The present invention provides a dispenser for both rolled paper products and liquid fluid having scent therein. The dispenser allows an individual that is injured, handicapped, or otherwise unable to grasp and unroll the rolled product, to have the product unrolled automatically by depressing a single button. In addition, a fluid dispenser is incorporated within the rolled paper product dispenser so that the individual using the present invention may be provided with a convenient apparatus for freshening the air adjacent the dispenser when desired.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to toilet tissue holders, and more specifically, motorized toilet tissue dispensers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The have been patented devices in the past that not only rotatably support a roll of paper product, such as toilet paper, but that are also capable of automatically dispensing a desired length of the product to a user. U.S. Pat. No. 1,674,285, issued on Jun. 19, 1928 to Leaman S. Harvey, discloses a holder for paper rolls, specifically toilet paper rolls. Harvey's holder comprises a bracket member for attachment to a planar supporting surface such that a portion of the bracket extends normal to the supporting surface. The bracket has means for accepting a plurality of clamps or biased spools that rotate with and without ball bearing against the bracket, for removably engaging the inner portion of a cylinder about which the paper product is wound so that the same may be unrolled as needed.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,008,059, issued on Nov. 14, 1961 to Frederic P. Plotkin et al., discloses a dispensing device for rolled material comprising a base frame structure having two roll supporting arms extending therefrom. One of Plotkin's rolls supporting arms is pivotally attached to the base frame structure and biased so as to better retain a roll of paper product between the two roll supporting arms.
Examples of electronic toilet tissue dispensers within the patent record are U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,200, issued on Jan. 31, 1978 to Barry N. Stone and U.S. Pat. No. 4,721,265, issued on Jan. 26, 1988 to Junior F. Hawkins. Stone's dispenser is seen as a battery powered, switch activated, dispenser having a rectangular frame with two mounting arms attached thereto. A cylinder is provided to engage the roll of paper product to be dispensed. A biased peg extends from within the cylinder to retain the cylinder between the two mounting arms. Furthermore, gear means are utilized to rotate the cylinder once placed between the mounting arms. The Hawkins dispenser is also seen as a battery powered toilet tissue dispenser that is activated through a sensor-type switch as opposed to a manual-type switch. The motor of Hawkins' dispenser transfers power to the toilet paper roll by means of a belt and pulley-type arrangement. A spring-biased handle arrangement provides proper compressive forces to secure the toilet paper roll within the dispenser.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,783,016, issued on Nov. 8, 1988 to Daniel L. Pool, is presented herein to further illustrate means for retaining a roll about a central rotating member. Through the utilization of a shaped wire member, Pool's roll holder engages the inner surface of a roll with enough frictional for that the roll will not slip as the holder is rotated.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.


A circuit interrupting device has a circuit interrupter with a stationary contact and a moveable contact. The movable contact is movable relative to the stationary contact between a closed position that allows current to pass through the circuit interrupter and an open position separating the contacts and preventing current from passing through the circuit interrupter. The movable contact is controlled by a solenoid assembly. The movable contact is connected to a plunger of the solenoid assembly by a turnbuckle and weld break assembly. The turnbuckle and weld break assembly permits adjusting the contact wipe distance and generates a hammer force to break any welds between the contacts of the vacuum interrupter.

Conventional circuit interrupting devices, such as circuit breakers, sectionalizers, and reclosers, provide protection for power distribution systems and the various apparatus on those power distribution systems by isolating a faulted section from the main part of the system. A fault current in the system can occur under various conditions, including lightning, an animal or tree shorting the power lines, or different power lines contacting each other.
Conventional circuit interrupting devices sense a fault and interrupt the current path. Conventional reclosers also re-close the current path and monitor continued fault conditions, thereby re-energizing the utility line upon termination of the fault. This provides maximum continuity of electrical service. If a fault is permanent, the recloser remains open after a certain pre-set number of reclosing operations.
Conventional circuit interrupters typically have opposing contacts. The opposing contacts move from an open position where the contacts are separated and no current passes between them to a closed position where the contacts abut one another, allowing current to pass between them. The contacts are usually sealed into a vacuum bottle to minimize the arcing that occurs when the contacts are opened and closed. Arcing is undesirable because it causes erosion of the contacts. Arcing can also weld the opposing contacts together, effectively preventing operation of the circuit interrupter.
Examples of conventional circuit interrupting devices include U.S. Pat. No. 6,242,708 to Marchand et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,663,712 to Kamp; U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,403 to Hamm et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,103,364 to Kamp; U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,382 to Eppinger; U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,804 to Luehring and U.S. Pat. No. 4,323,871 to Kamp et al. The subject matter of each of these patents is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

Circuit interrupting device with a turnbuckle and weld break assembly


To provide a simulation method capable of efficiently evaluating reliability of gate oxide films formed on the elements within short periods of time to evaluate characteristics of a semiconductor device made up of elements of any size and any number.. In a semiconductor device having transistors formed thereon, a pattern 1 for evaluating characteristics of a semiconductor device characterized in that gate area portions 9, gate bird's-beak portions 10 and LOCOS bird's-beak portions 11, are factors affecting the insulation breakdown of the gate oxide film, are rendered to be variable, so that the shapes of these portions can be handled as independent parameters.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of evaluating semiconductor devices, a method of designing semiconductor devices and a method of producing the semiconductor devices. More specifically, the invention relates to a method of evaluation for producing semiconductor devices made up of the transistors that exhibit highly reliable characteristics and a method of producing semiconductor devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Among transistors, a MOS transistor using a gate oxide film has heretofore been widely used. Accompanying the demand for fabricating MOS transistors in reduced sizes yet having improved performance, is a demand to form the gate oxide film with a reduced area and a reduced thickness.
The gate oxide film, however, often undergoes insulation breakdown due to defects in the steps of production, erroneously designing or conditions in which it is used, and it is becoming important to enhance the reliability of the gate oxide film, the properties of the gate oxide film and the life thereof.
In order to improve the reliability of transistor characteristics, therefore, it is necessary to properly evaluate the performance and properties of the gate oxide film.
It is further becoming necessary to investigate the reliability of the gate oxide film of the transistor by evaluating TDDB (time dependent dielectric breakdown) characteristics or QBD (Q-breakdown) characteristics, as an example, to evaluate the quality and characteristics of the semiconductor device for each generation of technology or for each processing technology.
So far, however, the reliability of the gate oxide film has been investigated and evaluated by practically forming an oxide film on a MOS capacitor or the like, relying upon the processing technology that is to be used, and conducting the testing.
Accordingly, problems occur as described below.
(1) An element is formed on which an oxide film is practically formed and the testing is, then, carried out. An extended period of time is required before the test results are obtained.
(2) The testing pattern is made up of an ordinary MOS capacitor which, however, is different in shape from the gate oxide film of the MOSFET. It is not therefore possible to use the data obtained from the MOS capacitor as data for the gate oxide film.
(3) Even when a MOSFET testing pattern is formed as the gate oxide film, a new pattern for evaluation must be formed for every progression of the generation in the LSI.
(4) Reliability of the gate oxide film is affected depending upon its shape, but it is difficult to verify the effects of the shapes in a distinct manner.
So far, therefore, a considerable period of time was required for evaluating the reliability of the gate oxide film that is a basis for evaluating the characteristics of the semiconductor device, i.e., for evaluating characteristics, performance, shape, etc. of the transistor. Besides, it is difficult to evaluate the desired gate oxide film from the obtained data. Moreover, even when the gate oxide film was evaluated, the data were not adapted to evaluating the gate having a different form. Therefore, the evaluation operation had to be repeated for each of the steps for producing transistors and each of the production conditions.

Semiconductor device and pattern including varying transistor patterns for evaluating characteristics


The present invention relates to () non-peptide aspartyl protease inhibitors; (ii) methods for modulating the processing of an amyloid precursor protein (APP); (iii) methods for modulating the processing of a tau protein (τ-protein); and (iv) methods for treating neurodegenerative diseases. For instance, in one embodiment, the present invention provides a method for modulating the processing of an amyloid precursor protein (APP), the method comprising contacting a composition containing the APP with an aspartyl protease inhibitor having the formula:

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of both senile and presenile dementia in the world and is recognized clinically as relentlessly progressive dementia that presents with increasing loss of memory, intellectual function and disturbances in speech (Merritt, 1979, A Textbook of Neurology, 6th edition, 484–489 Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia). The disease itself usually has a slow and insidious progress that affects both sexes equally, worldwide. It begins with mildly inappropriate behavior, uncritical statements, irritability, a tendency towards grandiosity, euphoria and deteriorating performance at work; it progresses through deterioration in operational judgement, loss of insight, depression and loss of recent memory; it ends in severe disorientation and confusion, apraxia of gait, generalized rigidity and incontinence (Gilroy and Meyer, 1979, Medical Neurology, 175–179 MacMillan Publishing Co.). Alzheimer's disease afflicts an estimated 4 million human beings in the United States alone at a cost of 35 billion dollars a year (Hay and Ernst, Am. J. Public Health, 77:1169–1175 (1987)). It is found in 10% of the population over the age of 65 and 47% of the population over the age of 85 (Evans, et al., JAMA, 262:2551–2556 (1989)). In addition, the disease is found at much lower levels in the younger age groups, usually beginning at about 30 years of age and even rarely in late childhood (Adams and Victor, Principles of Neurology, 401–407 (1977)).
Proteases and, in particular, aspartyl proteases have been implicated in diseases, such as Alzheimer's Disease, that are characterized by the accumulation of amyloid plaques. Amyloidogenic Aβ peptides (Aβ) are the principle component of the amyloid plaques that accumulate intracellularly and extracellularly in the neuritic plaques in the brain in AD. Aβ is a 4.5 kD protein, about 40–42 amino acids long, that is derived from the C-terminus of amyloid precursor protein (APP). APP is a membrane-spanning glycoprotein that, in the normal processing pathway, is cleaved inside the Aβ protein to produce α-sAPP, a secreted form of APP. Formation of alpha α-sAPP precludes formation of Aβ. It has been proposed that Aβ accumulates by virtue of abnormal processing of APP, so that compounds that inhibit the activity of the enzymes responsible for Aβ production are desirable (see, e.g., Wagner, et al., Biotech. Report, 106–107 (1994/1995); and Selkoe, TINS, 16:403–409 (1993)).
In addition to the accumulation of amyloid plaques, neurons in AD brains exhibit specific alterations in τ, a family of phosphoproteins that bind tubulin (Weingarten, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 72:1858–1862 (1975); and Williams and Detrich, Biochemistry, 18:2499–2503 (1979)), and stabilize microtubules (Goode and Feinstein, J. Cell Biol., 124:769–782 (1994)). In these brains, τ proteins adopt an altered form and comprise the dominant component of abnormal cytosketal fibers known as paired helical filaments (PHFs) (see, Kosik, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 83:4044–4088 (1986); Lee, et al., Science, 251:675–678 (1991); and Mann, et al., Neuropathol. Appl. Neurobiol., 13:123–139 (1987)). Molecular dissection of PHFs has revealed two specific alterations in τ. First, PHF-τ proteins maintain an excessively phosphorylated state throughout postmortem intervals (Matsuo, et al., Neuron, 13:989–1002 (1994)). Second, after treatment of PHFs with reducing agents and detergents, the remaining filaments contain truncated forms of τ (Nieto, et al., Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun., 154:660–667 (1988); Nieto, et al., J. Neurosci., 37:163–170 (1990); and Wischik, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 85:4506–4510 (1988)). These results suggest that modifications in the posttranslational processing of τ contribute to the formation of PHFs. It has been proposed that τ-fragments accumulate by virture of abnormal processing of τ by proteases (see, Bednarski and Lynch, J. Neurochem., 67(5):1845–1855 (1996)). As such, compounds that inhibit the acitivity of the enzymes responsible for τ-fragment production are desirable.
Because proteases are implicated in Alzheimer's Disease and in numerous other disorders, there remains a need in the art for the development of potent and specific inhibitors of these enzymes. Quite surprisingly, the present invention fulfills this and other need.

Methods for treating neurodegenerative disorders using aspartyl protease inhibitors

Abstract: wherein:

Abstract: R1, R2 and R3 are members independently selected from the group consisting of alkyl, substituted alkyl, aryl, substituted aryl, arylalkyl, substituted arylalkyl, aryloxyalkyl, substituted aryloxyalkyl, heteroaryl, substituted heteroaryl, heteroarylalkyl, substituted heteroarylalkyl, heterocycles, substituted heterocycles, heterocyclicalkyl and substituted heterocyclicalkyl; and R5 and R6 are independently selected from the group consisting of hydrogen, halogen, alkyl, substituted alkyl, aryl, substituted aryl, arylalkyl, substituted arylalkyl, aryloxyalkyl and substituted aryloxyalkyl; or R5 and R6 and the carbons to which they are bound join to form an optionally substituted carbocyclic or heterocyclic fused ring system having a total of 9- or 10-ring atoms within the fused ring system.

The Regents of the University of California


A conduit disconnect tool is fabricated from a hollow tubular member having one end angled with respect to the longitudinal axis of the hollow tubular member and formed with a fork configuration at that end. The opposite end of the tool is milled to provide a semi-cylindrical section. Either end may be impinged on a fitting release plate to effect and permit removal of conduit from the fitting.

In a principal aspect the present invention relates to tools useful for disconnection of an air line or other conduit from a connector or fitting.
Many machines and mechanical control devices are operated by air or other fluids. Additionally, there are numerous instances wherein fluids other than air are carried by conduits between various ports in a mechanical mechanism. For example, pneumatic control systems or vehicle fuel lines often utilize flexible tubing to connect logic devices or controls or other elements. Typically, conduit connections between various components of mechanical devices are effected by means of a connector or fitting which includes a cylindrical opening for receipt of a conduit or tube. The connector includes an annular plate or similar structure which may be compressed or engaged to operate a tube retention mechanism incorporated in the connector or fitting. Thus pressing on the plate and moving it axially with respect to the conduit axis will effect a release of the conduit retained by the fitting. Release of the plate, of course, enables the fitting to typically spring back or return to a position that engages or compresses the conduit and retains it attached to the fitting.
When repairing mechanical devices which include conduit connecting various elements of the device, it is often necessary to replace component parts or the conduit. As a result, it is generally necessary to disconnect the tubular conduits joining various mechanical components. Such tubular connections may comprise plastic tubing, metal tubing, or the like.
Often a screwdriver is used to effect such disconnection. That is, the screwdriver blade may be impinged against the fitting retention plate which is moveable in the fitting to thereby release the conduit from the fitting. However, connections are often dirty or contaminated by debris or located in areas that are difficult to access. Thus, there has developed a need for a tool which will enable rapid disconnection of conduit, such as air lines, from fittings. Preferably, a universal tool or set of tools is desired in order to enable disconnection of conduit having various diameters from associated fittings. Such needs have led to the development of the tool of the present invention as well as sets of such tools for disengaging or disconnecting conduit from fittings.


Systems and methods for two-component mixing in a jetting dispenser are provided herein. A jetting dispenser includes a fluid chamber having a first fluid inlet providing a first fluid and a second fluid inlet providing a second fluid, wherein the first fluid and the second fluid mix within the fluid chamber into a mixed fluid. A method for dispensing a mixed fluid from a dispenser having a fluid chamber in fluid communication with first and second fluid inlets is also provided. A first fluid is provided to the fluid chamber via the first fluid inlet and a second fluid is provided to the fluid chamber via the second fluid inlet. At least a portion of a valve element is moved relative to a valve seat to cause dynamic mixing of the first fluid and the second fluid within the fluid chamber to produce the mixed fluid that is dispensed.

Viscous material dispensers are often used to apply minute amounts of viscous materials, i.e. those with a viscosity exceeding fifty centipoise, onto substrates. As used herein, a "jetting dispenser" refers to a device which ejects, or "jets", a droplet or stream of material from the dispenser to land on a substrate. In particular, the material is deposited on the substrate such that the material disengages with the dispenser nozzle—either before or after contacting the substrate—due primarily to the force of the material being expelled from the dispenser nozzle rather than the surface tension of the material with the substrate.
In a non-contact implementation of a jetting dispenser, the droplet of material disengages from the dispenser nozzle before making contact with the substrate. Thus, in a non-contact jetting dispenser, the droplet dispensed is "in-flight" between the dispenser and the substrate, and not in contact with either the dispenser or the substrate, for at least a part of the distance between the dispenser and the substrate. Although in some uses of a non-contact jetting dispenser, the dispenser may be positioned in close proximity to the substrate, which may cause the dispensed droplet to remain momentarily in contact with the substrate and the dispenser. In other types of jetting dispensers, a stream of material is produced from the dispenser such that the stream of material remains in contact with both the dispenser and the substrate during at least part of a dispensing operation.
Specific applications abound for dispensing viscous materials from a jetting dispenser onto a substrate. In semiconductor package assembly, applications exist for underfilling, solder ball reinforcement in ball grid arrays, dam and fill operations, chip encapsulation, underfilling chip scale packages, cavity fill dispensing, die attach dispensing, lid seal dispensing, no flow underfilling, flux jetting, and dispensing thermal compounds, among other uses. For surface-mount technology (SMT) printed circuit board (PCB) production, surface mount adhesives, solder paste, conductive adhesives, and solder mask materials may be dispensed from jetting dispensers, as well as selective flux jetting.
A jetting dispenser may be employed to dispense a viscous material that was pre-mixed from two base materials before being provided to the jetting dispenser. This two-component mixing may provide additional flexibility in designing specific characteristics of material properties of the resultant mixed material, thus affording better overall material performance. Yet, one challenge arising from the use of pre-mixed materials in jetting dispensers is that the pre-mixed material is subject to a change in viscosity during dispensing due to material pot life limitations. The change in viscosity may thus affect the flow characteristics of the pre-mixed material in the jetting dispenser, which, in turn, may cause the jetting dispenser to apply an incorrect volume of material to a substrate.
For at least these reasons, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods for two-component mixing in a jetting dispenser.


A method for identifying common multiphone units to add to a unit inventory for a text-to-speech generator is disclosed. The common multiphone units are units that are larger than a phone, but smaller than a syllable. The method slices each syllable into a plurality of slices. These slices are then sorted and the frequency of each slice is determined. Those slices whose frequencies exceed a threshold are added to the unit inventory. The remaining slices are decomposed according to a predetermined set of rules to determine if they contain slices that should be added to the unit inventory.

The present invention deals with speech properties. More specifically, the present invention deals with unit inventories in text-to-speech systems.
Speech signal generators or synthesizers in a text-to-speech (TTS) system can be classified into three distinct categories: articulatory synthesizers; formant synthesizers; and concatenative synthesizers. Articulatory synthesizers are based on the physics of sound generation in the vocal apparatus. Individual parameters related to the position and movement of vocal chords are provided. The sound generated therefrom is determined according to physics. In view of the complexity of the physics, practical applications of this type of synthesizer are considered to be far off.
Formant synthesizers do not use equations of physics to generate speech, but rather, model acoustic features or the spectra of the speech signal, and use a set of rules to generate speech. In a formant synthesizer, a phoneme is modeled with formants wherein each formant has a distinct frequency "trajectory" and a distinct bandwidth which varies over the duration of the phoneme. An audio signal is synthesized by using the frequency and bandwidth trajectories to control a formant synthesizer. While the formant synthesizer can achieve high intelligibility, its "naturalness" is typically low, since it is very difficult to accurately describe the process of speech generation in a set of rules. In some systems, in order to mimic natural speech, the synthetic pronunciation of each phoneme is determined by a set of rules which analyzes the phonetic context of the phoneme. U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,216 issued to Malsheen et al. describes a text-to-speech synthesis system and method using context dependent vowel allophones.
Concatenation systems and methods for generating text-to-speech operate under an entirely different principle. Concatenative synthesis uses pre-recorded actual speech forming a large database or corpus. The corpus is segmented based on phonological features of a language. Commonly, the phonological features include transitions from one phoneme to at least one other phoneme. For instance, the phonemes can be segmented into diphone units, syllables or even words. Diphone concatenation systems are particularly prominent. A diphone is an acoustic unit which extends from the middle of one phoneme to the middle of the next phoneme. In other words, the diphone includes the transition between each partial phoneme. It is believed that synthesis using concatenation of diphones provides good voice quality since each diphone is concatenated with adjoining diphones where the beginning and the ending phonemes have reached steady state, and since each diphone records the actual transition from phoneme to phoneme.
In a concatenative Text-to-speech (TTS) system, speech output is generated by concatenating small pre-stored speech segments one by one. Most state-of-the-art TTS systems adopt corpus-driven approaches, called unit selection, due to their capability to generate highly natural speech. In these systems, a set of "atom units", that is the smallest constituents in the concatenation procedure that could not be segmented further are defined. Typically there are many instances with phonetic and prosodic variations for the units that are kept in a very large unit inventory, and a unit selection algorithm is used to select the most suitable unit sequence by minimizing a cost function.
Defining a suitable set of atom units is very important for such systems. There is always a balance between two conflicting requirements for the unit inventory. On the one hand, in order to get natural prosody, smaller units are preferred so that a pre-recorded unit inventory could cover as many prosodic variations of each unit as possible. On the other hand, in order to make concatenated utterances smooth, larger units are preferred because they reduce the likelihood of an unsmooth concatenation in the synthesized utterances. Strategies for defining the atom unit differ among languages due to the different phonological characteristics of languages. For languages that have a relatively small syllable set, such as Chinese, which contains less than 2000 syllables, syllables are often used as the atom units. However, using syllables as atom units becomes somewhat impractical for languages that have too many syllables to enumerate effectively. For example, English contains more than 20,000 possible syllables. This makes it difficult to generate a closed list of syllables for English. In such a language, smaller atom units such as the phoneme, diphone or the mixture of the two is often adopted. However, using such small units has many shortcomings.
Using smaller units means more units per utterance and more instances per unit. That is a much larger search space for unit selection and more search time is required during speech generation.
Smaller units also cause more difficulties in precise unit segmentation. This is crucial for speech quality of synthesized speech. For example, in English, the word 'yes' consists of three phones, /j/, /e/ and /s/, where the boundary between /e/ and /s/ can be labeled easily, yet it is difficult to separate /j/ from /e/ due to the flat transition between their formant tracks. Moreover, experimentation shows that if the co-articulation between two phones is strong, it is difficult to smoothly concatenate two segments selected from different locations during the synthesis phase.
Therefore, it has been desired for a method to define a set of atom units having a size between phone and syllable to increase the overall efficiency of the text to speech system in large syllable languages such as English

Defining atom units between phone and syllable for TTS systems


An acetamide derivative of the formula (I): ##STR1## wherein X is --0-- or --NR.sub.4 --, R.sub.1 is H, lower alkyl, lower alkenyl or cyclolalkyl-lower-alkyl, R.sub.2 is lower alkyl, cycloalkyl, substituted or unsubstituted phenyl, etc., R.sub.3 is H, lower alkyl or hydroxy-lower alkyl, R.sub.4 is H, lower alkyl, etc., R.sub.5 is H, lower alkyl, lower alkenyl, hydroxy-lower alkyl, etc., R.sub.6 is H, lower alkyl, CF.sub.3, substituted or unsubstituted phenyl, or R.sub.5 and R.sub.6 may optionally combine to form --(CH.sub.2)n--, R.sub.7 is H, halogen, lower alkyl, lower alkoxy, CF.sub.3, OH, NH.sub.2, etc., R.sub.8 is H, halogen, lower alkyl or lower alkoxy, or a pharmaceutically acceptable acid addition salt thereof. The compounds of the present invention selectively act on the peripheral-type BZ.omega..sub.3 -receptor, and show excellent pharmacological activities, and hence, they are useful in the prophylaxis or treatment of central nervous disorders such as anxiety-related diseases, depression, epilepsy, etc.

In the central nervous system of the mammals, including human, there are three kinds of benzodiazepine (hereinafter, occasionally referred to as BZ) recognition sites, and each is named as central-type (.omega..sub.1, .omega..sub.2) benzodiazepine receptors and a peripheral-type (.omega..sub.3) benzodiazepine receptor, respectively (hereinafter, occasionally referred to as BZ.omega..sub.1 -receptor, BZ.omega..sub.2 -receptor and BZ.omega..sub.3 -receptor, respectively). Among them, the peripheral-type BZ-receptor unevenly distributes in the peripheral tissues or organs such as kidney, liver, heart, etc., but it especially distributes with high density in the cells of the endocrinium organs such as adrenal glands, testicles, etc., or in the cells deeply participating in the inflammation-immune system in whole body such as mast cells, lymphocytes, macrophages, blood platelets, etc., so that the physiological roles of the peripheral-type BZ-receptor have recently been drawing attention.
On the other hand, the peripheral-type BZ-receptor is present a lot in the mitochondrial membrane of glial cells in the brain, and it participates in cholesterol influx into the mitochondrial membrane, and hence, it is thought to act on the biosynthesis pathway of cholesterol into neurosteroids such as allopregnanolone, allotetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone (THDOC), etc. via pregnenolone. Thus, it is considered that stimulation of the peripheral-type BZ-receptor accelerates the synthesis of neurosteroids in the brain which affect the choride ion channel gating process by binding to the neurosteroid-specific recognition site on the .gamma.-aminobutyric acid-A-receptor (hereinafter, occasionally referred to as GABA.sub.A -receptor) [cf. Romeo, E., et al., J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther., 262, 971-978 (1992)].
A compound having a non-BZ nucleus and selectively showing an affinity for the peripheral-type BZ-receptor has been disclosed in Japanese Patent First Publication (Kokai) No. 201756/1983 (EP-A-94271), and since then, various compounds are disclosed in many literatures including patent applications. However, there is no compound which has actually been used as a medicament.
As a compound having a non-BZ nucleus and selectively showing an affinity for the peripheral-type BZ-receptors, in addition to the above, there have been known the compounds disclosed in Japanese Patent First Publication (Kokai) Nos. 5946/1987 and 32058/1990.
Japanese Patent First Publication (Kokai) No. 5946/1987 (EP-A-205375, U.S. Pat. No. 4,788,199) discloses amide compounds of the following formula, which are bound to the peripheral-type BZ-receptor, and are useful as anxiolytics, anticonvulsants and antiangina agents, and for the treatment of immuno-deficiency syndrome. ##STR2## wherein A is a nitrogen atom or .dbd.CH--; B is a nitrogen atom or .dbd.CH--; V and W are the same or different and each a hydrogen atom, a halogen atom, an alkyl group or an alkoxy group both having 1 to 3 carbon atom, etc.; Z is bound in the ortho- or para-position with respect to the B, and is a phenyl group, a thienyl group, a pyridyl group, or a phenyl group substituted by 1 to 2 groups selected from a halogen atom, an alkyl group or an alkoxy group both having 1 to 4 carbon atoms, trifluoromethyl group and a nitro group; a chain of --X--(CH.sub.2).sub.n --(CHR).sub.m --CONR.sub.1 R.sub.2 is bound in the ortho- or para-position with respect to the B; R is a hydrogen atom or an alkyl group having 1 to 3 carbon atoms; R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 are the same or different and each a straight chain or branched chain alkyl group having 1 to 6 carbon atoms, a cycloalkyl group having 3 to 6 carbon atoms, a phenyl group, a phenylalkyl group or a cyclo-alkylalkyl group wherein the alkyl moiety has 1 to 3 carbon atoms and the cycloalkyl moiety has 3 to 6 carbon atoms, or an alkenyl group having 3 to 6 carbon atoms wherein the double bond is not located at the 1,2-position with respect to the nitrogen atom, and R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 may combine together with the nitrogen atom to which they are attached to form pyrrolidine, piperidine, morpholine or thiomorpholine ring; X is --CHR.sub.3 --, --NR.sub.4 --, --SO--, --SO.sub.2 --, an oxygen atom or a sulfur atom; R.sub.3 is a hydrogen atom or an alkyl group having 1 to 3 carbon atoms; R.sub.4 is an alkyl group having 1 to 3 carbon atoms; m is 0 or 1; and is 0, 1 or2,
provided that when X is --SO--, --SO.sub.2 -- or --NR.sub.4 --, the total number of m+n should be at least 1, and that when both of A and B are a nitrogen atom and Z is at the para-position with respect to the B, X should not be --CHR.sub.3 --, and that when A is .dbd.CH--, B is a nitrogen atom, Z is in the ortho-position with respect to the B, X is an oxygen atom and R is a hydrogen atom, the total number of m+n is other than 1, and excluding 2-phenyl-4-quinolyl-N,N-dimethylcarbamate.
Japanese Patent First Publication (Kokai) No. 32058/1990 (EP-A-346208, U.S. Pat. No. 5026711) discloses that 4-amino-3-carboxyquinoline compounds of the following formula show an affinity for the peripheral-type BZ-receptor both in vivo and in vitro, and can be used in the prophylaxis or treatment of human cardiovascular diseases, or as an antiallergic agent, or in the prophylaxis or treatment of infectious diseases, or in the treatment of anxiety. ##STR3## wherein R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 are each a hydrogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alkyl group, or a C.sub.2 -C.sub.6 alkenyl group, a phenyl group or a benzyl group, or R.sub.1 and R.sub.2 may combine together with the nitrogen atom to which they are attached to form a C.sub.4 -C.sub.8 saturated heterocyclic group; R.sub.3 is a hydrogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alkyl group, a phenyl group or a C.sub.7 -C.sub.9 phenylalkyl group; R.sub.4 is a hydrogen atom or a C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl group; R.sub.5 and R.sub.6 are each a hydrogen atom, a halogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.3 alkyl or alkoxy group, a nitro group, or a trifluoromethyl group, or combine together to form a methylenedioxy group; Z is OR.sub.7 (R.sub.7 is a hydrogen atom or a C.sub.1 -C.sub.6 alkyl group), NR.sub.8 R.sub.9 (R.sub.8 and R.sub.9 are each a hydrogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl group, a phenyl group or a benzyl group), a C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl group, a benzyl group, a C.sub.4 -C.sub.6 aryl group which may optionally have a heteroatom; R.sub.10 is a hydrogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.4 alkyl group or a phenyl group (provided that when Z is not a benzyl group or an aryl group, R.sub.3 is not a hydrogen atom, and a phenyl group and a benzyl group may optionally be substituted by a halogen atom, a C.sub.1 -C.sub.3 alkoxy, alkyl or thioalkyl group, a nitro group, a trifluoromethyl group or a hydroxy group, and these alkyl and alkoxy groups are straight chain, branched chain or cyclic ones, respectively); n is 0, 1 or 2; p is 0 or 1; one of A, B, C and D is N, and the other ones are each CH, or all A, B, C and D are each CH.
On the other hand, there are known some acetamide derivatives having a 2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinylamino moiety. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,631,036 discloses some compounds represented by 2-(5-cyano-2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinyl-amino) acetamide as a synthetic intermediate for 5-amino-2,6-di-substituted-7H-pyrrolo[2,3-d]pyrimidines. U.S. Pat. No. 3,631,045 discloses some compounds represented by 2-(5-cyano-6-methylamino-2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinylamino)-acetamide as a synthetic intermediate for 4,5-diamino-7H-pyrrolo[2,3-d]-pyrimidines. However, the pharmacological activities of these compounds have never been disclosed yet.
Besides, Pharmazie, 43, 537-538 (1988) discloses some compounds represented by 2-(5-acetyl-6-methyl-2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinylthio)-N-(4-chloro-phenyl) acetamide and 2-(5-acetyl-6-methyl-2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinylthio)-N-(4-methylphenyl) acetamide, as a synthetic intermediate for thieno[2,3-d]pyrimidine derivatives. Moreover, it is also disclosed in said literature that 2-(5-acetyl-6-methyl-2-phenyl-4-pyrimidinylthio)-N-(4-chlorophenyl)acetami de shows antibacterial activity against Bacillus subtilis.

Acetamide derivative, process for preparing the same, and a pharmaceutical composition containing the same


A baseplate holder for conveniently securing a mother board on a baseplate has a -shaped profile, the top face thereof being formed with a hook or a threaded hole, both vertical sidewalls being each provided on the end with a horizontal projection for insertion into the respective stamped hole on the baseplate. If a threaded hole is formed on the top face of the holder, the edges of a hole formed on the respective vertical sidewall can be formed with at least a tongue extending inwardly to support the screw passing through the threaded hole.

Information industry has become one of the most important industries in the world. To maintain the superiority in this competitive field, increasing the efficiency in producing computers is necessary. In the past, the processes of securing a mother board on the baseplate in assembling computers are as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. 1 shows a bolt. While assembling a mother board onto the baseplate, the bolt is first screwed into a threaded hole preset on the baseplate, and then a screw is inserted through a threaded hole on the mother board and screwed into the bolt secured on the baseplate, so as to fix the mother board on the baseplate. In this manner, two screwing operations are required and threaded holes must be prepared in advance on the baseplate, which manner takes much time. FIG. 2 shows a holder having a top face and four vertical sidewalls. The top face is formed thereon with a threaded hole or provided with a hook. On both sides of the middle of each vertical sidewall are provided with projections and on the end of each vertical sidewall is formed with a horizontal flange with a gap formed between the horizontal flange and one end of the projection, the gap being the same thickness as that of the baseplate. While assembling a mother board, the holder is first inserted from the back of the baseplate (opposite to the side of the mother board) into a rectangular hole preformed on the baseplate and then secured on the baseplate through the gaps between the horizontal flanges on the ends of the vertical sidewalls and the ends of the projections. Further, a screw is inserted through the threaded hole on the mother board and screwed into the threaded hole on the top face of the holder secured on the baseplate, or the hook on the top face of the holder can hook an edge of the mother board so as to secure the mother board on the baseplate. With such a holder, although the operations of screwing can be eliminated and thus the time for assembling is decreased, such a holder is not easy to manufacture and requires more material, which results in increased production cost. In addition, during assembling, the baseplate has to be turned over so as to allow the holder to be inserted into the baseplate from the back thereof and fixed thereto and the baseplate has to be turned over further for attaching the mother board thereon, which causes the inconvenience in assembling and extends the time of assembly. Further, in case the hook on the top face of the holder was found misguided, the baseplate has to be turned over again to release and reinstall the holder, which seriously delays the process of assembly.


A method and apparatus are disclosed for carbon dioxide removal and sequestration from ambient air or point source emissions by integration of four self-sufficient systems including a PEO renewable energy generation system, a desalination system, a pH-swing hydration or a direct hydration system, and a bicarbonate fixed, and alkalinity enhanced dense brine sequestration system, in which, the synergy between the PEO energy generation system and other three systems including provision of all needed renewable energy for operation of other three systems, the synergy between the desalination and other systems including provision of freshwater needed for the PEO energy generation system and the pH-swing system, as well as provision of a dense brine fluid from the desalination system to the pH-swing or the direct hydration system, and in the case of available freshwater supply where the desalination system can be avoided.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to only reduce or eliminate existing carbon dioxide emissions caused by human contributions is unable to keep global temperature rise under 1.5° C. or 2° C. above pre-industrial levels (See IPCC AR5 Synthesis Report, Climate Change 2014; and IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5° C., Chapter 4, 2018). Negative emission technologies (NETs) that remove and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are required for achieving the 1.5° C. climate goal (National Academy of Science (NAS), Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration, 2019). Data provided by the IPCC show that approximately 10 gigatons of net CO2 per year (10 Gt CO2/yr) need to be removed and safely sequestered from the atmosphere by the year 2050 to keep global temperature rise under 1.5° C. or 2° C. Therefore, it is very important that for accomplishing the 1.5° C. climate goal any cost-effective negative emission technologies developed shall be scalable in removing atmospheric CO2, ideally in the gigaton CO2 per year range. To achieve the gigaton goal, stable, adequate, and affordable supply of sizable quantity of resources, such as energy, land, water, and other related material resources, are required. Supply of resources shall also not be location limited and shall not contribute greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to affect the applications of the selected negative emission technologies. To meet the above concerns, for the supply of energy resource, it shall be scalable and renewable in nature without itself contributing any CO2 and other air polluting emissions. Therefore, energy resources shall be selected from renewable sources such as hydraulic, solar, wind and geothermal energies, and shall be scalable to meet demands (such as meeting the high million tons CO2 per year or gigaton CO2 per year removal requirements). Due to the large-scale concerns, the selected location, land area, energy and material quantity constraints, and high-cost demands may, in many cases, become limitations for implementing negative emission technologies. Large-scale, stable, reliable, and around the clock supply of renewable energy is still difficult to find currently. Material resources for implementing negative emission technologies such as water, and other related chemicals needed shall be also in large scale supply, which in many cases are unpracticable, not economical, not easily executable and may involve with numerous social and negative environmental impacts. It is also required that the storage capacity for sequestration of CO2 shall be large enough, economic, easily implementable, and stable and safe (no chance for leakage) for long time periods, ideally for geologic time periods. Development of negative emission technolog to avoid the above constraints are the main objectives of the subject invention.
The existing negative emission technologies reported in the open literature for carbon dioxide removal are taking numerous forms, including natural solutions, and innovated technological systems that accelerate current carbon dioxide removal rates. The negative emission technologies for carbon dioxide removal systems usually include the following three major integrated processes or steps: (1) atmospheric air collection system, (2) carbon dioxide capture and conversion or fixation system, and (3) carbon dioxide sequestration and/or utilization system. The major integrated systems which have developed and some of them are in the pilot or commercial scales are discussed below. One technology called "biochar" which is using plants to extract CO2 from ambient air and then converting plant material into a charcoal-like substance and burying it in soil to store carbon away from the atmosphere for decades to centuries. Another technology already in the demonstration phase is known as "bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)" where atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by plants as they grow, and then the waste plant material (biomass) is burned or pyrolyzed to produce bioenergy. The CO2 released in the production of bioenergy is captured before it reaches the atmosphere and stored in geological formations deep underground on very long-time scales. "Afforestation and reforestation" are also considered forms of carbon dioxide removal technology because they enhance natural CO2 sinks. In the carbon dioxide removal system known as "direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS)", CO2 is extracted directly from the air and stored in geological formations deep underground. There are two main DACCS systems widely reported in use today applying either liquid solvent or solid sorbent to capture CO2. A system called "coastal blue carbon" which through practices of land use and management that increase the carbon stored in living plants or near shore sediments in mangroves, tidal marshlands, seagrass beds, and other tidal or salt-water wetlands. A system called "accelerated weathering" in which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere by using specific natural or artificial minerals which absorb CO2 and fix it into other substances through chemical reactions occurring in the presence of water.
However, so far none of the above discussed negative emission technologies can fully overcome all the above discussed constraints. The most promising and already commercialized negative emission technologies discussed above are the BECCS technology and DACCS technology. One of major constraints for the BECCS technology may include land availability to raise feedstocks, in which according to the above NAS report, 30 million to 43 million hectares is required to raise the BECCS technology feedstocks per gigaton CO2 per year of negative emissions. Thus, 10 gigatons CO2 per year of negative emissions from the BECCS technology requires hundreds of millions of hectares of land, which is almost 40% of global cropland. Based on the above NAS (2019) reference, another major constraint of the BECCS technology is the availability and economic viability of other carbon sequestration resources discussed above. Besides, the BECCS technology will also be constrained by other biomass production activities such as, planting, irrigation, fertilization, harvesting, and transportation to the biomass conversion sites which could consume large quantity of other resources and generate large amount of greenhouse gases. Large scale use of the BECCS technology also will cause potential impacts regarding land-use change, land conservation (e.g., nutrient availability), and biodiversity. The BECCS technology will compete with afforestation/reforestation, as well as with food production and delivery of other ecosystem services. Therefore, large scale use of the BECCS technology for carbon dioxide removal would be limited.
Some of the DACCS systems used for carbon dioxide removal today are also already in the commercial stage. Large fans are usually used to push ambient air through a filter (providing with either a liquid solvent or a solid sorbent) to capture CO2. These air collection and carbon capture facilities can be built near geologic storage sites to avoid occupation of arable land and minimize transportation requirement. However, large land area is still needed for the generation and use of renewable energy. Based on the World Resources Institute report for a commercial liquid solvent system using potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution (WRI 2021, Direct Air Capture: Resource Considerations and Costs for Carbon Removal), to capture 1 Mt CO2 per year, the land requirement is 0.4 Km2 for the liquid solvent direct air capture (DAC) system and 7.7 Km2 for the solar photovoltaic (PV) system (the electricity generation by the solar photovoltaic system is only for the solvent absorption operation of the direct air capture, electricity required for the regeneration of solvent is too high so natural gas is still needed); and for a commercial solid sorbent system is 1.2 to 1.7 Km2 for the direct air capture system and 23 Km2 for the solar photovoltaic system. Based on the above data, capturing 1 gigaton CO2 per year using the photovoltaic renewable energy resource, the liquid solvent direct air capture system may require an area roughly the size of Vermont. Based on the above NAS (2019) report, deployment of the DACCS technology at 1 Gt/yr CO2 removal and assuming $100/t CO2 capture cost, the total investment would be about $100 billion per year or 0.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). At a global scale of 10 Gt CO2/yr removal and $100/t CO2, the total investment increases to about $1000 billion or 1.2 percent of global GDP. The range of costs for direct air capture vary between $250-$600 today depending on the technology choice. Therefore, the energy resource, land resource and cost concerns may become major constraints to scale up the DACCS systems to reach the 1.5° C. global warming goal. As for the other resource requirements such as water requirement, for a liquid solvent direct air capture system, capturing lton of CO2 can require between 1 and 7 tons of water, vary widely depending on the relative humidity and temperature variations of the plant's location. The water requirements for solid sorbent direct air capture systems in use today also vary widely, depending on the sorbent regeneration method, ranging from very minimal water losses to about 1.6 tons of water per ton of CO2 captured, based on the WRI report (2021).
Many liquid solvent and solid sorbent chemicals have been developed for the DACCS systems. Conventional liquid solvent systems are using amine-based, alkali-based or alkali-earth based liquids to capture CO2 from the air. An earlier liquid solvent direct air capture pilot-scale plant developer, Carbon Engineering founded in 2009, is using KOH solution as CO2 capture liquid solvent to form carbonate solution. The carbonate solution is salt out from solution into precipitates and then heated to a temperature about 900° C. by a calciner to regenerate chemical and release pure carbon dioxide gas (CO2(g)) for sequestration. U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,699,909B2, 8,246,731B2, and 8,702,847B2, all to Lackner et al., disclose using NaOH solution to absorb CO2 and convert to Na2CO3 liquid. Then the liquid is converted to CaCO3 solid species by reaction with a Ca(OH)2 solution. Then, the CaCO3 species is regenerate to Ca(OH)2 again by heat and release CO2(g) for sequestration. U.S. Pat. No. 7,887,694 B2 to Constantz et al. discloses using alkaline-earth-metal-containing waters as the liquid solvents for CO2 capture. The metallic carbonate precipitates are formed and captured and sequestered directly to disposal locations. U.S. Pat. No. 9,266,057B1 to Jones, which is based on Henry's gas law, discloses using an aeration process to dissolve CO2 and a deaeration process to concentrate CO2 until the gas is reaching desirable purity for sequestration.
Many of the solid sorbent chemicals for CO2 removal are using adsorption-desorption mechanisms, accompanying with moisture-swing, temperature-swing, or pressure-swing methods to release captured CO2. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,645 to Kumar discloses using a CO2 removing process with alumina and zeolite adsorbents at 70-120° F., 50-150 psi, and release CO2(g) by reduction to room temperature and atmospheric pressure. U.S. Pat. No. 5,980,611 to Kumar et al. discloses further modified the temperature-swing from 0-50° C. to room temperature, and pressure-swing from 0.9-50 bars to atmospheric pressure. U.S. Pat. No. 8,133,305B2 to Lackner et al. discloses using sorbents including zeolite, alumina materials, activated magnesia, activated iron oxide, with embedded positive ions comprising metal oxides or metal hydroxides, and individually mobile negative ions. CO2(g) is captured by the anions on surface of the sorbent, then CO2(g) is released, and the sorbent is regenerated by operations such as moisture-, temperature-, and voltage-swings. U.S. Pat. No. 8,715,393B2 to Wright et al. discloses including a CO2(g) removal method by contacting the air stream with a dry resin, then wetting the resin to release CO2(g) from water vapor. U.S. Pat. No. 9,283,510B2 to Lackner discloses preparation of CO2 capturing material by soaking an ion-exchange material in water to replace the chloride ions with hydroxide or carbonate ions, then dry the sorbent for the CO2 collection. U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,555,365B2, 10,239,017B2, and 10,413,866B2 to Eisenberger et al. diclose an amine sorbent medium to absorb CO2 from air under ambient condition, and then to release CO2(g) and regenerate the sorbent medium by a thermal-swing operation at a temperature not greater than 130° C.
In addition to the above discussed chemical or physicochemical processes, a pH-swing concept using electrochemical processes also has been used for CO2(g) capture, in which the CO2 is usually captured in an alkaline working fluid in the cathodic cell and CO2 is then recovered and released by shifting to the acidic fluid in the anodic cell by a pH-swing operation. The current pH-swing electrochemical processes for CO2 removal include using methods of electrolysis, bipolar membrane electrodialysis (BPMED), capacitive deionization or reversible redox reactions as reported in the open literature (Rahimi et al., Cell Reports Physical Science 1, 2020; Rheinhardt, et al., ACS Energy Lett., 2, 2017; Sharifian et al., Energy Environ. Sci., 14, 2021). The recovered CO2 through the pH-swing electrochemical processes is usually released in pure CO2(g) form for the subsequent sequestration. In some rare cases the captured CO2 are released as insoluble carbonate salts by adding soluble salts or polyvalent cation materials such as Ca+2, Mg+2, Sr+2 salts, or fly ash or olivine into the cathodic cell, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 10,718,055B2 to Ren et al. Comparing to the conventional chemical absorption/adsorption methods discussed above, advantages of the pH-swing electrochemical processes for CO2 capture and recovery are more flexible, sustainable, relatively rapid, and do not require use of any special expendable chemicals. However, the main challenge for the currently available electrochemical methods is the high energy consumption.
A CO2 capture method without the need for chemicals is based on hydration of CO2 gas stream in the seawater to dissolve CO2(g) into carbonic acid (H2CO3(aq)) and bicarbonate ion (HCO3−). As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 11,045,758B2 to Peng, the capture of CO2 from air or flue gas is accomplished by scrubbing the gas stream with surficial seawater under room temperature and atmospheric pressure to dissolve the CO2 gas into seawater, and then discharge the captured carbon species to the water column of ocean again for carbon sequestration. Major advantages of seawater hydration for CO2 capture are without the need for chemical(s), relatively low operation cost, more secure storage option than storage as a CO2 free-phase plume, and virtually no limit for the amount of CO2 gas stream for sequestration. However, the following disadvantages may be involved: (1) majority (>99%) of dissolved CO2(g) after hydration exists as CO2(aq) rather than H2CO3(aq) under the room temperature and atmospheric pressure conditions, (2) although dissolution of CO2(g) to CO2(aq) is rapid, but conversion of CO2(aq) to H2CO3(aq) is relatively slow, which affect the formation of HCO3− ion for sequestration, (3) discharge of hydrated CO2 seawater into the seawater column again could lower the pH of seawater which may affect marine lives, and (4) dissolved CO2(aq) and H2CO3(aq) sequestered in the seawater column may be released back to the atmosphere due to pH change and/or other environmental condition changes such as temperature and pressure changes.
Desalination technology has been used to assist the CO2 capture. U.S. Pat. No. 8,551,221B2 to Wolfe discloses utilizing ammonia in saltwater, such as seawater, wastewater, saline groundwater, or cooling tower blowdown, to absorb CO2 from a gas stream to form ammonium carbonate in the captured fluid. The captured fluid is first treated to remove the formed solid crystals of ammonium carbonate species, and then applying the fluid as a draw solution in the forward osmosis (FO) operation for desalination to dilute the saltwater. The diluted saltwater from the FO operation, containing ammonium carbonate, is then heated to vaporize ammonia for reuse. A small hydro turbine generator is used to recover energy based on the conventional pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) process. However, disadvantages of this invention for carbon dioxide removal may include: (1) large amount of heat energy is needed, typically 400-500 btu/pound of CO2 removal, for the recovery of ammonia, (2) losing of ammonia due to formation of ammonium carbonate crystals, (3) ammonia is toxic, corrosive, and explosive (13-28% by volume), and (4) using PRO process for the energy generation, in this case with a low dilution factor, may not be worthwhile due to high pressure is needed for the draw solution input which would consume most of the energy generated again (refer to explanation in U.S. Pat. No. 11,092,141B1 for details).
A system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,474,998B2 to Koo et al. combines CO2 capture and desalination. An absorption solution is used to capture CO2, and then use this solution as a draw solution for the forward osmosis operation which is similar to that described in the above U.S. Pat. No. 8,551,221B2. Ammonia is also used as the absorption chemical in this invention, therefore, disadvantages as discussed above will happen here. The difference between this invention to the previous Wolfe invention is without the use of a PRO system to recover energy.
U.S. Pat. No. 10,118,843B2 to El-Naas also discloses a combined CO2 capture and desalination system. In this invention, the CO2 absorption solutions comprise sodium chloride, and calcium oxide and/or calcium hydroxide, at a pH level equal or higher than 10. The concentration of the input CO2 stream is required to be equal or greater than 0.1%. A reverse osmosis (RO) type of desalination process is used to filter out the solid sodium bicarbonate species produced in the CO2 capture process. Major difference comparing to the above carbon removal and desalination combined processes is the avoidance of intensive energy requirement for the recovery of ammonia in this method. However, this method is still suffered by disadvantages such as: (1) using CaO and/or Ca(OH)2 chemicals which would require mineral resources and energy to manufacture, which may not be feasible when a large scale carbon dioxide removal system is implemented, (2) concentration of input CO2 stream shall be greater than 0.1%, which may not be feasible for the removal of CO2 from the air (only 0.04% by volume), and (3) using reverse osmosis (RO) to filter out solid sodium bicarbonate species requires intensive energy also.
After the CO2 capture and release step discussed above, the next step of the carbon dioxide removal is carbon sequestration. CO2 permanent sequestration methods applied so far involve storage of CO2 in the oceanic, or terrestrial environments, such as (1) bio-sequestration (through photosynthesis by plants either on land or in ocean and converting to biochar or storing dead plants in soil, wet lands or sediments for long-term storage), (2) underground geological sequestration (such as injection of CO2(g) to saline aquifers, oil fields, un-mineable coal seams, and underground porous basalt rock formations), (3) ocean storage (either converting CO2(g) to bicarbonate and storing in a relative shallow water column, or injecting into deeper ocean water, forming liquid CO2 (CO2(l)) below 1000 m as a rising droplet plume, or injecting CO2(l) below 4000 m and sinking on a sea floor), and (4) mineral carbonation (reaction of CO2(aq) with alkaline earth metal oxides or hydroxides to produce stable carbonate in geological reservoirs). The above four types of sequestration methods are widely discussed in the open literature, such as National Academy of Science (NAS), Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration, 2019; and Aminu, et al, 2017, Applied Energy 208, pp. 1389-1419.
A recent study discovered that deserts could serve as a sink for significant levels of carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere and storing it in the ground (Environment: Deserts Found To Be Major Carbon Dioxide Sink, Study Finds, Apr. 10, 2014). In the report Professor Evans indicated that arid regions on earth could increase the CO2 intake enough to account for somewhere between 15 and 28 percent of all carbon dioxide currently being absorbed by all of the Earth's land surfaces. Desert lands occupy a large area on earth and would be a good candidate for large amount of carbon sequestration. However, the permanent storage of CO2 in the desert soils and rocks requires a great amount of water to fix the carbon through weathering process.
The ocean sequestration methods discussed above and suggested in the open literature mainly involve injection of CO2(g) into the seawater at various depths below 1000 m, or injection of a dense CO2 seawater mixture at a depth at 500 to 1000 m. At typical temperatures and pressures that exist in the ocean, based on the CO2 characteristics, injection of pure CO2(g) would become a gas form above about 500 m and a liquid form below that depth. Injection of the captured pure CO2(g) would form liquid CO2 (CO2(l)) below 1000 m as a rising droplet plume. Density of CO2(l) is smaller than that of seawater at depth above about 3000 m so there is a possibility for carbon to leak back to atmosphere again. A solid CO2 hydrate can be formed below about 500 m depth depending on the relative compositions of CO2 and H2O as well as the environmental conditions. CO2 hydrate can be formed in the mixture of CO2(g) and water at pressure as low as 10 atmospheres with temperatures of -1.5° C. Injecting CO2(l) below 4000 m and sinking on a sea floor, where less ocean water movement occurred, may be a good solution, but require a relatively large energy to implement. Conversion of CO2(g) to bicarbonate species and inject into the seawater column is considered a much better carbon dioxide removal sequestration method due to the stability of bicarbonate in seawater. Based on physical chemistry, a large quantity of CO2 (far exceeding the estimated available fossil energy resources of 5,000-10,000 GtC) may be dissolved in ocean waters as bicarbonate. Injection of bicarbonate, CO2(l), or hydrate into the deep ocean water may be a good solution but less studied. Hydration of the captured CO2 species, fixation into bicarbonate species, and then injection into the interstitial water in deep marine sediments is believe even a better sequestration method as proposed by the present invention. According to reported calculation data, deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for CO2 sequestration (MIT News, 2006: Deep-Sea Sediments Could Safely Store Man-Made Carbon Dioxide; and House et al. 2006: Permanent Carbon Dioxide Storage in Deep Sea Sediments).

Self-sufficient systems for carbon dioxide removal and sequestration


A signal level detector to detect the level of 1-bit digital signal is provided. It includes a level detector (12) supplied with a sequence of 1-bit digital signals decoded by an audio decoder (5) and which counts the number of 0 (zeros) or 1 (ones) included in the row of a predetermined number n of 1-bit digital signals to detect the level of the 1-bit digital signal, and an indication unit (13) to indicate the signal level detected by the level detector (12).

In the conventional compact disc (CD), the sampling frequency fs is about 44.1 kHz and the PCM method is used to record one sample as 16-bit digital audio data for each channel. There has been proposed a so-called super audio compact disc (SACD) in which a 1-bit audio stream data is recorded with a very high sampling frequency generated by the DSD (direct stream digital) method (for example, a frequency 64 times higher than the sampling frequency fs in the ordinary CD).
By oversampling delta-sigma modulation of an input signal with 64 fs, there is generated a 1-bit audio digital signal. Hereupon, the 1-bit audio digital signal is decimated into a multi-bit PCM code in the CD using the PCM method. In the SACD using the DSD method, however, the 1-bit audio digital signal is recorded directly to the SACD.
The frequency band of the 1-bit audio signal recorded to the SACD is about 100 kHz. This is rather wider than the frequency band of the signal in the PCM method adopted in the CD.
In playback of the SACD having recorded therein the same audio signal in such a wide frequency band as in the CD, sound components of relatively low frequencies can be reproduced to be audible to the human ears. For example, even when the SACD is played back in a player having no ample acoustic-pressure frequency response, such as a home audio player, the sound recorded in the SACD can be reproduced to be audible to the human ears. However, the human ears can hardly hear sound components of high frequencies, such as 20 kHz or higher, reproduced from the SACD. When an audio signal in a wide band including high frequencies is reproduced from the SACD, sound components thereof in the low frequency band are audible to the human ears but sound components in the high frequency band are not audible to the human ears.
When reproducing an audio signal from a sound source including up to sound components of high frequencies such as about 100 kHz and which has an acoustic level of sound components in a high frequency band not audible to the human ears is higher than that of sound components in a low frequency band, raising the reproduction level of an audio player used for the audio signal reproduction, with the ability of the human ears taken in consideration, for the sound components in the low frequency band to be audible to the human ears at a sufficiently high acoustic pressure level, will result in an elevated acoustic pressure level of the sound components in the high frequency band for the high reproduction level. Since the human ears cannot hear any sound components in the high frequency; band, the reproduction level may possibly be raised above the capability of the audio player with the result that the power amplifier and speaker of the audio player is likely to be greatly loaded and damaged as the case may be.
Therefore, a function to monitor the sound level of sound components difficult to capture by the human ears should be provided in a player designed to reproduce audio signals in a wide band including from a low frequency to a high frequency such as 100 kHz, such as audio signals recorded to the SACD, or in an recorder to record such audio signals and an apparatus to produce a medium such as a compact disc or the like.
On the other hand, different from the multi-bit digital signal obtained by the conventional PCM method, the 1-bit digital signal obtained by the delta-sigma modulation includes also frequency components beyond the audio band of frequencies audible to the human ears. So, the level of the 1-bit digital signal cannot be known if left as it is. Conventionally, to know the level of a signal, only a necessary frequency component of the signal are extracted using a digital filter and the level of the signal is indicated based on the data thus extracted.
When the digital filter is used, however, different outputs may possibly result from the same input signal depending upon how the digital filter has been designed, namely, depending upon the type, factor and computing word length thereof. For example, since it is difficult to determine the level of the signal uniquely, indication of the same signal supplied to a player will possibly vary from one apparatus to another. Since the digital filter uses a multiplier and adder, its circuit is likely to be complicated and large in scale, which will cause a large manufacturing cost and increased power consumption of the circuit.
Also, if the digital filter is strictly designed for the completely same output from an input, it will be less flexible in performance and manufacturing cost so that the product design will be difficult in practice.

Signal level detection apparatus and detection method, and signal level indication apparatus


Disclosed is a medium for cultivating tumor cells, comprising the following constituents, as comprised for example in the medium RPMI 1640: (a) fetal calf serum (FCS), (b) penicillin-streptomycin, (c) L-glutamine, (d) transferrin, (e) insulin, (f) human epidermal growth factor (EGF) and (g) α-TGF. A method for characterizing tumor cells or potential tumor cells, respectively, is also described. Said method includes the culturing of cells in the inventive medium and the two tumor cell lines LNHOS1 and PTHOS1 established by means of the inventive culturing method.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medium for cultivating tumor cells, comprising the following constituents: (a) fetal calf serum (FCS), (b) penicillin-streptomycin, (c) L-glutamine, (d) transferrin, (e) insulin, (f) human epidermal growth factor (EGF) and (g) α-transforming growth factor (α-TGF). Furthermore, the present invention relates to a method for characterizing tumor cells or potential tumor cells, respectively, comprising the culturing of cells in the inventive medium, and the two tumor cell lines LNHOS1 and PTHOS1 established by means of the inventive culturing method.
2. Description of Related Art
Due to the use of immunohistochemical and molecularbiological examination techniques it has become possible to identify epithelial tumor cells in lymph nodes (Byrne et al., J. Surg. Oncol. 13 (1987), 409–411; Calaluce et al., J.Surg.Oncol. 67 (1998), 194–202; Latza et al., J.Clin.Pathol. 43 (1990), 213–219; Liefers et al., NEJM 339 (1998), 223–228; Pantel et al., Prog.Histochem.Cytochem. 30 (1996), 1–60; Passlick et al., J. Clin. Oncol. 12 (1994), 1827–1832; Raymond et al., Pathology 21 (1989), 11–50; and Sidransky, Science 278 (1997), 1054–1059). However, despite a growing number of publications which were able to prove a prognostic relevance of nodal early disseminated tumor cells in patients with carcinomas of the lungs, breasts, prostrate and the gastrointestinal tract (Izbicki et al., NEJM 337 (1997), 1188–1194; Hosch et al., Pancreas 15 (1997), 154–159; Passlick et al., J.Clin.Oncol. 12 (1994), 1827–1832; Greenson et al., Cancer 73 (1994), 563–569; and Liefers et al., NEJM 339 (1998), 223–228), the biological relevance of immunohistochemically detectable individual tumor cells remains unclear. This is due to the fact that so far it is almost impossible to further characterize these cells due to their extremely low frequency (1 tumor cell against the background of 104–105 normal lymph node cells). The uncertainty accompanying previous examination methods whether individual tumor cells are tumorigenic micrometastases or merely scaled-off and avital cells of the primary tumor presently prevents the introduction of this parameter into the international "tumor staging" nomenclature, i.e., it also does not permit making any prognoses or taking therapeutic measures which may be necessary.
Thus it is the underlying object of the present invention to solve the technical problem of overcoming these drawbacks of the methods used in the prior art, i.e., to provide means which allow identification whether the potential tumor cells in a tissue sample represent viable and malign tumor cells.


A branch prediction unit includes a local branch prediction and a global branch prediction. A global branch prediction utilizes a global history shift register to record the behavior of conditional branches. In some cases, a conditional branch may behave in a static manner, either always being taken or not taken, while resident in an instruction cache. Such static behaving conditional branches do not need a global history for prediction and contend with other conditional branches for global branch history training. By utilizing a dynamic branch classification scheme, branches requiring global history prediction can be identified and static behaving conditional branches may be prevented from polluting the global history. All conditional branches are initially classified as local and do not participate in global history training. Only after two mispredictions are branches recognized as exhibiting dynamic behavior and classified as global. These branches classified as global may then participate in global history training and utilize a global history based branch prediction.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of superscalar microprocessors and, more particularly, to the classification of conditional branches in branch prediction.
2. Description of the Related Art
Superscalar microprocessors achieve high performance by executing multiple instructions per clock cycle and by choosing the shortest possible clock cycle consistent with the design. As used herein, the termxe2x80x9cclock cyclexe2x80x9d refers to an interval of time accorded to various stages of an instruction processing pipeline within the microprocessor. Storage devices (e.g. registers and arrays) capture their values according to the clock cycle. For example, a storage device may capture a value according to a rising or falling edge of a clock signal defining the clock cycle. The storage device then stores the value until the subsequent rising or falling edge of the clock signal, respectively. The term xe2x80x9cinstruction processing pipelinexe2x80x9d is used herein to refer to the logic circuits employed to process instructions in a pipelined fashion. Although the pipeline may be divided into any number of stages at which portions of instruction processing are performed, instruction processing generally comprises fetching the instruction, decoding the instruction, executing the instruction, and storing the execution results in the destination identified by the instruction.
An important feature of a superscalar microprocessor (and a superpipelined microprocessor as well) is its branch prediction mechanism. The branch prediction mechanism indicates a predicted direction (taken or not taken) for a branch instruction, allowing subsequent instruction fetching to continue within the predicted instruction stream indicated by the branch prediction. A branch instruction is an instruction which causes subsequent instructions to be fetched from one of at least two addresses: a sequential address identifying an instruction stream beginning with instructions which directly follow the branch instruction; and a target address identifying an instruction stream beginning at an arbitrary location in memory. Unconditional branch instructions always branch to the target address, while conditional branch instructions may select either the sequential or the target address based on the outcome of a prior instruction. Instructions from the predicted instruction stream may be speculatively executed prior to execution of the branch instruction, and in any case are placed into the instruction processing pipeline prior to execution of the branch instruction. If the predicted instruction stream is correct, then the number of instructions executed per clock cycle is advantageously increased. However, if the predicted instruction stream is incorrect (i.e. one or more branch instructions are predicted incorrectly), then the instructions from the incorrectly predicted instruction stream are discarded from the instruction processing pipeline and the number of instructions executed per clock cycle is decreased.
In order to be effective, the branch prediction mechanism must be highly accurate such that the predicted instruction stream is correct as often as possible. Typically, increasing the accuracy of the branch prediction mechanism is achieved by increasing the complexity of the branch prediction mechanism. Among the methods used to predict branches are local branch prediction and global branch prediction. Local branch prediction involves making a prediction based on the behavior of a particular branch the past few times it was executed. Local branch prediction is effective for branches exhibiting repetitive patterns. On the other hand, global branch prediction involves making a branch prediction based on the history of the last few branches to have been executed. Global branch prediction is useful when the behavior of a branch is related to the behavior of the prior executed branches.
One problem with global branch prediction schemes is they do not account for branches that do not require a global history for prediction. Typically, all conditional branches participate in global history counter training. While some branches may be conditional, they may in fact exhibit static behavior by always being either taken or not taken. Such branches do not need a global history for prediction and contend with other conditional branches for history counter training. Consequently, the global prediction is in effect polluted by the training of branches which behave in a static manner.
The problems outlined above are in large part solved by a microprocessor and method as described herein. When a conditional branch is initially detected, it is classified as local and predicted not taken. If the branch is then actually taken, its prediction is changed to taken. If the branch is then actually not taken, its classification is changed to global, uses global branch prediction and participates in global history counter training. Advantageously, branches which exhibit static behavior may not participate in global history counter training. Instead, branches which are not taken may remain classified as local and not taken. Branches which are taken may remain classified as local and taken.
Broadly speaking, a branch prediction mechanism is contemplated comprising a local branch prediction storage, a global branch prediction storage, a branch target storage and a selection device. The local branch prediction storage receives a fetch address corresponding to a contiguous group of instructions and conveys a local branch prediction. The global branch prediction storage receives a fetch address and a global history which form an index for selecting a global prediction from the global prediction storage. The branch target storage also receives a fetch address is configured to store branch target addresses and classification indicators for classifying branches. This classification indicator is initially set to indicate the branch is local, but may be updated. Finally, a selection device is included for selecting either the local branch prediction or the global branch prediction in response to the classification conveyed by the classification indicator.
Also contemplated is a method comprising detecting that an instruction is a conditional branch. Upon such detection, a local branch prediction corresponding to the conditional branch is initialized to indicate the branch is predicted not taken. If the branch is then mispredicted, the local branch prediction is updated to indicate the branch is now predicted taken. In addition, the branch is classified as local. Finally, if the branch is again mispredicted, the branch classification is updated to indicate the branch is classified as global.

Dynamic classification of conditional branches in global history branch prediction


Methods and systems are provided for detecting an attention of an occupant of a vehicle. In one embodiment, a method includes calculating, by a processor, a first gaze vector in a three-dimensional space based on a first vehicle location, a first vehicle orientation, and a first gaze direction; calculating, by the processor, a second gaze vector in the three-dimensional space based on a second vehicle location, a second vehicle orientation, and a second gaze direction; and determining the attention of the occupant based on the first gaze vector and the second gaze vector.

Gaze detection systems generally include one or more cameras that are pointed at the eyes of an individual and that track the eye position and gaze direction of the individual. Vehicle systems use gaze detection systems to detect the gaze direction of a driver. The gaze direction of the driver is then used to detect the driver's attentiveness to the road ahead of them, or the driver's general attention to a feature inside the vehicle.
For example, some vehicle systems use the gaze direction of a driver to determine if the driver is inattentive to road and to generate warning signals to the driver. In another example, some vehicle systems determine that the driver is looking in the direction of a particular control knob or switch of the vehicle and can control that particular element (e.g., turn it on, etc.) based on the determination. In each of the examples, the vehicle systems make a general determination of where the driver is looking and do not make a determination of what the driver is looking at (i.e. what is grasping the attention of the driver).
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide methods and systems for detecting the attention of a driver to a point or object in a three-dimensional space. In addition, it is desirable to provide methods and systems for detecting the attention of a driver to a particular point or object outside of the vehicle. In addition, it is desirable to provide methods and system for making use of the information determined from the detected attention of the driver to the particular point or object. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.

Methods and systems for detecting driver attention to objects


A wind turbine fault detection circuit is designed to determine presence of a fault. In a described embodiment, the wind turbine fault detection circuit utilizes a magnetometer in the form of a hall-effect sensor coupled between a power converter and a ground element to measure a ground current from the power converter to obtain a real ground current. The wind turbine fault detection circuit utilizes a comparator to determine presence of a fault based on the real ground current.

The invention relates to a wind turbine fault detection circuit and method.
It is known to use current sensors for power converter systems to determine presence of ground faults which may cause loss of power and create safety hazards. A common approach of detecting ground faults of a three-phase power converter is to sum current outputs of the power converter. A desired result would be when the output currents are balanced, i.e. the output currents are 120° out of phase with each other and of equal magnitude, and the output currents cancel each other to result in a summed current value of zero. If, on the other hand, there is a current leak in the power converter, a non-zero reading is recorded at the output of the power converter and this is an indication of a possible ground fault.
However, such a method of detecting ground faults may not be accurate or reliable due to noise created by converter switching that is coupled through a circuit breaker (CB). This noise is usually coupled through stray parameters (stray inductance or capacitance) within or outside the CB.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a wind turbine fault detection circuit and method which addresses at least one of the disadvantages of the prior art and/or to provide the public with a useful choice.

Wind turbine fault detection circuit and method


A method of manufacturing a nickelous positive-electrode active material for an alkaline battery has a formation process in which nickel hydroxide and cobalt hydroxide are formed by adding an alkali metal hydroxide to a reaction system containing nickel ions and cobalt (II) ions. The method comprises at least one step of removing any oxidant which oxidizes the cobalt (II) ions into cobalt (III) ions, during or before the formation process. An expedient for the removal of the oxidant is, for example, to reduce and remove the oxidant by adding a reductant, such as L-ascorbic acid, to the reaction system. The reductant should preferably have an oxidation potential which is lower than the reduction potential of oxygen. Besides, the method should preferably comprise the step of removing the cobalt (III) ions, during or before the formation process.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a nickelous positive-electrode active material for alkaline batteries which are used for OA (office automation) equipment, cordless equipment, the power sources of electric vehicles, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
An alkaline secondary battery is capable of boost charging and high-current discharging. In addition, the alkaline secondary battery is highly immune to overcharging and overdischarging. It has therefore been used for a cordless device, the power source of an electric vehicle, or the like in which a large storage capacity and high charge/discharge efficiencies are required.
In such an alkaline battery, nickel hydroxide (Ni(OH).sub.2) is employed as the active material of a positive electrode. The nickel hydroxide exhibits a high degree of positive-electrode activation in an alkaline aqueous solution because it rapidly generates reversible oxidation/reduction reactions therein as indicated below: ##STR1##
The nickel hydroxide is obtained in such a way that an aqueous solution of a nickelous salt such as nickel nitrate or nickel sulfate and the hydroxide of an alkali metal such as sodium are brought to a neutralizing reaction while the solution is being stirred (Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2-6340). Further, the electrochemical activity of the nickel hydroxide can be heightened by lowering the temperature and pH of the neutralizing reaction and the concentration of the reacting solution.
The aforementioned prior-art method of manufacture, however, has the problem that nitric acid ions exist as an impurity in the nickel hydroxide thus obtained, so the self-discharging of the battery increases due to shuttle reactions. The shuttle reactions will now be explained in conjunction with the following chemical formulae, by taking as an example a battery whose negative electrode contains a hydrogen-occlusion alloy as its active material: ##STR2##
First, the nitric acid ions existing in the positive-electrode active material are eluted from the positive electrode into the electrolyte solution. Then, as indicated by chemical formula (a), the nitric acid ions (NO.sub.3.sup.-) reacts with the hydrogen-occlusion alloy (MH) contained in the negative-electrode active material, until a product NH.sub.4 OH is formed.
As indicated by chemical formula (b), the formed product NH.sub.4 OH subsequently reacts with a product NiOOH formed in the positive-electrode active material during charging, thereby to form the nitric acid ions (NO.sub.3.sup.-). In this manner, insofar as the battery is in the charged state, the shuttle reactions take place, and the self-discharging proceeds.
With the intention of mitigating such self-discharging of the battery, therefore, a method has been proposed wherein nickel hydroxide formed from a nitrate is washed with water so as to eliminate the nitric acid ions (NO.sub.3.sup.-) (Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 6-223826).
It has also been proposed to dissolve cobalt (Co) for a solid solution into a positive-electrode active material which contains nickel hydroxide (Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2-109261). Thus, the cobalt is facilitated to accept the high-temperature charge of the nickel hydroxide.
Herein, the solid solution should desirably be of high density in order to ensure a large capacity for the battery per unit volume or unit weight. As the solid solution, accordingly, the hydroxides of nickel (Ni) and cobalt (Co) are not formed from nitrates, but they are formed from the element nickel and the ammine complex Co(NH.sub.3).sub.6 !.sup.2+ (cobalt (II) ion) of the element cobalt.
More specifically, in preparing the solid solution, the solution of sodium hydroxide (an alkali metal hydroxide) is added into a mixed solution consisting of the element nickel and the ammine cobaltous complex. Thus, the solid solution is obtained as one consisting of the hydroxides (Ni(OH).sub.2, Co(OH).sub.2) of the elements nickel and cobalt.
With this method, however, the cobalt (II) ammine complex is oxidized by an oxidant (for example, oxygen) which is contained in a reaction system in the course of the formation of the ammine cobaltous complex, whereby a cobalt (III) ammine complex (an ammine cobaltic complex) is formed as an impurity. The cobalt (III) ammine complex remains without reacting with the alkali metal hydroxide, and it is included in the nickelous positive-electrode active material.
The cobalt (III) ammine complex induces an electrochemical reaction, and forms the product NH.sub.4 OH. This product causes the self-discharging of the battery due to the shuttle reaction indicated by the chemical formula (b). The remaining cobalt (III) ammine complex cannot be eliminated by the aforecited method disclosed in the Official Gazette of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 6-223826.

Method of manufacturing nickelous positive-electrode active material for alkaline battery

Kabushiki Kaisha Toyoda Jidoshokki Seisakusho


The processing circuit of the insulation monitor comprises a microprocessor receiving on a first input a signal representative of the DC component, or the component of preset frequency different from the frequency of the mains system to be monitored, of the voltage applied to the insulation monitor terminals. The microprocessor receives on a second input a signal obtained by making the difference between a measured voltage representative of said voltage component and a preset threshold value and by multiplying this difference by a multiplication coefficient. When the measured voltage is greater than the threshold value, the microprocessor uses the signal applied to the second input so as to improve the precision in the higher voltage range.

The invention relates to a continuous insulation monitor comprising an input voltage generator, either DC or of a preset frequency different from the frequency of the mains system to be monitored, a processing circuit comprising a measuring circuit of the DC or preset frequency component of the voltage applied to its terminals, a microprocessor comprising a first input connected to the output of the measuring circuit and comprising means for converting the output signal of the measuring circuit into a numerical value, for computing from the numerical value a value representative of the insulation resistance of the mains system to be monitored, for comparing the value representative of the insulation resistance with at least one preset threshold and for supplying an alarm signal on an output when this value is lower than the threshold, and an alarm and signalling circuit connected to the microprocessor output.
In an insulation monitor of this kind, to obtain a good precision for all insulation resistance values, an analog-to-digital converter has to be used providing a greater precision than the required precision, for example a 12-bit converter.

Insulation monitor with improved precision


A voicemail apparatus comprises a voicemail database for storing messages awaiting retrieval by a subscriber, wherein each stored message comprises a message header and message data, the message header including a calling party phone number and calling party network information. A voicemail controller is coupled to the voicemail database for handling an incoming call from a calling party to the subscriber. The voicemail controller compares the calling party phone number of the incoming call with calling party phone numbers of each of the stored messages for the subscriber. If the calling party phone number of the incoming call matches at least one calling party phone number of the stored messages then the incoming call is authenticated by comparing the calling party network information for the incoming call with calling party network information stored for the calling party phone number matching messages. If authenticated, then an option is presented to the calling party of the incoming call to alter those stored message for which the calling party network information matches.

The present invention relates in general to voice messaging in a telecommunications system, and, more specifically, to voicemail recall features wherein stored messages can be deleted or reprioritized.
Conventional voice mail systems create a mailbox for a person associated with a called telephone number (i.e., the subscriber). When incoming calls are unanswered within a certain number of rings, they are directed to a voice mail server allowing the caller to create a recorded message to be later retrieved by the subscriber. The subscriber accesses their mailbox in order to manage the mailbox (e.g., record a personal greeting), to review message details (e.g., day and time of message), to listen to messages, and to delete messages. The subscriber is typically required to enter a valid pin code or password in order to gain access to the mailbox.
It has been recognized that as time passes, any unretrieved messages may become superfluous or no longer accurate. When new information becomes available, the party who left a prior message may decide to make the new information available to the mailbox subscriber by calling and leaving an additional message. Since two messages would then be in the mailbox, and since the older, inaccurate message would typically be played back first when the subscriber retrieves messages, inefficiency and confusion result.
By way of example, a person who has misplaced their car keys and believes that they will be late for work or an appointment places a phone call to someone who will be expecting their arrival. The phone goes unanswered and the caller is connected with voicemail to leave a message. Shortly thereafter, the person finds their car keys and realizes that they still have time to arrive on time. Leaving a second message retracting the first one causes potential embarrassment for the person and wastes time for the recipient. By permitting the person to recall (i.e., delete) the first message, these problems can be avoided.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,966,351, issued to Carleton et al, discloses a voice mail system wherein a sender of a message who is an authorized user of the voice mail system can access stored messages in a recipient's mailbox that were originally recorded by the sender. The sender is allowed to re-prioritize or delete messages in the recipient's mailbox that have not yet been retrieved provided the sender is authenticated by providing correct login information. Both the sender and recipient of a message are required to be subscribers of the same voicemail system.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,614,887, issued to Satapathy et al, allows calling parties to create sub-mailboxes within the subscriber's mailbox. A sub-mailbox is addressed according to the calling party's phone number. Each sub-mailbox is protected by an associated PIN code which is set-up during first use of the sub-mailbox. A caller is required to enter the PIN code prior to deleting or re-ordering messages previously left in the sub-mailbox. While the requirement for the sender and recipient to subscribe to the same voicemail system is avoided, a relatively greater number of command prompts and responses are involved. Added command prompts and responses must be navigated even when the caller is the subscriber or when there are no stored messages to be deleted. It would be desirable to reduce the command interactions needed to permit a caller to alter a previously recorded message.
Use of a PIN code for securing a sub-mailbox entails administrative overhead. For example, when a user forgets their PIN code then administrative act must be taken to recover the PIN code or assign a new one. Entry of the PIN code also makes the voicemail system more cumbersome and slower to use. Thus, it would be desirable to maintain security of stored messages without requiring entry of a PIN code or other login information.