blue and non-pixel regions comprising black matrices formed at gaps between the color resins of the three colors of red, green and blue are formed on the color filter substrate, and common electrodes are formed on the black matrices (non-pixel regions) and the color resins (pixel regions).
FIGS. 1 and 2 show a LCD panel fabricated by cell-assembling the color filter substrate and the array substrate. In the LCD panel, the array substrate comprises: a first transparent substrate 101, a light-shielding strip 104, a data line 102, a gate line (not shown in the figure) and a pixel electrode 103 formed on the first transparent substrate 101; the color filter substrate comprises: a second transparent substrate 201, a color resin 202, a black matrix 203 disposed at gaps between color resins and a common electrode 204 overlaying the color resin and the black matrix. Moreover, the liquid crystal layer comprising liquid crystal molecules 30 is disposed between the color filter substrate and the array substrate.
With reference to FIG. 2, in the non-pixel region of the LCD panel, there is a complicated electric field consisted of electric fields generated between the common electrode 204 on the color filter substrate and the edge of the pixel electrode 103 on the array substrate, between the common electrode 204 on the color filter substrate and the data line 102 on the array substrate, between the edge of the pixel electrode 103 on the array substrate and the data line 102 on the array substrate, between the common electrode 204 on the color filter substrate and the light-shielding strip 104 on the color filter substrate, which makes the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules 30 in the non-pixel region abnormal. Due to the presence of the black matrix 203, the black matrix can block the transmittance of the light even if the liquid crystal molecules 30 are of abnormal orientations. However, when the color filter substrate and the array substrate are misaligned, the abnormally-oriented liquid crystal molecules 30 in the non-pixel region cause different light transmittance, as a result, the first black matrix 203a parallel to the data line 102 can not block the light from the abnormally-oriented liquid crystal molecules in the non-pixel region, which may lead to pixel light leakage and reduce the picture quality of the display device.

Liquid crystal display panel and display device

CHENGDU BOE OPTOELECTRONICS TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.


Any of a plurality of contact plugs which reaches a diffusion layer serving as a drain layer of an MOS transistor has an end provided in contact with a lower surface of a thin insulating film provided selectively on an interlayer insulating film. A phase change film constituted by GST to be a chalcogenide compound based phase change material is provided on the thin insulating film, and an upper electrode is provided thereon. Any of the plurality of contact plugs which reaches the diffusion layer serving as a source layer has an end connected directly to an end of a contact plug penetrating an interlayer insulating film.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of manufacturing the semiconductor device, and more particularly to a phase change memory for nonvolatily storing information with a change in a resistance value which is caused by a phase change.
2. Description of the Background Art
A phase change memory carries a current (an amorphous current) for causing an amorphousness over a memory cell constituted by a phase change material to melt the phase change material through resistance heating, then performs cooling to bring an amorphous state, and carries a current (a crystallizing current) for causing a crystallization over the phase change material to anneal the phase change material through the resistance heating, thereby bringing a crystalline state.
Binary information can be selectively written to a memory cell in two states of the phase change material. A state which is once subject to a phase change is not changed at an ordinary temperature. Therefore, it is possible to hold the information nonvolatily.
The phase change memory is a nonvolatile memory which can also be applied to both a memory embedded logic chip and a memory stand-alone chip and has been developed in a strategic location as a memory which succeeds to an existing NOR type flash memory and MONOS (Metal Oxide Nitride Oxide Semiconductor) memory. The MONOS is also referred to as SONOS (Silicon Oxide Nitride Oxide Semiconductor).
The research and development of the phase change memory for carrying out storage and read by conducting the phase change material has already been started in approximately 1970. A decline was caused for a certain period of time. However, a novel developed phase change material (GeSbTe) was successfully applied to an optical disk so that an activity was taken again. As a trigger for recovering an opportunity, a 4 Mbit phase change memory was published by Intel Co., Ltd. in 2002. After that, a large number of semiconductor manufacturers entered the development.
There have been invented a cross point type having no access device to an element, a type using a diode as an access device, a type using an MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor) as an access device or a type using a bipolar transistor in a case in which a phase change element is arranged as a memory array.
An example of a phase change memory using the MOSFET as an access device has been described in Y. N. Hwang et. al., "Writing Current Reduction for High-density Phase-change RAM" International Electron Devices Meeting 2003, pp. 893-896 (non-patent document 1).
For a phase change film, a chalcogenide semiconductor film such as GeSbTe (GST) is usually used. An ordinary semiconductor material and process can be applied to the MOSFET serving as the access device and a process for forming and processing, a device isolating film, a wiring layer and an interlayer insulating film.
By taking, as an example, a non-patent document 1, description will be given to the related art.
First of all, FIG. 20 shows a sectional structure of a non-patent document 1.
As shown in FIG. 20, an MOS transistor Q1 for access is provided on a silicon substrate 1 and an interlayer insulating film IL1 is provided to cover the MOS transistor Q1. A plurality of contact plugs CP1 to penetrate the interlayer insulating film IL1 is provided to reach a plurality of diffusion layers 3 disposed in a surface of the silicon substrate 1. A silicide layer SS is provided on the diffusion layer 3 and each contact plug CP1 is actually provided in contact with the silicide layer SS. For convenience, however, an expression of "reach the diffusion layer 3" is used.
The MOS transistor Q1 includes a gate insulating film 4 provided selectively on an active region defined by an isolation insulating film 2, a gate electrode 5 provided on the gate insulating film 4, and the diffusion layer 3 which is provided selectively in the surface of the silicon substrate 1 on the outside of both side surfaces in a direction of a gate length of the gate electrode 5 and serves as a source-drain layer. The gate electrode 5 is extended in a depth direction with respect to the drawing and serves as a word line and is covered with the silicide layer SS. The side surfaces of the gate insulating film 4 and the gate electrode 5 are covered with a sidewall insulating film, which is not shown.
Any of the plurality of contact plugs CP1 which reaches the diffusion layer 3 to be a source layer of the MOS transistor Q1 has an end connected to a source line SL (extended in the depth direction with respect to the drawing) having an end provided on the interlayer insulating film IL1, and the other contact plugs CP1 are connected to a connecting pad PD having an end disposed on the interlayer insulating film IL1. The source line SL and the connecting pad PD are constituted by a first metal wiring (M1).
The source line SL and the connecting pad PD are provided in an interlayer insulating film IL2 disposed on the interlayer insulating film IL1, and an interlayer insulating film IL3 is provided on the interlayer insulating film IL2. A contact plug CP0 is provided to reach the connecting pad PD penetrating the interlayer insulating film IL3, and an end of the contact plug CP0 is directly connected to a lower main surface of a phase change film 20 provided on the interlayer insulating film IL3.
The phase change film 20 is constituted by GST to be a chalcogenide compound based phase change material, an upper electrode 21 is provided on the phase change film 20, and the phase change film 20 and the upper electrode 21 will be referred to as a phase change element PE together.
An interlayer insulating film IL4 is provided on the interlayer insulating film IL3 to cover the phase change film 20 and the upper electrode 21, and a contact plug CP2 is disposed to reach the upper electrode 21 through the interlayer insulating film IL4. The contact plug CP2 has an end connected to a bit line BL provided on the interlayer insulating film IL4. The bit line BL is constituted by a second metal wiring.
With the structure described above, a region surrounded in a broken line in the drawing, that is, a region including a single MOS transistor Q1 and a phase change element PE conducted by turning ON the MOS transistor Q1 constitutes a memory cell MC corresponding to one bit. Two memory cells MCs which are close to each other are constituted to share a single source line and the contact plug CP0 linked thereto.
In a case in which the structure of the memory cell MC shown in FIG. 20 is employed, a distance corresponding to two interlayer insulating films is formed between a first metal wiring (M1) formed in the interlayer insulating film IL2 and a second metal wiring (M2) formed on the interlayer insulating film IL4 in a peripheral circuit region. The reason is that the structure is set to be common to the structure of a memory cell region, resulting in a simplification of a manufacturing process.
More specifically, in the memory cell MC, it is necessary to laminate the interlayer insulating films IL3 and IL4 in order to form a three-stage connecting structure including the contact plug CP0, the phase change element PE and the contact plug CP2 between the connecting pad PD and the second metal wiring M2. Therefore, the peripheral circuit region is also adapted thereto.
As a result, in the peripheral circuit region, a depth of the contact plug (CP2) is increased and a thickness of the interlayer insulating film between the first metal wiring (M1) and the second metal wiring (M2) is increased so that a line capacity is decreased. In particular, this is a serious problem in a embedded chip. More detailed description will be given.
In a memory embedded logic chip (an embedded chip) in which a phase change memory and a logic circuit are provided, a design of the logic circuit (peripheral circuit) is changed corresponding to the structure of a memory cell in order to simplify the manufacturing process. The circuit is usually designed through a computer simulation using a model set obtained by mathematically modeling an MOS transistor characteristic, a wiring resistance and a parasitic capacity. As described above, in the case in which the line capacity is different from that in an existing model set as a result of the adaptation to the structure of the memory cell, it is necessary to modify the model set and to design the circuit again. In a embedded chip in which various products are assumed to be applying destinations, particularly, a cost is increased in respect of a business profit, which is a serious problem.
The problem is caused by disposing the phase change element between the wiring layers. In order to solve the problem, it can be proposed to dispose the phase change element below a lowermost layer wiring.
As an example of the structure in which the phase change element is disposed below the lowermost layer wiring, the structures disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-287222 (patent document 1) and 2006-294970 (patent document 2) are taken.
In patent document 1 and patent document 2, a decrease in the line capacity is not recognized as a problem to be solved. However, FIG. 1 in patent document 1 and FIG. 13 in patent document 2 have disclosed a structure in which the phase change element is provided below the lowermost layer wiring. It can be supposed that a drawback of the decrease in the line capacity is not caused by the employment of the structure.
In a case in which the phase change element is provided below the lowermost layer wiring, the phase change element has such a structure that the lowermost layer wiring is interposed between the lower interlayer insulating film and the upper interlayer insulating film which are obtained by dividing the lowermost layer wiring into two upper and lower layers. The lowermost layer wiring is formed on the upper interlayer insulating film and is connected to the upper surface of the phase change element through the contact plug formed in the upper insulating film. Moreover, the lower surface of the phase change element is connected to the diffusion layer formed in the silicon substrate through the contact plug formed in the lower insulating film.
On the other hand, in the peripheral circuit region, the lowermost layer wiring is connected to the diffusion layer formed in the silicon substrate through the contact plug penetrating the lower interlayer insulating film and the upper interlayer insulating film.
However, the employment of the structure causes some new problems which will be described below.
More specifically, as a first problem, the contact plug for connecting the lowermost layer wiring to the semiconductor substrate is excessively deep as discussed in patent document 2. In this case, there are required a process technique and a process device which correspond to a high aspect ratio. A cost is increased and thereby the business profit is damaged.
In FIG. 12 showing patent document 2, there is disclosed a structure in which the lowermost layer wiring and the phase change element are formed in the "same layer", that is, on the same level. Instead, a degree of difficulty of the process is raised and the number of process steps is increased.
As a second problem, the contact plug (the lower plug) for connecting the lower surface of the phase change element to the semiconductor substrate is deepened and it is hard to reduce a diameter. More specifically, there is generally employed a method of setting the diameter of the lower plug such as the contact plug CP0 in FIG. 20 to be smaller than a standard hole diameter of the contact plug (a diameter of approximately several tens nm), thereby increasing a current density in order to reduce an operating current in the phase change memory. For this purpose, it is desirable that the depth of the plug should be small in respect of the characteristic of dry etching.
In the memory cell MC shown in FIG. 20, the depth of the contact plug CP0 is determined by only the thickness of the interlayer insulating film IL2 for insulating the phase change element PE from the first metal wiring provided thereunder. By setting a process for forming the interlayer insulating film IL2 and the CMP process as a special process to strictly increase precision, therefore, it is possible to form the interlayer insulating film IL2 thinly, thereby reducing the depth of the contact plug CP0 to some degree.
In a case in which the phase change element is disposed below the first metal wiring, however, the interlayer insulating film provided thereunder is to be thicker than at least the height of the gate electrode (word line) in order to cover the MOS transistor. The depth of the contact plug is greater than that of the contact plug CP0 shown in FIG. 20.
As described above, in the conventional memory embedded logic chip in which the phase change memory and the logic circuit are provided, there is a request for disposing the phase change element below the lowermost layer wiring in order to prevent the thickness of the interlayer insulating film between the first metal wiring and the second metal wiring from being increased, resulting in a decrease in the line capacity. In that case, however, the contact plug for connecting the lowermost layer wiring to the semiconductor substrate is excessively deepened so that there are required a process technique and a process device which correspond to a high aspect ratio, resulting in an increase in a cost. Moreover, there is a problem in that the depth of the contact plug for connecting the lower surface of the phase change element to the semiconductor substrate cannot be set to be smaller than the height of the gate electrode (the word line) and it is hard to reduce the diameter of the contact plug, resulting in an increase in an operating current.

Semiconductor device and method of manufacturing the same