A seat belt retractor has a low tension mode in which seat belt webbing engages an occupant of a vehicle with a reduced force. A frame supports a spool on which belt webbing is wound for rotation in belt withdrawal and belt retraction directions. A sun gear is rotatable with the spool. A planet carrier rotatable relative to the sun gear rotatably supports a planet gear in meshing engagement with the sun gear. A ring gear rotatable relative to the spool and to the planet carrier has internal teeth in meshing engagement with the planet gear and external ratchet teeth. A spring connected between the planet carrier and the frame biases the spool in the belt retraction direction. A pawl is engageable with the external ratchet teeth on the ring gear to block rotation of the ring gear in a belt retraction direction to place the retractor in the low tension mode. A cam is rotatable relative to the spool and is engageable with the pawl to hold the pawl out of engagement with the ratchet teeth of the ring gear to disengage the low tension mode.

The present invention relates to a vehicle seat belt retractor, and particularly relates to a vehicle seat belt retractor having a mechanism for reducing tension in seat belt webbing.
A known vehicle seat belt retractor comprises a spool for holding a wound length of seat belt webbing. The spool is supported for rotation in belt withdrawal and belt retraction directions. A spring biases the spool to rotate in the belt retraction direction to wind up the webbing onto the spool. The spool rotates in the belt withdrawal direction against the force of the spring when the webbing is unwound from the spool to be buckled around a vehicle occupant. After the webbing is buckled around the vehicle occupant, slack in the webbing is wound onto the spool because the spool is rotated in the winding direction by the spring. The webbing is thereafter held against the vehicle occupant by the force of the spring biasing the spool to rotate in the belt retraction direction. The force of the spring biasing the spool in the belt retraction direction and holding the webbing against the vehicle occupant may cause discomfort to the occupant.
Mechanisms for minimizing the force of the spring biasing the spool and holding the seat belt webbing against the occupant are known. U.S. Pat. No. 4,301,977 discloses a retractor having a spring with one end connected to a retractor housing and its other end connected to a disk rotatably supporting a plurality of planet gears. The planet gears mesh with a sun gear that is attached to a retractor spool around which a seat belt is wound. The planet gears also mesh with a ring gear that is rotatable relative to the retractor spool. Axially extending studs rotatably support the planet gears and extend into arcuate slots connected with the ring gear. A rocker block associated with the ring gear engages a fixed surface of the housing to prevent the ring gear from moving in the belt retraction direction.
Withdrawal of the belt causes the sun gear to rotate in the belt withdrawal direction which urges the planet gears to rotate in the opposite direction, which, in turn, produces a force in the belt retraction direction against the ring gear. Since the ring gear is prevented from rotating in the belt retraction direction, the engagement of the planetary gears with the ring gear causes the planetary gear studs to move in the belt withdrawal direction. The studs engage the ends of the slots in the ring gear and overcome the force of the rocker block to rotate the ring gear in the belt withdrawal direction. Thus, the sun gear, the disk and the ring gear all move in the belt withdrawal direction.
Upon buckling of the seat belt, the spring acts through the planet gears and sun gear on the spool of the retractor in a low tension mode. The spring urges the planetary gear studs to move in the belt retraction direction in the arcuate slots in the ring gear. The rocker block holds the ring gear stationary, causing the planetary gears to rotate in a counterclockwise direction about their axes which causes the sun gear to rotate in the belt retraction direction. Thus, the retractor is in a low tension mode due to the gear reduction between the planet gears and the sun gear.
When the seat belt is unbuckled, the planetary gear studs move in the belt retraction direction until they engage the ends of the arcuate slots in the ring gear. One of the planetary gear studs engages the rocker block to pivot the rocker block in a direction which allows the ring gear to move in the belt retraction direction. Thus, the sun gear, the disk and the ring gear all move in the belt retraction direction to retract the belt onto the spool.

Seat belt retractor with an automatic belt tension reducer


A method is applied to reduce a range in variation of a target spin speed for a rotatable medium in a data storage device. The method includes rotating the rotatable medium at the target spin speed, determining an initial position of a head relative to a surface of the rotatable medium, determining a target position of the head relative to the surface of the rotatable medium, calculating an adjusted spin speed based on the initial position and the target position, sending a signal to rotate the rotatable medium at the adjusted spin speed, repositioning the head from the initial position to the target position, and sending a signal to rotate the rotatable medium at the target spin speed.

Over the past few years, notebook computers have become progressively thinner and lighter, and battery technology has improved significantly; but, though both thinner and lighter, notebook computers have incorporated ever-more powerful CPU's, larger and higher resolution screens, more memory and higher capacity hard disk drives. Feature-rich models include a number of peripherals such as high-speed CD-ROM drives, DVD drives, fax/modem capability, and a multitude of different plug-in PC cards. Each of these features and improvements creates demand for power from system batteries. Many portable electronics, such as MP3 players and personal digital assistants, now use rotatable data storage devices as well, and by their nature and size place great demands for power on batteries.
Many manufacturers of rotatable data storage devices reduce demand on batteries by employing power savings schemes; for example, many manufacturers ramp down and stop a rotating storage medium after a period of inactivity. Rotating the storage medium can consume power and it can be desirable to implement schemes that minify the amount of excess power consumed in rotating the storage medium. A scheme to reduce excess power consumption can include improving the ability of a rotating storage medium to maintain spin speed when rotating to avoid consuming power to correct the spin speed.

Spindle speed control using feed-forward estimation in a hard disk drive

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


An organic compound capable of forming a hydrogen molecular compound such as a hydrogen clathrate is brought in contact with hydrogen gas in a pressurized state. It enables relatively light-weight and stable storage of hydrogen at or near the ordinary temperature and the ambient pressure and easy takeoff of the stored hydrogen.

Recently, new clean energy systems in which hydrogen is used as an energy medium have been proposed as a countermeasure against global environmental problems due to emission of CO2. Among such energy systems, fuel cell is based on an energy conversion technology of taking electric energy out of hydrogen and oxygen by converting chemical energy, produced when hydrogen and oxygen react with each other to form water, into electric energy. This technology draws attention as the most important next-generation technology to be used as a power source alternative to gasoline engine for vehicles, an on-site electric generator for household use, and a DC power supply for IT (information technology) use.
However, the biggest problems of the hydrogen fuel are storage and transport thereof.
There are various methods have been proposed as method for storing hydrogen. As one of the methods, there is a method of storing hydrogen in gaseous phase into a high-pressure gas cylinder. This storage at high pressure is simple, but requires a container having thick wall. Accordingly, the container is so heavy that the efficiency of storage and transport is poor. Therefore, for example, the application to automobiles is difficult because weight saving counts in automobile manufacture. On the other hand, in case of storing hydrogen in liquid phase, the efficiency of storage and transport is improved as compared to the storage in gaseous phase. However, high-purity hydrogen is required to make the hydrogen in liquid phase and a special container capable of withstanding cryogenic temperature because the temperature of liquefaction process is an extremely low temperature of −252.6° C. That is, there is economical problem. There is another proposal of using hydrogen storage alloy. However, there are problems that the alloy itself is heavy and that, in case of Mg based hydrogen storage alloy having lighter weight, the temperature for emitting stored hydrogen is high near 300° C. There is further another proposal of using porous carbon material such as carbon nanotube. However, there are a lot of problems that the repeatability of hydrogen storage is low, that the storage under high pressure condition is required, that it is difficult to manufacture carbon nanotubes, and the like.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of storing hydrogen to be useful as a novel storage and transport method capable of solving the aforementioned problems of the prior art, and capable of achieving the relatively light-weight and stable storage of hydrogen at or near the ordinary temperature and the ambient pressure and allowing easy takeoff of the stored hydrogen.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a hydrogen clathrate to be useful as a novel storage and transport method capable of solving the aforementioned problems of the prior art, and which is relatively light weight and can store hydrogen at or near the ordinary temperature and the ambient pressure and to provide a production method thereof.

Method for storing hydrogen, hydrogen clathrate compound and production method thereof


An n-type GaAs layer as a buffer layer, an n-type (Al.sub.0.7 Ga.sub.0.3).sub.0.5 In.sub.0.5 P layer, an active layer, a p-type (Al.sub.0.7 Ga.sub.0.3).sub.0.5 In.sub.0.5 P layer, a thin layer of Al.sub.x Ga.sub.1-x As layer (x.gtoreq.0.9), an Al.sub.0.7 Ga.sub.0.3 As layer as a current spreading layer and a high doped p-type GaAs cap layer are sequentially grown on an n-type GaAs layer of a substrate. As the active layer, an (Al.sub.x Ga.sub.1-x).sub.0.5 In.sub.0.5 P based bulk or multi-quantum well is employed. As the current spreading layer, an Al.sub.x Ga.sub.1-x As (x.gtoreq.0.7) is employed. The current spreading layer is a p-type III-IV compound semiconductor having wider band gap than a band gap of a material used for forming the active layer, and being established a lattice matching with the lower p-type cladding layer. After mesa etching up to the cladding layer, growth of selective oxide is performed at a part of the AlGaAs layer. BY this, a block layer (selective oxide of AlGaAs) is formed. By this blocking layer, a light output power and a coupling efficiency are improved.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an optical device to be employed for optical communication system. More specifically, the invention relates to a high-brightness visible light-emitting diode (LED) to be employed as high-efficiency light source in a plastic optical fiber (POF) based optical data-link system. Such LED is also applicable for an outdoor display device, an automotive indicator and so forth.
2. Description of the Related Art
A light output efficiency of the conventional light-emitting diode (LED) is mainly dependent on a structure and shape of an electrode to be used for injecting the current to junction. Conventionally fabricated surface-emission type light-emitting diode has a quadrangular or circular-shaped upper electrode located at the center portion thereof. The area and shape of the upper electrode significantly influence the light output efficiency. For achieving higher light output efficiency, it is required to make the area of the electrode smaller and the area of a light-emitting surface wider.
In the conventional LED, while employment of the quadrangular or circular-shaped electrode positioned at the center may facilitate fabrication, but it may cause disruption of gaussian beam pattern of an output beam. Especially, it may make the beam having the peak of the emission pattern at the circumferential edge portion of the electrode. The emission pattern attenuate according to increasing of distance from the electrode. This is caused by the fact that the current is concentrated at the center portion and not distributed at the position, distanced from the electrode. A beam intensity to be attained is directly proportional to a current density thereat. The conventional LED having wide beam pattern as set forth above cannot be employed in an optical data-link system. That is, even when a large core fiber is employed, the coupling efficiency is held low due to emission pattern.
One of typical examples of the conventional surface emission type LED is shown in FIGS. 1A, 1B and 2. FIGS. 1A and 1B show sections along an upper surface of an LED and an approximated near-field-emission. In FIGS. 1A and 1B, an n-type GaAs buffer layer 2, an n-type (Al.sub.x Ga.sub.1-x)In.sub.1-x P layer 3, an active layer 4, a p-type (Al.sub.x Ga.sub.1-x).sub.0.5 In.sub.0.5 P layer 5, a current spreading layer 7 and a p-type GaAs cap layer 8 are grown sequentially on an n-type GaAs substrate 1. For a p-type contact, quadrangular, circular or cross shaped electrode 28 is employed in the prior art. As the current spreading layer 7, a thick Al.sub.0.7 Ga.sub.0.3 As layer is normally employed.
In FIG. 2, an approximated near-field-pattern of a light intensity 30 for LED having a quadrangular or circular shaped electrode located at the center, is shown. As shown, the light intensity 30 is maximum around the peripheral edge portion of the electrode and becomes lower at distance position from the electrode. This represents crowding of the current at the center and not distributing far away for the electrode. In this case, it is impossible to enhance the output efficiency as expected. In order to avoid crowding of current around the electrode, a blocking layer 31 is typically employed in front of the AlGaAs layer (current spreading layer) 7. FIG. 3 shows another example of the conventional LED having the blocking layer 31. Requirement of regrowth makes production cost of the LED higher. Also, darkness at the center portion in the case of circular electrode makes the coupling efficiency lowers even with a large core fiber. It is highly desirable to provide an LED structure which can provide high coupling efficiency and is suitable for mass scale production.
III-V semiconductor based visible LED (wavelength is in a range from 580 to 670 nm) which has quadrangular/circular shaped electrode at the center, have been disclosed in various publications and patent publications. In every case, quadrangular or circular shaped electrode provided at the center is used as upper contact for injecting the current. One of typical examples can be found in the paper of Sugawara et al., "Japan Journal of Applied Physics, Part 1, Vol. 31, No. 8, pp 2446 to 2451, 1992". In this report, a cross shaped electrode along with blocking layer were used in the surface-emission type LED.
However, the light output efficiency is still beyond its practical application. To enhance current spreading outside the contact, a thick window layer having low resistivity is required. Even with such thick window layer, the current spreading outside the contact is limited to a certain level. Thus, the light intensity is much lower than that required for practical application. However, in application, such as short distance data-link system, especially based on POF, employment of the conventional LED exhibits low coupling efficiency and thus is impractical in a POF based communication system. For POF based data link application, it would be highly desirable to design the LED which offers not only high brightness but also high coupling efficiency. In addition, it is highly desirable to reduce a fabrication cost as low as possible in order to contribute for lowering of a cost for the system.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. Heisei 2-174272 discloses a high brightness LED. In the disclosed art, the brightness of the LED is enhanced employing n-p-n-p structure under the contact, which assists for spreading the current outside the contact. The fabrication process of the conventional LED as disclosed in the above mentioned publication includes a first step of sequentially growing of an N-type junction layer, a P-type light emitting layer and an N-type transparent layer on an N-type semiconductor substrate, a second step of performing photo-etching for the N-type transparent layer, a third step of performing diffusion of Zn for forming a current spreading region, a fourth step of performing photo-etching for isolation of elements and polishing of the lower portion of the element, and fifth step of forming electrode on upper and lower portions of the element. The main drawback of the disclosed invention is that prior to form p-type contact, a mesa structure reaching to the active region has to be formed in a light emitting surface to define a current path. Also, a dopant, such as Zn, has to be diffused at high temperature environment. The post-growth high temperature treatment for Zn diffusion influences on performance characteristics due to degradation of the active region. As the light emitting surface with high p-doping is used, a large fraction of light (depending upon the light energy) can be absorbed in the diffused layer. In fabrication of this type of LED, several times of processes are required to cause high fabrication cost of the LED. In addition, difficulty may be encountered in fabrication of high speed LED for high capacitance caused by wide contact area.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 3-20 190287 discloses a high brightness LED. In the disclosed conventional LED, a plurality of light emitting regions of mesa structure are arranged on a direction. Each of the light emitting regions is formed so that edges of the light emitting region perpendicular to the arranging direction thereof become forward mesa structure and remaining edges parallel to the arranging direction become reverse mesa structure. And an electrode is lead from only one of edges having forward mesa structure. In such LED array, for facilitating wire bonding, the contact was made on the upper layer following the mesa formation. In this case, the shape of the contact is varied to achieve high light output. The disclosed prior art is completely related to the LED array, and since the mesa structure is required to be formed prior to the electrode formation, there should have difficulties in formation of the electrode unless a thick contact is formed. This is not only results in increasing of the fabrication cost of the LED, but also impractical for application in fabrication of single LED.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 5-211345 discloses an LED. In the disclosed prior art, between a p-type clad layer and a cap layer, an n-type current blocking layer is provided. In conjunction therewith, a portion to be the peripheral edge of the upper electrode in the current blocking layer is converted into p-type by diffusion or ion implantation of a p-type impurity through a portion of a light extraction surfaces on the cap layer where an upper electrode is not mounted. In such prior art, the current blocking layer, the type of which is opposite type (p or n type) of compound semiconductor, and diffusion at high temperature are used for fabrication of the LED. In addition, the configuration of the upper electrode of the LED is impractical to be employed as a light source in the optical data-link system for low coupling efficiency. Furthermore, high temperature treatment degrades the optical characteristics due to dopant diffusion and also crystal defect.
The Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 4-174567 discloses a high brightness LED array to be employed in a printer. The disclosed conventional surface emission type light emitting diode array has a plurality of surface emission type light emitting diodes extracting a light generated in a plurality of active layers provided on a common substrate, through light extracting surfaces formed at opposite side of the substrate. Also, a light reflector layer of semiconductor multiple layers are provided. The light reflector layers are respectively provided in between active layer of surface emission type light emitting diode and the common substrate for reflecting the light by light wave interference. In such prior art, a bottom distributed bragg reflector layer (DBR) is used for reflecting the light back from the substrate. In this case, the same idea for fabricating the surface emission laser is implemented. For the DBR, pairs of GaAs/AlAs is used for reflecting a 880 nm wavelength light toward the substrate. The types and number of pairs to be used in the DBR should be dependent on the output emission wavelength. Also, the same DBR cannot be used in the visible LED where 600 to 650 nm wavelength are concerned.
Namely, the disclosed LED array can be used in the printer but cannot be employed in the data link system. This is because the configuration of the upper electrode is the same as that of the conventional LED as set forth above. The coupling efficiency with a fiber becomes quite low as such LED is employed.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Heisei 4-259263 discloses a visible LED employing InAlGaP. The disclosed conventional semiconductor light emitting element is fabricated by sequentially growing n-type clad layer formed of InGaAlP type material, active layer and p-type clad layer, on an n-type GaAs substrate to form a double heterostructure portion. A p-type intermediate band gap layer is formed on the double heterostructure portion, and a p-type contact layer is selectively formed on the intermediate band gap layer. The semiconductor light emitting element is consisted of an active layer formed with an ordered layer having natural super lattice, and the intermediate band gap layer 15 formed with a non-ordered layer, in which the natural super lattice is extinguished by Zn diffusion. By making the band gap of the intermediate band gap layer greater than the band gap of the active layer, the light from the light emitting region can be extracted without blocking by the electrode at the light extracting side. In the disclosed prior art, an additional layer of InGaP, band gap wider than the layer used in active region is used in order to avoid Zn diffusion into the active region. No additional layer for current spreading is used. As set forth above, this type of the visible LED with centrally located circular shaped electrode can not be used in the short distance data link system.
As explained in the above, the LED structure so far proposed, has light output and coupling efficiency, not enough for using in the short distance data link system, especially where POF based system are concerned. This is because, conventional LED has low output power and also low coupling efficiency with the POF. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to design a high brightness visible LED which could be fabricated in low cost and suitable for mass scale production.

Surface-emission type light-emitting diode and fabrication process therefor


A sensor assembly and coupling arrangement for a rotary disk refiner. The sensor assembly includes a housing formed by a base and frustoconical cap that has a sensing element carrying bulb extending outwardly therefrom. The coupling arrangement includes a conduit arrangement that is received in one or more aligned preexisting instrument ports of the refiner and that releasably couples with a connector puck. The puck is carried by the backside of a refiner disk segment that lies next to the refiner disk segment that is equipped with one or more sensor assemblies. Preferably, a flexible hose communicates sensor wiring from a sensor manifold that holds a plurality of sensor assemblies to the connector puck. The sensor manifold preferably is carried by the backside of the sensor refiner disk.

Many products we use everyday are made from fibers. Examples of just a few of these products include paper, personal hygiene products, diapers, plates, containers, and packaging. Making products from wood fiber, fabric fiber and the like, involves breaking solid matter into fibrous matter. This also involves processing the fibrous matter into individual fibers that become fibrillated or frayed so they more tightly mesh with each other to form a finished fiber product that is desirably strong, tough, and resilient.
In fiber product manufacturing, refiners are devices used to process the fibrous matter, such as wood chips, fabric, and other types of pulp, into fibers and to further fibrillate existing fibers. The fibrous matter is transported in liquid stock to each refiner using a feed screw driven by a motor.
Each refiner has at least one pair of circular ridged refiner disks that face each other. During refining, fibrous matter in the stock to be refined is introduced into a gap between the disks that usually is quite small. Relative rotation between the disks during operation fibrillates or grinds fibers in the stock as the stock passes radially outwardly between the disks.
One example of a refiner that is a disk refiner is shown and disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,508. However, many different kinds of refiners are in use today. For example, there are counterrotating refiners, double disk or twin refiners, and conical disk refiners. Conical disk refiners are often referred to in the industry as CD refiners.
During operation, many refiner parameters are monitored. Examples of parameters include the power of the motor coupled to a rotor carrying at least one refiner disk, the mass flow rate of the stock slurry being introduced into the refiner, the force with which opposed refiner disks are being forced together, the flow rate of dilution water being added in the refiner to the slurry, and the refiner gap.
It has always been a goal to monitor conditions in the refining zone between the pairs of opposed refining disks. However, this has always been a problem because the conditions in the refining zone are rather extreme making it rather difficult to accurately measure parameters in the refining zone, such as temperature and pressure.
Sensors have been used in the past to monitor parameters relating to refiner operation that include, for example, consistency, stock pressure, stock temperature, dilution flow water rate, refiner gap, the pressure or force urging one refiner disc toward the other, refiner energy use, and other parameters. Most of the sensors employed to measure these parameters were not located in the refining zone. As a result, while useful information was obtained to help make refiner control decisions, there was often a time lag that occurred from the time that changes actually occurred in the refining zone to when the sensor or sensors monitoring one or more of the parameters detected a change. This often lead to an operator of the refiner or an automatic refiner control system making a change to a refiner control parameter, such as refiner gap, dilution water flow rate, chip mass flow rate, refiner disc pressure or force, or refiner disc best because it may not have been truly based upon actual conditions in the refiner zone. As a result, refiner process control changes are typically infrequently made so as to permit operation of the refiner to converge or settle to a steady state operating condition. Often, this takes a great deal of time, typically hours, for it to be determined whether the change made by the operator of the automatic refiner control system had the desire effect. If it did not, it is possible that the quality of the resultant fiber product ultimately produced may not meet quality control standards. When this happens, the fiber product may have to be scrapped or sold at reduced cost. For example, where the fiber product is paper, this time lag can cause the fiber that is outputted by the refiner to have a lower quality than desired. This can cause paper made with the fiber to fail to meet quality control criteria for strength or some other parameter. When this happens, the paper may be scrapped by putting it into a beater so it can be reused to make other paper or it is sold at a reduced price as job lot. More recently, attempts have been made to locate sensors in close proximity to the refiner zone. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,502,774 discloses a plurality of spaced apart bores in the refining surface of a refiner disc. Temperature sensors are disposed in the bores such that the sensing element is located below the bottom of an adjacent groove of the disc in which it is disposed. While this sensor assembly is capable of outputting a temperature measurement, the measurement outputted may not accurately reflect the temperature of stock in the refining zone. First, since the sensing element is located below the bottom of an adjacent groove, it can measure the temperature of the material of the refiner disc that surrounds the sensor assembly. Since refiner discs are typically made of metal and possess a considerable amount of mass, the temperature of material often differs, sometimes quite significantly, from the temperature of stock in the refining zone. As a result, temperature response is quite slow and not indicative of the actual temperature of stock in the refining zone.
Such sensor arrangements have been used in the past, but have not been satisfactory because of the effects of thermal inertia caused by the surrounding mass of the refiner disc. Refiner control systems that receive temperature data from such sensors, are not as effective in controlling refiner operation because of this inherent time lag. Due in part to this, the performance of these control systems has been less than optimal, leaving a great deal of room for improvement.
The reliability and robustness of sensor assemblies has also been an issue because of the rather harsh conditions to which they are exposed in the refining zone. They are subjected to vibration, shock, temperature fluctuations, and pressure fluctuations that all can occur during refiner operation. Any one of these things can cause sensor failure or a significant degradation in sensor performance. Where a sensor is part of an array or group of sensors mounted to a refiner disc or in between refiner discs, the loss or degradation in performance of just a single sensor can have a significant impact. One known problem that exists for temperature sensors is that the sensing element holder can loosen over time and get pushed axially into the refining disc in which it is disposed. When this happens, the steam tight seal between the sensor assembly and the refiner disc can be compromised thereby causing steam and stock to leak from the refining zone through the bore in the refining surface completely through the disc. Such a leak can lower the pressure in the refining zone, which can reduce refining efficiency, quality, and throughput. Worse yet, stock and steam leaking from damaged sensor as well as other sensors that have not been damaged. This ultimately can lead to failure of the entire array or group of sensors, effectively rendering the refiner control system inoperative. Where leakage becomes too great, production will have to be stopped to change the sensor refiner disc. When such down time is unplanned, it is particularly costly.
What is needed is a more reliable and robust sensor assembly that is better able to withstand vibration, impact, shock, pressure fluctuations, and temperature fluctuations during refiner operation while still being able to provide a temperature measurement that is representative of a temperature of stock in the refining zone. What is also needed is a sensor refiner assembly that minimizes effects caused by leakage of stock and steam from the refining zone should a leak develop through one of the sensor assembly receiving bores in the refining surface of a sensor refiner disc.


A gas inlet (4), a stop value (7), a pressure reducing valve (8) and a gas outlet (5) are arranged in series within a valve casing (3). The gas outlet (5) and an outlet (7b) of said stop valve (7) are communicated with each other by a gas charging passage (10) provided with a check valve (11). The gas outlet (5) is communicated with a secondary safety valve (28) by a gas inducting passage (29). When a gas cylinder (1) is charged with a gas, a gas charging mouthpiece (14) is attached to the gas outlet (5). Thereupon, an opening or closing portion (A) provided in the gas inducting passage (29) is closed by an actuating portion (30) provided in the mouthpiece (14). Thereby, a high-pressure gas is not released from the secondary safety valve (28).

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a valve assembly adapted to be attached to a gas cylinder containing a compressed gas and a liquefied gas for use in taking out and charging the gas and, more specifically, to a valve assembly enabling to take out a high-pressure gas within a gas cylinder from a gas outlet in a pressure-reduced state through a pressure reducing valve when the gas is taken out and to charge a high-pressure gas into the gas cylinder from the gas outlet when the gas is charged.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Among such valve assemblies, there is a one having the following construction as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Publication JPA 3-219172 which was proposed formerly by one of the inventors of the present invention.
Between a gas inlet and a gas outlet within a valve casing, a pressure reducing valve is disposed in series relative to a stop valve while a gas charging passage is provided in parallel relative to the pressure reducing valve. The gas charging passage is provided with a bypass check valve which serves to block a flow from the gas inlet to the gas outlet. A secondary safety valve is connected to an outlet of the pressure reducing valve and is provided with a backup pusher member.
The above-mentioned valve assembly is used as follows at the time of gas charging.
Prior to the gas charging working, a backup for the secondary safety valve is applied by the pusher member so as to prevent a blowout of the gas from the secondary safety valve which might be caused by a net pressure of the high-pressure gas to be charged. Then, the high-pressure gas is supplied to the gas outlet under an open condition of the stop valve. Thereupon, the high-pressure gas is supplied from the gas outlet to the gas cylinder through the bypass check valve and the gas inlet in order. After completion of the gas charging working, the backup for the safety valve is released.
Now, since such valve assemblies are necessarily fabricated in a compact structure corresponding to a size of the gas cylinder, also the secondary safety valve is made as small as possible.
At the time of gas charging, since it is necessary that an operator carries out the backup operation and the backup releasing operation of the small safety valve by his or her fingers, those operations are so difficult that the gas charging working takes much trouble. When the operator having gloves on effects the working, that problem becomes a great abuse because his or her fingers can't move freely.
Further, when the operator forgets the backup releasing operation by mistake after completion of the gas charging, the secondary safety valve doesn't work at the time of taking out the gas.


A display panel includes: a first substrate including a gate line and a data line crossing the gate line, a pixel portion formed in a display region and electrically connected to the gate and the data line and a gate driving part formed on a first peripheral region and electrically connected to the gate line; a second substrate having a light blocking layer formed on an area of the second substrate corresponding to the first peripheral region; and a seal line formed between the first substrate and the second substrate to confine a liquid crystal layer therebetween, the seal line being formed in an area outside an outer peripheral edge of the display region, the area outside the outer peripheral edge of the display region being closer to an outer peripheral edge of the light blocking layer than to the outer peripheral edge of the display region.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display panel and a method of manufacturing the display panel. More particularly, the present invention relates to a display panel capable of adjusting a transmittance of liquid crystal contained therein and a method of manufacturing the display panel.
2. Description of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display ("LCD") apparatus, which is a common flat panel display apparatus, has various desirable characteristics, such as being thin and lightweight, and having a low driving voltage, for example. As a result, the LCD apparatus is employed in various electronic devices such as monitors, notebook computers, mobile phones and large-sized television sets, for example.
The LCD apparatus typically includes an LCD panel which displays an image by controlling a transmittance of liquid crystal, a backlight assembly disposed under the LCD panel to provide the LCD panel with light, a printed circuit board ("PCB") for driving the LCD panel and a flexible printed circuit board ("FPCB") which electrically connects the PCB to the LCD panel.
The LCD panel typically includes a first substrate, a second substrate, a liquid crystal layer and a seal line. The first substrate includes a plurality of pixels and is electrically connected to the PCB through the FPCB. The second substrate faces the first substrate, and the liquid crystal layer is disposed between the first substrate and the second substrate. The seal line is also disposed between the first substrate and the second substrate to seal the liquid crystal.
The FPCB typically includes a gate circuit film to apply gate signals to the first substrate and a data circuit film to apply data signals to the first substrate.
The gate circuit film is electrically connected to a gate pad typically formed at a left lateral end portion, as viewed from a top perspective, e.g., viewing a top plan view, of the first substrate. Further, the data circuit film is electrically connected to a data pad typically formed at an upper lateral end portion, as viewed from the top perspective, of the first substrate. Additionally, a panel naming mark for indicating characteristics and records of the first substrate is generally formed at the left lateral end portion of the first substrate.
Since the gate pad and the panel naming mark are formed at the left lateral end portion of the first substrate and the data pad is formed at the upper lateral end portion of the first substrate, a size of the first substrate is necessarily larger than a size of the second substrate. In other words, the second substrate is physically smaller than the first substrate so that a left lateral end portion and the upper lateral end portion of the first substrate are exposed, e.g., not covered by the second substrate.
However, moisture may condense and form water droplets on the left lateral end portion and the upper lateral end portion of the first substrate. Further, the water droplets may spread on the left lateral end portion and the upper lateral end portion of the first substrate and thereby penetrate into a space between the first substrate and the second substrate, causing a display quality of the LCD apparatus to deteriorate.

Display panel and method of manufacturing the same


A device for hanging one or more cords, such as cables or ropes used to hang banners or electrical wires used to hang strings of decorative lights, includes (a) an elongate housing, (b) an interior member which is slidably disposed within the housing, and (c) biasing means, such as a coil spring. The interior member defines a notch proximate to its forward end. The notch is sized to accept and retain at least one cord. The interior member is slidable within the housing between a closed position and an open position. The biasing means is adapted to bias the interior member towards the closed position. When a cord is disposed within the notch, the biasing of the interior member towards the closed position firmly attaches the cord to the device.

Hanging cords, such as cables or ropes for bearing banners or electrical wires for bearing strings of holiday lighting, is a tedious and awkward affair. Ad hoc methods of attaching cords, for example with screws, nails or other metal fasteners, are time consuming and it may be dangerous if improperly employed. Moreover, such ad hoc fasteners are generally unsightly and need to be removed from the house or structure when the cords are taken down. Specialty hangers for hanging such cords have been proposed in the past. However, most such specialty hangers are also difficult to install, and tend to be unsightly, especially once the decorative lighting is removed.
Accordingly, there is a need for a new device capable of hanging such cords which avoids the aforementioned problems in the prior art.

Device for hanging cords from a structure


An apparatus for reading a flash memory includes a read controller operable to read the flash memory to yield read patterns, a likelihood generator operable to map the read patterns to likelihood values, a decoder operable to decode the likelihood values, a data state storage operable to retrieve the likelihood values for which decoding failed, and a selective dampening controller operable to select at least one dampening candidate from among the likelihood values for which decoding failed, to dampen the likelihood values of the at least one dampening candidate to yield dampened likelihood values, and to provide the dampened likelihood values to the decoder for decoding.

Non-volatile memories such as flash memory can be used to store data in a wide range of different applications, such as a solid state disk (SSD). Data is read from the non-volatile memory in blocks referred to herein as a "read unit" or as a "codeword" that is protected from error by included error correction, such as included parity bits generated using an error correction algorithm such as low density parity check (LDPC) encoding. In some cases, each read unit contains approximately 4K to approximately 32K bits of user data, plus error correction bits. Under command of a solid state disk controller, those bits are read from non-volatile memory cells, e.g., via an array access. The resulting data is decoded to apply the error correction algorithm, for example in a low density parity check decoder. If the data fails to converge in the low density parity check decoder, a retry operation can be used to re-read the data and to again apply the error correction algorithm. Although cell voltage is continuous, non-volatile memory cells generally provide only binary hard decisions after a read operation. When soft iterative decoding algorithms such as low density parity check decoding are used for error correction, it is desirable to convert the hard decisions generated by the non-volatile memory into soft decisions that give the decoder more information to help correct errors.

Flash channel with selective decoder likelihood dampening


A gas turbine blade having a plurality of shower head cooling holes (1), bored in a blade leading edge portion, are arranged along a single line which is biased so as to correspond to the direction of swirling flow in a combustor. The swirling flow is clockwise or counter-clockwise. In particular, if the flow is clockwise, the cooling holes (1) are biased to the left hand side, as seen from upstream of the blade, toward a blade hub side (HS) from a blade tip side (TS). Also, if the flow is counter-clockwise, the cooling holes (1) are arrayed on one line which is biased to the reverse side relative to the latter case. The influence of the swirling flow is thus avoided, and the pressure at each position of the cooling holes (1) is constant, so that uniform cooling can be attained.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a gas turbine blade having a shower head cooling mechanism.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an air cooled blade of a high temperature gas turbine, film cooling has now become established as an indispensable art. With reference to FIGS. 3 and 4, a conventional type of cooling is illustrated. FIG. 3 is a cross sectional view of the an air cooled blade, and FIG. 4 is a perspective view showing an arrangement of shower head cooling holes in a blade leading edge portion.
Generally in a high temperature gas turbine blade, as shown in FIG. 3, shower head cooling holes SC are provided in a blade leading edge portion. Film cooling holes FC are provided on an upstream side of the a blade dorsal portion and on a downstream side of a blade ventral portion and pin fin holes PC are provided in a blade trailing edge portion.
The shower head cooling holes SC, as shown in FIG. 4, are bored in a leading edge portion of a blade 2 so as to be arranged in a straight line toward a blade hub side HS from a blade tip side TS. Air is blown from the cooling holes in an opposite direction relative to the gas flow.
Shower cooling and film cooling relate to an art that enhances cooling efficiency by covering a blade surface with a cooling air that is blown over a gas flow surface.
If the cooling air is blown too strongly, however, the cooling air causes a peeling from the blade surface so as to mix with a main flow of the gas which results in a reduced effect of the film cooling, or if the cooling air is blown too weakly, it will not provide a proper cooling effect due to a shortage of the cooling air amount. Accordingly, these considerations must be taken into account so that the blade surface will be covered by an optimal film of air.


An approach for determining whether a current address is within an address range in which both the starting address of the range and the size of the address range are determined by variable register contents. Whereas the information in the variable register contents is in binary format, the current address is in a 2B format. The present invention provides logic for translating the binary formatted information so that it can be compared to the 2B formatted current address.

During microprocessor operation, every memory access must go through an address translation process before the data can be fetched from or written to the memory subsystem. Block Address Translation (BAT) is one of two possible methods for performing this necessary translation. In this process, the current address needing translation is compared to a range of addresses stored in BAT registers. If the current address is found to be within this range, the BAT circuitry will provide an indication that the BAT circuitry is capable of providing the necessary address translation. If the address is not within this range, the BAT circuitry cannot perform the translation and a secondary method of translation must be employed.
The determination of whether the BAT circuit can provide a translation is made by referencing two fields within a register in the BAT circuitry. The first field within the register is for the starting address of the block for which this BAT circuit is providing a translation. The second field within the register is for the length of the block for which the BAT circuit is providing a translation. An example of valid block lengths are illustrated in Table 1.
TABLE 1 __________________________________________________________________________ Block Mask Bits and Segment Size for BAT Effective Page Index Bits Block Mask Bits BLK 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 SIZE 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 __________________________________________________________________________ 128K * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 256K * * * * * * * * * * * * * * X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 512K * * * * * * * * * * * * * X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1M * * * * * * * * * * * * X X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2M * * * * * * * * * * * X X X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 4M * * * * * * * * * * X X X X X 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 8M * * * * * * * * * X X X X X X 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 16M * * * * * * * * X X X X X X X 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 32M * * * * * * * X X X X X X X X 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 64M * * * * * * X X X X X X X X X 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 128M * * * * * X X X X X X X X X X 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 256M * * * * X X X X X X X X X X X 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 __________________________________________________________________________
The circuit logic required to determine if an address is within a specified address range (starting at address 2.sup.m and ending on address {2.sup.n -1} where m and n are positive integers and m<n) is well known and straightforward. For example, if it were necessary to determine whether the address B0:7! (with B0 being the most-significant bit) was within the eight bit address range from addresses 64 to 127, it is necessary only to compare the bit B1! to a logic "1" and bit B0! to a logic "0". Based on the binary representations of each address in this address range, it can be seen that this comparison would generate a match for all addresses between 64 and 127, inclusive.
The binary representation for numbers is particularly convenient for this address matching task. However, if the traditional binary representation of numbers is not used, the nature of the problem changes considerably. In certain microprocessor designs, many numbers and busses are represented in a signaling format described as 2B format. This signaling format encodes data into groups of two bits represented by four signals with only one out of the four signals active at any time. From this description, we can see that the numbers zero through three would be represented as "1000", "0100", "0010" and "0001", respectively. The use of 2B formatting of signals adds considerable complexity to the logic that determines whether an address is within a predefined range. Therefore, the need exists for a method and apparatus to determine whether a current address is within a range of addresses when the addresses are represented by a number of binary logic bits in a format such as the 2B format.

Block address translation circuit using two-bit to four-bit encoder

International Business Machines Corporation


A method of accelerating corneal wound healing in the corneal anterior stroma and/or improving the quality of wound healing in a mammal comprises: (1) providing an ophthalmically compatible solution of platelet-derived growth factor; and (2) applying the solution to the cornea of a mammal at the time of or subsequent to occurrence of a corneal wound in a quantity sufficient to accelerate clinically detectable healing, the healing being accelerated through proliferation of epithelial cells and/or keratocytes of the cornea stimulated by application of the platelet-derived growth factor to the cornea. The platelet-derived growth factor can be selected from the group consisting of the AA isoform, the AB isoform, the BB isoform, and mixtures thereof. A preferable form of platelet-derived growth factor is a recombinantly-derived refolded B-chain homodimer of 119 amino acids, having the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 1. The concentration of platelet-derived growth factor in the solution can be from about 10 .mu.g/ml to about 1000 .mu.g/ml, preferably from about 50 .mu.g/ml to about 500 .mu.g/ml, and most preferably about 100 .mu.g/ml.

The invention relates to the use of platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) to stimulate ophthalmic wound healing, particularly wounds to the cornea.
Corneal wounds frequently arise from trauma to the eye, such as may occur in automobile accidents, industrial accidents, and wounds caused by weapons. Wounds to the eye also occur as the unavoidable consequence of surgery, such as cataract surgery, penetrating keratoplasty, glaucoma filtering surgery, retinal surgery such as retinal reattachment, and refractive surgery such as laser corneal ablation or radial keratotomy. Non-healing corneal ulcers may also arise from pathological non-traumatic causes, such as diabetes.
The healing of these wounds can frequently be slow and difficult, complicating recovery from trauma or the post-operative course of surgery. There is, therefore, a need for a readily applicable method of accelerating ophthalmic wound healing, particularly of corneal wounds.
Additionally, the quality of healing of corneal wounds is frequently poor, leading to scarring and other vision-impairing consequences. Therefore, there also is a need for a method that can improve the quality of healing of corneal wounds.
Recently, much attention has been paid to the use of growth factors to accelerate wound healing, particularly of skin. Growth factors are agents which cause cells to migrate, differentiate, transform, or mature and divide. These factors are polypeptides which can usually be isolated from many different normal and malignant mammalian cell types. Some growth factors can be produced by genetically-engineered microorganisms such as bacteria (Escherichia coli) and yeasts. See, for example, Chapters 10 and 11 of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Wound Repair (1986), incorporated herein by reference. Among these growth factors are included epidermal growth factor (EGF), transforming growth factors alpha and beta (TGF.alpha., TGF.beta..sub.1, and TGF.beta..sub.2), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF), nerve growth factor (NGF), and platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF). These are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,939,135 to Robertson et al., incorporated herein by this reference.
The use of PDGF to accelerate wound healing in skin and connective tissue has been studied (Antoniades et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 88:565-569 (1991); Cromack et al., J. Trauma 30:S129-133 (1990); Ross et al., Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. (Biol.) 327:155-169 (1990)). However, conditions in the cornea are substantially different than those in skin and connective tissue. For example, the corneal epithelium is continually washed with tear fluid which contains a significant quantity of EGF. It is believed that the presence of one growth factor may compete for or interfere with the response to other growth factors (Adelman-Grill et al., Eur. J. Cell. Biol. 51:322-326 (1990)). Thus, there is a need for a growth factor that will work in corneal tissue as opposed to skin or connective tissue, and that can work to promote corneal wound healing even in the presence of other growth factors.
Additionally, re-innervation of the cornea is highly desirable but frequently is delayed during healing. Failure of re-innervation can lead to loss of function, such as the failure of maintenance of the corneal epithelium. It is therefore desirable that a treatment that accelerates corneal wound healing also accelerates re-innervation.

Use of platelet derived growth factor in ophthalmic wound healing


A computer implemented method for dynamically setting hint fields of instructions. Machine executable code is modified during execution to locate and replace instructions having hint fields. The instructions are replaced with calls to intercept the execution flow and redirect to procedures of a monitor. During execution of the machine executable code, hint information is recorded in a memory. The recorded hint state information is analyzed to determine the most frequently occurring or best hint value. When a best hint value has been determined, the replaced instructions are restored with best hint values.

In modern computers, it is common to pre-fetch instructions. Then, when it is time to execute a next instruction, the instruction will readily be available. If instructions are fetched ahead of time, delays can be avoided. Normally, instructions are executed in a sequential order with respect to their addresses as maintained by a program counter (PC). Therefore, normal sequential pre-fetching is simple to perform.
However, some instructions are fetched from non-sequential addresses. For example, branch and jump instructions change the PC to a non-sequential address. In order to allow the pre-fetching of instructions from non-sequential addresses, the instructions may include "hint" fields. For example, on the ALPHA processor made by Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, Mass., a 16 bit hint field is provided with branch-to-subroutine, and jump-to-subroutine instructions.
The hint field, in part, specifies the low order bits of a likely target address. The low bits are enough to specify an address of an instruction-cache block. The hint field allows branch prediction logic of a processor to start an early instruction fetch from the likely target address. A correct prediction can save five to six cycles for certain ALPHA processors.
In most prior art applications, hint fields of instructions are statically determined when source code modules are processed to produce machine executable code. Static hint field predication is limited to determining hint fields for instructions where the target address is absolutely known. For example, the target address is the first instruction of a procedure of a shared library whose load address can be predetermined.
However, in object oriented programming using, for example, the C++ language, it is common to indirectly call a procedure (method) via a variable which is dynamically resolved at run-time. Obviously, in this situation, the likely target address cannot be predicted prior to run-time, and, the hint field cannot be set statically, e.g., the hint field is null. Consequently, instructions which are indirectly fetched in a non-sequential manner can cause delays. A solution is desired.

Dynamically determining instruction hint fields


Azeotrope-like compositions comprising pentafluoropropane and a perfluorocarbon having 5 to 7 carbon atoms or N-methylperfluoromorpholine OR N-ethylperfluoromorpholine are stable and have utility as refrigerants for heating and cooling, blowing agents, solvents and fire extinguishing agents.

This invention relates to azeotrope-like or essentially constant-boiling mixtures of pentafluoropropane and a perfluorinated fluorocarbon having 5 to 7 carbon atoms or N-methylperfluoromorpholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine. These mixtures are useful as refrigerants for heating and cooling.
Fluorocarbon based fluids have found widespread use in industry for refrigeration applications such as air conditioning and heat pump applications.
Vapor compression is one type of refrigeration. In its simplest form, vapor compression involves changing the refrigerant from the liquid to the vapor phase through heat absorption at a low pressure and then from the vapor to the liquid phase through heat removal at an elevated pressure.
While the primary purpose of refrigeration is to remove energy at low temperature, the primary purpose of a heat pump is to add energy at higher temperature. Heat pumps are considered reverse cycle systems because for heating, the operation of the condenser is inter-changed with that of the refrigeration evaporator.
Certain chlorofluoromethane and chlorofluoroethane derivatives have gained widespread use in refrigeration applications including air conditioning and heat pump applications owing to their unique combination of chemical and physical properties. The majority of refrigerants utilized in vapor compression systems are either single components fluids or azeotropic mixtures. Moreover, certain applications, such as centrifugal chillers, can only use pure or azeotropic refrigerants, since non-azeotropic mixtures will separate in pool boiling evaporators, causing undesirable performance.
Azeotropic or azeotrope-like compositions are desired because they do not fractionate upon boiling. This behavior is desirable because in the previously described vapor compression equipment with which these refrigerants are employed, condensed material is generated in preparation for cooling or for heating purposes. Unless the refrigerant composition exhibits a constant boiling point, i.e. is azeotrope-like, fractionation and segregation will occur upon evaporation and condensation and undesirable refrigerant distribution may act to upset the cooling or heating. If a leak occurs in a refrigeration system during use or service the composition of the azeotrope-like mixture does not change and thus, system pressures and system performance remain unaffected.
The art is continually seeking new fluorocarbon based azeotrope-like mixtures which offer alternatives for refrigeration and heat pump applications. Currently, of particular interest, are fluorocarbon based azeotrope-like mixtures which are considered to be environmentally safe substitutes for the presently used fully halogenated chlorofluorocarbons (CFC""s), such as trichlorofluoromethane (R-11), which are suspected of causing environmental problems in connection with the earth""s protective ozone layer.
The substitute materials must also possess those properties unique to the CFC""s including chemical stability, low toxicity, non-flammability, and efficiency in-use. The latter characteristic is important in refrigeration and air-conditioning especially where a loss in refrigerant thermodynamic performance or energyefficiency may have secondary environmental impacts through increase fossil fuel usage arising from an increased demand for electrical energy. Furthermore, the ideal CFC refrigerant substitute would not require major engineering changes to conventional vapor compression technology currently used with CFC refrigerants.
Mathematical models have substantiated that hydro-fluorocarbons, such as pentafluoropropane, including 1,1,2,2,3-pentafluoropropane (HFC-245ca), 1,1,2,3,3-pentafluoropropane (HFC-245ea), 1,1,1,2,3-pentafluoropropane (HFC-245eb) and 1,1,1,3,3,-pentafluoropropane (HFC-245fa) will not adversely affect atmospheric chemistry, because they are a negligible contributor to ozone depletion and to green-house global warming in comparison to the fully halogenated species.
However, HFC-245eb has been found to have flame limits under normal ambient conditions, and HFC-245ca has been found to have flame limits under humid conditions, but not under dry conditions. It has not been confirmed whether or not other pentafluoropropane isomers also exhibit some finite flame propagation behavior in specific, but yet undetermined, environments. This flame propagation behavior would significantly limit the potential use of the pentafluoropropane isomer as an R-11 replacement in chiller applications.
In accordance with the present invention, novel mixtures have been discovered comprising pentafluoropropane and a perfluorocarbon having 5 to 7 carbon atoms or N-methylperfluoromorpholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine. Also, novel azeotrope-like compositions have been discovered comprising pentafluoropropane and a perfluorocarbon selected from the group consisting of perfluoropentane, perfluorohexane and perfluoroheptane or N-methylperfluoromorpholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine.
Preferably, the novel azeotrope-like compositions comprise effective amounts of pentafluoropropane and a perfluorocarbon having 5 to 7 carbon atoms or N-methylperfluoromorpholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine. The term xe2x80x9ceffective amountsxe2x80x9d as used herein means the amount of each component which upon combination with the other component, results in the formation of the present azeotrope-like compositions.
The preferred, more preferred and most preferred embodiments for each azeotrope-like composition of the invention are set forth in Table I below. The numerical ranges, boiling point and pressures are understood to be prefaced by xe2x80x9caboutxe2x80x9d.
All compositions within the indicated ranges, as well as certain compositions outside the indicated ranges, are azeotrope-like, as defined more particularly below.
The precise azeotropic compositions have not been determined but have been ascertained to be within the above ranges. Regardless of where the true azeotropes lie, all compositions within the indicated ranges, as well as certain compositions outside the indicated ranges, are azeotrope-like, as defined more particularly below.
Moreover, these compositions were determined to be nonflammable in air at ambient conditions using the ASTM E-681 method as specified in the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 34-1992.
Because the present novel compositions exhibit essentially constant-vapor pressure characteristics as the liquid mixture is evaporated and show relatively minor shifts in composition during evaporation, the present compositions are advantageous in a vapor compression cycle as they mimic the performance of a constant-boiling single component or azeotropic mixture refrigerant.
From fundamental principles, the thermodynamic state of a fluid is defined by four variables: pressure, temperature, liquid composition and vapor composition, or P-T-X-Y, respectively. An azeotrope is a unique characteristic of a system of two or more components where X and Y are equal at the state P and T. In practice, this means that the components of a mixture cannot be separated during a phase change, and therefore are useful in the cooling and heating applications as described above.
For the purpose of this discussion, azeotrope-like composition is intended to mean that the composition behaves like an azeotrope, i.e. has constant-boiling characteristics or a tendency not to fractionate upon boiling or evaporation. Thus, in such compositions, the composition of the vapor formed during boiling or evaporation is identical or substantially identical to the original liquid composition. Hence, during boiling or evaporation, the liquid composition, if it changes at all, changes only to a minimal or negligible extent. This is to be contrasted with non-azeotrope-like compositions in which during boiling or evaporation, the liquid composition changes to a substantial degree.
It should be understood that the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention may include additional components which do not form new azeotropic or azeotrope-like systems i.e., additional components which are not present in a first distillation cut taken as described below.
One way to determine whether the addition of a component forms a new azeotropic or azeotrope-like system so as to be outside of this invention, is to distill a sample thereof under conditions (i.e. resolutionxe2x80x94number of plates) which would be expected to separate the mixture into its separate components. If the mixture containing the additional component is non-azeotropic or non-azeotrope-like, the additional component will fractionate, i.e. separate from the azeotropic or azeotrope-like components. If the mixture is azeotrope-like, some finite amount of a first distillation cut will be obtained which contains all of the mixture components and which is constant-boiling or behaves as a single substance. As used here, the term xe2x80x9cfirst distillation cutxe2x80x9d means the first cut taken after the distillation column displays steady state operation under total reflux conditions.
It follows from the above that another characteristic of azeotrope-like compositions is that there is a range of compositions containing the same components in varying proportions which are azeotrope-like or constant-boiling. All such compositions are intended to be covered by the terms xe2x80x9cazeotrope-likexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cconstant-boilingxe2x80x9d as used herein. As an example, it is well known that at differing pressures, the composition of a given azeotrope will vary at least slightly as does the boiling point of the composition. Thus, an azeotrope of A and B represents a unique type of relationship but with a variable composition depending on temperature and/or pressure. As is readily understood by persons skilled in the art, the boiling point of the azeotrope will vary with the pressure.
As such, the present invention meets the need in the art for a refrigerant which has a low ozone depletion potential and is a negligible contributor to green-house global warming compared with fully halogenated CFC refrigerants, is nonflammable, has a COP and capacity comparable to that of R-11, and has a low compressor discharge temperature.
In one process embodiment of the invention, the azeotrope-like compositions of the invention may be used in a method for producing refrigeration which comprises condensing a refrigerant comprising the azeotrope-like compositions and thereafter evaporating the refrigerant in the vicinity of a body to be cooled.
Alternatively, the azeotrope-like compositions of the invention may be used in a method for producing heating which comprises condensing a refrigerant comprising the azeotrope-like compositions in the vicinity of a body to be heated and thereafter evaporating the refrigerant.
The azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention may also be used as heat transfer fluids. For example, in certain refrigeration systems it is desirable to operate the system at a specific temperature. However, maintaining the desired temperature may require either the addition or removal of heat. Thus a secondary heating loop containing an appropriate heat transfer fluid may be added. The heat transfer fluid absorbs heat in one part of the cycle and transfers the heat to another part of the cycle without changing state (when the heat transferred is sensible heat) or by changing state (when the heat transferred is latent heat).
In another process embodiment, the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention are used in a method for producing polyurethane and polyisocyanurate foams. The method comprises reacting and foaming a mixture of ingredients which forms the polyurethane and polyisocyanurate foams in the presence of a volatile blowing agent comprising the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention. Alternatively, the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention are used in a premix of polyol and blowing agent. The premix comprises the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention prior to reaction and foaming of the ingredients forming polyurethane and polyisocyanurate foams. The blowing agents of the present invention are used alone or in a premix with a polyol. Suitable polyols are generally known in the art, as are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,130,345, which is incorporated by reference.
In still other process embodiments, the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention may be used in a method for producing foam comprising blending a heat plasticised resin with a volatile blowing agent comprising the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention 1 and introducing the resin/volatile blowing agent blend into a zone of lower pressure to cause foaming.
The azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention may also be used in a method of dissolving contaminants or removing contaminants from the surface of a substrate. This use comprises the step of contacting the substrate with the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention. The compositions of the present invention may also be used as fire extinguishing agents.
HFC-245ca, HFC-245ea, HFC-245eb, HFC-245fa, perfluoropentane, perfluorohexane, perfluoroheptane, N-methylperfluoromorpholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine are each known materials. Preferably, the materials should be used in sufficiently high purity so as to avoid the introduction of adverse influences upon the cooling or heating properties or constant-boiling or the system.
Additional components may be added to the mixture to tailor the properties of the mixture according to the need. For example, in the art, propane has been added to refrigerant compositions to aid oil solubility and may be added to the azeotrope-like compositions of the present invention. Similar materials may be added to the present compositions.
It is also possible to produce thermoplastic foams using the compositions of this invention. For example, conventional foam polyurethanes and isocyanurates formulations are combined with the azeotrope in a conventional manner to produce rigid foams.

Azeotrope-like composition of pentafluoropropane and a perfluorinated fluorocarbon having 5 to 7 carbon atoms or N-methylperfluoromoropholine or N-ethylperfluoromorpholine


An ore fine agglomerate to be used in a sintering process is disclosed, wherein the ore fine agglomerate is formed by a mixture of ore fine particles and an agglomerating agent, and wherein the particles have diameters between 0.01 mm and 8.0 mm. A production process of ore fines agglomerate is disclosed comprising the steps of using ore fine particles with a granulometry lower than 0.150 mm, mixing the ore fine particles with an agglomerating agent in a ratio of 0.5 to 5.0% by mass of sodium silicate, forming wet particles with diameters between 0.01 mm and 8.0 mm with an addition of water, and drying the wet particles at a temperature varying from 100° C. and 150° C. to form dry particles that are resistant to mechanical efforts and the elements.

1. Field of Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to ore fines agglomerate to be used in a sintering process, the agglomerate comprising a diameter between 0.01 mm and 8.0 mm, produced from natural ore fines and sodium silicate as main agglomerant and at low temperature curing. Aspects of this invention also relate to a process of production of ore fines agglomerates to be used in sintering processes.
2. Description of Related Art
Several technologies of cold ore agglomeration are known by the prior art. These technologies are based on the agglomeration of ore fines using basically, cements, mortars, organic agglomerants and carbonated residues as agglomerant agents. In these acknowledged agglomeration processes, the fines used need to undergo a milling stage so that it may feature adequate granulometry for the agglomeration, being that this unit operation requires appropriate equipment and energy.
Besides that, several additives, associated to these agglomerants, are added in order to accelerate the cure of agglomerates and improve its mechanical properties. The use of several agglomerants and additives, in addition to make the dosage system more complex, it also hampers the reduction of operational cost and the agglomerate quality control.
Other technologies for residues agglomeration known by the prior art and used in the steel mill and metallurgy industry use the sodium silicate, among other additives, to accelerate the curing process of the agglomerates, however, in this case, the obtained agglomerates present diameters above 12 mm and are used as metallic load for reduction reactors.
Additionally, most of these processes use briquetting as unit transformation operation, that is, the fines used in these processes also require to undergo a conformation stage so that it may display an adequate granulometry for the agglomeration.
Therefore, in general, the agglomerates obtained from these processes known by the prior art present the need of high dosage of agglomerants (above 10%) and high time for the curing of the product (more than ten days for curing time). Furthermore, the traditionally used agglomerants are expensive and represent more than 70% of the operational cost of transformation of the fines in agglomerates, resulting in high production costs.
Further, the agglomerates resulting from these processes present low resistance to water contact, high generation of fines during transportation and handling (low mechanical resistance) and high generation of fines due to thermal shock inside the reduction reactors. Most of the times, the agglomerated product presents contamination by elements that are deleterious to the operation of metallurgic reactors, besides the high transformation cost. The low resistance to water contact refers to the fact that these agglomerants are not completely insoluble and its fragility to thermal shock may be related to the chemical and physical stability of the agglomerant.
Production process of agglomerates to be used in sintering process, with diameter between 0.01 mm and 8.0 mm, produced from ore natural fines and sodium silicate as main agglomerant, and curing at low temperature, is not mentioned in the prior art.

Ore fine agglomerate to be used in sintering process and production process of ore fines agglomerate


In a mobile communication system, when a mobile station (PS1 to PSj) makes a request for connection to a service provider (SP), a base station (BS1 to BSn) acquires an IP address "IP1" assigned for the base stations and assigns to the requesting mobile station an IP address "IP2" for the mobile stations that has been acquired in advance in place of the IP address "IP1". When data transfer is started, the base station changes the source address in data sent by the mobile station from "IP2" to "IP1" and then transfers the resulting data to the service provider. On the other hand, the base station changes the destination address of data sent by the service provider from "IP1" for the base stations to "IP2" for the mobile stations for subsequent transfer to the mobile station.

The present invention relates to a cellular mobile communication system such as a mobile telephone system or a cordless telephone system, and more specifically to a system having a function of making access to a computer network such as Internet.
With the recent spread of mobile communication systems, such as cellular telephone and cordless telephone systems, etc., attention has been paid to so-called mobile computing which allows radio terminals used in these systems to make access to Internet.
In mobile computing using the dialup IP connection scheme that is the most common one, the public network is first called by a radio terminal through a radio base station and the server of a service provider is then called via the public network. The server of the service provider assigns an IP address to the calling radio terminal via the public network and the radio base station. After that, the use of the IP address thus acquired permits the radio terminal to make access to Internet over the radio base station, the public network, and the server of the service provider.
To make access to Internet via the service provider in this manner, each user is individually requested beforehand to register himself or herself with the service provider. On the other hand, some of companies, department stores and hotels have been making an attempt to register as an organization with the service provider and to allow each staff or customer to make access to Internet through the use of their respective privatemobile communications systems.
However, the conventional mobile communications systems merely connect the calling user terminal and the service provider server by a communications link including a radio channel only. For this reason, even with the use of the private mobile communications system registered as an organization with the service provider, each user cannot make access to Internet unless he or she registers himself or herself with the service provider.

Mobile communication system with access function to computer network


A computer-implemented method to process a model of an object includes mapping a mesh representation of the model onto a plane to form a planarized mesh; generating a shape image by associating a shape descriptor with each vertex of the planarized mesh; forming a color image of the planarized mesh by using the shape descriptor to encode a color of each mesh vertex; creating a region map of the color image corresponding to areas of small shape variation; fitting a coarse two dimensional mesh to the region map and computing a target representation from the coarse two dimensional mesh. In the presently preferred embodiment the target representation is expressed as a multiresolution subdivision surface representation. The shape descriptors can include surface normals obtained from the mesh representation and, more generally, can be descriptive of one of surface normal, Gaussian curvature, mean curvature, shape index and curvedness. The colors assigned to the vertices therefore correspond to properties of the three dimensional surface of the object model. Creating the region map includes performing a color segmentation procedure, and in the preferred embodiment identifies clusters of mesh faces corresponding to portions of the mesh in which vertices have approximately the same value of shape descriptor. The process of creating the region map preferably identifies clusters of mesh faces corresponding to connected sets of faces representing aggregate properties of the mesh.

The representation of surfaces through subdivision elegantly addresses many of the drawbacks that are inherent in conventional 3D shape representations. Subdivision offers an efficient and compact technique to represent the geometry with minimal connectivity information. The use of subdivision beneficially: (i) generalizes the classical spline patch approach to arbitrary topology; (ii) naturally accommodates multiple levels of detail; and (iii) produces meshes with well-shaped elements arranged in almost regular structures, suitable for digital processing.
One of the earliest approaches to the multiresolution analysis of arbitrary meshes was proposed by M. Eck, T. DeRose, T. Duchamp, H. Hoppe, M. Lounsbery, and W. Stuetzle, Multiresolution Analysis of Arbitrary Meshes, Computer Graphics, vol. 29: Annual Conference Series, pps.173–182, 1995. In this case, domain decomposition is done by randomly selecting seeds on the 3D model around which tiles are grown. The growth of a tile is driven by a set of topological criteria, and does not take into account the shape of the surface.
L. Kobbelt. J. Vorsatz, U. Labsik and H-P. Seidel described in A Shrink Wrapping Approach to Remeshing Polygonal Surface, Computer Graphics Forum (Eurographics'99), vol. 18(3):119–130, The Eurographics Association and Blackwell Publishers, ed. P. Brunet and R. Scopigno, 1999, a shrink-wrapping approach to semi-regular mesh extraction. The approach, however, is limited to closed genus 0 input meshes.
A parameterization-based approach to finding a suitable base domain is described by U. Labsik, K. Hormann, and G. Greiner, Using Most Isometric Parameterizations for Remeshing Polygonal Surfaces, Proceedings of Geometric Modeling and Processing 2000, pps. 220–228 (IEEE Computer Society Press). This method is restricted to manifolds with boundary and no holes, and it is insensitive to shape variations.
T. Kanai in MeshToSS: Converting Subdivision Surfaces from Dense Meshes, Proceedings of Modeling and Visualization 2001, IOS Press, Amsterdam, pps. 325–332, 2001, describes a method to recover a multiresolution Loop subdivision surface. The construction of the base domain is based on simplification of the input mesh which is presumed to be dense. Some surface information such as sharp features are used to guide the simplification process. Nevertheless, like any simplification-based approach, there is limited flexibility as to where vertices of the base domain are positioned and the simplification process may be quite time-consuming. Moreover, no multiresolution hierarchy is directly extracted, rather, different base meshes are used to lead to different approximations.
Of more interest to this invention is the approach of Alliez et al. (P. Alliez, M. Meyer, and M Desbrun, Interactive Geometry Remeshing, ACM Transactions on Graphics. Special issue for SIGGRAPH conference, 21(3):347–354, 2002). In this case, various property maps are computed for a mesh and used for remeshing. The maps, however, correspond to mesh charts with disk topology, and they are not used to compute the decomposition into charts, which is done using the method proposed by M. Eck, et al., Multiresolution Analysis of Arbitrary Meshes, Computer Graphics, vol. 29: Annual Conference Series, pps.173–182, 1995.
Other methods attempt to recover semi-regular meshes from other types of input data. For example, given as input a signed distance volume, the method of Z. Wood, P. Schroder, D. Breen, and M. Desbrun, Semi-regular mesh extraction from volumes, IEEE Visualization, pps. 275–282, 2000, is directed towards the extraction of semi-regular iso-surfaces from volumes. Wood et al. proceed by building a coarse domain for the isosurface by stitching together contours on the surface. This approach is driven by topological information about the model extracted from the volume dataset, and does not include any surface properties in the computation of the base domain. It is also restricted to closed meshes (i.e., meshes with no boundary). Also starting from a volume, K. Hormann, U. Labsik, M. Meister, and G. Greiner, Hierarchical Extraction of Iso-Surfaces with Semi-Regular Meshes, Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications, pps. 53–58, 2002, K. Lee and N. M. Patrikalakis editors (ACM Press), describe a process of semi-regular mesh extraction. The base mesh is computed using a standard Marching Cubes algorithm (W. Lorensen and H. Cline, Marching cubes: A high resolution 3D surface construction algorithm, Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 87, pps. 163–169, 1987), with no regard for surface properties.
A cloud of points is another, relatively common data representation, typically generated by scanning devices. Fitting surfaces to clouds of points has been extensively studied. For example, reference can be made to H. Hoppe, T. DeRose, T. Duchamp, M. Halstead, H. Jin, J. McDonald. J. Schweitzer, and W. Stuetzle, Piecewise Smooth Surface Reconstruction, Computer Graphics, Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 94, vol. 28:295–302, Annual Conference Series, 1994, where the authors describe an optimization-based method for fitting a piecewise smooth surface to a dense set of points. The approach is very compute-intensive as it involves several optimization steps. Also, the recovered mesh is at a single resolution and the method is not applicable to sparse data sets. Mention may also be made of the approach of Suzuki et al. (H. Suzuki, S. Takeuchi, T. Kanai, and F. Kimura, Subdivision Surface Fitting to a Range of Points, Proceedings IEEE Pacific Graphics 99, pps. 158–167, 1999), which recovers meshes with subdivision connectivity. However, this approach requires a manual outlining of the base mesh.
A significant drawback to representing surfaces using semi-regular meshes is having to convert existing 3D data to this format. Current 3D content creation technology typically leads to either irregular representations, such as point clouds and arbitrary polygonal meshes, or to regular but constrained representations, such as spline patches. While volumetric datasets are typically regular in nature, most extraction algorithms tend to yield an irregular mesh from a volumetric dataset.
What is thus required is a technique for the conversion of arbitrary polygonal meshes to multiresolution subdivision hierarchies. While no standard has yet emerged for 3D shape description, polygonal meshes are the output representation of choice in many applications, especially in the final stages of processing for viewing and rendering purposes. Many methods have been devised to generate arbitrary meshes from other representations.
The task of converting an arbitrary mesh to one with semi-regular connectivity can be viewed as having two main steps: (a) identifying a suitable parameterization domain for the input mesh; and (b) resampling the original geometry at regularly-spaced intervals in parameter space.
By far, the first step is the most challenging one. An ideal domain should have several properties. As examples, an ideal domain will have the properties of: a small number of elements; elements that are well-shaped polygons, with reasonable aspect ratios; and that partition the surface of the model into a collection of height-field patches suitable for resampling. Once a parameterization of the model is found, a multiresolution representation can be extracted by choosing the resolution of the finest level, resampling on this level, and then applying multiresolution analysis to generate a hierarchy of details at intermediate levels.
Methods that have attempted to address this problem typically involve some degree of manual adjustment, or they generate arbitrary domains, by simplification of the original mesh.
With specific regard to domain decomposition, it is noted that parameterization of discrete surfaces plays an important role in many computer graphics applications. A commonly used technique to define a parameterization is to identify a coarse polyhedral domain that approximates the surface, and to then define the parameterization as a function over this domain. The first task, domain identification or, alternatively, model decomposition, has numerous applications beyond parameterization generation, in areas such as object recognition, shape perception, collision detection and ray tracing.
To summarize the foregoing, it has been shown that subdivision methods lead to hierarchical representations of 3D surface data that are useful in many applications from network transmission to surface styling and design. A number of algorithms that exploit their semi-regular nature have recently emerged and address some of the major limitations posed by more traditional surface representations, such as arbitrary polygonal meshes and NURBS, in an elegant and efficient way. However, an obstacle to the widespread acceptance of these newer algorithms is the lack of a general, high-quality conversion method from other 3D data formats.
What is thus needed, and what is therefore a goal of this invention to provide, is a method to perform the automatic conversion of arbitrary polygonal meshes into multiresolution hierarchies having subdivision connectivity.

System and method for performing domain decomposition for multiresolution surface analysis

International Business Machines Corporation


An inverse phase converter includes a first bobbin, a plurality of second bobbins, a first magnetic core and a second magnetic core. The first magnetic core and the second magnetic cores are overlapped and coupled to form at least one closed magnetic path. The first bobbin has a wire gathering portion to allow a primary coil to be wound horizontally to increase the winding space thereof. The winding direction of the primary coil is normal to the winding direction of a secondary coil wound on the second bobbin. The temperature generated by the primary coil is lower, and the length of the magnetic cores may be shortened.

The conventional inverse phase converter has a magnetic core located in a bobbin. The bobbin is wound with coils of the same or different diameters to become a first side coil and a second side coil. The magnetic core wound with the first side coil and the second side coil is encased in shell to become an induction coil inverse phase converter. The present liquid crystal display (LCD) has a back light module which generates light through CCFLs that are compact and powerful. The CCFLs are driven by high voltage electric power. Hence the CCFLs require the inverse phase converter to generate light to serve as the light source of the LCD.
As large display device has gradually become the mainstream of the market, a plurality of CCFLs are needed to provide light and achieve a desirable display effect. As a result, the demand of supporting multiple CCFLs through a single inverse phase converter increases. R.O.C. patent No. M267607 discloses an inverse phase converter that has multiple coils winding on a primary side winding zone to generate more magnetic sheaves so that high voltage may be generated on a secondary side winding zone to supply electricity required by one or more CCFLs. Its coils are wound on a hollow bobbin with two spacers dividing the bobbin into three zones. The three zones include a pair of secondary side winding zones on two sides and a primary side winding zone in the middle.
In order to generate the high voltage, the winding number of coils on the primary side winding zone must be increased. But the two sides of the primary side winding zone are occupied by the second side winding zones. Hence the winding coil can only be stacked upwards. This creates difficulty of installation on the circuit board. Moreover, the inverse phase converter could be easily overheated. To reduce the heat generated by the winding coil, the diameter of the bobbin on the primary side winding zone must be larger. As the winding space of the primary side winding zone is restricted, the number of coils that can be wound decreases. This affects the voltage output of the inverse phase converter. As a result, the number of installable CCFLs also is limited.
Moreover, to increase the number of the winding coil by increasing the length of the primary side winding zone requires a longer magnetic core. This creates quality problem of magnetic core fabrication. The performance of the inverse phase converter also is impacted.