A device for the separation of the liquid portion of blood from the cellular components of blood comprises: (1) a pad of porous material permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; (2) a substrate supporting the pad; and (3) means, attached to the pad, for facilitating the flow of the liquid portion of the blood: (i) through interstices around the trapped cellular components of the blood and (ii) from the pad of porous material. The separation of the liquid portion of blood from the cellular components of the blood occurs by flow through the pad of porous material without significant hemolysis. The device can be incorporated into a device for the performance of specific binding assays such as immunoassays. The pad of porous material can contain an agglutinating agent such as a lectin or an anti-blood cell antibody, or a carbohydrate such as mannitol. Other devices and methods for the separation of the liquid portion of blood from the cellular components of the blood are also disclosed.

This invention is directed to methods and devices for separating cellular elements of blood from the liquid portion of blood, particularly in connection with the determination of characteristics of blood samples.
Among the many analytical systems used for detection and/or determination of analytes, particularly analytes of biological interest, are chromatographic assay systems. Among the analytes frequently assayed with such systems are:
(1) hormones, such as human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), frequently assayed as a marker of human pregnancy; PA1 (2) antigens, particularly antigens specific to bacterial, viral, and protozoan pathogens, such as Streptococcus, hepatitis virus, and Giardia; PA1 (3) antibodies, particularly antibodies induced as a result of infection with pathogens, such as antibody to the bacteria Helicobacter pylori and to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); PA1 (4) other proteins, including tumor markers such as carcinoembryonic antigen and .alpha.-fetoprotein; PA1 (5) enzymes, such as aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase, alkaline phosphatase, and glutamate dehydrogenase, frequently assayed as indicators of physiological function and tissue damage; PA1 (6) drugs, both therapeutic drugs, such as antibiotics, tranquilizers, and anticonvulsants, and illegal drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana; PA1 (7) environmental pollutants such as pesticides and aromatic hydrocarbons; and PA1 (8) vitamins. PA1 (1) a pad of porous material permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; PA1 (2) a substrate supporting the pad; and PA1 (3) means, attached to the pad, for facilitating the flow of the liquid portion of the blood: (i) through interstices around the trapped cellular components of the blood within the pad and (ii) from the pad of porous material. PA1 (1) a first porous separating matrix permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; and PA1 (2) a second porous matrix in operable contact with the first porous separating matrix that permits the liquid portion of the blood to flow by capillary action or chromatographic separation through the second porous matrix. PA1 (1) applying a sample of blood to the first porous separating matrix of the device; PA1 (2) allowing the blood sample to flow through the first porous separating matrix to separate the liquid portion of the blood sample from the cellular components of the blood sample; PA1 (3) facilitating the flow of the liquid portion of the blood through the interstices around the trapped cellular components of the blood as a result of the action of the second matrix; and PA1 (4) allowing the liquid portion of the blood to flow through the second matrix so that an assay is performed in the second matrix, the assay being performed by binding a member of a specific binding pair to the capture zone of the second matrix to detect and/or determine the at least one analyte. PA1 (1) a first porous separating matrix permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; PA1 (2) a second porous separating matrix in operable contact with the first porous separating matrix permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; and PA1 (3) a third porous matrix in operable contact with the second porous separating matrix that permits the liquid portion of the blood to flow by capillary action or chromatographic separation through the second porous matrix. PA1 (1) a first porous separating matrix permeable to the liquid portion of blood but capable of trapping the cellular components of blood; and PA1 (2) at least two second porous matrices, each second porous matrix in operable contact with the first porous separating matrix that permits the liquid portion of the blood to flow by capillary action or chromatographic separation through the second porous matrix. PA1 (1) a first opposable component including: PA1 (2) a second opposable component attachable to the first opposable component such that the first and second opposable components can be brought into opposition to transfer fluid from one of the opposable components to the other by pressure. PA1 (1) a first opposable component including: PA1 (2) a second opposable component attachable to the first opposable component such that the first and second opposable components can be brought into opposition to transfer a reagent from the second opposable component to the first opposable component by pressure such that bringing the first and second opposable components into opposition causes the reagent transferred from the second opposable component to the first opposable component to migrate through the second porous matrix in a second direction opposite to the first direction. PA1 (1) adding a cross-linking substance for the cellular components of blood to a sample of whole blood, the cross-linking substance being selected from the group consisting of a lectin, an anti-blood cell antibody, and a carbohydrate capable of aggregating blood cells; PA1 (2) mixing the cross-linking substance and the blood sample to form a mixture of the cross-linking substance and the blood sample; PA1 (3) applying the mixture of the cross-linking substance and the blood sample to a device for separating the liquid portion of blood from the cellular components of blood, the device comprising: PA1 (1) adding a sample of blood to a capillary tube coated with a cross-linking substance as described above; PA1 (2) allowing and cross-linking substance to dissolve in the blood sample to form a mixture of the cross-linking substance and the blood sample; PA1 (3) applying the mixture of the cross-linking substance and the blood sample to a device for separating the liquid portion of blood from the cellular components of blood as described above; and PA1 (4) allowing the liquid portion of the blood to flow through the pad to separate the liquid portion of the blood from the cellular components of the blood.
Such chromatographic systems are frequently used by physicians and medical technicians for rapid in-office diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of a variety of conditions and disorders. They are also increasingly used by patients themselves for at-home monitoring of such conditions and disorders.
Among the most important of such systems are the "thin layer" system in which a solvent moves across a thin, flat absorbent medium. Among the most important of tests that can be performed with such thin layer systems are immunoassays, which depend on the specific interaction between an antigen or hapten and the corresponding antibody to form antigen-antibody complexes. The antigen to be detected can itself be an antibody, such as in serological assays for H. pylori-specific antibody. In such cases, the antibody to be detected can also be bound to a specific antigen. Alternatively, the antigen to be detected can be detected indirectly by using a labeled second antibody that binds to the first antibody to the analyte to be detected. These immunoassays as a means for testing for the presence and/or amount of clinically important molecules have been known for some time. As early as 1956, J. M. Singer reported the use of an immune-based latex agglutination test for detecting a factor associated with rheumatoid arthritis (Singer et al., Am. J. Med. 22:888-892 (1956)).
Immunoassays generally use a disclosing reagent or particle that has been linked to an antibody, i.e., a labeled reagent or component, to the molecule to be assayed, forming a conjugate. This conjugate is then mixed with a specimen, and if the molecule to be assayed is present in the specimen, the disclosing reagent-linked antibodies bind to the molecule to be assayed, thereby giving an indication that the molecule to be assayed is present. The disclosing reagent or particle can be identifiable by color, magnetic properties, radioactivity, specific reactivity with another molecule, or another physical or chemical property. The specific reactions that are employed vary with the nature of the molecule being assayed and the sample to be tested. Immunoassays have been used with chromatographic methods and devices; this combination is known as immunochromatography.
Immunochromatographic assays fall into two principal categories: "sandwich" and "competitive," according to the nature of the antigen-antibody complex to be detected and the sequence of reactions required to produce that complex.
In general, the sandwich immunochromatographic procedures call for mixing the sample that may contain the analyte to be assayed with antibodies to the analyte. These antibodies are mobile and typically are linked to a label or a disclosing reagent, such as dyed latex, a colloidal metal sol, or a radioisotope. This mixture is then applied to a chromatographic medium containing a band or a zone of immobilized antibodies to the analyte of interest. The chromatographic medium is often in the form of a strip resembling a dipstick. When the complex of the molecule to be assayed and the labeled antibody reaches the zone of the immobilized antibodies on the chromatographic medium, binding occurs and the bound labeled antibodies are localized at the zone. This indicates the presence of the molecule to be assayed. This technique can be used to obtain quantitative or semi-quantitative results.
In other variations of this technique, if an antibody is to be detected, the immobilized material on the dipstick can be a corresponding antigen, and the labeled antibody can be a second antibody that binds the first antibody on the basis of a specificity such as species or class specificity. For example, if a human antibody to a particular bacterial antigen is to be detected, the bacterial antigen can be immobilized on the dipstick and the antibody can be detected with labeled goat anti-human antibody.
Examples of sandwich immunoassays performed on test strips are described by U.S. Pat. No. 4,168,146 to Grubb et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 4,366,241 to Tom et al., both of which are incorporated herein by this reference.
In competitive immunoassays, the disclosing reagent is typically coupled to an analyte or analyte analog which competes for binding with an antibody with any unlabeled analyte present in this sample. Competitive immunoassays are typically used for detection of analytes such as haptens, each hapten being monovalent and capable of binding only one antibody molecule. Examples of haptens include therapeutic drugs such as theophylline and digoxin and drugs of abuse such as cocaine and heroin and their metabolites. Examples of competitive immunoassay devices are those disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,235,601 to Deutsch et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,204 to Liotta, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,208,535 to Buechler et al., all of which are incorporated herein by this reference.
One of the samples most frequently assayed for an analyte using test strips or similar devices is blood. Most typically, the analyte to be assayed is a soluble component in the liquid portion of blood, i.e., serum or plasma. The compositions of the two are similar, except that serum, obtained from a blood sample that has been allowed to clot, is lacking in fibrinogen and certain other clotting factors that are depleted as a result of the clotting process.
Most typically, the clinician or technician will draw a blood sample, which is often a fairly small sample. It would be preferable to be able to use the entire blood sample for the assay, avoiding the necessity of a bulk preparation of serum or plasma from the blood sample. However, with most test strips and similar analytical devices, the use of whole blood as a sample, or even a blood sample from which the cells, particularly the erythrocytes, have been partially removed, is undesirable.
The blood cells, particularly the erythrocytes, first slow the flow of serum or plasma along the membrane and ultimately stop it by clogging the pores of the membrane. This results in an invalid test. The migration of red blood cells or other blood cells can also create high backgrounds or otherwise interfere with the performance of the test carried out by the assay device. Although blood cells can be removed by filtration through microporous filters, the action of such filters is generally too slow to permit efficient assay of cell-free blood.
Additionally, even if the blood cells are effectively removed, methods for doing so frequently result in hemolysis. The occurrence of hemolysis is undesirable because it results in the release of enzymes, hemoglobin, other pigments, and stromata into the cell-free portion of blood. This causes interference with many clinical tests.
Various methods for the separation of blood cells from the liquid portion of blood are described, for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,768,978 to Grubb et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,902,964 to Greenspan, U.S. Pat. No. 4,477,575 to Vogel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,372 to Zuk, U.S. Pat. No. 4,753,776 to Hillman et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,816,224 to Vogel et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,933,092 to Aunet et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,055,195 to Trasch et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,064,541 to Jeng et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,076,925 to Roesink et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,118,428 to Sand et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,118,472 to Tanaka et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,130,258 to Makino et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,719 to Hillman et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,209,904 to Forney et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,212,060 to Maddox et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,240,862 to Koenhen et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,067 to Wilk et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,306,623 to Kiser et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,364,533 to Ogura et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,397,479 to Kass et al., all of which are incorporated herein by this reference.
However, there is still a need for an improved method of separation of the cellular components of blood from the liquid portion of blood for rapid and accurate assay of analytes contained in the liquid portion of blood. Particularly, there is a need for an integrated device that incorporates both an assay element and means for separating the liquid portions of blood from the cellular components of blood so that an analyte present in the liquid portions of blood can be assayed readily in a single device. Such an improved device would avoid the necessity of a preliminary extraction of serum or plasma with its attendant necessity of safe disposal of the blood fractions. This has become a serious problem due to the increased spread of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis and AIDS. An improved device would be capable of direct assay of the desired analyte when a whole blood sample is applied to the device.
Preferably, such a device should be able to perform a broad range of immunoassays, including both sandwich and competitive immunoassays.

Devices and methods for separating cellular components of blood from liquid portion of blood


A printing blanket according to the present invention is formed by laminating a non-stretchable layer obtained by winding a thread in helical fashion in the circumferential direction, a compressible layer comprising an elastomer and in a porous and a seamless cylindrical shape, and a surface printing layer similarly comprising an elastomer and in a seamless cylindrical shape in this order, whereby high-quality prints can be obtained in a wide range, and the degree of the degradation of printing properties due to the reduction in reaction force is low.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing blanket in a seamless cylindrical shape which is particularly suitable for use in high-speed web offset printing presses.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A printing blanket in a seamless cylindrical shape has been recently proposed as a printing blanket suitable for printing at all speeds from ordinary lithographic offset printing to high-speed printing done by a high-speed offset rotary printer or the like (e.g. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 301483/1993).
The above-mentioned printing blanket is formed by laminating a compressible layer comprising an elastomer such as rubber and formed in a porous and seamless cylindrical shape, a non-stretchable layer which is nonstretchable in the circumferential direction, and a surface printing layer comprising an elastomer formed in a seamless cylindrical shape in this order on the outer periphery of a cylindrical sleeve mounted on a blanket cylinder.
The non-stretchable layer is formed on the compressible layer by winding a thread (for example, a thread such as a cotton string) which is non-stretchable in a longitudinal direction and is easy to deform in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction in helical fashion in the circumferential direction while applying a tensile force thereto.
Such a non-stretchable layer has the function of preventing the occurrence of a phenomenon whereby a compressible layer or the like released from a compressive force produced by a plate cylinder or the like after passing through a nip deformed portion caused when it is pressed by the plate cylinder or the like at the time of printing excessively expands in the radial direction by elastic rebound forming a so-called bulge. The non-stretchable layer prevents the occurrence of such a phenomenon whereby the surface printing layer forms waves by repeating the above-mentioned nip deformation and creates bulge at high speed, that is, a stationary wave.
Furthermore, the non-stretchable layer also has the function of applying a radial preload to the compressible layer in order to improve the reaction force produced in pressing and deforming the printing blanket in the radial direction when it is pressed by the plate cylinder or the like. The magnitude of the preload and the magnitude of the reaction force are greatly related to the printing properties of the printing blanket and particularly to dot or solid applicability (the properties of forming prints without white spots) or to the properties of preventing deformation of dots such as double or slurry.
Specifically, the dot or solid applicability depends on the magnitude of the reaction force of the printing blanket. The larger the preload applied by the non-stretchable layer and the larger the reaction force, the better the dot or solid applicability is made.
On the other hand, the properties of preventing the deformation of dots depend on the degree to which the bulge is absorbed ahead of and behind the nip deformed portion. The smaller the preload applied by the non-stretchable layer, and the smaller the reaction force of the printing blanket and the more easily the bulge is absorbed. Therefore, the properties of preventing the deformation of dots are improved. The reason for this is that the deformation of dots is mainly caused by the elongation in the circumferential direction of the surface printing layer by the occurrence of the bulge.
In the case where no preload is applied, or the case where the preload is too light, the properties of preventing the deformation of dots are improved, while the dot or solid applicability is degraded. On the contrary, in the where the preload is too heavy, the dot or solid applicability is improved, while the properties of preventing the deformation of dots such as double or slurry are degraded.
Therefore, the tensile force or the like in winding a thread composing the non-stretchable layer is established by considering the balance between both the properties, that is, by finding the range of the magnitude of the preload in which the balanced results of printing in which the dot or solid applicability is good and the deformation of dots is prevented are obtained, in such a manner that the preload in the above-mentioned range occurs when the printing blanket is fabricated.
"Double" means that dots slip, so that double printing is done, and easily occurs by the slip in the direction in which paper sheets are discharged. When such double occurs, dots become large, so that the color of a portion represented by the dots is made darker than that in the other portion.
"Slurry" is a phenomenon that dots are out of shape, so that dots warps having the shape of bristles or the tail of a comet.
In the printing blanket of the above-mentioned conventional construction, the preload always continues to be applied from the non-stretchable layer to the compressible layer even if it is not employed, whereby rubber composing the compressible layer easily causes stress relaxation due to compression set. Correspondingly, the preload is decreased by the non-stretchable layer and therefore, the dot or solid applicability is easily degraded, for example, due to the reduction in the reaction force of the printing blanket with time.
Therefore, in employing the above-mentioned printing blanket, printing conditions such as a pressing force (the amount of depression) of the plate cylinder or the like must be frequently adjusted in conformity to the degradation of the dot or solid applicability due to the reduction in the reaction force, that is, the amount of depression must be frequently increased in order to maintain the dot or solid applicability in a suitable state, for example.
Finally, at the time where the rubber composing the compressible layer causes compression set to such a degree that the degradation of the dot or solid applicability cannot be sufficiently covered only by adjusting the amount of depression or the like, or the degree of the deformation of dots such as double or slurry exceeds the allowable range because the amount of depression is too large to sufficiently absorb the bulge ahead of and behind the nip deformed portion, the printing blanket cannot be employed.


The present invention relates to a protection switching for use in a communication network, and more particularly, to a method and a system for protection switching provision by a distributed or extended protection group in a communication network. In one embodiment, this can be accomplished by defining a traffic bit (t-bit) on all the communication devices in the network, assigning at least one communication device as master node and other devices as slave node, determining a fault if continuity check message is not received in a predetermined time period between the master node and the traffic source, carrying of status information, reliably, between communication devices using existing protection or restoration methods, broadcasting by setting the bit ‘t’=1 (or ‘t’=0) by the master node to all other slave nodes thereby notifying about the fault (or clearance of fault) towards traffic source and receiving the traffic from the traffic source by the other available slave nodes when master node's link towards traffic source fails.

Communication networks are becoming widely used for distributing both high and low speed data over varying distances. Typically, a communication network is comprised of a number of network elements (for example Nodes, switches, routers etc) that are connected to each other in a variety of configurations so as to form a unified communication network. The communication network may extend over a small area, such as a company wide network, or may cover large distances, such as in regional or nationwide networks. The nodes allow network clients to input data for transmission over the network and to receive data transmitted over the network from other locations. Thus, data may be added to, or dropped from the network at node locations, as the data flows from point to point throughout the network.
One problem associated with communication networks is the problem of protection switching. In one situation, protection switching involves the process of switching network traffic from one network transmission path to another in the event of a network failure.
In another protection switching technique, typically used in ring networks, the network traffic is transmitted over working and protection transmission paths that flow in different directions over the network to the same destination. In the event of a network failure, either the working or protection transmission path will be selected to deliver the network traffic to the network element at the final destination. To ensure uninterrupted (continuous) traffic flow a protection group (PG) is provisioned at each node where at least one working and at least one protection elements are presented at every node. FIG. 1 shows an example illustration of the protection group (PG) as defined in Provide Bridge Backbone Network with Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE, i.e. IEEE 802.1Qay) which has one work and one protect. Also, IEEE 802.1Qay defines two PGs are must i.e. one on source end and other on the destination end. Also, the work (protect) entity is bi-directional and path should be congruent between the two PGs.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a system to perform protection switching in a communication network using distributed or extended protection group to overcome the above restrictions.

Protection switching method and system provision by a distributed protection group


A semiconductor wafer partitioned into a multiplicity of chip areas defined by a grid-like array of scribe lines inscribed into the surface of the wafer, wherein each scribe line is longitudinally bounded by respective field oxide layers formed in the surface of the wafer, to thereby define a scribe line region between adjacent chip areas. The wafer includes a multiplicity of integrated circuits formed in a corresponding multiplicity of the chip areas, respectively, each of the integrated circuits including a patterned, multilayer structure having a peripheral edge portion which extends into a respective one of the scribe line regions, wherein the peripheral edge portion of each multilayer structure has a multi-tiered cross-sectional profile, thereby ensuring adequate step coverage of the photoresist film which is applied to the individual layers of the multilayer structures when they are patterned during the wafer fabrication process.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to semiconductor wafers and wafer fabrication, and more particularly, to a semiconductor wafer wherein step coverage along the scribe lines thereof is improved over that of the prior art.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a semiconductor wafer fabrication process, a semiconductor wafer is partitioned into a multiplicity n of chip or die areas defined by a grid-like array of scribe lines which are inscribed into the surface of the wafer. Then, an identically patterned, multilayer structure is simultaneously fabricated in each of the chip areas, with the exception of a few test chip areas. Generally, each of these patterned multilayer structures constitutes a single, discrete semiconductor device or integrated circuit (I.C.). Ultimately, the wafer is sliced, e.g., by means of a diamond-tipped cutting tool, along the scribe lines, into a multiplicity n of individual I.C. chips or die.
In the fabrication of I.C.s having high levels of integration (e.g., VLSI), the number of patterned layers required to make the I.C.s is large, which occasions certain problems which complexify the wafer fabrication process and degrade wafer yield. More particularly, the peripheral edge portion of the patterned multilayer structure of each individual I.C. fabricated on the wafer, extends into the scribe line region between adjacent ones of the I.C.s. As part of the fabrication process, a sequence of photolithographic steps are performed in order to create the desired pattern in each of the individual layers of the eventual multilayer structure of each I.C. It is critical to the efficacy of this process that the photoresist film deposited on each layer to be patterned, be deposited evenly and uniformly, and at the proper thickness. However, when the number of individual layers to be patterned becomes too large, the height of the vertical steps formed at the peripheral edge of the patterned multilayer structure of each I.C. becomes so great as to cause thinning or attenuation of the photoresist film deposited thereover, a condition which is generally referred to an inadequate step coverage.
Such inadequate step coverage results in degradation of the electrical characteristics, performance, and reliability of the individual I.C.s fabricated in the wafer. Further, such inadequate step coverage causes an increase in the number of defective die per wafer, thereby lowering wafer yield. This problem of inadequate step coverage becomes more acute as the level of integration density of the I.C.s becomes greater, thereby resulting in increased height of the vertical steps formed at the peripheral edge of the patterned multilayer structure of each I.C., which, in turn, aggravates the problem of inadequate step coverage.

Semiconductor wafer with improved step coverage along scribe lines


A calender for a sheet of paper comprising a metal roll which is rotated by a first driving unit. The calender further comprises a rotatable cylindrical jacket, a pressurizing shoe, and a plurality of support members. The cylindrical jacket is disposed opposite the metal roll to form a calender nip so that the sheet of paper is continuously passed through the calender nip. The pressurizing shoe is provided within the jacket at the position of the calender nip and presses the interior surface of the jacket radially outward to pressurize the calender nip. The support members are disposed inside the jacket so that they are equally balanced in the peripheral direction of the jacket.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a calender for a sheet of paper, and more particularly to a calender which performs a surface process on paper after it is dried by a drier, to make it smooth and glossy.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In paper mills, a layer of paper made by a paper-making section is pressed to remove water by a press. Then, the paper is heated and dried. Next, a calender is employed as a machine in which paper is pressed by rollers to glaze or smooth it.
Typical examples of calenders are a chilled nip calender, a soft nip calender, and a shoe calender. The chilled nip calender is equipped with chilled metal rolls to form at least one pair of nips. The soft nip calender is constructed of a metal roll and an elastic resin roll. In the soft nip calender, only a pair of nips is formed on the periphery of the resin roll. The shoe calender is constructed of a metal roll, a tube sleeve disposed opposite the metal roll and a shoe which is inside of the tube sleeve. The shoe is pressed against the inner periphery of the sleeve to form a nip.
Since the present invention relates to the above-described shoe calender, two conventional shoe calenders will hereinafter be described with reference to FIGS. 13 to 17.
FIGS. 13 and 14 show a first conventional shoe calender described in patent reference 1. The conventional shoe calender is constructed of an upper half part including a metal roll 10, and a lower half part including a cylindrical stationary beam 1, a sleeve 2, etc. The cylindrical stationary beam 1 is fixedly attached to a support leg 11. The outer periphery of the stationary beam 1 is provided with guide members 8 at suitable intervals with respect to the center of the stationary beam 1.
A sleeve 12 is provided to cover the cylindrical stationary beam 1 and rotatably supported by the guide members 8. The opposite ends of the sleeve 12 are further supported by clamp discs 9 to make the interior airtight.
In the conventional shoe calender constructed as described above, when a paper sheet 15 is calendered, the lower half part of the calender with the sleeve 2 is brought into contact with the peripheral surface of the metal roll 10 through the paper sheet 15, as shown in FIG. 13. The sleeve 2 is pressurized by applying pressurized oil to the pressurizing shoe 3 and utilizing the deformation of the sleeve 2 that develops when the sleeve 2 is pressed radially outward.
The stationary beam 1 is further provided with lubricating-oil supply passages 4, 5 and lubricating-oil collection passages 6, 7. The first lubricating-oil supply passage 4 is connected to the lower portion of the pressurizing shoe 3 so that pressurizing force is applied to the pressurizing shoe 3. The second lubricating-oil supply passage 5 is opened at the outer periphery of the stationary beam 1 so that lubricating oil can be supplied to the inner periphery of the sleeve 2.
FIGS. 15 through 17 show a second conventional shoe calender described in patent reference 2. The conventional shoe calender is basically the same in construction as the first conventional shoe calender shown in FIGS. 13 and 14. As in the first conventional shoe calender, a flexible jacket 32 is pressed against a metal roll 10 to calender a paper sheet 15.
That is, to calender the paper sheet 15, a shoe roll 30 is pressed against the metal roll 10 by a pressurizing shoe 18 provided inside the flexible jacket 32. Reference numeral 95 denotes a pressurizing unit for the metal roll 10. Reference numeral 34 denotes a support beam for the pressurizing shoe 18, and 20 denotes a pressurizing unit.
As shown in FIG. 16, the opposite ends of the flexible jacket 32 are fixed to end plates 24, 26. If the pressurizing unit 20 is actuated, the pressurizing shoe 18 projects in the radial direction of the flexible jacket 32 and deforms the flexible jacket 32. As a result, the paper sheet 15 is pressurized between the metal roll 10 and the flexible jacket 32.
In the conventional shoe calender shown in FIGS. 13 and 14, the sleeve 2 is rotated by the rotational force of the metal roll 10 which is rotated by a driving unit (not shown). Because of this, if the pressurizing force of the pressurizing shoe 3 is weak, the transmission of the rotational force will be insufficient, and consequently, the sleeve 2 will slip easily. Conversely, if it is strong, the friction between the pressurizing shoe 3 and the sleeve 2 will increase. As a result, heat will be generated and the sleeve 2 will be elliptically deformed.
Hence, the shoe calender is provided with the lubricating-oil supply passages 5, and lubricating oil is supplied to the inner periphery of the sleeve 2 to prevent generation of heat and perform lubrication. In addition, the guide members 8 are disposed inside the sleeve 2 to prevent deformation of the sleeve 2.
However, if the pressurizing force reaches a predetermined value or greater, deformation of the sleeve 2 will become great and therefore gaps will be produced between the guide member 8 and the sleeve 2. As a result the effect of the guide members 8 will no longer be obtained.
Because of the gaps between the guide members 8 and the sleeve 2, the sleeve 2 is insufficiently supported and therefore vibrates. As a result, there is a problem that because of the vibration, the trace of vibration will occur in the paper sheet 15.
In chilled nip calenders, incidentally, paper is passed between rolls in contact with each other. However, in soft nip calenders, if a rubber roll is contacted with a high-temperature metal roll without paper, the rubber will degrade. Because of this, the rubber roll is held away from the metal roll until paper is passed through. After paper is passed through, the rubber roll is pressed against the metal roll through the paper.
On the other hand, in the conventional shoe calender (patent reference 1), the sleeve 2 is of a driven type. That is, the sleeve 2 is rotated by contacting with the metal roll 10. In this shoe calender, as with chilled nip calenders, paper is passed between the sleeve 2 and the metal roll 10 after the sleeve 2 is contacted with the metal roll 10. Because of this, before paper is passed through, the outer periphery of the sleeve 2 is contacted directly with the high-temperature metal roll 10.
However, since the outer periphery of the sleeve 2 of the shoe calender is constructed of elastic synthetic resin, if the sleeve 2 of the shoe calender is exposed to high temperature for along time and rises in temperature, then the quality will degrade and the life will be shortened. Particularly, in such a shoe calender, the nip passage time is long and therefore the contact area (i.e., contact time) between the outer periphery of the sleeve 2 and the metal roll 10 is long. As a result, the temperature of the outer periphery of the sleeve 2 becomes considerably high.
To prevent the problem of high temperature, it is contemplated that the sleeve 2 is held away from the metal roll 10 until paper is passed through. In soft nip calenders, such a process is often performed. However, since the sleeve 2 in the conventional shoe calender (patent reference 1) has no driving unit, the sleeve 2 will no longer rotate if it is moved away from the metal roll 10. Therefore, in the case where the sleeve 2 is contacted with the metal roll 10 after paper is passed through, it is necessary to contact the sleeve 2 with the metal roll 10 being rotated. In such a case, paper is broken as soon as the sleeve 2 not being rotated is contacted with paper.
Therefore, in the conventional shoe calender, the sleeve 2 must be held in contact with the metal roll 10 during operation. As a result, the outer periphery of the sleeve 2, which is constructed of a material whose heat-resisting temperature is low (e.g., polyurethane), will reach a considerably high temperature and degrade quickly.
In the conventional shoe calender shown in FIG. 17, the flexible jacket 32 can rotate. That is, the end plate 24 or 26 is driven by a driving unit (not shown). A gear 56 is rotated by a driving shaft 48. In this way, the flexible jacket 32 is rotated. Since the moving speed of the paper sheet 15 can be synchronized with the rotational speed of the flexible jacket 32, breaking of the paper sheet 15 can be reduced.
However, as with the conventional shoe calender shown in FIGS. 13 and 14, the pressurizing shoe 18 contacts with the metal roll 10 at one point on the flexible jacket 32. Therefore, in combination with centrifugal force, etc., the flexible jacket 32 is elliptically deformed when it rotates.
That is, since the flexible jacket 32 is supported only at the position of the pressurizing shoe 18, deformation of the flexible jacket 32 becomes great and it rotates elliptically. Because of this, vibration is generated by rotation and the runout of the jacket 32 occurs. Thus, the calender cannot be operated at a high speed.


A magnetic generator may be disclosed. The magnetic generator may include one or more permanent magnets which may function in one or more ways in combination with a dielectric elastomer to efficiently produce electricity. Electricity may be produced directly by the magnets, through mechanical means as driven by the magnets, by piezoelectric means, or as desired to maintain peak efficiency. Further, systems to retain excess energy for later use, such as a flywheel or a battery may be employed.

The emission of pollutants due to industry and automobiles such as smog-causing sulphur compounds, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxides has caused ever-increasing problems including health hazards and global warming that are becoming the world's most dangerous and preoccupying matters. In addition, the rapid increase in the demand for automobiles in the Asian market, which has doubled in the last four years, requires an urgent solution. The Earth's population is continuously increasing, requiring more energy and putting pressure on the world community to find reliable and clean solutions for these problems.
Part of the difficulty in addressing the above-mention problems is that there is no comprehensive solution which encompasses the whole cycle of energy production, starting from a non-polluting renewable energy source and continuing to the end user. For example, cars with increasingly-popular electrical motors, fuel-cell, or hybrid engines do not solve the problem because they still rely for the most part on the power plant that would supply the required energy to charge the batteries for the electrical cars or to produce hydrogen, in the case of fuel-cells, from natural gas, etc.
There is a need for a cost-effective, safe, and efficient clean energy production solution which can be implemented using current engineering principles and manufactured without overburdening complexity.

Magnetic power generator for hybrid vehicle and/or electric power plant


A solid state mass storage device having a first storage area portion and a second storage area portion. The mass storage device including accessing means adapted to cause data to be stored in the first storage area portion in one of: only in memory cells belonging to columns of a first collection or only to columns of a second collection such that memory cells of the first storage area portion belonging to the first or second collection are left unprogrammed; or only in memory cells of even rows or only memory cells of odd row such that the memory cells of the first storage area belonging to the even or to the odd rows are left unprogrammed; or only in memory cells such that memory cells that are immediately adjacent to said memory cells in said row and column are left unprogrammed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of mass storage of data. More particularly, the present invention relates to a non-volatile solid-state mass storage device.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In electronics, the term mass storage refers to the storage of large amounts of data in a persisting way, even in absence of a power supply. The storage media used for mass storage applications may be divided in three broad classes: magnetic mass storage devices, such as hard disks, floppy disks, drum memories and magnetic tapes; optical mass storage devices, such as compact disks, Digital Versatile Disks (DVDs) and magneto-optical discs; and solid-state mass storage devices, such as Electrically Programmable Memories (EPROM), NOR/NAND flash memories and ovonic memories.
In order to make a comparison of the various mass storage devices, it may be useful to examine their most important features, such as the storing capacity, the data transfer speed and the access time.
More particularly, the greater the storing capacity, the better the mass storage device. However, the cost of a mass storage device significantly depends on said feature, together with the technology used for implementing the device. Magnetic mass storage devices are nowadays those featuring the highest storage capacity, followed by optical mass storage devices and then, last in the rank, by solid-state mass storage devices.
However, magnetic and optical mass storage devices have the great disadvantage of exhibiting a long access time. In fact, referring for example to a hard disk, during a program operation in which data have to be stored in addressed memory locations, data are actually written into said locations after a relatively long access time, e.g., of the order of 10 milliseconds, during which the magnetic read/write head of the hard disk moves for reaching the position on the track corresponding to the addressed memory locations. On the other hand, solid-state mass storage devices have very low, practically null, access times with respect to the other classes.
At the present time the class of mass storage devices featuring the highest data transfer speed (both in program and in read) is that of the magnetic mass storage devices. Modern hard disks, once their magnetic read/write head has been correctly positioned (as discussed above, the time required to bring the read/write head to the addressed memory locations is the access time), are capable to store data with a rate of 20 Mbits per second. On the contrary, the data transfer speeds of the solid-state mass storage devices are lower. For example, modern four-level NAND flash memories typically have program speeds of 2 Mbits per second, while two-level (also referred to as binary) NAND flash memories typically have program speeds of 10 Mbits per second.
As known to those skilled in the art, the data transfer speed of a NAND flash memory, and in particular its program speed, depends on several factors, like: the number of levels to which each memory cell can be programmed, the width of the memory cells' threshold voltage distributions corresponding to the various levels, the duration and the number of program voltage pulses used during the program operation for programming the memory cells.
Since the program operation for a NAND flash memory consists in repeatedly performing the actions of applying a program voltage pulse to the addressed memory cells and then verifying the program state reached by such memory cells after the program pulse voltage application, the highest the number of program voltage pulses, the longer the time required for programming. Consequently, in order to have a program speed that is sufficiently high, it should be necessary to reduce the number of program voltage pulses necessary to bring the memory cells to the target program states.
However, the minimum allowed number of program voltage pulses significantly depends on the number of the program levels, i.e., on the number of the threshold distributions and on their width.
To be able to finely adjust the memory cells' threshold voltage, the increment of the program voltage pulses has to be sufficiently low (and, consequently, the number of pulses necessary for bringing the memory cells to the target program states has to be sufficiently high). This constraint is more severe the higher the number of program levels, i.e. the number of threshold voltage distributions within a certain threshold voltage range of values (wider threshold voltage distributions make it difficult to discriminate the program level; for example, an ideal threshold voltage distribution of a four-level NAND flash memory should have a width of about 150 mV).
For the above reasons, in order to correctly program a multilevel NAND flash memory, more program voltage pulses are needed than in the case of a binary NAND flash memory: consequently, the program speed of a binary NAND flash memory is higher than that of a multilevel NAND flash memory.
Back Pattern Dependency (BPD) and Floating Gate Coupling (FGC) are known effects which cause the widening of the threshold voltage distributions.
In order to describe how the BPD affects the width of the threshold voltage distributions, attention has to be paid to the fact that the memory cells in a NAND flash memory are arranged according to strings of serially-connected memory cells between a drain select transistor, connected to the bit line, and a source select transistor, connected to a reference voltage distribution line; said strings are connected in parallel to each other. When all the memory cells belonging to a same string have to be programmed, usually the first memory cell subjected to programming is the cell connected to the source select transistor of the string, followed by the subsequent memory cells of the string proceeding towards the memory cell connected to the drain select transistor. Therefore, each memory cell of the string to be programmed is connected to the corresponding bit line by means of still non-programmed (i.e., erased) memory cells. With such a program method, the condition (by the resistance point of view) of each memory cell of the string during the program operations (i.e., when their program state is verified) is different than in the case in which all the memory cells of the string have already been programmed. In fact, while the source resistance (i.e., the resistance seen at the source electrode) of each cell to be programmed is the same both during the verify and after that all the memory cells of the string have been programmed, the drain resistance (i.e., the resistance seen at the drain electrode) usually changes. This is due to the fact that while the source resistance depends on the channel resistances of the memory cells that have already been programmed, the drain resistance depends on the channel resistances of the memory cells that probably will change their program states, being not programmed yet. In other words, when the memory cells are subjected to a read operation in order to retrieve their program states later on, said read operation is performed in conditions that may be different from the ones during the verify operations. This (program) pattern dependency increases the width of the threshold voltage distributions corresponding to the non-erased states by a non negligible amount (for example, equal to 50 mV).
Regarding the FGC effect, it is known that the floating gate of a generic memory cell is not totally shielded (from an electrical point of view) from the floating gates of the adjacent memory cells, being instead capacitively coupled thereto. Considering a generic memory cell in the memory cell array, it is surrounded by 8 other memory cells, two along the bit line direction, two along the word line direction and four along the two diagonal directions. As is known to those skilled in the art, the FGC effect depends significantly on the amount of variation in the threshold voltages that the adjacent memory cells experience during the program operations. For example, let us consider a multilevel memory, with memory cells Mc that are adapted to store 2 bits, and whose threshold voltages may be programmed to four different levels, denoted for simplicity as "A", "B", "C", "D" (with A being associated with the erased state and D with the programmed state corresponding to the highest threshold voltage). If a memory cell is adjacent to memory cells that are subjected to program operations for bringing them to the last programmed state D, this memory cell heavily experiences the FCG effect. In fact, since the threshold voltages depend on the amount of electrical charge stored in the floating gates, a memory cell passing from the state A (i.e., corresponding to a condition in which the floating gate has a small amount of electrical charge stored therein) to the state D (i.e., corresponding to a condition in which the floating gate has a high amount of electrical charge stored therein) requires the transfer of a great amount of electrical charge, which in turn affects the threshold voltages of the adjacent floating gates, being capacitively coupled therewith. The higher the variation in the threshold voltages of the memory cells to be programmed, the higher the amount of electrical charge involved in the transfer and the higher the variation in the threshold voltages of the adjacent memory cells. As a consequence, said capacitive coupling between the floating gates of adjacent memory cells increases significantly the width of the threshold voltage distributions corresponding to the non-erased states. In particular, the disturbances on the considered memory cell induced by the programming of the eight adjacent cells may cause the width of the threshold voltage distribution to be increased by 400-500 mV.
In order to prevent that the undesired widening of the threshold voltage distribution impairs the memory operation (which would occur in case two threshold voltage distributions corresponding to two program states overlap), measures need to be taken to ensure that the threshold voltage distributions are narrow, carefully planning the width, the number and the time duration of the program voltage pulses to be applied to the memory cells. Unfortunately, the extent of the undesired effects described above is such as to cause the data transfer speed (during the program operations) of the NAND flash memories to be lower than the transfer speed of magnetic mass storage devices.
As a consequence, magnetic mass storage devices greatly predominate on the market over the other mass storage device classes in all the applications where great amounts of data have to be sequentially stored. In fact, in case a magnetic mass storage device (e.g., a hard disk) has a sufficiently large free space, the data to be sequentially stored can be written in adjacent memory locations; in this way, the positioning of the magnetic read/write head of the hard disk has to be performed only once, for the first memory location, and the high data transfer speed is fully exploited. However, when the amount of data to be stored is not so great, and when the frequency of the access to the storage device is relatively high, it is more advantageous to use solid-state mass storage devices.
Reassuming, apart in case the access to the stored data is very frequent, the most convenient storage media for mass storage applications at the present time are still the magnetic mass storage devices.
However, solid-state mass storage devices are more robust compared to the magnetic (and optical) counterparts, since-solid state devices do not include mechanical and movable parts (like the read/write heads, the spindle and the platters). The presence of such mechanical and movable parts, in addition to cause the devices to be more fragile, prevents the miniaturization thereof, since the sizes of the mechanical parts can not be scaled down in the same way as that of electronic components. Moreover, in order to be capable of moving the mechanical parts, magnetic (and optical) mass storage devices have to include motors, which need power supplies higher than those normally used for supplying electronic devices.
For all these reasons it would be strongly desirable to use solid-state mass storage devices for all mass storage applications. However, to this purpose, their data transfer speed should be increased significantly.


A memory array of a plurality of memory cells accessed by either a single-ended wordline or a differential pair of wordlines emanating from a wordline decoder is improved by the inclusion of a sense amplifier circuit on the far end of the memory array from the wordline decoder, which operates to amplify the wordline signals.

With today's software being developed, computer systems are in need of larger memory systems in order to adequately and efficiently run such software programs. As a result, memory systems often occupy a large amount of the integrated circuit ("chip") area. Often such memory cell arrays operate as cache memories associated with the microprocessor. As these memory arrays grow larger (even if the area occupied by the memory array does not increase, the number of transistors needed to implement the array may still increase) it is necessary to ensure that the performance of the array improves, or at least does not degrade.
With such memory arrays, memory latency is a critical performance limiter. Means to speed up memory access for memory array designs are needed for memory chips and embedded memories. This is more critical as larger DRAMs are embedded on microprocessor chips as large caches or system memory. Therefore, there is a need in the art for increasing the speed of the transition time for memory accesses in memory arrays.

International Business Machines Corporation


Method and apparatus for providing a duct arrangement adapted for installation through an opening in a wall (3), preferably of a vehicle. The arrangement includes an elongated ducting element (2) that has a sealing component (9) projecting therefrom on all sides and which is designed to bear against the edges of the opening so that sealing is produced between the two sides of the wall and establishes an installed position. Behind the component (9), when viewed in the direction of ducting, is a flexible section (5), which under loading of a part in front of the said section (5), permits displacement of the said part in relation to its unloaded longitudinal extent. The wall (3), when viewed from its front face in the direction of ducting, has a depression (6) formed all around the opening so that the opening essentially forms the lowest point of the depression (6). This configuration is designed to guide a tip of the ducting element (2) toward and through the opening to the installed position.

The present invention relates to an arrangement in a duct through an opening in a wall, preferably in a vehicle, comprising an elongated ducting element. The present invention also relates to a method of placing an elongated ducting element in an installed position in an opening in a wall, preferably in a vehicle.
It is sometimes necessary when manufacturing vehicles to lead lines of different types, for example pipes for liquids or gases or electrical cables, through sheet metal walls of the vehicle. For this purpose, holes are drilled in the sheet metal plates, following which the lines can be drawn through the sheet metal plates. In many applications, however, it is required that the ducting through the sheet metal walls be designed in such a way that it is impossible for water, moisture, and in certain situations, even sound to penetrate through the hole in the sheet metal wall. A common method used today for sealing off such a hole in the sheet metal wall is to install a rubber ring in the hole with an opening at the very center. The outside radius of the ring coincides with the inside radius of the hole. A drainage hose, or any of the other above-mentioned types of lines are led through the opening in the rubber ring.
There are, however, inherent deficiencies associated with these conventionally designed lead-through arrangements and methods for installing the same; responsively, the present invention has been developed. Important enhancements and benefits are described in greater detail hereinbelow with respect to several alternative embodiments of the present invention.
The present invention in its several disclosed embodiments alleviates the drawbacks described above with respect to conventionally designed devices and methods for mounting lead-through means in vehicle walls and incorporates several additionally beneficial features.
One object of the present invention is to produce a duct through a wall that can be installed by means of a robot. In another aspect, a goal is to produce a duct that is installable by a robot and that is liquid and moisture -tight, as well as soundproof.
According to the present invention, these goals and objectives are achieved in one design by way of an arrangement in which a ducting element has a component projecting therefrom on all sides. The element is designed to bear against the edges of the opening so that sealing is produced between the two sides of the wall and defines an installed position. Behind the element, when viewed in the direction of the ducting, there is a flexible section, which under the effect of a slight force applied anywhere along the longitudinal extent of one part in front of the section, permits displacement of the part in relation to the unloaded longitudinal extent of the part. The wall, when viewed from its front face in the ducting direction, has a depression formed all around the opening so that the opening essentially forms the lowest point of the depression. The depression is designed to direct the tip of the ducting element towards the opening and through the opening to the installed position.
The invention also includes a related method that is characterised in that the ducting element is provided with a component projecting on all sides which, when the ducting element is placed in the installed position, bears against the edges of the opening, so that sealing is produced between the two sides of the wall. Behind the element, when viewed in the direction of ducting, the ducting element is provided with a flexible section such that, under the effect of a slight force applied anywhere along the longitudinal extent of one part in front of the said section, the part is displaced in relation to its unloaded longitudinal extent. The wall, viewed from its front face in the ducting direction, is provided with a depression all around the opening, so that the opening essentially forms the lowest point of the depression and that the tip of the ducting element is inserted towards the depression and directs the tip so that it is guided towards the opening and through the latter to the installed position.
The arrangement and the method according to the invention have a number of advantages compared to previous designs. The depression formed in the wall, together with the fact that the part in front of the flexible section can form angles with its direction of movement allows the tip of the ducting element to be directed toward, and through the opening during installation, even if the movement is not aimed precisely towards the opening. These error tolerances facilitate robot installation of the ducting element. The diameter of the depression can be selected according to prevailing circumstances, such as the performance of the robot, for example, so that when installing the ducting element it always strikes the wall somewhere in the depression. In addition, a ducting element utilized in accordance with the invention has a simple construction formed in a single piece and which can be manufactured at low cost. An arrangement in accordance with the invention may be used for ducting various types of media, such as liquids and gases, for example. In another utilization, one or more electrical cables may be drawn through the ducting element.

Device and method for mounting of a lead-through means


An image processing apparatus includes a layer separating unit configured to separate an input frame image data item into a moving subject layer and a background layer and a combining processing unit configured to generate a combined image data item by performing an image combining process using the input frame image data item. In the image combining process, top priority is given to a moving subject layer of the latest input frame image data item, a second priority is given to a moving subject layer of a frame image data item associated with a previously performed combining process, and a layer-image combining process is performed for a partial area of an existing combined image data item.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a program and, in particular, to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a program for acquiring a still image or a moving image indicating a motion sequence of a photographic subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
The related art is described in Japanese Patent No. 3449993, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-180259 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 7,123,275), Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-259477 (a divisional application of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-180259), and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-359777 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 7,146,022).
As shown in FIG. 32, a "motion sequence image" is used in, for example, sports training.
A motion sequence image is generated by acquiring images of a moving human or a subject (a moving subject) at predetermined characteristic times (key-frame times) and, subsequently, arranging the images in space. Thus, a motion sequence can be easily recognized. A motion sequence image is generated such that images of a moving subject are spatially arranged even when the moving subject does not spatially move. In general, a motion sequence image is generated by drawing a picture. However, in some cases, by manually clipping part of an image from each photo and arranging the partial images, a motion sequence image can be also generated.

Image processing apparatus, image processing method, and program


The present invention relates to a composition containing vitamin C. The composition according to the present invention includes cationic material and anionic material as a primary stabilizing agent of the vitamin C; and a caffeic acid derivative as a secondary stabilizing agent of the vitamin C. The caffeic acid derivative is water-soluble and, preferably, a new caffiec acid derivative as denoted by the chemical formula 1 below is used. According to the present invention, the cationic material and the anionic material generate an electrical double layer to stabilize the vitamin C primarily; water-soluble caffeic acid derivative stabilizes the vitamin C secondarily. Accordingly, the vitamin C is stabilized double so that the vitamin C is protected from being oxidized by air, heat and moisture.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a composition containing a vitamin C, more particularly, relates to a composition capable of protecting the vitamin C effectively by stabilizing the vitamin C double.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is well-known that a vitamin C shows strong antioxidant effect, anti-aging effect by the promoting capacity for the collagen biosynthesis, whitening effect by the restraining capacity against the melanin generation. However, an L-Ascorbic acid of vitamin C has a problem that it is easily oxidized at the external environment as like moisture, heat, light, air, etc, so that it becomes lost its titer and it becomes decomposed.
It is known that a dihydroascorbate radical, which is an oxidation intermediate, is generated by the dissociation of the hydrogen ions, where 2 electron-transfer processes are occurred serially. It is known that dihydroascorbate radical has powerful reactivity. The dihydroascorbate radical acts as 2 moleculars by itself to combine with the vitamin C, which is a molecular, thereby digydroascorbate acid is generated. This oxide of the vitamin C has a side-effect to damage the skin. And this oxide of the vitamin C has a problem to stimulate the skin when it is applied to the skin because it has structurally strong acidity. Because vitamin C can be oxidized easily in the alkalic aqueous solution, vitamin C can lost its color or ruined easily if it is placed on this environment in the process of maintenance and manufacture,
To solve the defect of the vitamin C, that is, instability and stimulation in various environments, various vitamin C derivatives have been developed and these developed vitamin C derivatives are applied widely over grocery, pharmacy, medicine and cosmetics. However, these vitamin C derivatives have a problem that they are inferior to the pure vitamin C in effectiveness.
Also a method to add antioxidant agent, a method to stabilize the vitamin C in multiple emulsifying agents, a method to stabilize the vitamin C in an aqua emulsifying agent, a method to restrain the oxidation of vitamin C by coating, etc have been provided. However, these methods are not appropriate for the formulation of the cosmetic material because they do not show enough stability and effectiveness and because titer of the vitamin C becomes decreased as time goes. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,969, EP 0533667 B1)
Thus, there is a great need to develop stabilizing technique of vitamin C in order that skin activation capacity of vitamin C can be applied to the skin well.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Vitamin C composition stabilized with cationic material, anionic material and caffeic acid derivative


The present invention relates to a press-type liquid pump. The liquid pump comprises a fixed unit fixed relative to a container and a movable unit capable of performing a reciprocating motion relative to the fixed unit, and a liquid product is pumped to the exterior of the container. The reciprocating motion is achieved by a pressing force applied by a user to the movable unit to move the movable unit relative to the fixed unit in combination with an elastic restoring means for restoring the movable unit relative to the fixed unit after the pressing force is removed. The elastic restoring means is a plastic elastic compressing means located below a toothed sleeve and installed between the fixed unit and the movable unit, which comprises at least one elastic strip generally formed in an arc shape.

A press-type liquid pump is generally installed at an opening of a container, for pumping and dispensing a liquid product in the container to the exterior thereof by means of a manual pressing operation by a user for later use. This liquid pump generally has an elastic restoring means for restoring a pump pressing head to an original position thereof after the user has removed the downward pressing force on the pressing head, and during the restoring of the pressing head, the liquid product within the container is sucked into a liquid reservoir of the liquid pump for pumping and dispensing by the next pressing.
In conventional press-type liquid pumps, the elastic restoring means is generally fitted between a movable unit (generally including a pressing head and a piston rod) and a fixed unit (generally including a cylinder) in a pre-loaded manner, so as to ensure that there is enough elastic force to enable the movable unit to be restored to the original position thereof relative to the fixed unit after the user has removed the downward pressing force. However, keeping the elastic restoring means in a loaded state for a long time would result in creeping and fatigue failure of the elastic means, ultimately resulting in an insufficient rebounding force to restore the movable unit into position, and thereby influencing the amount of liquid outputted by the liquid pump.
Furthermore, the conventional press-type liquid pumps mostly use a metal spring as the elastic restoring means, as shown in FIG. 49. The metal spring 1010 for use in this liquid pump rusts easily due to damp or contact with liquid, and a rusted spring affects the quality of the product (including the quality of the spring and the quality of the liquid product in the container). Moreover, the cost of the metal spring is relatively high, and in the recycling of the liquid pump, the metal spring needs to be disassembled from other plastic members for separate recovery, which greatly increases the cost of recovery.
Another press-type liquid pump is a bellows type plastic spring pump, as shown in FIG. 50, which uses an elastic force generated by the bellows 1110 when deformed to provide the power force for the restoring movement of the press-type liquid pump. However, this bellows type plastic spring inherently presents the problem of an insufficient elastic force, which, in the case that the liquid product is relatively viscous or a relatively high amount of liquid to be pumped out is required, will inevitably make a rebound difficult or even impossible, thereby affecting the use by consumers. Furthermore, in order to enable such a liquid pump to rebound into position during use, the bellows must be installed in a pre-loaded manner such that it has been subjected to a certain pre-stressed deformation before use; however, after it has been in place for a long time or due to changes in the ambient temperature, the bellows spring is prone to creeping, resulting in the previously stored elastic deformation disappearing, thereby resulting in a reduced rebounding force.
A further press-type liquid pump is a neck casing type plastic spring pump, as shown in FIG. 51 and as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,223,954. A disadvantage of the spring 1210 used in this liquid pump is that a very large downward pressing force is required to bend the spring when the pressing head is in the vicinity of an upper stop position of a pressing stroke, and the rebounding force that can be provided by this plastic spring is too small when the pressing head is in the vicinity of a lower stop position of the pressing stroke, resulting in a slow or incomplete restoration. Moreover, in terms of the appearance, the casing type spring is arranged above the toothed sleeve of the liquid pump, making the section above the toothed sleeve particularly bulky and even larger after a downward pressing, which is very unattractive.


When an insurant of the game insurance attempts to play a game on another gaming machine after having played a game on one gaming machine, the member inputs and transmits information to the effect of playing a game being covered by the game insurance on another gaming machine, on condition that the insurant of the game insurance has been identified, thereby halting making of a determination as to whether or not insurance coverage of the game insurance has been paid. Subsequently, the insurant of insurance who has played a game on another gaming machine inputs and transmits information to the effect of not playing a game being covered by the game insurance on another gaming machine, thereby canceling a halt of making a determination as to whether or not insurance coverage of the game insurance is paid.

Related-art gaming machines include, e.g., a slot machine provided with an insurance function. When insurance coins (coins for activating the insurance function) is inserted into the slot machine in advance before initiation of a game, even when the number of consumed game start coins has reached a certain level and a player has failed to gain a win, a specified number of coins as dividend of the insurance (insurance dividend coins) are paid out to thereby lessen the loss of the player (e.g., see JP-A-4-244178).
However, the insurance function fulfilled by the insurance coins is limited to the services that have previously been set in the slot machine into which the insurance coins are to be inserted, such as payout of a specified number of insurance dividend coins according to the number of consumed game start coins. Accordingly, only a uniform insurance service can be provided, and obstacles are encountered in providing a variety of services that satisfy requests of the player.


A device which determines a motion parameter with a sensor having a plurality of sensor elements coupled to one another, in which the motion parameter corresponds to a rotational speed. The device includes a starter loop for putting the sensor in a state of excitation via a starter signal via at least one of the sensor elements and for generating a sensor quantity, with the sensor quantity being a measure of a response of the sensor to the starter signal, and the starter signal having a substantially constant amplitude. A detector loop coupled to at least one of the sensor elements is also provided in the device for providing a measurement signal correlating with the motion parameter. The device further includes an analysis unit for providing an output voltage representing the motion parameter as a function of the measurement signal, a correction unit for keeping a substantially constant correlation between the output voltage and the motion parameter and for generating a correction signal as a function of the sensor quantity, and a multiplier providing the correction signal to the analysis unit.

German Patent No. DE 44 47 005 describes a device for determining a rotational speed, with a sensor being set in a constant state of excitation by a starter loop. Furthermore, the device has a detector loop for detecting a motion parameter and an analyzer loop for generating an output voltage proportional to the rotational speed. An external scaling factor defined as the ratio of the output voltage generated to the rotational speed to be measured is subject to changes over time, because the sensitivity of the sensor can change with temperature or with increasing age.

Device for determining a motion parameter with automatic scaling factor correction


A clasp or catch for jewelry items or the like, comprises: a first member, for attachment to one end of a jewelry item, having two parallel sides and two transversal bars interconnecting the two sides; a second generally O-shaped but not closed member having one end pivoting around one of the two transversal bars, and the other end securely engaging the other of the two transversal bars; and a third member, for attachment to another end of the jewelry item, similar in construction to said first member, having at least one cross bar for retaining said other end of the second member when not engaged by said other of the two transversal bars.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to items of jewelry in general, and in particular to a clasp or catch for securing such items on the wearer. The clasp is easy to operate, and offers improved security even in the open position such that if inadvertently opened the bracelet or necklace would not necessarily drop off the wearer.
2. Prior Art of the Invention
Known prior art are the ubiquitous clasps or catches known in the trade by the names "spring ring", "lobster claw", and "box catch". They are generally difficult to manipulate and close with one hand, and when open have their ends fully disengaged.
The spring ring and lobster claw catches require the wearer to chase the open end of a bracelet while at the same time operating the spring mechanism of the catch. The box catch requires the wearer to push two loose ends toward each other with one hand.


Embodiments provide a system for controlling HVAC/ACMV system of a building, including an occupancy pattern extractor configured to generate at least one facility-based occupancy pattern for each facility type based on historical occupancy data and spatial information of the building; a zone occupancy predictor configured to predict zone occupancy variation of each zone after a predetermined time period, based on the facility-based occupancy patterns and real-time occupancy data; a similar zone matcher configured to match each zone with one or more pre-stored zones and determine air handler configurations based on the matched pre-stored zones; a configuration generator configured to determine configuration combinations by combining the air handler configurations for a plurality of zones of the building, each configuration combination including one of the air handler configurations for each zone; and a configuration optimizer configured to determine an optimal configuration combination based on one or more key performance indicators.

In recent decades, building/facility energy management had become a major concern. Many countries have introduced the concept of "green building" and various standard requirement on building energy usage, to enforce the building designed and operated in an energy efficient manner for maximum energy saving without compromising the occupants comfort level. To achieve such goals, the building owner may not only apply those recommended energy efficient technologies to various building system, e.g.: HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), ACMV (air conditioning and mechanical ventilation), lighting, facade, but also keep the building systems operated efficiently under the optimized control configuration.
Therefore, there is a need for the building owner and facility manager to make use of a Smart Building Energy Management System to monitor and control the real time building system operation, including HVAC or ACMV, lighting, lift and other systems. Among all the systems, HVAC or ACMV system usually consumes more than 50% of the total building energy in the daily operation. Therefore, the optimization of HVAC or ACMV system have attracted more attention from the building owner or facility manager compared to other systems.
There are many approaches to calculate the optimized system configuration setting in physical model based on the real-time sensor reading, occupancy rate and current weather condition. However, the HVAC or ACMV system usually takes half hour or longer time from the time the configuration is changed on board to the time it really takes effect on the building. Therefore, the prediction of thermal load demand is required at least half hour earlier to avoid the delay, thereby maintaining the comfort level of the occupants.
Some approaches in this area make use of the weather forecast data and occupancy prediction result, to predict a daily thermal load demand scheduling in advance. The occupancy prediction is usually based on real time sensing occupancy and a given predictive occupancy schedule or a specific occupancy pattern learned from historical data. U.S. Pat. No. 9,245,229 describes a method of predicting the building occupancy based on occupancy patterns, sensing occupancy and scheduling information. The occupancy patterns are stochastic statistical profiles which can be extracted from historical data or pre-seeded based on a specific building facility type, expected occupant type, season, or location. U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2015/0323915 describes a method of predicting the occupancy state using a predictive time schedule and real-time event detection. The predictive schedule should be learned from historical occupancy data. Method of set point optimization for AHU (U.S. Pat. No. 8,560,126) describes a method of optimizing the AHU set point based on building location, sensed zone level air properties, a seasonal based thermal comfort index (TCL) schedule and user input occupancy parameters. The optimization is based only on the real-time sensor data, with no prediction on the change in zone air properties in advance. The main disadvantages of these approach is that the occupancy pattern is applicable only for single facility-type based buildings, such as office building or apartment. The occupants in the building are most likely same group of people, undertaking similar activities, and having mostly periodic and fixed human flow pattern.
These approaches may only predict the thermal load demand change based on the change of occupancy in advance in a single facility-based building, which could be a residential building, schools, or office building with a relatively fixed group of people, fixed or static human flow pattern and similar activities (e.g. similar metabolic activity levels). However, these approaches could not predict the thermal load demand variation in a multiple facilities-based building, such as shopping or commercial malls, due to highly dynamic human flow across different facilities and different human activities in different facilities. As a result, the thermal comfort level of a group of occupants in certain facility of the building may become sub-optimal. In addition, the building may consume unnecessary energy due to over cooling or heating. For a multiple facilities-based building, like a multi-functional shopping mall, the prediction of thermal load demand variation is a very challenging task. Accordingly, operating the building HVAC/ACMV system in an energy efficient manner for maximum energy saving without compromising the occupants' thermal comfort level has become a challenging task for building energy management system (BMS) due to the difficulty of predicting the thermal load demand variation in advance.

System and method for controlling an HVAC system or an ACMV system of a building


An arrangement of cooling tubes within a Fischer-Tropsch slurry reactor simplifies removal and reinstallation of cooling tubes for reactor maintenance.

A commercial FT slurry reactor can have hundreds to thousands of cooling tubes spanning most of the vertical extent of the reactor, e.g. 75 feet. These cooling tubes will typically be about 3 to 5 inches in diameter.
Reactor cooling tubes are used to generate saturated steam thereby providing cooling of the contents of a slurry reactor. Specifically, saturated steam is produced when preheated boiler feed water is supplied to the cooling tubes. This steam production absorbs the exothermic heat of reaction within the reactor.
The combination of the large number of tubes, their associated weight, the need to supply boiler feed water at one location and to remove steam from another location, leads to a fairly complex reactor design. The design is even more involved and difficult when the need to remove the cooling tubes from the reactor for maintenance is addressed.
The present invention discloses a cooling tube design that addresses these concerns and facilitates the removal of cooling tubes from a reactor, thereby providing a simple construction for a method of cooling tube installation and maintenance.
A variety of Fischer-Tropsch reactor cooling tube designs are known. However, reactor internal details are generally not made public. Most typically employ the generation of saturated steam within cooling tubes.
Maretto and Krishna, "Design and optimization of a multi-stage bubble column slurry reactor for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis," Catalysis Today, 66 (2001) 241-248, show schematically the arrangement of cooling tubes in a bubble column slurry reactor; see their FIG. 1.
Bhatt et al., "Catalyst and Process Scale-up for Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis," Symposium on Fischer-Tropsch and Alcohol Synthesis, 1994 Spring ACS Meeting, San Diego, Calif., Mar. 15-17, 1994, show the arrangement of cooling tubes in a reactor cooled by heat transfer oil.
Kolbel and Ralek, "The Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis in the Liquid Phase," Catal. Rev. Sci. Eng, 21, 225(1980), show the arrangement of cooling tubes in a reactor as well as the supporting equipment needed to provide boiler feed water and to control the generated steam from the system.
An example of an alternate approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,409,960 to Thomas M. Stark which teaches a method for removing heat from a slurry FT hydrocarbon reactor by using pentane in a gas conversion process to absorb the exothermic heat of reaction in the FT process. Pub. 00614864/EP A1 (Thomas Marshall Stark), which published Sep. 9, 1994, discloses a process that consumes a cooling medium, such as pentane, and vaporizes the cooling medium by the exothermic heat of reaction. Said vaporized medium may then be expanded to produce energy, for example, to drive an air plant compressor to produce oxygen for use in the gas conversion process.

Fischer-tropsch slurry reactor cooling tube arrangement


In a data processing system having an electronic mail system for sending documents from a first user to a recipient user and, for each user, a means for creating and editing documents, the documents having differing formats, a method for converting a document having a first format into a document having a second format preferred by the recipient user, using a table of user document format preferences and a document format conversion facility. The user preference table contains, for each user, an entry specifying the document format preferred by the user, and appended to each document to be sent to a recipient user is a tag which includes a field specifying the user to receive the document, and a field specifying the first format of the document. The document format field of the tag of a received document is compared with the preferred document format field of the user preference table entry of the recipient user, and, in response to a difference between the first format and the preferred format, the document conversion facility is used to convert the document from the first format to the preferred format.

1. Field of Use
The present invention pertains to electronic mail systems and, in particular, to a method for automatically converting documents from a first format into a second format preferred by a recipient.
2. Prior Art
The common use of word processing programs and electronic mail systems has resulted in a recurring problem arising from the differing document formats used by the various word processing programs.
It is frequently found that the originator of a document prefers a different word processor from that preferred by the intended recipient of the document, and that it is difficult for the recipient to read or handle the document in any meaningful manner because of the document format differences. This has been alleviated somewhat for very local communications of documents, for example, within a single department, by decreeing that all users within the department will use the same word processing program.
Decreeing a common document format is usually not feasible, over larger and more diverse groups, however, resulting in the use of document conversion utilities to convert documents from one format to another.
This general approach has not been satisfactory, however, in that the systems of the prior art have required the recipient of documents to perform a separate and individual conversion process on each document received, resulting in a substantial waste of the users time merely because of the differences between document formats.
The method of the present invention addresses this and other problems of the systems of the prior art.

Automatic document format conversion in an electronic mail system based upon user preference


Noise measurements are made within a fraction of a single symbol period of a longest orthogonal code symbol. A control processor identifies an unoccupied code having a spreading factor that is less than a longest spreading factor for the system. A despreader measures symbol energy based on the unoccupied code and a noise estimator generates noise estimations based on the measured symbol energies. The subscriber station uses similar techniques in order to perform channel estimations within a period that is a fraction of a symbol period of a longest-spreading-factor code.

The field of wireless communication includes many wireless applications such as voice communication, paging, packet data services, and voice-over-IP. One challenge presented by such services are the widely varying requirements for capacity, quality-of-service, latency, data rates in the different services. Various over-the-air interfaces have been developed to accommodate combinations such services using different wireless communication techniques such as frequency division multiple access (FDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), and code division multiple access (CDMA).
In order to accommodate combinations services having different sets of requirements, communication standards such as the proposed cdma2000 and W-CDMA specify the use of orthogonal codes of varying length on the downlink channels from a wireless base station to a subscriber station. Some standards also specify transmitting signals for different uplink channel (in the direction from the subscriber station to the base station) using orthogonal codes of varying lengths for the different channels. For example, a wireless base station may transmit three types of downlink signals, pilot, voice, and packet data, using a different length orthogonal code symbols to channelize or "cover" each different type of signal. The length of an orthogonal code symbol is typically described as a number of "chips," with a chip being a smallest binary component of a transmitted signal. In a spread spectrum system, each bit of information is multiplied by a sequence of binary chips having a predetermined number of chips-per-bit. Multiplying a single binary information bit by an orthogonal code symbol effectively "spreads" the information bit over all of the chips in the symbol. For this reason, the chip length or chips-per-bit is often referred to as a "spreading factor" of a transmitted information signal.
Another aspect of current spread spectrum systems is the sharing of frequency bands between different subscriber stations and between different base stations. In other words, neighboring base stations in a spread spectrum system transmit their downlink signals in the same frequency band as each other. Because of this sharing (also called "reuse") of frequency bands, downlink signals transmitted by a base station destructively interfere with the downlink signals of neighboring base stations. This interference decreases the capacity of the neighboring base stations, measured in either number of subscriber stations that can be supported or maximum information throughput possible on the downlink. The capacity of such systems can be increased by using power control techniques to decrease the transmit power of all signals to a lowest value that will still permit the signals to be correctly received and decoded by subscriber stations. The effectiveness of power control depends largely on the accuracy of noise measurements made by subscriber stations and base stations. There is therefore a need in the art for a way to provide maximal noise measurement accuracy in systems utilizing varying spreading factors.

Noise and channel estimation using low spreading factors