A press-fit plug connector for press-fitting into holes in a printed circuit board, includes contacts which are each fastened at one end in a parallelepipedal plastic body and laterally guided in a molded part in slot-like recesses that are open toward the printed circuit board. The contacts have a free end with a press-fit section which is bent away toward the printed circuit board and two press-fit shoulders. The molded part is constructed with press-fit areas. A plug-in surface of the plug connector is constructed with a shielding plate having parts which are perpendicular to the printed circuit board and define a front plane of the plug connector. The molded part is of approximately U-shaped construction and free ends of U legs together with the plastic body disposed therebetween, abut against the front plane.

Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a press-fit plug connector for press-fitting into holes in a printed circuit board, including contacts which are fastened at one end in an essentially parallelepipedal plastic body and are laterally guided in a molded part in slot-like recesses that are open toward the printed circuit board, the contacts have a free end with a press-fit section which is bent away at right angles toward the printed circuit board and in each case is provided with two press-fit shoulders, the molded part is constructed with press-fit areas which are parallel to the printed circuit board, are disposed next to the recesses and interact with the press-fit shoulders during a press-fitting operation, and a plug-in surface of the plug connector is formed by a shielding plate having parts which are perpendicular to the printed circuit board and define a front plane of the plug connector.
An angular press-fit female strip connector of the above-described type is disclosed in the registered German Utility Model DE 295 15 592. In principle, press-fitting through the use of a flat punch, that is to say "by way of plastic" and without special tools with pressure pins, has also already been disclosed in German Patent DE 33 18 135 C2.
In the case of the press-fitting principle illustrated in the documents cited above, it is provided to transmit pressure exerted areally from above at right angles to the printed circuit board, through the use of press-fit areas in the molded part, directly onto press-fit shoulders disposed on press-fit sections of the contacts. Since the press-fit pressure is exerted very near and in a line with the press-fit zone, neither bending moments nor buckling of the contact can be produced in the case of that press-fitting method. What is problematic in known plug connectors is the structural layout, in particular the configuration and fastening of the individual parts with respect to one another and with respect to the printed circuit board. In addition to the mechanical stability of the structure and the fastening problems, there is often the further problem of integrating a ground contact possibility between the metallic plug-in surface and the printed circuit board in the already largely predetermined connector structure.

Angular press-fit plug connector for press-fitting into holes in a printed circuit board


An assembling member and a heat-dissipating module having the assembling member are proposed. The assembling member connects a fan having at least a receiving space and a plurality of first positioning portions to an electronic host housing having a plurality of first fixing portions. The assembling member includes a main body for being accommodated into the receiving space, a plurality of first coupling portions for coupling with the first positioning portions, an elastic portion disposed at one side of the main body, and a plurality of first engaging portions for engaging with the first fixing portions. The first engaging portions are connected to the elastic portions, such that the first engaging portions can be urged by the elastic portions of the assembling member to engage with the first fixing portions. The heat-dissipating module of the present invention is easy to assemble and disassemble, has simple structure and low cost.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fixing technology, and more particularly to an assembling member that can be fixed to an electronic host housing and a heat-dissipating module that has the assembling member.
2. Description of Related Art
With development of science and technology, along with development of information communication, computers are becoming a necessity in our daily life, which are crowded with more and more electronic components to meet demands for high processing speed and high integration. Accordingly, at least a heat-dissipating fan is disposed inside a computer such as a server for dissipating heat generated by electronic components of the computer such as CPU and hard disk during operation, thereby avoiding malfunction of the computer.
To fix a heat-dissipating fan inside a host housing of a server or a hard disk, a screw fixing method is usually used, which however not only needs a large amount of screws but also needs additional tools such as a screwdriver to tighten or loosen the screws. If the heat-dissipating fan needs to be removed from the host housing for troubleshooting or replacement, additional tools also need to be used for removing the fan from the host housing. Therefore, such a screw fixing method is rather inconvenient and can adversely affect production of servers or hard disks and decrease maintenance efficiency.
Accordingly, Taiwanese Publication No. 200521336 and US Patent Publication No. 2006/0099092 disclose heat-dissipating fan fixing techniques without using the screw fixing method. FIG. 1 is an exploded view of a heat-dissipating fan module disclosed by Taiwanese Publication No. 200521336.
As shown in FIG. 1, the heat-dissipating fan module comprises an assembling member 100 and a fan 200. The assembling member 100 comprises a top portion 101, two side portions 102 extending at a certain angle from the top portion 101, holding rings 103 disposed on two sides of the top portion 101, elastic sheets 104 connected with the holding rings 103, tenons 105 disposed on the elastic sheets 104, and a plurality of connecting holes 106 disposed on inner sides of the two side portions 102 corresponding to fixing holes 201 of the fan 200.
By closely attaching the assembling member 100 to a side surface of the fan 200 and connecting the connecting holes 106 to the corresponding fixing holes 201 through rivets, the assembling member 100 can be fixed to the fan 200 so as to form a heat-dissipating fan module. Then, the heat-dissipating fan module is laterally disposed inside a host housing with the tenons 105 engaging with the host housing. When a user uses fingers inserting the holding rings 103, then applies a force in a direction toward the top portion 101 of the assembling member 100, because the elastic sheets 104 of the assembling member 100 have elasticity, the holding rings 103 move toward the top portion 101, causing tenons 105 disposed on the elastic sheets 104 to separate from the host housing. As a result, the fan 200 is removed from the host housing.
Although such a fixing technique eliminates the need of any additional tools, it has some drawbacks. For example, the plurality of rivets used to fix the assembling member 100 to the fan 200 increases the material cost and increases assembly and disassembly time of the assembling member 100. Meanwhile, the attaching of the assembling member to the fan increases the volume of the heat-dissipating fan module. In addition, a space needs to be reserved for allowing a force to be applied on the holding rings so as to remove the heat-dissipating module from the host housing, which thus decreases the design flexibility.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a heat-dissipating module fixing technique overcoming the above drawbacks.

Assembling member and heat-dissipating module having assembling member


A wall member that covers lateral sides of an article storage rack includes a main wall portion that is installed in an orientation in which it extends along a vertical direction at a position that is spaced apart upward from an installation floor, and a sub-wall portion that is installed at a position that is spaced apart upward from the installation floor. An inlet port is formed at an upper end of the main wall portion, a first space surrounded by the main wall portion and a second space directly below the sub-wall portion are in communication with each other, an outlet port is formed below an end portion of the sub-wall portion on a second side, and an end portion of the sub-wall portion on a first side is connected to a lower end of the main wall portion in a state in which the flow of air between the sub-wall portion and the main wall portion is restricted.

JP 2009-184787A discloses an example of an article storage facility including an article storage rack that is installed upright on an installation floor that is configured to restrict the flow of air therethrough and a wall member that covers lateral sides of the article storage rack such that the wall member restricts the flow of air therethrough. In this article storage facility, the wall member (peripheral wall (W)) is formed into a rectangular tubular shape whose upper and lower ends are open. An inlet port through which air flows into a space surrounded by the wall member from above the wall member is formed in the opening at the upper end of the wall member, while the opening at the lower end of the wall member is closed by the installation floor. In addition, an outlet port through which air flows laterally out of the space surrounded by the wall member is formed in a lower end portion of the wall member, and an air blower (fan filter unit 35 for peripheral walls) is provided in the outlet port.
In the above-described article storage facility, since an air blower is provided in the outlet port, the running costs of the article storage facility are high. To address this issue, it is conceivable to not provide the air blower in the outlet port to suppress the running costs, but then the following problems arise. For example, provided that articles stored in the article storage rack are containers that accommodate semiconductor substrates, there are cases where an inert gas, such as nitrogen gas, or the like that is filled into the containers escapes from the containers. If a gas flows out from the containers as described above, the concentration of the gas may increase locally, or in other words, the concentration of oxygen may decrease locally. In the conventional article storage facility, air is forcibly discharged from the outlet port by the air blower, and thus, air is agitated, so that a local decrease in the concentration of oxygen in air that is discharged from the outlet port can be suppressed. However, if an air blower is not provided in the outlet port in order to suppress the running costs, air that flows out from the outlet port is unlikely to be agitated, and flows out of the wall member while the oxygen concentration is locally low.
Thus, there is demand to provide an article storage facility with which a local decrease in oxygen concentration in air flowing out of a wall member can be suppressed while suppressing the running costs.


The invention is a cable restraint system for an aircraft having first and second main landing gears equally spaced from the longitudinal axis of the aircraft; the system for securing the aircraft from movement during engine run-up testing when the aircraft is positioned such that the main landing gears are in front of and the longitudinal axis thereof is aligned with a ground attachment fitting mounted to the ground. In detail, the system includes first and second coupling members. First and second cables having first and second ends, have their first ends attachable to the ground attachment fitting and the second ends attached to the first and second coupling members, respectively. A third cable is attached by its ends to the first and second coupling members. Fourth and fifth cables having first and second ends, are attached by their first ends to the first and second coupling members and attachable by their second ends main landing gears. When installed with the first ends of first and second cables attached to ground attachment fitting and the second ends of the fourth and fifth cables attached to the main landing gear, the system has a generally Y shape with the fourth and fifth cables forming the arms of the Y and the first, second and third cables forming a triangular shaped leg of the Y.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of aircraft restraining systems and, in particular, to a cable restraint system for an aircraft for use during engine run up tests.
2. Description of Related Art
After repair or replacement of an engine in an aircraft, it is necessary to check out engine performance on the ground prior to any flight test. During these tests, it is often required that the engines be run at or near full power and it is therefore necessary to physically restrain the aircraft. On early aircraft designs having non-retractable landing gear wherein the wheels are connected by a common shaft, restraint systems as disclosed in French Patent No. 617,573 by. M. Dauvin could be used. The aircraft is restrained by a vertical "Y" shaped member having the center member or leg of the Y either driven into the ground or encased in concrete. The "harms" of the Y are pivotally connected to the common landing gear shaft in proximity to the wheels, and to the center member. Additionally, three cables are attached by one of their ends to the center member and extend radially outward therefrom, having their second ends attached to pins inserted into the ground. While such a system will work, it is totally unusable with aircraft using retractable tricycle landing gear, thus eliminating its use on virtually all modern aircraft.
Of course, wheel chocks cannot be seriously considered for use during part or full power engine run-up tests because of the danger that they may move or that the wheels will ride-up and over them, especially if they are not properly positioned. Separate cables attached to each main landing gear, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,469,659 "Tethering Device For Airplanes" by J. Martin, have been used, but the storage and tracking of separate cables is a drawback. In addition, on aircraft such as the F-117 Night Hawk aircraft, running two separate cables directly back to a ground attachment fitting at an acute angle can cause interference with the landing gear doors. The use of such cables or chains to hold the aircraft to the deck of an aircraft carrier is discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,154 "Securing System For Jet Engine Testing Of Aircraft" by F. W. Jones. Additionally, attempts to use tie-down rings on the main landing gear can also cause problems. For example, on the F-117 aircraft with tie-down rings off-set from the centerline of the gear, the cables when loaded during engine run-up can cause damage to the landing gear torque arms.
Thus, it is a primary object of the invention to provide an aircraft restraint system for engine run-up tests.
It is another primary object of the invention to provide an aircraft restraint system for engine run-up tests that is easy to attach to the aircraft.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an aircraft restraint system for engine run-up tests that is easy to store.
It is a still further object of the invention to provide an aircraft restraint for engine run-up tests that allows self alignment of the aircraft.
It is another object of the invention to provide an aircraft restraint system for engine run-up tests that includes tie down redundancy.

Cable restraint system for aircraft engine run-up tests


The disclosure relates to a casing assembly, and a casing assembly and electronic device having the same. The casing assembly includes a first casing, a second casing and a fixing assembly. The second casing is slidably disposed on the first casing. The fixing assembly includes a mount, a fastener and a pressure supply component. The mount is disposed on the first casing. The fastener is disposed on the second casing. The fastener is detachably engaged with the mount. The pressure supply component is movably disposed on one of the mount and the fastener and configured to push the other one of the mount and the fastener. When the fastener is disengaged from the mount, the pressure supply component forces the fastener and the mount to move away from each other so as to force the second casing to move relative to the first casing.

With the development of technology, electronic devices, such as computers and servers, often contain various function modules for various requirements of cloud services. Take the server as an example, the server rack is usually equipped with different function modules, such as hard disk module, memory module, and disk array card module, for providing different services, some of the function modules are removably placed on the server rack so that the user or maintenance personnel can pull them out from the server rack for maintenance or other purposes.
In addition, in order to facilitate the user to take out the function module, the most common approach is to additionally add a handle on the function module. However, the devices on the server are usually arranged in a compact manner to fully utilize the internal space of the server, thus the space around the function module is not sufficient for the handle. Without the handle, it would be difficult to take out the function modules and would affect the maintenance.
It is understood that the foregoing issue does not only occur in the server but also occur in other electronic devices that require taking out function module from limited internal space.

Fixing assembly, casing assembly, and electronic device


A vehicle driving assistance device according to the invention is intended to improve the reliability of driving assistance and includes a vehicle sensor that acquires vehicle behavior information about the behavior of a vehicle, an inter-vehicle communication unit that acquires other-vehicle behavior information about the behavior of another vehicle which travels in front of the vehicle, a traffic condition estimating unit that estimates traffic conditions between the vehicle and another vehicle on the basis of the vehicle behavior information and the other-vehicle behavior information, and a driving assistance unit that performs driving assistance on the basis of the estimation result of the traffic condition estimating unit.

A device has been proposed which estimates traffic conditions around a host vehicle on the basis of information acquired by, for example, inter-vehicle communication with other vehicles and performs driving assistance corresponding to the estimation result. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-185136 discloses a driving assistance device that estimates the number of other vehicles which cannot perform communication between the host vehicle and another vehicle which travels in front of the host vehicle and can perform inter-vehicle communication on the basis of the distance between another vehicle and the host vehicle. In the driving assistance device, when the number of other vehicles which cannot perform inter-vehicle communication is estimated from the inter-vehicle distance, the interval at which there is a communication-incapable vehicle is calculated using various maps corresponding to an inter-vehicle time, a traveling time, and a traveling region on the basis of the speed of another vehicle acquired by inter-vehicle communication. In this manner, estimation accuracy is improved.


A space saver shelving unit adapted to straddle the tank of a toilet for convenient shelves above the tank. The shelving unit includes detachable leg members which connect to a folding upper section. The upper section has a plurality of shelves pivotably attached to a rear panel and front posts. The leg members are secured to the back panel and posts to supply rigidity retaining the shelves in their proper position. The foldable shelving unit allows for convenient storage and shipment by folding to a flat surface.

I. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a freestanding shelving unit adapted to be positioned above the toilet and, in particular, to a shelving unit which may be selectively folded to a compact assembly convenient for storage and shipment.
II. Description of the Prior Art
Convenience devices have become increasingly popular for increasing storage areas in the home particularly the bath area which is typically devoid of closet space. Shower caddies for the bath and shelving units can be positioned in corners or other open areas to increase storage. An additional open area is the wall space above the toilet. Wall mounted cabinets and free-standing shelving units have become popular devices to fill these areas. However, because of their size, fully assembled devices can be expensive to ship. Alternatively, the devices are shipped disassembled requiring the user to assemble the product in the home. In addition to requiring tools for assembly, the assembly process can become tedious and frustrating.


A selective inhibition of sintering (SIS) technique may be used to fabricate a three-dimensional (3-D) dense metal object from a binderless metal powder. Layers of metal powder are provided on a build tank. For each layer, regions of the layer are sinter-inhibited, e.g., by depositing a sinter-inhibiting material such as a ceramic slurry, a metal salt, or oxidizing metal particles in the powder using chemicals or a concentrated heat source. Each layer may be compacted before the next layer is provided. A final compact may then be sintered. Unwanted sintered sections may be removed from the compact at boundaries formed by the sinter-inhibited (unsintered) regions, and the object extracted.

Three-dimensional (3-D) objects, such as prototype parts, may be produced directly from computer-aided design (CAD) databases. Various technologies may be used to produce such objects, including layered additive processes. Current layered fabrication methods for building metallic parts typically use polymer binders mixed with metal powder. For example, in FDM (Fused Deposition Method) fabrication, a mix of polymer binder and metal powder is made into a filament which is fed through a heated extrusion nozzle. A green (unsintered) part is then formed by layer-by-layer extrusion of the material. In SLS (Selective Laser Sintering), a mix of loose powder (polymer and metal or polymer-coated metal) is spread into a thin layer and exposed to a laser which melts the polymer particles and bonds the metal powder in selected areas of each layer to form the green part. Other techniques use similar approaches with some variations. The green part is then sintered in a conventional sintering furnace where the fugitive polymer is eliminated.
There are several problems with the approaches described above. Use of polymer binders adds greatly to the sintering shrinkage factor. Also, the creation of dense metallic parts is difficult because of the existence of the binder in the green part structure. Furthermore, incineration of polymer binders during sintering may leave hard-to-remove residues on sintering furnaces and may present environmental hazards.
There are commercial processes for layered fabrication that use binderless metal powder. However, these methods require very expensive high power lasers. Moreover, building parts with overhang features may be problematic with these methods.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Metallic parts fabrication using selective inhibition of sintering (SIS)


An embodiment relates to the transmission of a data set to a central data store. A data set is received via a data source. Furthermore, country information is optionally received via the data source. Furthermore, a data classification is determined based on the data set via the data source. Furthermore, the data classification and optionally the country information are sent to a server via the data source. Furthermore, data transmission information from the server is received via the data source. In this context, the data transmission information is based on the data classification and optionally on the country information and the data transmission information relates to the permissibility of the transmission of the data set. Furthermore, the data set is transmitted to the central data store in dependence on the data transmission information.

Medical apparatuses, in particular imaging medical apparatuses such as computed tomography scanners, magnetic resonance scanners, X-ray apparatuses or ultrasound apparatuses are frequently connected via a data link to a control center or a central data store. This data link enables, for example, remote maintenance of the medical apparatus from the control center. In this context, the medical apparatus and the control center can be located in different countries.
In this context, the transmission of data via the data link is subject to a wide variety of restrictions. For example, legal regulations may only allow the transmission of certain types of data and/or transmission may only be allowed to certain countries. Furthermore, the permissibility of a transmission may depend upon whether there is a contractual arrangement between the operator of the medical apparatus and the operator of the control center.
Therefore, the medical apparatuses must be suitably configured so that transmission of data only takes place when transmission of the data is actually allowed. However, the configuration of the individual medical apparatuses is very complex, in particular when the configuration of a large number of medical apparatuses has to be adapted and in particular when they have to be frequently adapted to changing circumstances.
Alternatively, it is known to transmit data from the medical apparatus to the control center in all cases or unconditionally and only to decide in the control center whether the data transmission was allowed and to delete data transmitted without permission after checking in the control center.

Transmission of a data set and provision of data transmission information


The linear bearing (3) comprises a plurality of concentrically arranged springs (2), each spring (2) being designed as a plate spring with a fixing part (2a) and a bore (2c) arranged in the center (Z). Each spring (2) also has a spring arm (2b) which emerges from the fixing part (2a) and ends in an end section (2g). The end section (2g) has the bore (2c), and the bore (2c) is concentric to the fixing part (2a). Each spring (2) has a direction of movement (B) which runs perpendicular to the fixing part (2a), and the springs (2) are arranged one behind the other in the direction of movement (B). The spring arm (2b) has a spring arm section (2ba) which runs concentrically with the bore (2c) and which extends along an angular range (γ) between 100° and 270°, preferably along an angular range (γ) between 180° and 300°. The fixing part (2a) is at least partly annular, and the spring arm section (2ba) has, in a radial direction with respect to the bore (2c), a width (2k) which is at least five times greater than the thickness (2i) of the spring arm (2b). The width (2k) of the spring arm section (2ba) is designed such that the spring arm section extends relative to the annular fixing part (2a) and the end portion (2g) while forming a lateral gap (2d).

The document U.S. Pat. No. 5,895,033 and the document U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,214 respectively disclose a linear bearing comprising a plurality of concentrically arranged springs, wherein each spring is configured as a disk spring, and wherein each spring has a spring arm extending in a spiral manner. These linear bearings have the disadvantage that the properties of the linear guidance are not satisfactory.

Linear bearing, and solenoid comprising such a linear bearing


Disclosed herein is an article including a substrate, a first layer adjacent the substrate, the first layer having a silicone-containing pressure sensitive adhesive and a thickness of less than about 5 um, and a second layer adjacent the first layer and opposite the substrate, the second layer having a pressure sensitive adhesive. The silicone-containing pressure sensitive adhesive can include a copolymer of a vinyl polymeric backbone having polysiloxane moieties grafted thereto.

This disclosure relates to pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) articles, particularly those having a thin layer of a silicone-containing PSA between a layer of a conventional PSA and a substrate. Also described is a multilayer coating method in which two or more layers of fluids are coated on a substrate and to articles made using the method.
A fundamental characteristic of a coating process is the number of layers that can be applied per applicator. Single layer coating processes employ applicators that can apply one coating layer at a time, that is, a single coating layer is applied per pass of a web past the applicator. Multilayer coating processes employ applicators that can apply two or more coating layers at a time and are typically premetered processes in that all of the fluid fed to the applicator is applied to the web. Examples of multilayer coating processes include slot, extrusion, slide, and curtain coating processes.
Today, there is much need for high performance coated articles manufactured by coating two or more layers of fluid onto a continuous web. The fluids can be coated using a single layer coating process such that the fluids are coated in series with each layer being dried, cured, etc. before the next one is applied. For reasons such as efficiency and cost, it is usually more desirable to employ multilayer coating processes in which the fluids are coated simultaneously onto the web.
Applicators used in multilayer coating processes can be designed to deliver a wide range of fluids, but this is typically not the case if the fluids are to be coated simultaneously. That is, for a given set of fluids to be coated simultaneously, the particular applicator and process conditions used in a multilayer coating process often dictate how different the fluids can be with respect to a particular property such as surface tension, viscosity, etc. Thus, there is a need for multilayer coating processes that are amenable to coating simultaneously fluids having properties that are very different from each other. There is also a need for multilayer coating processes that employ conventional multilayer coating applicators and are amenable to coating simultaneously fluids having properties that are very different from each other.


Improved methods for designing the route of a transport element, such as a tube, are provided. A method preferably designs the route automatically and, by utilizing constraint objects, including at least one adaptively-sampled distance field (adaptive distance field or ADF) constraint object, in the design of the route, as opposed to during a post design check, ensures that the resulting route complies with the various constraint objects, including the at least one ADF constraint object. In addition, a method may establish an overall cost function to evaluate a plurality of feasible routes of the transport element that each comply with the constraint objects, including at least one ADF constraint object, such that a preferred or optimal route may be designed.

Transport elements, such as tubes, cables, hoses, wires, wire bundles, and the like, are widely used in a great variety of applications. For example, a jet airliner contains approximately 3,000 custom-designed metal tubes in a number of different systems including the hydraulic system, pneumatic system, fuel system, drainage system, fire suppression system, and the like. In many of these applications, the tubes must be carefully designed in order to be manufacturable and installable. For example, the design of each tube carried by a jet airliner typically takes about 40 hours on average.
Most conventional systems, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,227,983 to Cox, relate to the design of piping (in particular networks of piping). Such systems are concerned with automating, or helping to automate, the design of a typically approximate plan for pipes, such as in a building, ship, or factory. Piping, however, is different from the more general class of transport elements (exemplified by bent-metal tubing) that the present invention deals with, for two primary reasons. First, piping characteristically involves assembling pre-manufactured shapes (exemplified by straight sections, 90-degree elbows, 45-degree elbows, etc.) and is laid out in a generally rectilinear fashion, i.e., subsequent sections of pipes usually differ in orientation by 90 degrees or 45 degrees. In contrast, the generic class of transport elements including tubing, hoses, wires, etc. are available in, typically, straight, but sometimes also coiled, stock into which are introduced straight sections of arbitrary (or nearly arbitrary, subject to certain constraints detailed below) lengths and angles of arbitrary (or nearly arbitrary, subject to certain constraints detailed below) degrees.
Another important point of contrast is that piping layout does not generally have to be exact, but can often be approximated within an error on the order of fractions of an inch, inches, or sometimes even feet. There are two senses in which a mere approximation is tolerated: (a) failure to be precise and (b) failure to be optimal. With regard to the first sense in which a mere approximation is tolerated, failure to be precise can also be called coarseness of specification. This means that the output of the design system is not expected, or relied upon, to be correct to within a certain crude tolerance. This does not matter greatly in piping designs because a given piping design is often assembled only once, or at most a few times. This is because buildings, factories, and ships of given design are seldom manufactured in large numbers. Therefore, small errors in the design can be affordably worked-out by the persons of skill installing the pipes, such as by cutting and shaping them to the necessary dimensions in situ. In contrast, products such as airplanes and automobiles are manufactured in the thousands or even millions. Therefore, for reasons of efficiency, it is essential to have a single, exact design that can be manufactured in great numbers off-line, then moved to the point of assembly and integrated into the final product with no further modification.
With regard to the second sense in which a mere approximation is tolerated, failure to be optimal has two main aspects. First, many design domains, especially aircraft, are highly sensitive to weight and other performance measures. For example, it would typically be unacceptable for a large tube on an airliner be one inch longer than necessary, subject to the design constraints. This is because an inch of tubing, especially when filled with fluid, can weigh on the order of ounces. Thus, the thousands of tubes in an airplane, if designed with a sub-optimal system, might weight many tens, or even hundreds, of pounds more than they would had they been designed with an optimal system. Because of the harsh economics of commercial air transport, every ounce is a vital target for elimination, even on a half-million-pound vehicle. Second, each tube in an airplane is typically labored over by a human designer or team of designers for many hours. The designer manipulates the shape of the tube with a computer-aided design (CAD) system that provides an extremely detailed and realistic view of the tubes. Experienced designers possess a highly refined visual intuition about what shape they want to obtain. Simply put, they can tell when things are "off," and they demand total and fine control in rectifying such situations. Accordingly, a conventional system suited to the design of pipes in a building is generally far too crude for designing tubes in such objects as an airplane, a jet engine, or a rocket motor. In sum, conventional systems attempt to design an approximate route or gross route, rather than refining a gross route into an precise, optimal route in the face of various constraints. The gross route is the final output of such systems. The gross route (i.e., approximate route) is in fact only the input to the present invention; the output is something optimal and perfectly manufacturable.
A tube is one type of transport element that poses a number of challenges in its design due to limitations upon the way in which the tube may be bent as described below. By way of background, tubes are generally composed of straight sections joined by circular arcs. As a result of constraints placed upon tube design by the manufacturing process, the straight sections and circular arcs each have a minimum length such that it is impossible to have an arbitrarily small bend, and one bend cannot begin an arbitrarily small distance from another bend. As shown in FIG. 1, a tube generally includes a starting point, designated the A-end, and an ending point, designated the B-end, and at least one bend defined or determined by a node, e.g., N1, therebetween. With respect to the node terminology, it is noted that for certain classes of curves, nodes are also called, e.g., control points. Since the straight segments 2 of a tube are joined by arcuate segments 4, the tube does not pass through the nodes which, instead, are imaginary points where the two adjacent straight sections would intersect if extended far enough as designated by N1 and N2 in FIG. 1. A transport element may therefore be defined in terms of its nodes supplemented by some additional information depending upon the type of transport element. In the case of a metal tube, for example, the additional information may include the radius at which the tube is bent at each bend, although typically, for the sake of efficiency, a metal tube is bent at the same radius at each bend. For other types of transport elements, such as hoses, the additional information may be, e.g., the order and knot spacings of a spline. Note that, in the context of splines, such as NURBS, what are herein called "nodes" are often called "control points," "control polygon vertices," or the like. "Node" is merely the prevailing term of art in the tubing business.
While nodes form a compact and intuitive representation of a tube, the use of nodes in the design of tubes may sometimes create problems. For example, a tube design may require a predetermined standoff S at the B-end, such as for tool access, as shown in FIG. 2. In this regard, standoff refers to the length of the straight segment adjacent to either the A-end or the B-end. Traditional design practice is to position the node N a sufficient distance from the B-end to provide the designated standoff. However, if the segment of the tube upstream of node N is modified as shown in FIG. 3, the standoff S′ will shrink to an unacceptable level even though the node that defined the standoff was supposedly correct. Nevertheless, even though the node does not define the standoff directly and may therefore be somewhat problematic during the design process, nodes are frequently utilized in the design of tubes because of their simplicity and intuitive appeal.
When designing the route of a transport element, such as a tube, a designer initially develops a gross route, which is an approximate description of a route, or, equivalently, a description of a set of possible routes. The gross route is typically based upon the start and end points as well as various obstacles, way-points, etc. that are located therebetween. In designing the gross route, a designer generally designs it to comply with a number of extrinsic or situation-dependent constraints that include, for example, the minimum separation from structures or other tubes, requirements that the tube be parallel to certain structures, requirements that the tube penetrate certain structures within a particular zone, etc. While termed a "route," the gross route that is designed really defines a whole family of topologically equivalent routes that satisfy the various constraints. Based upon the gross route, a designer can select a specific route for the transport element. Unfortunately, designers cannot generally select the specific route to be optimal for a transport element and currently have no automated techniques for doing so.
Given a gross route, the specific route of a transport element is generally designed by manual drafting in a CAD system such as CATIA. This manual drafting is typically a slow and difficult process. In the case of a metal tube, it may appear that a tube centerline extending from the A-end to the B-end may be easily constructed by merely specifying some intermediate way-points at which the tube will be attached to structures at particular orientations and then having the CAD system fill in straight lines and tangential circular arcs between the A-end, the B-end and the intermediate way-points. The difficulty lies, however, in ensuring—in the face of the difficulties attached to node-based design just described—that the resulting route is manufacturable, satisfies engineering constraints and is optimal.
In the case of metal tubes, for example, the manufacturing process dictates a variety of intrinsic constraints, such as minimum bend angle, maximum bend angle, minimum straight section length between bends, constraint bend radius, etc. These constraints typically arise from the nature of tube bending machines. Generally, a tube bending machine starts with a straight piece of tubing stock and repeatedly performs various operations including shooting out a certain length of tube stock to generate a straight section, bending or wrapping the tube around a circular die to generate a circular arc, and rotating the tube about its longitudinal axis to establish a new plane for the next bend. Typically, it is expensive to change the circular die. As such, each bend in a tube preferably has the same radius. In addition, the machine must be able to grip the stock during the formation of a bend such that the bending head has a certain amount of clearance, i.e., a new bend cannot be started arbitrarily close to the previous bend. The requirement that the tube stock be gripped during bending operations therefore results in the requirement of a minimum straight section length. These constraints are termed "intrinsic" because they are defined without regard to how the tube is situated once it is installed in a machine, plant, or vehicle.
In designing the route for a tube on a CAD system, the designer essentially lays out one straight segment after another or, equivalently, defines one node after another, with the circular arcs connecting these straight sections being interpolated automatically. A variety of CAD systems are available including CATIA, Solid Edge, and Pro/ENGINEER. Typically, these systems offer the designer assistance in placing the next segment by providing an easily manipulated graphical representation of a local Cartesian coordinate system, sometimes called a "compass." In CATIA and similar systems, the designer can place the compass anywhere in the scene, usually by using existing geometry as a base of reference. For example, if the designer wants the next section of a tube to be parallel to a particular facet of a solid, the designer can place the compass on the facet, and indicate which of its three planes is to be "paralleled." The next tubing section is automatically constrained to lie parallel to that plane. Similar functionality is common in many graphical computer applications. The compass is essentially a way of using an inherently 2-D input device (a mouse) as an effective 3-D input device.
The compass can also be used to establish planes that cannot be penetrated during the drawing process. For example, when routing a tube near a piece of machinery from which there must be a certain amount clearance, the designer can use the compass to establish a plane defining an impenetrable barrier at the appropriate distance from the machinery. This barrier behaves like a glass wall through which the cursor cannot move.
Nevertheless, the compass, even with all the operations it provides, only supports what is still an essentially manual, sequential drafting process. As shown in FIGS. 4a-4d, the designer draws one segment of the tube, which is then frozen, and then proceeds to the next section, and so on. With respect to the sequential example provided by FIGS. 4a-4d, the tube design is frozen to the left of the dotted line. As soon as a new segment is drawn, the necessary circular arc is interpolated between the new segment and the previous segment as indicated by the dashed lines in FIGS. 4a-4d. Most CAD systems allow the designer to input minimum bend angles, minimum straight segment lengths and the like and, if the designer draws a tube segment that violates these rules, a warning is provided which may simply involve the failure to construct the tube as requested. However, conventional CAD systems do not provide the designer with any alternative suggestions for a comparable tube segment that would comply with the rules and do not consider any redesign of the previously frozen portion of the tube design. Following completion of a portion of the tube routing, the CAD system simply checks the route for compliance with various rules in a post hoc manner. For example, the CAD system may check the route to ensure that the segment just designed has a certain minimum length. (One example of the CAD system for routing transport elements that offer a mere post hoc check, albeit a rapid and interactive one, is the TubeExpert CAD program provided by Oettinger Gmbh of Oberursel, Germany.) If the post hoc check determines that one or more of the segments does not comply with the rules, the route of the transport element must be redesigned, thereby consuming a significant amount of additional time and resources.
Transport element designs are not always final. Very often it is desirable to modify an existing design. This is another area in which conventional tubing design systems are lacking. Conventional tubing design systems only support a local notion of modification, and one that never includes the automatic insertion, deletion, or re-ordering with respect to background geometry of nodes. For example, consider the tube depicted in FIG. 5. If the nodal point N4 were moved upward, a conventional CAD system would change only that portion of the route of the tube that is just next to the node that is being moved, i.e., the straight segments N3-N4 and N4-N5, and the arcs that connect these straight segments. The remainder of the tube would remain fixed. Thus, conventional CAD systems do not respond in a global way to local influences or changes—even if optimality would demand it. One way of visualizing this is to take the view in FIG. 6, that a tube is essentially a linkage of ball joints and telescoping joints. Under this view, conventional CAD systems "freeze" all the joints but the ones nearest the source of the change. For example, in FIG. 6 as N4 moves upwards, the joints or links that are circled in dashed lines in FIG. 6 are free to accommodate this movement, but the other joints or links are frozen so that the transformation of the route of the tube occurs as shown in FIG. 7. The problem with this is that the optimal (e.g., shortest) redesign is very seldom obtainable by merely local adjustments.
It is noted that the portion of the transport element that drives or originates the modification need not be a single node. For example, the designer may wish to move an entire straight segment, such as the segment between N3 and N4. If this segment were moved upward such as in response to the moving of a clamp through which this segment of the tube must pass, the route of the tube would be varied as shown in FIG. 8 in which the clamp is indicated by a rectangle. It should be noted, however, that the tube still changes shape only via the minimal, local subset of joints or links necessary to allow the upward motion of the N3-N4 segment.
As mentioned above, conventional CAD systems permit tubes to be modified automatically only in a local sense, and only if the modification does not involve the insertion, deletion, or re-ordering with respect to external constraints of nodes. The mathematical object consisting in the number of nodes and where they fall with respect to external constraints (such as hardpoints, obstacles, etc.) is called the node distribution. Put in mathematical terms, conventional CAD systems do not permit one route to be continuously deformed into another unless they have the same node distribution. Put in common CAD terms, tubes with different node distributions cannot be "rubber banded" into one another. In this regard, FIG. 9 depicts the tube extending from a fixed fitting 10 to a bulkhead 12 of an aircraft. If the position of the bulkhead 12 changed as shown in FIG. 10, the node distribution for the tube would also have to change. Crucially, FIGS. 9 and 10 illustrate that the change in the node distribution is not necessarily trivial, even in such an apparently trivial case. That is, even though it might seem that the rotation of the bulkhead could be accommodated by simply introducing one bend, it might actually require up to three bends, even for such a simple situation. (Three bends are needed if a minimum bend-angle constraint is imposed with a sufficiently large minimum bend-angle. If the angle between the bulkheads is less than this threshold, then by definition any configuration having a single bend would violate the constraint, so some number greater than one bend is needed, and in this example it is three. Minimum bend-angle constraints are pervasive in tubing design and are described below.) The key point is that, because FIG. 10 has a different node distribution from FIG. 9, the transition from FIG. 9 to FIG. 10 is not handled automatically by conventional CAD systems. The node distribution is considered inherently "part of the design"—where design means, inherently, the purview and the onus of the human designer. A conventional CAD system would require the designer to foresee the possible future rotation in FIG. 10 and build in the necessary bends into FIG. 9, where clearly they are unnecessary. In sum, the node distribution is not a one-size-fits-all aspect of a route, and even tiny changes in the constraints can impose a radically different node distribution.
The requirement that a human always design the node distribution for a route is a primary deficit of conventional tubing design systems.
By way of another example, a tube may be required to be attached to a structural element 14 as shown in FIG. 11. Most modem parametric CAD systems allow the designer to represent the clamp by associating a mathematical constraint between a point, edge or face of the structural element and an intermediate segment of the tube. Thus, if the structural element were moved downward, the route of the tube may be changed on a local basis as described above and as depicted in FIG. 12. In this regard, some CAD systems also require the designer to specify the joints and links that are free to move. For example, with respect to the route of the tube depicted in FIG. 12, in order to accommodate the downward movement of the structural element, the straight segments 16 of the tube on either side of the structural element may be elongated and the intermediate tube segment 18 may be shrunk, or the intermediate tube segment may maintain a constant length while permitting the straight tube segments on either side to stretch and all four nearby angles 20 to vary. In other words, the CAD system may not necessarily have a predefined rule or principle for determining the joints and links that are free and the joints and links that are frozen and may, instead, require input from the designer.
In contrast to the downward movement of the structural element, upward movement of the structural element can cause the route of the tube to approach an illegal configuration in which the minimum bend angle would be violated at bends 22 as shown in FIG. 13. In this regard, it is important to note that angles α are conventionally measured supplementarily as indicated in FIG. 13. While the upward movement of the structural element may be accommodated either by moving the outboard clamps downward such that the tube may assume a straight line or introducing additional nodes or bends, each of these solutions requires that the tube be (in the eyes of conventional CAD systems) "redesigned" by introducing a different number and general placement of the nodes.
Another important area of transport element CAD is multiple transport elements. Conventional CAD systems do not effectively address the potential for designing the route of a transport element based at least in part upon one or more existing or contemporaneously designed transport elements.
Further, while pre-defined path constraints, such as parameterized stay-out zones such as boxes, cylinders, and spheres, may be used to represent spatial regions or objects which a transport element should circumvent, penetrate, or pass through for routing, pre-defined path constraints may not accurately represent an object and/or may be computationally intensive to implement when attempting to approximate fine details and complicated shapes, particularly if parameterized shapes would be used for regularly-sampled distance fields. Accordingly, improved methods for designing the route of a transport element using an improved path constraint, and, in particular, an improved path constraint that accurately represents the shape of an object and is computationally feasible when designing a route for a transport element, are desired.

Adaptive distance field constraint for designing a route for a transport element


An optical communication system and method of use are described. The system comprises an optical source adapted to receive a digitally encoded data signal comprising sequences of data at a data rate (B) and comprising two signal levels representing a first state and a second state of the data signal, the optical source being adapted to produce an optical signal substantially frequency modulated with frequency excursion Δν comprising a first instantaneous frequency (ν0) associated to the first state and a second instantaneous frequency (ν1) associated to the second state; an optical converter adapted to receive the substantially frequency modulated optical signal, the optical converter having an optical transfer function varying with frequency and including at least one pass band, the at least one pass band having a peak transmittance and at least a low-transmittance region.

Recently, there has been a growing interest in directly modulated lasers for use as transmitters in optical communication systems because they allow a compact design, have large response to modulation, and are integrable. In addition, they are typically inexpensive compared to externally-modulated transmitters, which require an intensity modulator, such as LiNbO3 modulators, following the laser.
Various optical sources, such as semiconductor lasers, exhibit optical frequency chirp when directly modulated by a signal, due to the fact that intensity modulation in semiconductor lasers is invariably accompanied by phase modulation because of the carrier-induced change in the refractive index.
Fiber based transmission systems that use Directly Modulated Laser (DML) sources having optical frequency chirp suffer signal degradation due to optical dispersion in the transmission fiber. In a digital system, dispersion causes the digital pulses to spread in time. As a result, the pulses can overlap and interfere with each other, thereby limiting data transmission speed. Since pulse duration broadens linearly with traveled distance, system performance degrades because of Inter Symbol Interference (ISI). For instance, DML sources at 1550 nm wavelength and 10 Gb/s data rate typically generate an optical signal that propagates no more than 10 kilometers in standard fiber links, such as along standard single-mode fibers (SMFs).
In order to minimize the transient response of the DML occurring at bit transitions, conventional direct intensity modulation of a semiconductor laser is achieved by operating the laser with a bias current well above the lasing threshold and setting a modulation depth small enough to avoid switching off of the laser upon modulation, i.e., by operating in the so-called small or weak signal regime. In this condition, the "off" or "0" state has an optical power (P0) that is a fraction of the power (P1) at the "on" or "1" state. In addition the small modulation mitigates the inclusion in the signal of the transient and thermal chirp contributions arising from the sudden changes in injection current. However, this choice affects the value of Extinction Ratio (ER), defined as ER=P1/P0 and often also specified as a dB value, 10 log(ER), which is typically not larger than about 2 dB.
In an optical communication system, the receiver sensitivity, expressed in terms of received optical power, increases as the ER decreases. This is because any deviation from the ideal optical signal at the receiver, i.e. a bit stream made of bits '1' bits '0', leads to a change of the '0' and '1' bit levels, reducing the degree of discrimination between the two symbols and leading to ISI. To keep the Bit Error Rate (BER) at a predetermined value, the minimum average optical power required at the receiver increases because of such non-ideal conditions. This increase in the average received power is generally referred to as power penalty.
Larger optical link lengths can be achieved by employing frequency modulation of the laser with subsequent optical conversion into intensity modulation.
A frequency discriminator may be chosen to partially compensate for the dispersion in the transmission fiber while converting a Frequency Modulated (FM) signal from a laser into a substantially intensity-modulated signal, generally referred to as Amplitude Modulated (AM) signal.
What is needed, therefore is an optical system and method that overcome at least the shortcomings described above.

Dispersion tolerant optical system and method


A stapler mechanism is described which contains a stapling assembly, and anvil assembly, firing means and knife means. These means are activated by a firing trigger. The anvil assembly is closed upon the stapling assembly by means of a closure trigger. The firing trigger is inoperable until the closure trigger has been activated. Another mechanism in the stapler is capable of locking the closure trigger after use so it does not spring open inadvertently before use of the firing trigger. Additionally, the stapler mechanism allows forward motion of both triggers and also is capable of allowing reverse motion of the closure trigger to open the mechanism.

In recent years surgery has markedly advanced through the performance of laparoscopic and endoscopic surgical procedures such as cholecystectomies, gastrostomies, appendectomies, and hernia repair. Also, the application of endoscopic surgical stapling and suturing instruments has been provided in cardiovascular and pulmonary surgery, as well as operative inventions in the gastrointestinal tract. Such endoscopic instruments are capable of providing hemostasis and also of cutting tissue. This reduces operating and recuperation time.
These stapling procedures are accomplished through a trocar assembly, which is a surgical instrument used to puncture a body cavity. The trocar contains a sharpened obturator tip and a trocar tube or cannula. The trocar cannula is inserted into the skin to access the body cavity, by using the obturator tip to penetrate the skin. After penetration, the obturator is removed and the trocar cannula remains in the body. It is through this cannula that surgical instruments are placed. Specifically, it is through this trocar cannula that surgical stapling instruments with cutting mechanisms are placed. One such trocar is the Endo-path.RTM.trocar manufactured by ETHICON ENDO-SURGERY, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nonetheless, certain deficiencies in current concepts for endosurgical stapling mechanisms have been recognized. One of the more important deficiencies is the fact that current stapling mechanisms can not cause clamping of tissue and firing of the stapler, including the knife mechanism, with the same position of the hand for the forward stroke of an actuator, such as a trigger. Thus, the user must aim the clamping mechanism to encapture the desirable tissue with one hand, and then, while making a forward trigger stroke with the opposite hand, cause the tissue to be stapled and cut. If the stapling mechanism provides a ratchet member for the actuator, this deficiency is really not overcome, for in such a mechanism there still must occur simultaneous clamping and stapling of the tissue. Then, if it is undesirable to staple the tissue in that location, the trigger must be fully reversed. This may result in inadvertent jamming of the system, and in some staplers this alternative is simply not capable of being performed.
Another perceived deficiency is that no current stapling mechanisms have a safety device in place which prevents firing of the stapler before tissue has been clamped. Typically, the stapling mechanism may begin to clamp tissue between an anvil jaw and a stapling jaw. However, in some instances, there will be firing of the stapling mechanism before the tissue is entirely clamped. The user may have the mechanism partially attached to tissue via partially expelled staples before the user has ascertained a desirable location of the stapler. In this way, once again, there is a certain amount of instability or uncertainty in applying such a device.
A design criteria in creating a system containing two separate mechanisms for clamping and firing tissue is the limitation of the human hand. Therefore, it is difficult to properly and conveniently position a pair of triggers or a pushbutton mechanism coupled with a trigger mechanism. Thus, there has been little focus or incentive to create stapling mechanisms whereby the user is capable of operating a stapler with two strokes, unless both can be accomplished in a one-handed operation without moving that hand from the handle of the instrument.
Naturally, it would be desirable to be able to perform these functions in a fully rotational system. This simply allows the user to obtain virtually any angle of approach to the surgical site without having to contort the arm or wrist in order to adequately approach the subject.
Also, there have been no mechanisms which provide opening and closure of a clamping mechanism occurring during reciprocating motion of a clamping trigger. What is desired would be to be able to forwardly or reversedly move a trigger and thereby obtain closure or opening.
Finally, it would also be desirable to have distal contact of the stapling jaws, and then proximal clamping. In this way, once distal contact is effectuated, the surgeon realizes and can actually visualize the amount of tissue clamped between the jaws. By distal contact is meant that the distal or far end of the anvil seats first on the gap spacing pin or cartridge. Without such distal contact, the surgeon may still be uncertain about the amount of tissue clamped, and therefore the firing force necessary to fire the mechanism.

Linear stapling mechanism with cutting means


To be able to do good color mapping between color encodings for gamuts with considerably different luminance dynamic range while not introducing significant color errors, we describe an image color processing apparatus (201) arranged to transform an input color (L,x,y) of a pixel specified in a color representation corresponding to a first luminance dynamic range into an output color (L*,x,y) of a pixel specified in a color representation corresponding to a second luminance dynamic range, which first and second dynamic ranges differ in extent by at least a multiplicative factor 1.5, comprising a tone mapping deformation unit (203) arranged to determine on the basis of an input tone mapping (301) and a quantity linearly related to the luminance (L) of the input color, an adjusted output luminance (L*, 309), wherein the determining is arranged so that the adjusted output luminance (L*, 309) obtained by applying the input tone mapping to the input luminance (L) of all possible input luminances in its extent of valid values [0,1] giving the highest output (L*,L_HDR), is not higher than a maximum luminance Lmax(x,y) which for the chromatic coordinates (x,y) of the input color is maximally achievable in the gamut corresponding to the second luminance dynamic range for those chromatic coordinates (x,y).

Color processing is a difficult task, especially when transforming (such as e.g. to obtain a color specification directly usable for driving a display, whereby the display can take care of handling its specifics, like e.g. a display dependent electro-optical rendering behavior or gamma) colors between color representations corresponding to an input and output luminance dynamic range which differ considerably, e.g. the largest one is at least 1.5 times larger than the smaller one. This can happen e.g. when transforming from High dynamic range (HDR) to Low dynamic range (LDR), or vice versa. HDR may refer to rendering on a display with higher peak brightness, and typically also deeper blacks, but also signal encoding with a higher captured scene dynamic range, or to be used with such a higher dynamic range display. The skilled reader understands if we say the representation corresponds to a particular dynamic range, that it is specified according to that range. A color specification means not so much (especially in the technical field of HDR encoding or HDR rendering) unless we specify which luminances correspond to the color coordinates (e.g. should one show a photo of a tapestry with the maximum brightness, or with a reduced brightness so that it looks more like a tapestry and less like a luminous object). E.g., in a relative RGB encoding, we may say that the white [1,1,1] corresponds with a maximum displayable peak brightness of 2000 nit (for a HDR display), and e.g. 2× less for an other ("LDR") display for which we will derive a new color specification. If the color is specified device dependently, the maximum of the dynamic range may be the actual display peak brightness, and for generic color encodings, one can consider the maximum encoding (e.g. 255,255,255) corresponding with a reference display peak brightness (e.g. 5000 nit). This principle can be applied in whatever way one encodes the color (e.g. in non-linear Lab, etc.).
Now prior art attempts to map from e.g. HDR to LDR have seen considerable difficulties in obtaining good (e.g. natural looking, or with the output/LDR colors reasonably matching the input HDR/colors at least in their chromatic appearance not their brightness or lightness) colors as output. At least three reasons contribute to this. Firstly, several color spaces used in practice are non-linear in an inconvenient way, and even then people don't always use them in the correct way, which leads to (sometimes difficult to predict) color errors, which then need considerable further correction. Secondly, different displays have their own inherent limitations, and an LDR display just cannot make as many bright colors as an HDR display. This may e.g. lead to choices in the top of the LDR gamut to make colors less saturated. Lastly, ultimately the quality of the colors is judged by the appearances to the human viewer, and this is also a highly complex process. A big mathematical issue when inappropriately mapping colors is already the clipping which occurs when mapping colors to non-realizable, out-of-gamut colors for the final display and/or output color space.
An example of a system which adapts an image for displaying on a display with a different dynamic range is provided in US2006/0104508. In the system, specular highlights are detected in an LDR image and the additional dynamic range of an HDR display is used to increase the brightness of the specular highlight. The system achieves this by applying a piecewise linear transformation.
Prior art like R. Mantiuk et al. "Color Correction for Tone Mapping," Eurographics Vol. 28 (2009), pp. 193-202, start by specifying a tone mapping in the luminance direction, and then apply this tone mapping on the luminances of the pixels in the input image. The then remaining color problems are handled, but it is still difficult to get good colors.
An object of our invention is to also have a color processing which can handle inter alia the mapping between a color representation for a higher and lower luminance dynamic range, which takes particular care of handling the chromatic appearance of the colors correctly. And preferably also we have a simple method, which can cheaply be incorporated in many apparatuses.

Luminance changing image processing with color constraints


The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device. In the method, an etching-back layer consisting of aluminum or copper is formed on a base substrate and a multilayer wiring board is manufactured on the etching-back layer. After that the etching-back layer is etched to be removed under the condition that the multilayer wiring board and the base substrate are not etched, so that the base substrate is separated from the multilayer wiring board. Accordingly, the base substrate can be reused.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device whose manufacturing cost was reduced and method of manufacturing the same, and particularly relates to a flip-chip type semiconductor device in which a semiconductor chip was mounted on a multilayer wiring board and method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Laid-open No. 2001-257288, in accordance with the demands of weight reduction in a semiconductor device and a reduction of a mounting area, semiconductor devices, particularly flip-chip type semiconductor devices, which are assembled by a bare chip mounting process have been noted.
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view showing a conventional flip-chip type semiconductor device. As shown in FIG. 1, in the conventional flip-chip type semiconductor device 318, an insulating substrate 311 is provided. And a conductive adhesive 313 is provided in the insulating substrate 311. Further, a multilayer wiring board 309 is provided on the front surface of the insulating substrate 311, and bumps 317 are provided on the back surface of the insulating substrate 311. The multilayer wiring board 309 and the bumps 317 are connected to each other with conductive adhesive 313. Further a semiconductor chip 314 is mounted on the surface of the multilayer wiring board 309, and the semiconductor chip 314 is covered with an insulating resin 316 to be supported and protected by the resin 316. The flip-chip type semiconductor device 318 is mounted on a substrate (not shown) through the bumps 317. The bumps 317 and the semiconductor chip 314 are electrically connected to each other with the multilayer wiring board 309 and the conductive adhesive 313 formed in the insulating substrate 311.
An excellent flatness is required for the multilayer wiring board 309. Therefore, the multilayer wiring board 309 is manufactured by the following steps. First, a supporting substrate (not shown), having high rigidity and being composed of metal such as copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), aluminum (Al) and the like, or an alloy-consisting of them as primary components, is prepared. Next, the multilayer wiring board 309 is formed on the supporting substrate. And, the supporting substrate is removed by etching so that only the multilayer wiring board 309 is left.
However, the above-described conventional arts have the following problems. That is, as mentioned above, the supporting substrate having the excellent rigidity is removed by etching after the multilayer wiring board has been once formed. Accordingly, when the next multilayer wiring board is formed, a new supporting substrate must be prepared, which results in increased cost.

Semiconductor device and method of manufacturing the same


A fluorescent composite resin substrate white light LED includes a fluorescent composite resin substrate, two conductive brackets, a light emitting unit, two conductive lines and a package material. The fluorescent composite resin substrate is formed from a mixture through a curing reaction. Each of the conductive brackets is partially connected to the substrate. The light emitting unit is disposed on the substrate. The conductive lines are connected to the light emitting unit and respectively connected to the conductive brackets. The package material is formed from a mixture through a curing reaction. By fixing the light emitting unit at the fluorescent composite resin substrate, when applied to white light LED operations, the present invention achieves effects of emitting light through six planes, having high light flux and good heat dissipation, and significantly increasing production yield rate and speed without incurring different color temperatures at front and reverse sides.

a) Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a fluorescent composite resin substrate white light light emitting diode (LED), and more particularly, to an LED substrate applied to a white light LED. The device utilizes a light emitting unit fixed on the fluorescent composite resin substrate to achieve effects of emitting light from six planes as well as having high light flux and good heat dissipation.                b) Description of the Prior Art
For many years, in a conventional light emitting diode (LED) chip-on-board (COB) technology, a light emitting element is mainly directly fixed on a substrate (aluminum, PCB (Printed Circuit Board) or ceramic). However, the above LED COB technology suffers from drawbacks of being capable of emitting light through only one single plane and having low light flux that cannot be effectively enhanced.
In view of the above drawbacks, a chip-on-glass (COG) technology is later developed. In the COG technology, a light emitting element is directly fixed on a glass substrate. Thus, the COG technology features emitting light through six planes and has high light flux.
However, the COG technology has following drawbacks.
1. Compared to conventional substrates (aluminum, PCB and ceramic), the glass substrate has poorer heat dissipation efficiency.
2. Compared to the COB technology, in the manufacturing process of the COG technology, the COG glass substrate is easily broken, resulting in a yield rate of only 60%. Further, the COG technology has a slow manufacturing process.
3. As the glass substrate contains no fluorescent powder whereas a package adhesive contains fluorescent powder, color temperatures at a front side and a reverse side when the chip emits light are different.
Therefore, there is a need for a solution that improves inadequate effects and practicability of the conventional COB and COG technologies.

Fluorescent composite resin substrate white light light emitting diode


A method of manufacture of an identification plate: comprises advancing a transparent sheet material having an opaque material in contact with one major surface thereof to a printing station, printing indicia in reverse on the other major surface of the sheet material, and securing the printed sheet material to a substrate having a retro-reflective surface such that the printed surface is in contact with, or at least adjacent to, the retro-reflective surface.

This invention relates to identification plates and, in particular, to plates which indicate the provenance of an object to which they are attached. Such plates are conventionally termed licence or number plates when attached to a motor vehicle.
From 01 Sep. 2001, each United Kingdom licence plate must conform to British Standard BSAU 145d which governs, inter alia, the impact resistance and the minimum retro-reflectivity of the plate. Similar although, in some cases, less stringent provisions exist across the entire European Union, as they do in most other countries across the world.
GB 2126386 A discloses a method of producing licence plates for a vehicle, in which indicia are printed onto a carrier. The carrier may be either a reflective surface or a plastics coating, such as a relatively thick transparent plastics sheet to provide structural support for the plate.
EP 0806752 A1 discloses an identification plate and a method of manufacture of such a plate wherein a rigid transparent substrate has indicia printed thereon. The resulting printed plate is then adhered to an opaque liner such that the indicia are visible through the transparent sheet.
It is known to print on to a nominally retro-reflective surface and then to adhere to that surface a lens, such as a clear polymer layer, to impart to that surface a retro-reflective character. The lens may be a transparent, relatively thick, acrylic layer applied over the retro-reflective surface or a relatively thin layer with a relatively thick backing layer to provide support, as is disclosed in WO 94/19769 A2.
Retro-reflective sheet material is typically a beaded substance which has a rough surface. Consequently, it is difficult to print on, so special formulations of sheet materials, which are able to 'take' the ink, special printing materials such as ribbons, together with the use of elevated print-head temperatures are required. Both of these factors increase the cost. The coarse surface structure of the specially formulated retro-reflective sheet materials can reduce print-head operating life and the elevated print-head temperatures can also reduce print-head lifetimes. It has also been found that print quality suffers at elevated print-head temperatures and with such rough surfaces.

Method for manufacturing an identification plate


A machining system that has (i) plural machining cells spaced along a path, each having a single-point-tool and a rapid-positioning assembly for positioning the tool for multiple insertions into a workpiece as well as rapid tool exchange at speed rates that approach or exceed one G; (ii) table means for presenting a table surface in a selected plane for each cell; (iii) workpiece means for each table surface having keying surfaces for lockingly mating with a reference point of such table surface; (iv) transfer means for rapidly replacing a machined workpiece with an unmachined workpiece on a table surface, the just-machined workpiece being transferred to the next table surface while the substituted workpiece is undergoing machining; and (v) programmed electrical control means for activating the positioning assemblies and transfer means.

1. Technical Field
The invention relates to machining systems utilizing electrical linear motors and, more particularly, to machining systems that use multiple tools, each independently positionable at high acceleration/deceleration rates.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Multi-axis positioners for light or heavy industrial machining use mechanical ball-screw drives (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,102,035 and 4,359,814). Such drives inherently suffer from slow wind-up which inhibits rapid positioning and thereby productivity. To increase productivity, a great number of machining cells need to be used, each at its own limited production rate. It is conventional in the U.S. automotive industry to shape a complex workpiece, such as an engine block or head, by transferring such workpiece, clamped on a fixture and pallet, along a series of machining stations where a specific surface is cut or finished by a dedicated tool (or cluster of dedicated tools) fed along a unitary axis. The workpiece must be transferred, with time-consuming effort, to other fixtures and/or pallets to expose a variety of faces to the feed axis of the tools. The percentage of in-cut time exercised by such a system is low due to the frequency of low speed workpiece transfer and due to the slow rates of tool positioning. Each tool carries out a task dedicated solely to one machining function with little modification over several years of use. The initial cost of fabricating and installing such nonflexible dedicated equipment with complex controls is very high not only due to their sophistication but also due to the large number of single purpose cells needed to complete the shaping of a specific engine block or head.
To spread out the initial high cost of equipment acquisition, minimum volume production requirements are imposed for such lines and such requirements are extremely high, i.e., 400,000-800,000 workpieces per year. Even if the capacity of a machining line, such as for a cylinder block, were reduced to 300,000 units per year (or 1000 units per day using two shifts) and dedicated multiple-spindle turret heads were incorporated in at least some of such machining cells (as is practiced by some Japanese automotive companies to introduce semiflexibility, see FIG. 1), the number of machining cells would still need to be at least about 40. This high number of machining cells is costly in initial aquisition, maintenance, and risk of down-time resulting from failure of a single cell. Such prior art manufacturing systems do not allow the automotive producer to respond quickly to market demand changes either for different engine block or head designs or for different volume levels of the existing block or head design.
It is an object of this invention to provide a new approach to machining systems that dramatically reduces the number of machining cells required in machining a given workpiece, permits continuous use of the machining line to flexibly produce different products in volumes such as 50,000-500,000 per year, improves repeatability and accuracy of machining, increases the number of machining tasks and rate of carrying out such tasks at each station, and reduces the handling time for workpieces between in-cut stages.


This disclosure describes techniques for processing data bits using pseudo-random deterministic bit-streams. In some examples, a device includes a pseudo-random bit-stream generator configured to generate bit combinations encoding first and second numerical values based on a proportion of the data bits in the sequence that are high relative to the total data bits in the sequence. The device also includes a stochastic computational unit configured to perform a computational operation on the bit combinations and produce an output bit-stream having a set of data bits indicating a result of the computational operation, wherein the data bits of the output bit-stream represent the result based on a probability that any data bit in the set of data bits of the output bit-stream is high.

Stochastic computing (SC) has been around for many years as a noise-tolerant approximate computing approach. Logical computation is performed on probability data represented by uniformly distributed random bit-streams. Image and video processing, digital filters, low-density parity check decoding and neural networks, have been the main target applications for SC. Low hardware cost and low power consumption advantages of this computing paradigm have encouraged designers to implement complex calculations in the stochastic domain.
Deterministic approaches to SC remove the random fluctuation and correlation problems of SC, producing completely accurate results with stochastic logic. For many applications of SC, such as image processing and neural networks, completely accurate computation may not be required for all input data. Decision-making on some input data can be done in a much shorter time using only a good approximation of the input values. While the deterministic approaches to SC are appealing by generating completely accurate results, the cost of precise results makes the deterministic approaches energy inefficient for the cases when slight inaccuracy is acceptable.

High quality down-sampling for deterministic bit-stream computing


A method of forming nitrogen-doped or other Group V-doped single-walled nanotubes including: forming a catalyst metal layer on a substrate; loading a substrate having the catalyst metal layer into a reaction chamber; forming an H2O or other plasma atmosphere in a reaction chamber; and forming the nitrogen-doped or other Group V-doped carbon nanotubes on the catalyst metal layer by supplying a carbon or other Group IV precursor and a nitrogen or other Group V precursor into a reaction chamber where a chemical reaction therebetween is generated in the H2O or other plasma atmosphere.

1. Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate to a method of forming carbon nanotubes, for example, a method of simply and easily forming nitrogen-doped or other Group V-doped, single-walled carbon nanotubes.
2. Description of the Related Art
A carbon nanotube may be a carbon allotrope and may be a material in which one carbon atom may be combined with other carbon atoms in a honeycomb shaped tube. The diameter of the honeycomb shaped tube may only be a few nanometers. Carbon nanotubes may have improved mechanical characteristics, electrical selectivity, field emission characteristics, and/or relatively highly efficient hydrogen storing medium characteristics.
A carbon nanotube may be a rolled graphite sheet forming a tube having a nano-size diameter, and may have a sp2 bonding structure. A carbon nanotube may have electrical conductor characteristics or semiconductor characteristics according to the rolling angle and the shape of the graphite sheet. Carbon nanotubes may be classified into single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs), according to the number of carbon nanotubes that constitute a wall. Also, a bundle form, in which a plurality of SWNTs is gathered, may be known as a rope nanotube.
Carbon nanotubes may be manufactured using a high synthetic technique, for example, a Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) method, a Thermal Chemical Vapor Deposition (TCVD) method, an electrolysis method, or a flame synthetic method.
Due to their improved electrical characteristics, carbon nanotubes may be used for manufacturing semiconductor devices, for example, CMOS devices. In general, a semiconductor manufacturing process and a semiconductor integration process must be performed at a temperature below about 500° C. to reduce product defects. However, when carbon nanotubes are grown at a temperature below about 500° C. using a conventional carbon nanotube synthetic method, defective carbon nanotubes may be grown because many impurities, for example, amorphous carbon, may be generated during the synthetic process. The defective carbon nanotubes may degrade the characteristics and performance of a semiconductor device.
Also, to manufacture a CMOS using a carbon nanotube-based transistor, an n-type and a p-type SWNT must be manufactured. However, a technique that may dope a donor during the SWNT synthetic process has not been developed. In general, an intrinsic SWNT may have a p-type characteristic by surface adsorption of oxygen in the air. Also, a technique that may synthesize the n-type SWNT has not been developed. To solve this problem, a method of manufacturing an n-type transistor by adsorbing an alkali metal, for example, amine or potassium K having an electron-donating group on a surface of the SWNT, may have been attempted. However, the doping material adsorbed on the surface of the SWNT may be unstable, that is, the doped material may break away at any time. Therefore, the doping of a material by adsorption on the surface of the SWNT remains an unreliable device characteristic.

Method of forming nitrogen-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes


A system for mirroring source data to two or more mirrors includes first and second processors designated to communicate with first and second remote mirrors, respectively. First and second queues in the system receive requests to mirror source data at first and second mirrors, respectively. Each of the queues is periodically scanned by a processor corresponding to the mirror associated with that queue. A mask provides information indicative of any pending mirror requests for sending the source data to the first and second mirrors.

This invention relates to data storage, and in particular, to remote mirroring of data.
Content providers on the internet often maintain multiple content servers, each of which contains a complete copy of the content contained in a master server. By distributing the task of serving content among multiple content servers, content providers reduce the latency associated with satisfying a request for content. The process of maintaining a complete and current copy of the content stored on a master server is referred to as xe2x80x9cmirroring.xe2x80x9d The content servers on which such copies are maintained are referred to as xe2x80x9cmirror servers,xe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cmirrors.xe2x80x9d
In a distributed content serving system, it is desirable for a change in the content stored on the master server to be propagated among all the mirrors as quickly as possible. It is also desirable for this propagation to occur automatically and without significantly increasing the latency associated with serving content.
Mirroring is also used to safeguard data in a distributed data storage system. In this application, the content of a mirror is updated in response to changes in the content of a primary data storage system. This, however, introduces latency associated with establishing communication between the primary data storage system and the mirror.
To reduce latency, it is desirable to locate the mirror proximate to the data storage system. This results in faster and more reliable communication between the primary data storage system and the mirror. However, such a mirror does not protect the data against destruction of the premises on which both the primary data storage system and the mirror are located.
In a data storage system, it may be desirable to provide another mirror at a location that is distant from the primary data storage system. However, the introduction of a second mirror means that changes to the data on the primary data storage system must be propagated to two different mirrors. This can increase the latency associated with making changes to the data in the primary data storage system.
A data storage system incorporating the invention reduces latency associated with mirroring source data at more than one remote mirror by providing data structures that enable a plurality of processors to concurrently mirror source data to more than one remote mirror. This enables a first processor to be mirroring source data at a first remote mirror at the same time that a second processor is mirroring the same source data at a second remote mirror.
The invention provides for mirroring source data at a plurality of remote mirrors by preparing a mask indicating a plurality of remote mirrors designated to receive the source data. This mask is then posted in a common memory that is accessible to a plurality of processors. Each of the processors is associated with at least one of the remote mirrors. For each mirror, a mirror request is placed on a queue associated with that mirror.
Each processor in the plurality of processors scans a queue associated with one of the remote mirrors. When a processor identifies a mirror request in a queue associated with a remote mirror, it attempts execution of the mirror request. The processor then modifies a mask in response to an outcome of that attempt.
In synchronous mirroring, the method provides for the inspection of a status field maintained in the common memory. Through inspection of the status field, it is possible to determine whether each of the processors has attempted to mirror the source data, and if so, whether any of the attempts were unsuccessful.
In the case of synchronous mirror, the method can also provide for the creation of a request buffer in the common memory. The request buffer includes information identifying the source data and, optionally, information derived from the source data that can be used to validate the source data. Each mirror request associated with the mirroring operation includes a pointer to the request buffer.
Optionally, an elapsed time since the queuing of the mirror request is monitored. If this elapsed time exceeds some threshold value, the status field is modified to indicate withdrawal of the mirror request.
The mask identifies where the source data is to be mirrored. In one embodiment, the mask has a plurality of mask elements, each of which corresponds to a remote mirror. To prepare the mask, a subset of the plurality of mask elements is modified to indicate the existence of source data to be sent to a mirror corresponding to the selected mask element.
In some cases, there is an unsuccessful attempt to mirror source data. As a result, an optional feature includes selecting, from a mask, a mask element corresponding to the remote mirrors and modifying the mask element in response to the outcome of the attempt.
Once all mirroring events have been completed, it is useful to send an acknowledgement signal to a host to indicate an outcome of the storage operation. The method can thus include determining whether all mirror requests for mirroring the source data have been attempted. This can be achieved by modifying a first mask if a mirroring attempt was unsuccessful and modifying a second mask if the attempt was successful. Success or failure of each mirroring attempt can be determined on the basis of the first and second mask. To determining whether all mirror requests for mirroring the source data have at least been attempted, the method provides for comparing the first and second masks with a third mask, the third mask containing information indicative of which remote mirrors are to receive the source data.
The invention also includes a system for carrying out the foregoing methods. Such a system includes first and second processors designated to communicate with first and second remote mirrors, respectively. First and second queues in the system receive requests to mirror source data at first and second mirrors, respectively. Each of the queues is periodically scanned by its associated processor. As used herein, the term xe2x80x9cperiodicallyxe2x80x9d does not imply a regular, fixed period; it instead means xe2x80x9cfrom time to timexe2x80x9d, or xe2x80x9casynchronouslyxe2x80x9d. A mask provides information indicative of any pending mirror requests for sending the source data to the first and second mirrors.


In a method for performing wireless connection among devices in a wireless communication system, the method according to the present invention comprises activating a wireless connection function; transmitting a ping tone for discovering one or more second devices in the surroundings; receiving a response tone with respect to the ping tone from the one or more second devices; based on the received response tone, transmitting a connection request tone for requesting wireless connection to the second device; and receiving a connection, response tone corresponding to a response of the connection request tone from the second device.

According to the wide spread of smartphones, multimedia contents, screens, and non-contents are shared in various ways and frequently among devices through wireless communication technologies.
As one example, Bluetooth is used for sharing a photo, music file, address book, or memo. Likewise, Wi-Fi P2P technology is used for sharing screens to allow a screen of one device to appear on a screen of another device.
In order to perform a series of tasks involved in the contents sharing above, however, a wireless connection function has to be activated beforehand by the user for each of the devices participating in the contents sharing, and a process for discovering a target device compliant with the corresponding wireless communication technology should be performed.
However, a user who has low understanding of the wireless communication function offered by existing technologies may be readily confronted with a difficulty of handling the devices while directly trying to activate the corresponding wireless communication function. Also, even for a user who is familiar with the wireless communication function, he has to endure the inconvenience of activating the corresponding wireless communication functions one by one.
Moreover, even if the corresponding wireless communication function is activated at all, the user may still find it difficult to select a target device because of device-dependent names unfamiliar to the user (for example, model name or hardware address) during a process of discovering the target device and displaying a list of discovered devices to the user.
Furthermore, even if the user is familiar with the device-dependent name of the corresponding device, the user still has to face an inconvenience of searching for the target device one after another in case a list of searched devices is large.

Method and device for performing wireless connection between devices in wireless communication system


A method is provided to scroll a calendar user interface (UI) comprising: displaying on a device display screen a visible range of a calendar UI, wherein the calendar UI includes a display grid that includes individual date display panes that are associated with individual dates, wherein the date panes are arranged in rows corresponding to weeks and columns corresponding to days of the week and wherein the visible range of the calendar UI includes multiple rows of date panes; receiving user input to indicate a scroll direction in which to scroll the display grid to display a different date range that includes earlier or later date display panes; and in response to the user input, scrolling the calendar UI by rows to the different date range.

Electronic calendars typically display calendar entries based upon individual predetermined lists of events, such as a calendar for a single person, single room, or single project. While some prior calendars allow overlaying of multiple lists on the same view, they generally have limited capability to enable dynamic combinations and selection of entries across multiple lists. While calendars have been employed routinely to plan and organize activities, they generally have not been used for dynamic communication and dynamic information sharing. There is a need for an electronic calendar system that facilitates dynamic communication and dynamic information sharing to thereby facilitate collaboration and the organization, management of people and projects.

Continuously scrollable calendar user interface