This compressed air storage power generation device 10 is provided with: a power demand receiving unit 60 which receives in real-time the power demand value of consumer equipment 3; a power supply adjustment device 19 which adjusts the amount of power generated by a generator 15; and a control device which has a power generation amount control unit 17a for controlling the power supply adjustment device 19 so as to supply the consumer equipment 3 in a timely fashion with power corresponding to the power demand value received by the power demand receiving unit 60.

Since power generation utilizing renewable energy such as wind power generation or photovoltaic power generation depends upon meteorological conditions, the output may be unstable. Therefore, in order to obtain necessary power in a timely manner, there is a need to use an energy storage system. As an example of such a system, for example, a compressed air energy storage (CAES) power generation device is known.
The CAES power generation device is a device in which a compressor is driven by means of renewable energy to produce compressed air, the compressed air is stored in a tank or the like, and a turbine power generator is driven by using the compressed air when needed to obtain power. Such a CAES power generation device is disclosed, for example, in Patent Document 1.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Compressed air energy storage power generation device


An image forming apparatus includes a pseudo half tone processing unit that performs a pseudo half tone process on input image data to generate output image data. An exposure unit executes light modulation of a plurality of light emitting sources based on the output image data. The exposure unit performs writing in such a way that different numbers of light emitting sources are used when writing a character/line image and a picture image or a graphics image. The pseudo half tone processing unit performs pseudo half tone processes with different resolutions on a character/line image and a picture image or a graphics image based on the numbers of the light emitting sources to be used for the writing by the exposure unit.

1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that uses an electrophotographic process, such as an electrostatic copier, a laser printer or a plain paper facsimile machine, and an image forming method for the apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that is equipped with a multi-beam optical system having a plurality of light emitting sources (laser diodes or the like) in a writing unit and that performs a pseudo half tone process on input image data to generate output image data and performs writing by executing light modulation of the light emitting sources of the writing unit, and an image forming method for the apparatus.
2) Description of the Related Art
FIG. 18 is a schematic structural diagram of an imaging unit (printer unit) in a conventional image forming apparatus that functions on an electrophotographic process. The imaging unit includes a photosensitive drum 101 that has a photoconductor coated on the top surface of a conductor. The photosensitive drum 101 rotates in the direction of an arrow A. The imaging unit also includes a charging roller 102, an exposure unit 103, a developing unit 104, a transfer/feeding unit 105, and a cleaning unit 106 that are arranged around the photosensitive drum 101. The imaging unit also includes a fixing unit 107 at the downstream side of the transfer/feeding unit 105.
The image forming apparatus forms an image in the following manner:
1. The charging roller 102 charges a surface of the photosensitive drum 101 to a desired potential,
2. Optical writing is done on the charged top surface of the photosensitive drum 101 with a laser beam LB from the exposure unit (optical unit) 103 to form an electrostatic latent image corresponding to the desired image,
3. The electrostatic latent image formed on the surface of the photosensitive drum 101 is developed with a toner in the developing unit 104, thereby forming a toner image,
4. The transfer/feeding unit 105 transfers the toner image on the photosensitive drum 101 onto a recording sheet 110, such as paper, which is fed in the direction of an arrow B at a given timing by a sheet feeder, such as resist rollers (not shown), and feeds the recording sheet 110 in the direction of an arrow C,
5. The cleaning unit 106 cleans toners that are not transferred onto the recording sheet 110 and remains on the surface of the photosensitive drum 101,
6. The recording sheet 110 with the toner image is transported in the direction of the arrow C by the transfer/feeding unit 105 and fed to the fixing unit 107. The fixing unit 107 heats the recording sheet 110 to thereby fixing the toner image. After the toner image is fixed on the recording sheet 110, the recording sheet 110 is discharged in the direction of an arrow D.
As the photosensitive drum 101 rotates in the direction of the arrow A, subsequent desired image is formed on the recording sheet 110 by repeating the steps 1 to 6 mentioned above.
The exposure unit 103 in the electrophotographic process is generally designed to perform light modulation of a laser diode (LD) in association with an output image. The exposure unit 103 includes an LD that irradiates a laser beam onto the photosensitive drum 101 via a collimate lens, an aperture, a cylindrical lens, a polygon mirror, an f-θ lens, etc. (none of which are not shown).
The polygon mirror is a rotatable mirror with multiple surfaces. As the polygon mirror rotates, the laser beam LB scans on the top surface of the photosensitive drum 101 (main scanning).
As the photosensitive drum 101 rotates in a direction orthogonal to the scan direction of the laser beam LB by a photoconductor driving unit (sub scanning), it is possible to expose the top surface of the photosensitive drum 101 with the laser beam LB to two-dimensionally form an electrostatic latent image corresponding to the desired image on the top surface of the photosensitive drum 101.
FIG. 19 is an exemplary configuration of the conventional image forming apparatus.
The conventional image forming apparatus includes an image input unit 111 which is a scanner or the like. The scanner may be the one that is connectable to computers, or that is arranged in digital copying machines or image data reading units. The image input unit 111 sends image data, which may be read from an original or may be read from a recording medium, as input image data PDi to an image processing unit 112.
The image processing unit 112 performs various kinds of image processing, such as MTF filtering, gradation correction (γ conversion), and a pseudo half tone process, on the input image data in order in an MTF filtering unit 113, a gradation correcting (γ conversion) unit 114, and a pseudo half tone processing unit 115, and sends output image data PDo as a processing result to a video signal processing unit 117.
The video signal processing unit 117 converts the output image data PDo to an image signal PS, sends the image signal PS to the exposure unit 103 shown in FIG. 18, and drives the LD at a given timing. In an image forming apparatus equipped with a plurality of LDs, the video signal processing unit 117 distributes the image signal for the LDs to be used.
The individual units are connected to a Central Processing Unit (CPU) 121, a read only memory (ROM, program memory) 122, and a random access memory (RAM, data memory) 123, that constitute a microcomputer, and an operation unit 124 having operation keys and a display via a system bus 120, and are controlled by the CPU 121.
The image forming apparatus described above is a monochromatic electrophotographic image forming apparatus. As a full-color electrophotographic image forming apparatus, there is known a tandem type electrophotographic apparatus that has four sets of electrophotographic process units (equivalent to the individual units shown in FIG. 18) respectively corresponding to the individual colors of cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y), and black (K).
In a tandem type full-color image forming apparatus, toner images of the colors C, M, Y, and K are transferred onto a belt-like intermediate transfer in an overlaid manner, then the toner images of the four colors are transferred onto a recording sheet, such as paper, at a time. The toner images on the recording sheet are heated and pressed by a fixing unit to be fixed on the recording sheet. The recording sheet is then ejected out of the apparatus.
There is know a direct transfer type full-color image forming apparatus that does not have an intermediate transfer unit and overlays toner images of individual colors of C, M, Y, and K on a recording sheet in order.
There is known a revolver type full-color image forming apparatus in which developers of the individual colors of C, M, Y, and K are rotatably supported with respect to a single photosensitive drum in such a way that the developers face the photosensitive drum in order.
Generally the image forming apparatuses are equipped with a multi-beam optical system that has a plurality of light emitting sources (laser diodes or the like) in a writing unit equivalent to the exposure unit 103. If higher resolution is required or if faster printing speed required, and if only one light emitting source is used, then the polygon mirror is required to be rotated more times. This causes an increase in the noise generated from the polygon mirror, an insufficient strength of the rotary shaft thereof, an increase in heat generated by the rotary shaft, and an enlargement of a driving power source.
Further, the frequency of a pixel clock should be increased at the same time, requiring the fabrication of an electronic circuit adapted for high-speed switching of the laser diode. When the drive frequency of an electronic circuit exceeds 50 Megahertz, however, it becomes difficult to stably operate the electronic circuit.
As a solution to those problems, there is known a multi-beam system having a plurality of light emitting sources. The multi-beam system simultaneously scans with laser beams emitted from the light emitting sources using the polygon mirror, thereby simultaneously forming plural lines of electrostatic latent images on a photoconductor, as disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H7-242019.
Image data to be input to the image forming apparatus is multi-value data of 8 to 12 bits per pixel for a gradation image of a picture or the like. In an image forming apparatus (including an electrophotographic type) that forms an image on a sheet of paper (so-called hard copy), the number of gradations that can be expressed per pixel is substantially very small.
To overcome the problem, an image forming apparatus as a hard copying machine displays a half-tone image in a pseudo manner by improving the resolution to 600 dots per inch (dpi) or to 1200 dpi and modulating the image density with a plurality of pixels in terms of an area. The image processing that is performed in the process of converting the input image data to data of a pseudo half tone image is a pseudo half tone process.
Input image data can be classified into the following three types of images.
(1) Character/line image
(2) Picture image
(3) Graphics image
The character/line image of the type (1) has a characteristic that the shape reproducibility of a character/line is important whereas the color reproducibility and the gradation reproducibility are less significant. The picture image of the type (2) and the graphics image of the type (3) have the opposite characteristic such that the color reproducibility and the gradation reproducibility are more significant than the shape reproducibility.
Under such a circumstance, as a conventional technology, an electrophotographic apparatus described in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H9-282471 employs a method of changing the number of lines in a pseudo half tone process in such a way that a screen process with 400 lines is performed for a character/line image and a contour and a screen process with 200 lines is performed for other images, such as a picture image.
The resolution of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus has a tendency of becoming greater. At present, the standard resolution is 600 dpi and there are many apparatuses that achieve the resolution of 1200 dpi.
In most of the apparatuses that achieve the resolution of 1200 dpi, the beam size of a laser beam to expose a photoconductor (the size of a spot that forms an area indicating 1/e2 of the peak amount of light) lies in a range of 50 to 80 micrometers. With the resolution of 1200 dpi, the length per pixel is 21.2 micrometers, which is significantly smaller than the beam size.
The beam size of the laser beam is determined by the wavelength of a laser, the focal distance of the optical system, and the aperture size, so that reducing the beam size alone causes a problem of enlarging the apparatus. This prevents the beam size from being made smaller actively.
Setting the resolution to 1200 dpi is advantageous in that jaggies (an oblique line or a periphery of a character having a jagged contour) in a character/line image can be eliminated and oblique lines or characters having a smooth contour can be reproduced. As a result, the differences between individual fonts can be discriminated, thus ensuring such printing as to make the differences between individual fonts discriminable even in a hard-copy image like an image formed on a sheet of paper.
However, the experiments conducted by the present inventor showed that increasing the resolution as large as 1200 dpi resulted in significant degrading of the gradation including a reduction in the reproducibility of highlighting. This has made it clear that a picture image or a graphics image for which the gradation reproducibility or the color reproducibility are considered significant suffer a reduction in image quality. This seems to have originated from increasing the resolution alone without reducing the beam size.
That is, for images undergone a pseudo half tone process with the same number of lines, an image with a higher resolution has a larger number of pixels to be written. However, the size of an area on a photoconductor to be actually exposed with a laser beam in association with one pixel is determined by the beam size of the laser beam, so that increasing the resolution increases the area of a region on the photoconductor to be exposed becomes larger unless the beam size becomes smaller. This seems to degrade the gradation including a reduction in the reproducibility of a highlighted region.
The description given above is explained in reference to FIG. 20. FIG. 20 depicts, as an example, an image with 200 lines per inch (lpi) as the number of lines and an area ratio of 11% (= 1/9). With the resolution of 600 dpi, image data has ON data included at only one pixel in a region consisting of a total of nine pixels, three pixels in the main scanning direction and the sub scanning direction. While FIG. 20 depicts only a region of 3×3 pixels, an image having such a pattern repeated cyclically is formed. This image data is shown on the upper left side in FIG. 20.
When an image with 200 lpi and an area ratio of 11% is formed with a resolution of 1200 dpi, image data has ON data included at four pixels in a region consisting of 6×6 pixels or a total of 36 pixels, as shown on the upper right side in FIG. 20.
Here is an instance that exposure is done with a laser beam having a beam size of 60 (main scanning direction)×60 (sub scanning direction) micrometers with respect to such image data with both resolutions of 600 dpi and 1200 dpi. The reason why it is not easy to reduce the beam size according to the resolution has already been given above.
The lower side in FIG. 20 depicts the photoconductor being exposed corresponding to the image data. In practice, the photoconductor is exposed by turning on the laser diode while scanning the photoconductor in the main scanning direction with the laser beam, so that the exposure region moves in the main scanning direction. Accordingly, the exposure region becomes elongated in the main scanning direction. However, as the fact is not essential in the description below, it will not be explained.
While the beam size is the same for 600 dpi and 1200 dpi, the amount of light corresponding to one pixel differs between 600 dpi and 1200 dpi. Ideally, writing is done for 600 dpi with the amount of light four times the amount of light for 1200 dpi, but writing is done with the adequate amount of light for each resolution.
The lower left side in FIG. 20 depicts the exposed state on the photoconductor for 600 dpi, and the lower right side depicts the exposed state on the photoconductor for 1200 dpi. When writing is done with the same beam size for 600 dpi and 1200 dpi, the exposure energy is dispersed for the pattern written with the higher resolution of 1200 dpi (a wider region on the photoconductor is exposed). When the same image pattern (the pattern with 200 lpi and an area ratio of 11%) is formed with different resolutions, the exposure energy is dispersed for the pattern with a higher resolution.
As a result, an electrostatic latent image to be formed by the writing process is formed shallow over a wide region. When an electrostatic latent image is formed shallow, a phenomenon, such as deteriorated highlight reproducibility, occurs at a highlighted portion, and deformation becomes quicker at a dark portion due to the same mechanism, thereby lowering the gradation reproducibility.
For an oblique line or the like, so-called jaggies can be reduced by setting the resolution to 1200 dpi. FIG. 21 depicts image data (upper side) corresponding to oblique lines with the same line width and an inclination angle of 45 degrees and exposure regions (lower side) corresponding to the image data.
With the resolution set to 1200 dpi, image data itself can be generated with reduced jaggies of an oblique line (the upper right side in the diagram).
An exposure region on the photoconductor when writing is done for the image data becomes as shown on the lower right side in FIG. 21. While the exposure energy is dispersed and spread in the exposure region as per the previous case of a dot image, it is apparent that the jaggies at the edge portions are reduced. For a character/line image, therefore, increasing the resolution to 1200 dpi from 600 dpi can ensure expression of an image with reduced jaggies.
When the resolution is increased without reducing the beam size, the photoconductor is exposed with the exposure energy dispersed for the reason given above. This may lower reproducibilities including the highlight reproducibility at a highlighted portion and the gradation reproducibility, and may lower the gradation for a picture image or a graphics image, degrading the image quality.
Such a reduction in gradation reproducibility means the generation of a dense region indicating a sharp density change in the relationship between input image data and an image density (so-called γ characteristic). The appearance of such a region indicating a sharp density change means the appearance of discontinuous gradation in an output image, which is a major factor of degrading the image quality.
In color image formation of outputting an image through color correction or gradation correction, a gradation loss occurs in the region indicating a sharp density change at the time of correcting the gradation. This means the degradation of the quality of the image of a pseudo contour or the like.

Image forming apparatus and image forming method using pseudo half tone processing with different resolutions


Image pick-up device reads image pick-up signals of all the pixels of CCD only when a light intercepting plate is moved from the light non-intercepting position to the light intercepting position for the first time after a battery replacement. By comparing the image pick-up signal from each pixel with a first threshold value, a possibly defective pixels are extracted. Thereafter, by reading the image pick-up signals for a prescribed number of times from CCD, accumulated value of the image pick-up signals of each of the possibly defective pixels is calculated. Based on the result of comparison between the accumulated value corresponding to each of the possibly defective pixels and second threshold value, an actually defective pixel is specified from the possibly defective pixels.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a defective pixel detecting circuit for a solid state image pick-up device and image pick-up device including the same. More specifically, the present invention relates to a defective pixel detecting circuit of a solid state image pick-up device in, for example, a video camera or an electronic still camera which is capable of automatically detecting and correcting a defective pixel, and to an image pick-up device including the same.
2. Description of the Background Art
In an image pick-up device such as a video camera or an electronic still camera, a solid state image pick-up device such as a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) is used for converting an optical image to an image pick-up signal, generally. The solid state image pick-up device has two functions of photo-electric conversion and scanning. More specifically, the solid state image pick-up device includes photo-electric converting elements such as MOSs or photodiodes arranged two-dimensionally, forming a number of pixels. A charge image is formed in accordance with the intensity of light incident on each pixel, the charge images are scanned successively, and image pickup signals are taken in time sequentially.
Among the pixels of the solid state image pick-up device, there is possibly a so called defective pixel, which outputs a signal of an abnormal level without incident light. When there is such a defective pixel, quality of the pick-up image is degraded.
Such a defective pixel is generated not only as an initial defects, but it is also generated because of aging, as the solid state image pick-up device is used for a long period time.
The position of the defective pixel itself is fixed. Therefore, generally, the image pick-up signal from the defective pixel is corrected by storing the position thereof in advance.
More specifically, the defective pixel is detected at the time of delivery of the body of the image pick-up device and thereafter periodically, the position information of the defective element is stored in a storing device, and the image pick-up signal corresponding to the defective pixel is replaced by interpolation, using image pick-up signals from the pixels around the defective pixel. Such an interpolation is performed after the image pick-up device takes in the image signal and before processing the signal, by reading the position information of the defective pixel from the storing device and by interpolating the defective pixel by using the image pick-up signals one-dimensionally or two-dimensionally therearound.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 5-260385 (H04N5/335), for example, discloses a method of detecting a defective pixel as follows. More specifically, the level of the image pick-up signal from each pixel of the CCD is compared with a prescribed threshold value with the light not incident on the CCD, and the position of the pixel outputting the image pick-up signal of an abnormal level, that means, higher than the threshold value, on the CCD, is stored in a register. When the pixel corresponding to the position data stored in the register does not continuously attain the abnormal level for a prescribed number of times (for example, ten times), the position data is erased from the register. Erroneous detection because of noise or the like can be prevented by this structure.
However, since it is necessary to include the white level to the black level of the CCD output in the dynamic range, the difference in level between the output of a normal pixel and of a defective pixel obtained at one photo-electric conversion is not so large, when outputs of the CCD with no incident light are considered. Therefore, if a defective pixel is to be detected by the structure of this prior art, setting of the threshold value is considerably difficult.
For example, if the threshold value is set too high, a defective pixel may be erroneously determined to be a normal pixel, and if the threshold value is set too low, the normal pixel may be erroneously recognized as a defective pixel.
Specially when a defective pixel cannot be recognized unless the output therefrom exceeds the threshold value continuously for ten times, for example, as in the above described prior art, a defective pixel may be erroneously determined to be normal if the output therefrom does not exceed the threshold value only once, and the defective pixel is overlooked.
Further, if the operation for detecting a defective pixel of the CCD is always performed at the time of power on of the video camera, that is, every normal image pick-up operation as in the prior art described above, it is possible to recognize generation of a defective pixel due to aging with high precision. However, it is necessary to monitor the image pick-up outputs from the CCD for a prescribed number of times in order to prevent erroneous detection, and it is necessary to operate the CCD and succeeding detecting circuitry such as an image memory for a certain time period for detection, which includes at least several frames. Namely, the signal processing inevitably consumes considerable power.
Now, aging of the CCD does not so frequently generate a defective pixel in general. Therefore, defective pixel detecting operation at every image pick-up operation is wasteful in view of power consumption. Further, recently, a battery having small capacity such as a dry battery is often used as power source for a video camera or an electronic still camera. In such a camera, frequent detecting operation means that much power is consumed for the detecting operation, and the time in which normal image pick-up operation is possible becomes shorter accordingly.

Defective pixel detecting circuit of a solid state image pick-up device capable of detecting defective pixels with low power consumption and high precision, and image pick-up device having such detecting circuit


Semantic clustering techniques are described. In various implementations, a conversational agent is configured to perform semantic clustering of a corpus of user utterances. Semantic clustering may be used to provide a variety of functionality, such as to group a corpus of utterances into semantic clusters in which each cluster pertains to a similar topic. These clusters may then be leveraged to identify topics and assess their relative importance, as for example to prioritize topics whose handling by the conversation agent should be improved. A variety of utterances may be processed using these techniques, such as spoken words, textual descriptions entered via live chat, instant messaging, a website interface, email, SMS, a social network, a blogging or micro-blogging interface, and so on.

Companies continue to develop an ever increasing variety of techniques to interact with customers. For example, a company may provide a website that includes details about products and/or services of the company. Additionally, the website may include support information, or functionality to purchase products and services from the company. A customer, for instance, may interact with the website to find information about a prospective purchase and later, after the purchase, to find information regarding use of the purchase. Consequently, the amount of information that is made available via these techniques is ever-increasing, which may make it difficult for customers to locate desired information using traditional techniques.
One such traditional technique that has been employed by the companies involves the use of search technologies. For example, the company may include search technologies on a website to allow customers to hunt for answers to their questions. This may work well for certain types of queries and issues, but may fail as questions become increasingly complex, as issue resolution may require personalized information, and so on. As a result, users may "walk away" from the website frustrated, may make a time-consuming call to a human customer service representative (CSR), and so on. Therefore, traditional search techniques may have a negative impact on user experience with the website and consequently on the user's view of the company as a whole.


The invention is to provide an adjustable vacuum food storage container, comprising of a base, a socket mounted on the base, and a cover covering the socket; a vacuum controller, a pressure detective means, an out connector power means, a spare battery set, and a power switch are disposed on the base, and an exhaust valve are further added on upper cover; the pressure detective connected to the socket for auto-detecting the accommodation between the socket and the upper cover, and the vacuum controller combined to the pressure detective means for keep it at vacuum state at any moment.

Vacuum sealed storage devices have become readily available in recently years as people have begun preserving leftovers rather than treating them as waste. Conventional storage devices in accordance with the prior art that maintain a vacuum are prolific. However, detecting whether the vacuum has changed is difficult. Even though the conventional devices can seal the container and create a vacuum, some air may remain inside the storage device, and people therefore may not know the vacuum at another moment. Conventional storage devices cannot automatically detect and adjust the vacuum. So the food in the conventional storage devices may not be well-protected.
To overcome the disadvantage of the conventional food container, the present invention provides an improved and adjustable vacuum food storage container to overcome the issue mentioned above.

Adjustable vacuum food storage container


A method of fabricating an integrated circuit transistor in a substrate is provided. A gate electrode stack is formed on the substrate. The stack has a first insulating layer, a first conductor layer on the first insulating layer, a second insulating layer on the first conductor layer, and a second conductor layer on the second insulating layer. First and second source/drain regions are formed in the substrate in spaced apart relation to define a channel region underlying the first insulating layer. First and second sidewall spacers are formed adjacent to the gate electrode stack. The second conductor layer and the second insulating layer are sacrificed and a silicide layer is formed on the first conductor layer. The void remaining after removal of the second conductor and insulating layers establishes a large separation between the silicide forming titanium layer and the first conductor layer. The result is a gate electrode stack that is resistant to lateral silicide formation due to silicon diffusion.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to semiconductor processing, and more particularly, to a method of fabricating an integrated circuit transistor with an improved salicidation process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Insulated gate field effect transistors ("IGFET"), such as metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors ("MOSFET"), are some of the most commonly used electronic components in modern integrated circuits. Embedded controllers, microprocessors, analog-to-digital converters, and many other types of devices now routinely include millions of MOSFETs. The dramatic proliferation of MOSFETs in integrated circuit design can be traced to their high switching speeds, potentially low power dissipation, and adaptability to semiconductor process scaling.
A typical MOSFET implemented in silicon consists of a source and a drain formed in a silicon substrate, and separated laterally to define a channel region in the substrate. A gate electrode composed of a conducting material, such as aluminum or polysilicon, is disposed over the channel region and designed to emit an electric field into the channel region. Changes in the electric field emitted by the gate electrode enable, or alternatively, disable the flow of current between the source and the drain.
In a conventional process flow for forming a typical MOSFET, a gate oxide layer is grown on a lightly doped silicon substrate and a layer of polysilicon is deposited on the gate oxide layer. The polysilicon and the gate oxide are then anisotropically etched back to the upper surface of the substrate leaving a polysilicon gate electrode stacked on top of a gate oxide layer. Following formation of the polysilicon gate electrode, a source and a drain are formed by implanting a dopant species into the substrate. The gate electrode acts as a hard mask against the implant so that the source and drain are formed in the substrate self-aligned to the gate electrode. Many conventional semiconductor fabrication processes employ a double implant process to form the source and drain. A first implant is performed self-aligned to the gate electrode to establish lightly doped drain ("LDD") structures. After the LDD implant, dielectric sidewall spacers are formed adjacent to the gate electrode by depositing and anisotropically etching a dielectric material, such as silicon dioxide. The second of the two source/drain implants is then performed self-aligned to the sidewall spacers. The substrate is then annealed to activate the dopant in the source and the drain. Salicidation steps frequently follow the formation of the source and drain.
In conventional salicidation, titanium is deposited on the gate, the sidewall spacers, and the source and drain regions. A one or two step anneal is performed to react the titanium with the polysilicon of the gate and the silicon of the source and drain regions to form TiSi.sub.2. Following the anneal, an etch is performed to remove any unreacted titanium.
One of the principal functions of sidewall spacers is to separate the silicided gate from the source/drain regions. Despite the incorporation of spacers, silicide may form laterally and easily bridge the separation between the polysilicon gate electrode and the silicon source/drain regions causing the gate to become shorted to the source/drain regions. This so-called "bridging effect" occurs where silicon diffuses into the titanium regions that cover the sidewall spacers and subsequently reacts with the titanium.
Certain conditions tend to favor lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation. Conventional furnace annealing in an inert gas atmosphere (e.g., argon for approximately 30 minutes) may foster rapid lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation. Processing in the sub-0.25 .mu.m domain also appears to raise the frequency of lateral silicide formation. In sub-0.25 .mu.m processing, the minimum gate width may approach or even reach the dimensions of the grain boundaries between the individual grains of the polycrystalline silicon gate electrode. As the minimum device size approaches the dimensions of the grain boundaries in the polysilicon, the rate of silicon diffusion from the polysilicon into the titanium increases. The increased diffusivity is believed to stem from the elimination of pluralities of intersecting polysilicon grain boundaries that are present in larger scale processes. These grain boundaries act as natural barriers to silicon diffusion.
One method of controlling lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation used in some fabs for several years involves the introduction of a N.sub.2 ambient during the titanium anneal. Titanium absorbs a significant amount of nitrogen during the anneal, particularly at the titanium grain boundaries. The absorbed nitrogen clogs the grain boundary diffusion paths through the titanium. The result is a reduced diffusivity of silicon in the titanium and a suppression of the lateral TiSi.sub.2 reaction. A drawback of the nitrogen anneal method is the requirement for a relatively oxygen and water free nitrogen ambient (less than 5 ppma). Higher concentrations of oxygen and/or water may yield unwanted oxidation of the titanium film. Another shortcoming associated with reliance upon a nitrogen ambient is that even with the absorption of nitrogen by the titanium, bridging may still occur in sub 0.25 .mu.m processing.
Another conventional method of suppressing lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation involves careful tailoring of the anneal steps to reduce the potential for bridging. However, as is often the case in the thermal processing of integrated circuits in silicon, there are trade-offs in designing a thermal budget for a given process. Annealing titanium at higher temperatures generally produces a TiSi.sub.2 layer with a lower sheet resistance. However, higher heating tends to exacerbate the potential for lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation, and at temperatures above approximately 700.degree. C., the titanium and silicon dioxide sidewall spacers may react to form titanium oxides. Any residues of this reaction can degrade device performance by compromising the integrity of the oxide or by producing bridging. This effect tends to be less severe in rapid thermal processing anneals. Conversely, lowering the anneal temperature can reduce the potential for lateral TiSi.sub.2 formation, but often results in a higher sheet resistance for the TiSi.sub.2 layer over the source and drain, and thus a lower performance integrated circuit. In short, achieving a suitable balance between anneal temperature, acceptable TiSi.sub.2 sheet resistance, and lowered yields due to bridging is a difficult task and always subject to process variations.
The present invention is directed to overcoming or reducing one or more of the foregoing disadvantages.

Stacked poly-oxide-poly gate for improved silicide formation


A disc holder for holding at least one media storage disc during rotation includes a central hub arranged for rotation about a central axis. The hub includes resilient centering arms which are arranged to provide an outwardly directed centering force on an internal bore of a carried disc in order to center the carried disc about the axis of rotation of the hub. The arms are disposed in, and movable in, planes which are substantially perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the hub. The disc holder may be arranged for carrying a stack of axially spaced media storage discs and may include axial gripping structure for holding the stack together. The gripping structure may include a central shaft which is held in position by ball shaped clamps which are spring loaded against inclined surfaces.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to the carrying of data storage discs in a precise disposition. In particular the invention relates to the manufacturing process for such discs wherein blank discs are provided with tracks and other basic structure.
2. Related Art
The data storage discs used in the invention may have data written in either magnetically or optically such as by laser beam, and include hard and floppy magnetic discs and CD Roms.
In general there is a desire to provide ever increasing data storage densities on storage discs. This is particularly important in the case of hard disc drives as used for example in PCs and laptop or notebook computers. More storage is required but the physical size of the hard drive needs to be minimized. In recent times such increased storage densities have been achieved largely by writing an ever increasing number of tracks onto the storage discs during manufacture. This means that if there are not to be track errors, the storage discs must be mounted extremely precisely. In some cases, the mounting needs to be to a greater precision than that to which internal bores of the discs themselves are produced. Further, for various reasons, the speed at which the discs are rotated during track writing cannot be increased indefinitely. This means that an increased number of tracks leads to an increased processing time. Thus it becomes particularly desirable to be able to write the tracks onto a number of discs simultaneously. Moreover it is desirable if it is possible to write the tracks of the discs before they are assembled into a stack in the final disc drive.
In these and other circumstances it can be desirable to be able to mount a stack of the discs in a manner which allows for precision rotation and writing to and reading from each disc, and which preferably allows subsequent releasing of the discs.
In such a case, the discs should be mounted as a stack so that each disc locates on a hub with accuracy and should be accurately centered with reference to a main axis of rotation. Moreover, there should be a space in the axial direction between each disc to permit reading and writing data on the disc.

Data storage disc carrier with self centering and locking structures


An improved structure and method of forming a protective layer over an opening in insulation layers over a fuse is presented. The protective layer prevents contaminates from entering the exposed insulation layers in a fuse opening while not interfering with the laser trimming of the fuse. An opening through the layers over a fuse is made forming vertical sidewalls which expose portions of the insulation layers. A protective layer is formed over the insulation layer, the sidewalls and fuse thus preventing contaminates from diffusing into the exposed insulation layers. A second opening is made in the protective layer over the fuse link to allow a laser beam to melt the underlying fuse link.

1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to integrated circuits and semiconductor devices. It relates particularly to a structure and method for producing integrated circuits having improved openings for fusible links.
2) Description of the Prior Art
Semiconductor chips often have openings over fusible link regions which frequently lower chip yields and reliability by allowing contamination to penetrate from the openings to the device regions. Fusible conductive links are used to rewire electrical circuits to replace defective devices with redundant devices. These circuits are rewired by rendering the fuses non-conductive (i.e. blown) by applying laser energy to the fuse with a laser repair machine.
In dynamic or static memory chips, defective memory cells may be replaced by blowing the fuses associated with the defective cells, and then activating a spare row or column of cells. The spare cells can be activated by blowing fuses using a laser or passing a high current through the fuse. This circuit rewiring using fusible links increases yields and reduces the production costs.
Logic circuits may also be repaired or reconfigured by blowing fuses. For example, it is common to initially fabricate a generic logic chip having a large number of interconnected logic gates. Then, in a final processing step, the chip is customized to perform a desired logic function by disconnecting the unnecessary logic elements by blowing the fuses that connect them to the desired circuitry. Still other applications of laser-blown fuses are possible.
An important challenge is to improve the reliability of the semiconductor devices surrounding fusible links, especially when a large number of the fuses are on a chip. A major problem with fusible links is that moisture and other contaminates can diffuse from the openings in the insulating layers in the fuse regions into the device areas thus reducing circuit reliability and yields.
FIG. 1 shows a top plan view of a semiconductor chip 11 with fusible links regions 12. A conventional fusible link 26, opening 28 and an adjacent device regions 60, 61, 62 are shown in FIG. 2. Referring to FIG. 3, a cross-sectional view of the fuse 26 and device regions taken along horizontal axis labeled 3 is shown. Additional layers, especially metal layers may be present but are not illustrated in the FIGS.
Fuse 26 is normally formed over a thick field oxide region 31 in semiconductor substrate 10. In addition, fuse 26 is formed over the field oxide region 31 to prevent shorting of the fuse 26 to the substrate 10 through a thinner insulating layer. Fuse 26 can be formed of a metal, such as aluminum, platinum silicide, or titanium tungsten; polysilicon; or a polycide, such as titanium polycide, tungsten polycide, or molybdenum polycide. Layers 32, 34, 36, 38 are insulating layers, such as borophosphosilicate glass, spin on glass, silicon oxide, and silicon nitride respectively. Opening 28 is formed over the fuse area through the insulating layers 32, 34, 36, 38. Generally, opening 28 can have a width in the range of 5 microns and a length of 5 microns. An adjacent semiconductor device is shown with buried N+ regions 60, 61, 62 isolation oxide 31, gate oxide 64, gate 66, via 40, and metal layers 68 70.
A laser can be used to "blow" the fuse rendering the fuse non-conductive. The laser is focused through an opening in the insulation layers over the fuse and irradiates the fuse. The fuse absorbs the heat from the irradiation, melts and the melted polysilicon fuse is removed by evaporation. In this operation, sometimes called laser trimming, the rapid temperature rise of the upper portion of the fuse causes an increase in pressure which can cause any overlying film 32 to be "blown off." The portion of the fuse and thin insulating layer which is melted away or "blown" must not deposit on or interfere with near-by devices. Laser trimming requires that only a very thin insulation layer covers the fuse because the laser must be able to be penetrate the layer and melt the fuse.
Because fuse melting is more efficient if the laser beam is not reduced by travel through intervening layers, it is conventional to have an opening 28 over the fuse in the area where the fuse will be heated. Because overlying layers would inhibit the laser, the passivation layers are normally opened to a single insulating layer covering the fuse 26. In the example shown in FIG. 3, an opening 28 is formed over fuse 26 through overlying layers: silicon nitride 38, silicon oxide 36 and inter-metal dielectric layer 34.
A major problem with any window opening in the passivation layers is that moisture and contaminates can enter through the exposed insulation layers and diffuse to the semiconductor devices. The diffused moisture and contaminates can decrease semiconductor device reliability and yields. Sources of contamination are all around; moisture is present in the air and sodium (Na+ ions) are plentiful in the environment.
As shown in FIG. 3, moisture and other contaminates can enter through the window 28 into layer 34 and diffuse through the layer 34 to the adjacent semiconductor devices 31 60 64. Two major problems which reduce chip yield can result: a) water can attack metal via's and b) sodium and other contaminates can harm metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) devices.
First, water can attack the metal via 40, with the following chemical reaction: EQU 3 H.sub.2 O+Al.fwdarw.Al(OH).sub.3 +3/2H.sub.2
The resulting aluminum oxide in the via 40 can increase the resistance which can cause circuit failure.
Second, contamination can also harm MOS devices. FIG. 3 shows an opening 28, buried N+ regions 60, 61, 62, field oxide 31, gate oxide 64, polysilicon gate 66, and metal layers 68 70. Mobile ions, such as sodium ions, can diffuse through inter-metal dielectric layer 34, and through the insulating layer 32 into the field oxide layer 31. Mobile ions in the field oxide layer 31 can cause field inversion which can result in undesired leakage current between adjacent buried N+ regions 60, 61 resulting in circuit failure. Also, mobile ions in the gate oxide 64 will cause a transistor threshold shift whereby circuit failures can occur.
The following three U.S. patents show fusible link structures, but do not solve the problems of moisture and contaminates diffusing through the window opening into the insulating layers and devices.
Billig et all, U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,300 discloses a method of forming a very thin protective insulating layer over the fuse in a window. In another embodiment, the thin protective insulating layer is formed after the fuse is blown. This invention prevents shorts between conductors that otherwise might occur due to debris from the fuse-blowing operation. However, the problem of moisture and contaminates diffusing through the insulating layers in the window opening still exists. Moreover, the protective insulting layer over the fuse degrades the laser irradiation on the fuse.
Takayama, U.S. Pat. No. 4,536,949 discloses a method of forming openings over fuses where each insulation layer is etched separately yielding a more accurate opening. However, the problem of contaminates diffusing to the devices through the exposed sidewalls of the opening still exists.
Motonami, U.S. Pat. No. 5,241,212 discloses a protective layer covering an opening through a single insulating layer for a fuse. In one embodiment, the protective layer only covers the surface of the protective layer, but leaves the sidewall of the insulating layer exposed for moisture and contaminates to diffuse through. In a second embodiment, the protective coating covers the top of the isolation layer, the sidewalls of the fuse opening and also covers the isolation layer over the fuse and the fuse. Unfortunately, the protective layer over the fuse inhibits the laser from heating the fuse which can cause problems in consistently successfully blowing the fuses. A solution must be found that prevents contaminates from entering into the sidewalls of the insulation layers, but does not inhibit the laser trimming operation.

Integrated circuit having an opening for a fuse

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.


In a method and system for detachably docking a portable device to a docking device, the docking device is placed on a stable surface. The docking device includes a pair of moveable rear latches and moveable front latches, which are operable to latch on to corresponding matching slots of the portable device when docked. The portable device is aligned vertically on top of the docking device. A vertical force is applied on the portable device. When properly aligned a pair of alignment pins included in the docking device mate with corresponding notches on the portable device when the two devices are docked. A release latch on the docking device is operable to undock the two devices.

The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to a docking apparatus and method used in conjunction with information handling system portable devices such as a notebook computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), and gaming console.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Typically, portable devices such as notebook computers are not able to offer the same range of functionality as desktop computers. The functionality may include a choice of a wide range of peripherals such as optical disk drives, additional power sources, I/O ports or multimedia components. A common strategy to offer an increase in the functionality of the portable notebook computer without incurring a penalty in the weight and/or the size of the portable notebook computer is to use an optional docking station.
The docking station is basically an interconnecting structure designed to be left in place on a home or office desktop computer. The portable notebook computer may be removably connected to the docking station by engaging or mating means such as mating plugs, latches, hooks or sockets attached to the portable notebook computer and the associated docking station. The docking station is typically connected to external desktop peripheral devices, such as a monitor, keyboard and mouse, which typically remain in place on the desktop workstation. Disposed within the docking station housing are various components that serve to operatively connect devices when the portable notebook computer is plugged into the docking station. However, the docking station is typically not provided with a processor. Instead when the portable notebook computer is "docked" in this manner, the processor of the portable notebook computer is utilized in the resulting desktop computer workstation and the desktop keyboard, monitor and mouse are used in any subsequent desktop computing tasks. After these tasks are completed, the portable computer can simply be unplugged from the docking station and carried away for use in its usual self-contained laptop mode. Therefore, the function of a docking station is to effect connection between the portable computer and various pieces of ancillary or peripheral devices without the need for individual cable connections to the portable computer, thereby facilitating the conversion of the portable computer between its laptop mode of operation and a desktop mode of operation.
As is well known, there are many types and styles of docking stations, such as port replicators, enhanced port replicators, mini-docks, full docking stations, and cable docks, all of which provide an interface with the portable notebook computer to enhance its functionality. Docking stations typically support horizontal positioning of the portable notebook computer for docking.
Today, due to advances in chip technology the information handling system portable devices such as notebook computers are getting smaller, lighter and more powerful with each new generation. Present generation of 'ultra portable' notebook computers weigh less than 3 pounds and are less than an inch thick. Typically, these ultra thin, ultra portable notebook computers are not able to offer the same range of functionality as the full size notebook computers and/or desk top computers. Using an optional media slice module may extend the functionality of the ultra thin portable notebook computer. FIG. 1 illustrates a traditional media slice module 105.
The media slice module 105 may be viewed as a portable version of the traditional docking station. The media slice module 105 typically weighs only about 1–2 pounds, and is operable to detachably dock to an information handling system portable device 101 (also referred to as a portable notebook computer, notebook computer, portable device, laptop computer, PDA or gaming console). Like the traditional docking station, the media slice 105 is typically not provided with a processor. However, unlike the traditional docking station, which is generally left in place on a home or office desktop computer, the media slice 105 is typically designed to be as equally portable as the portable device 101. That is, while the portable device 101 and the media slice 105 are docked they are designed to be a portable unit and operate as one integrated portable computer providing increased functionality.
The size and shape of the media slice module 105 shown substantially resembles a rectangular prism having a length L, a height H and a depth D. In one example, the media slice module 105 is approximately 10.8″ long, 0.8″ high and 9.3″ deep. The exact dimensions may vary depending of the manufacturer. The shape and size of the media slice module 105 is typically consistent with that of the portable device 101, with the dimensions of the media slice module 105 slightly exceeding those of the portable device 101 to enable a snug fit when docked. In a docked position the front, rear, left and right edge surfaces of the portable device 101 are substantially included within with the corresponding front, rear, left and right edge surfaces of the media slice module 105. As described herein, references to the front, rear, left and right are relative to the front, rear, left and right of the portable device 101.
The media slice module 105 includes a substantially planar top section 110 to receive a bottom section 102 of the portable device 101, a pair of moveable rear latches 120 positioned approximately at each corner of the rear edge, an electrical connector 130 for electrically coupling the media slice module 105 to the portable device 101, and a pair of fixed front latches 140 positioned approximately at each corner of the front edge.
Each moveable latch in the pair of moveable rear latches 120 typically includes a spring mechanism (not shown). When a lateral force, which is substantially parallel to the planar top section 110, is applied to the moveable latch, it causes a slight movement of the latch thereby increasing the tension in the spring mechanism. The lateral force is withdrawn when the pair of moveable rear latches 120 'latch on', 'snap on' or 'dock to' a pair of matching slots (not shown), which are typically included on the bottom section 102 of the portable device 101. When properly docked, the pair of moveable rear latches 120 return to their normal position and the spring mechanism loses the tension. Each fixed latch in the pair of fixed front latches 140 is fixed and does not move when a lateral force is applied. Also, there is no spring mechanism associated with the fixed latch.
To properly dock the portable device 101 to the media slice module 105, the user is required to toe the front of the device into the pair of fixed front latches 140 to latch and then lower the back of the device onto the pair of moveable rear latches 120 and press to latch. FIG. 1 also illustrates the device 101 being aligned at an angle relative to the media slice module 105 to achieve the toe in. This process is similar to putting on a shoe where the front portion of the foot is toed into the front of the shoe first and then the heel portion of the foot is lowered into the shoe to fit snugly. A pair of release latches 150 is independently operable to release each of the pair of moveable rear latches 120 to undock the portable device 101 from the media slice module 105.
However, present docking mechanisms are not easy to use for users and often results in causing damage to the media slice module 105 and/or the portable device 101. For example, users often place the portable device 101 vertically on the media slice module 105 rather than at an angle (that is, attempt docking without toeing in), thereby leaving one or both of the pair of fixed front latches 140 unlatched. The user is often frustrated since the media slice module 105 fails to operate in the apparently docked position due to the improper latching. In some cases, to remedy the situation the user may forcibly press the portable device 101 vertically on the media slice module 105 (without toeing in), thereby potentially causing permanent damage to the latching components of the portable device 101.
Therefore, a need exists to improve the docking techniques for portable devices. More specifically, a need exist to develop a docking apparatus and method for an improved docking between the media slice module and the portable device. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide tools and techniques for an improved docking station for a portable information handling system absent the disadvantages found in the prior methods discussed above.


A transporter for use in transporting a harvesting machine having a laterally movable tongue is disclosed wherein the transporter has transversely extending loading ramps pivotally connected to the main frame of the transporter to permit the harvester to be elevated from the ground onto the transporter. The force of the loading tractor, acting through the wheels of the implement, causes each ramp to move to the transport position. As the wheels of the implement reach a platform, separate from the ramp, and engage a cross bar on each ramp, they exert a generally horizontal force on the cross bar that causes the ramp to pivot upwardly to the transport position.

The instant invention relates generally to transporters for crop harvesting implements, and more particularly to an apparatus for raising the ramps on such a transporter.
Generally, harvesting equipment, particularly hay harvesting equipment, has been designed and manufactured with a transverse width that would permit transport thereof over the highway and through farm gates. Although the hay harvesting machines commonly referred to as pivot tongue windrowers, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,081,946, granted in 1978 to Philip J. Ehrhart, were generally wider in a transverse direction than previous pull-type hay harvesting machines, the centrally mounted pivoted drawbar permitted towing of the harvester directly behind the tractor in a centrally located position and, therefore, transport of the harvester in a normal operational orientation was possible.
Increasing transverse widths of such harvesting machines, however, prevents harvesters from being towed over the highway and through restrictive openings behind the tractor in a normal orientation, necessitating the provision of alternative means of transport. Two methods of transporting such implements in a transverse orientation are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,962,853 and 3,721,461. Such apparatus requires a movement of wheels, hitches, jacks, etc. to equip the harvester for movement in a transverse direction, including the disconnection and reconnection of appropriate hitches to the tractor.
The development of the pivot tongue harvester with a laterally extendible drawbar, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,558,560, permits the harvester to be mounted on a transporter and transported in a lateral orientation by utilizing the drawbar of the harvester as the hitch connection to the tractor. Such a transporter utilizes transversely extending load ramps to permit the harvester to be elevated from the ground onto the transporter. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,996, granted to Earl E. Koch in 1986, discloses a transporter developed for carrying an implement of the type including a pivot tongue arched over the crop cutterhead of the implement and pivoted at is rear end to a location midway between the opposing side ends of the wheel-supported frame from which the Cutterhead, or header, is suspended. The transporter includes two retractable ramps oriented transverse to the normal direction of travel of the transporter. To load the implement, the ramps are lowered into contact with the ground and the implement is backed up the ramps and onto the transporter by the towing tractor. The implement contacts a linkage that acts to automatically elevate the ramps to the transport position as the implement becomes properly positioned on the transporter. The towing tractor and the draft tongue of the implement are then positioned for towing.
Another example of a transporter is U.S. Pat. No. 5,975,829, issued to Walters et al. in 1999. The transporter shown in the ""829 patent, while very similar to the Koch patent mentioned above, differs in the method by which the ramps are raised from the loading to the transport positions. In the ""829 patent, the loading ramps pivot about a fulcrum such that the ramps are moved from the loading to a transport position by the weight of the implement when it is backed up the ramps to a loaded position.
It would be desirable and beneficial to provide an apparatus for raising the ramps on an implement transporter that would not rely either on a linkage or the weight of the implement to cause the ramps to move into the transport position.
It is an object of this invention to provide an implement transporter having transverse load ramps pivotally connected to the frame of the transporter, the ramps relying upon the forces exerted by the tractor during the loading process to raise the ramps from the loading to the transport positions.
It is another object of this invention to provide pivotable load ramps to permit a compact positioning of the ramps when moved into the transport position.
It is a broad object of this invention to provide an improved implement transporter of the type described herein that is reliable and stable in design and simple in construction.
It is a feature of this invention to provide an implement transporter with transverse ramps that does not rely either upon a complex and expensive linkage or the weight of the implement to raise the ramps from the loading to the transport positions.
It is another feature of the instant invention to provide an implement transporter that employs, during the loading process, a ramp that supports the implement weight from the ground to a platform, then engages a cross bar on the ramp, which is above the pivot point of the ramp to the transporter frame, transferring the loading force of the tractor through the wheels of the implement and to the cross bar, resulting in the movement of the ramps to the transport position.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide a lateral transporter for carrying a harvesting machine in a transverse orientation that is durable in construction, inexpensive of manufacture, low in maintenance, facile in assemblage, and simple and effective in use.
These and other objects, features and advantages are accomplished according to the instant invention by providing a transporter for use in transporting a harvesting machine having a laterally movable tongue, wherein the transporter has transversely extending loading ramps pivotally connected to the main frame of the transporter to permit the harvester to be elevated from the ground onto the transporter. The force of the loading tractor, acting through the wheels of the implement, causes each ramp to move to the transport position. As the wheels of the implement reach a platform, separate from the ramp, and engage a cross bar on each ramp, they exert a generally horizontal force on the cross bar that causes the ramp to pivot upwardly to the transport position.

Apparatus for raising ramps on an implement transporter


Recorded images having an overlapping scene transformed into a Quantitative Cylispheric Stereo Pair (QCSP) of images. Pixels corresponding to a common scene object point are located in the same or nearly the same horizontal lines in the QCSP of images. The QCSP's produced can take a number of different formats, including traditional stereo pairs, radial stereo pairs, and general case cylispheric stereo pairs. The QCSP's can be used for various three-dimensional imaging processes, including passive volumetric surveying and the production of three-dimensional visualization models.

The present invention relates to surveying from recorded images, and more particularly to passive volumetric surveying from pseudo or synthetic stereo images. Thorough understanding, precise measuring, and concise parameterization of the influences of geometric effects on the content of images results in being able to use a compact set of equations to separate the complexities of image geometry from the problem of image correlation—thus paving the way for considerably more efficient automatic image correlation as is the case with traditional coplanar stereo imagery. That, in turn, allow the efficient generation of detailed three dimensional virtual models of the real world as can be seen from the multiple arbitrary viewpoints provided by oblique imagery.
Surveying involves determining the geographic location of points or objects that appear in an image, such as a video image. The images used in surveying may be obtained in any one of a variety of ways. Examples include images taken from a helicopter and images taken from a moving vehicle. A method for obtaining video image data from a moving vehicle is disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,946, entitled "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING AND PROCESSING VISUAL AND SPATIAL POSITION INFORMATION FROM A MOVING PLATFORM" (the '946 patent), which is hereby incorporated by reference. The '946 patent discloses a vehicle with multiple video cameras mounted thereon at different orientations. The vehicle is driven along a street and video images from each of the video cameras are recorded. Each image frame has a time code associated therewith. Accurate spatial position data is also obtained and recorded along with associated time codes. The spatial position data is obtained from a global positioning system (GPS) and an inertial navigation system (INS). The GPS system includes a GPS receiver in the vehicle and a GPS base receiver located in a known position. Errors introduced into the GPS satellite information are eliminated through differential processing of the GPS data gathered by the GPS receiver in the vehicle and the GPS base receiver. The INS comprises a set of rotation and acceleration sensors, and continually measures changes in rotation and changes in velocity as the vehicle moves in latitude, longitude, elevation, pitch, roll and yaw. The INS, therefore, provides raw differential spatial position data with six degrees of freedom between points where precise positional readings are taken by the GPS system.
In post-processing of the above navigation data, Kalman filtering techniques are used to compute a six-degree-of-freedom trajectory for the van as a function of time. This resulting trajectory is a best-fit through all of the navigation data. The indexing of the vehicle's six-dimensional spatial position data by time code allows it to be correlated with each recorded video image, which is also indexed by time code.
For each camera, camera calibration data is also generated and stored for later use in the surveying process. The camera calibration data is intended to adequately represent both the internal optical geometry of the camera and the external six-dimensional location of the camera in the vehicle. The internal aspects relate image pixels with associated rays in camera coordinates. The external aspects relate rays defined in camera coordinates with rays in global coordinates. Both these aspects operate bi-directionally. After both vehicle navigation data post-processing and camera calibration have been completed, a six-dimensional global location can be assigned to each video frame. The combination of the spatial data and the camera calibration data is referred to herein as the image parameters for each frame. After the image parameters have been determined, an image is ready to be used for surveying. Two or more such images at different locations, which view the same object or objects of interest, are used to accomplish the surveying.
Traditionally, aerial surveying has been done using a stereo photogrammetric approach. The mathematics of traditional stereo photography are based on the assumption the source images were taken in approximately the same geometric plane with correction terms for minor deviations of image location from the coplanar assumption. Such an approach must compensate for a relatively short baseline between two cameras by using high resolution digital cameras, which require extraordinarily large amounts of data to be stored. Further, when computing the position of a point or an object which is a great distance from the cameras, as must often be done in the stereo photogrammetric approach, the potential for error in calculating the position of the object is greatly increased.
One objective of the '946 patent is to determine the location of objects seen in two or more images using a generalized approach to surveying in which the locations of objects within images are determined from any two or more images having an overlapping scene, regardless of interimage geometry. It would be desirable to systematically apply this concept to the overlapping pixels of entire images without regard to interimage geometry. However, a difficulty that arises with a plurality of non-coplanar images is that the images are not easily correlated. Correlation algorithms must search through large portions of image data to find pixels in one image that correspond to pixels in the second image. It is commonly known that correlation processes to operate more efficiently on stereo pairs images. For example, in a human-viewable stereo pair, the same object-point in the left and right images lies on the same horizontal line in both images; the difference in lateral displacement along the horizontal line varies with distance of the object-point from the co-plane of the images.

Any aspect passive volumetric image processing method


A mobile radio telecommunication system and method provide battery-saving receiving of mobile stations. The mobile station autonomously changes the period of intermittence according to the frequency of paging in order to reduce the power consumption of the mobile station. When there has not been paging processing for a fixed time, the mobile station autonomously prolongs the period of intermittence and reregisters a new period of intermittence. In case there has been paging processing, the mobile station shortens the period of intermittence. If blocking has occurred for paging from the cell site, the cell site incorporates blocking information into a broadcast signal, informs the mobile station of occurrence of blocking, and registers a new period of intermittence.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radio telecommunication system and method, and in particular to a radio telecommunication system and method in which power consumption in mobile stations is reduced and blocking is minimized by intermittently receiving paging signals transmitted from a cell site by using a common control channel.
2. DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART
A conventional battery-saving receiving processing in a mobile station is schematically shown in FIG. 7. As indicated by 401 and 402, receiving power is turned on/off periodically and repetitively in the mobile station in order to reduce power consumption. Battery saving is performed when the mobile station is waiting for a paging signal or a broadcast signal (event). When receiving power is on, the mobile station checks whether a signal is being transmitted from the cell site or not.
In response to a request from a calling subscriber, the cell site sends a plurality of paging signals to the mobile station. Upon receiving one of the plural paging signals, the mobile station stops the battery saving and turns on receiving power (404) to come into paging connection.
The above-described battery saving can be represented in a simple state transition diagram as shown in FIG. 8. Upon receiving a paging signal in a battery saving state 501, transition to a talking state (stoppage of battery saving) 502 is made in the mobile station after processing of paging connection. Further, by clearing processing, the mobile station returns from 502 to the original battery saving state 501. The mobile station thus waits for a signal fed from the cell site in waiting state.
A conventional means based upon the above described battery saving is known. In this means, the intermittence period mode is changed by using an internal watch (timer) of the cell cite in order to reduce the power consumption and weight of the mobile station. This approach will now be described by referring to FIG. 9.
First of all, the mobile station recognizes the intermittence period mode registered in the internal memory and performs initialization to set the battery saving mode at step 601. If this is performed at power-on timing, the mobile station performs initialization with a period mode produced when power is turned off.
On the basis of a timer and a flag set by itself, the mobile station itself determines whether the timing is one of intermittent-on or one of intermittent-off at step 602. On the basis of this determination, the mobile station turns off the receiving power for the intermittent-off timing and turns on the receiving power for the intermittent-on timing. Processing at step 602 corresponds to the above described battery saving operation of the mobile station.
At the time of intermittent-on (receiving power on), the mobile station checks at step 603 whether a signal (paging /broadcast) has been transmitted from the cell site. If there is not a signal from the cell site, transition to the step 602 is made. If a signal has been received, transition to paging connection processing /broadcast processing is made.
In case of broadcast processing, the mobile station forms a judgment upon information contained in the broadcast signal. If the mobile station recognizes a difference from the current period mode at step 604, the mobile station registers a new intermittence period mode at step 605 and a transition to the step 601 is made. In case of paging processing, paging connection is immediately made and a transition to the step 601 is made upon clearing.
Herein, "broadcast signal" means a signal for periodically transmitting information needed in a mobile telecommunication system (such as intermittence period mode) from a cell site.
Thus there is a scheme in which the cell site has a watch and changes the intermittence period mode systematically by using a broadcast signal at appointed times. In this scheme, the period of intermittence is prolonged to lengthen the duration of receiving power off state at night during which the frequency of use of the mobile station is low whereas the period of intermittence is shortened to shorten the duration of receiving power off in the daytime during which the frequency of use is high. Thereby, both reduction of blocking and reduction of power consumption in the mobile station are achieved with a favorable balance. Intervals of receiving power on /off of the mobile station are constant as described before.

Method and system for dynamically regulating a power saving period within a radio telecommunication system


Generally, the present invention provides a way of determining in an unsupervised manner additional members for a family that is defined initially through exemplar sequences. The present invention is unsupervised in that it proceeds without any information related to the exemplar sequences defining the family, without aligning the sequences, without prior knowledge of any patterns in the exemplar sequences, and without knowledge of the cardinality or characteristics of any features that may be present in the exemplar sequences. In one aspect of the invention, a method is used to take a set of unaligned sequences and discover several or many patterns common to some or all of the sequences. These patterns can then be used to determine if candidate sequences are members of the family. In another aspect of the invention, a method is used to take a set of sequences and to determine a set of maximal patterns common to a number of sequences. The maximal patterns are determined without any previous knowledge about any properties or features that may be present in the processed sequences.

Sequences of symbols are useful in a number of areas. One such area is DNA. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) may be described through a long sequence of symbols. DNA is commonly described through the characters A, G, C, or T. These characters may be thought of as the alphabet of DNA. Another area where sequences of symbols are important is proteins. Proteins are sequences of amino acids, where each amino acid can be described by a character or letter. The "alphabet" of amino acids comprises the characters of A, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, and Y. Sequences of symbols are also important in encryption and coding. For example, computers commonly store character data in numeric format. For instance, the word "the" could be coded in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) format as decimal symbols 116, 104, and 101. Encryption schemes change these numbers to conceal the underlying information.
For amino acids, there are very large databases of knowledge that consist of sequences of proteins. Similar proteins are usually grouped into "families." Family members should have the same properties associated with them; once the properties of one of the family members is known, it is assumed that the other family members will have similar properties. Additionally, once the family is known, the family may be used to determine which candidate proteins are members of the family. Therefore, there has been tremendous research to determine how to best group proteins into families.
Generally, there are four different methods used to group proteins. One method is to determine a pattern of symbols that all of the sequences share. This is called a single descriptor approach, which looks for particular patterns of characters. The patterns are series of expected amino acids, described by alphabetic characters. In the pattern, some locations could be important and some locations might not be. An example pattern for a single descriptor might require certain amino acids to be in one particular location, then allow several "don't care" locations where any amino acid could reside, and then require only a particular amino acid in a final location. The patterns are based on observations that, in nature, specific amino acid positions seem to be preserved in a biased way. These specific amino acids positions are "conserved" even though their neighbors can undergo mutations. Thus, researchers used the concept of conservation to describe the members of the family. A very large, well known database of the single descriptor type is the Prosite database. There are about 1100 families in this database. To find the patterns contained in each family, the proteins contained there were first aligned. Then, the most conserved region of the family was located and the pattern (the single descriptor) contained in all or most of the family members was determined. However, there could be members of a family that did not share the single descriptor. This generates false negatives, as members of the family were incorrectly not discovered as such.
An improvement on the single descriptor method is the composite descriptor method. The composite descriptor method examines a candidate protein for several alphabetic patterns, as opposed to only one pattern with the single descriptor method. Again, this method generally requires aligning the proteins so that the multiple patterns, i.e., the composite descriptor, properly align within their respective blocks.
The conceptual underpinnings are the same across all the methods that rely on composite descriptors. Any differences have essentially to do with either the manner in which multiple alignments are used to construct the descriptors or whether the descriptors are explicitly (e.g., a "regular expression") or implicitly (e.g., a "profile") represented in the composite description. Additional characteristics common to these approaches include: (a) an iterative component; (b) the availability of a set of known (or alleged) family members (="training" set) that provides an initial "bootstrapping" stage; (c) the computation of a multiple-sequence alignment involving members of the training set—these alignments are typically verified manually or semi-automatically and can be used to derive profiles that allow the generation of quality measures when evaluating the results; (d) a range of quality control checks that are optionally applied on the generated results; and, (e) the need to study the collection under consideration in order to identify a minimum set of components that will form the composite description.
There are several problems with these approaches. For instance, in step (c), it is implicitly assumed that there is a multiple-sequence alignment involving all of the members of the training set; the alignment may either be a global alignment of both conserved and non-conserved regions, or a local alignment of the most conserved regions. This requirement unnecessarily burdens these methods. Additionally, multiple alignment programs usually work best when the parameters are optimized for the set of sequences which are being considered.
Steps (d) and (e) presuppose the availability of biological information pertaining to the set under consideration, and this biological information may not always be present. As a matter of fact, step (e) results in the selection and use of features which are conditional on each other. Although easy to describe, an additional assumption here is that the identity, cardinality, and properties of these features are available and also agreed upon ahead of time. For example, a statement such as "G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are proteins involved in signal transduction in eukaryotic organisms that consist of seven transmembrane helices composed typically of hydrophobic amino acids" represents a body of knowledge that has been used by researchers in the building of composite descriptors for GPCRs. With the supervised approaches described above, a detailed and frequently manual study of the collection under consideration is unavoidable.
In addition to descriptor approaches, there are also "windowing" approaches that build descriptors for a family. In these methods, one or more windows are used instead of character patterns. A single window method is called the PROFILE approach. All of the sequences of each of the family members are aligned with respect to their best-conserved region. Researchers then determined a probability distribution for locations in each column of the implied window. For each such block, they determined a probability of expecting an amino acid at some location within the window and thus built a 'profile' of expected probabilities for each of the columns of the window. The researchers would slide this set of probabilities against an unknown protein. If this candidate protein matched the expected probabilities, they included the protein as a member of the family. This approach was more tolerant than the single descriptor approach. Subsequently, researchers began to use profiles for multiple windows. There could be two, three, four windows where the members of the family could agree on content. Sometimes, a profile was not built explicitly but rather was maintained as a collection of the instances across the known or alleged family members of the conserved region under consideration.
The windowing methods again rely on alignment of proteins, which can be relatively complex and computationally lengthy. Typically, these windowing methods are supervised and biological information pertaining to the family can facilitate the analysis. With supervised approaches, a detailed and frequently manual study of the collection under consideration is unavoidable.
Therefore, there exists a need to provide a way of determining and using family members of sequences in an unsupervised manner, without knowledge of biological information related to the family, and without aligning the sequences.

Method and apparatus for discovering patterns in a set of sequences

International Business Machines Corporation


Disclosed is an optical fiber connector for a plurality of covered optical fibers, including (a) a lower ceramics plate with a top plane surface having a plurality of V-grooves, each groove for respectively holding one fiber, (b) an upper plate, in spaced apart combination with the lower plate, for firmly holding the optical fibers in the lower plate grooves, and (c) a holder having two opposed end portions in which (i) a first cavity is profiled in the first end portion to accommodate the combination of the upper and lower plates, and (ii) a second cavity is profiled in the second end portion to accommodate the covered fibers, and wherein the first cavity has a connection portion proximate to an inner end of the second cavity, which connects the first and second cavities to provide a through passage for the fibers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical fiber connector, and more particularly, to an optical fiber connector for collectively connecting a plurality of optical fibers together.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an optical fiber communication system, an optical fiber connector is used to connect optical fibers together. There are conventionally known optical fiber connectors such as a multi-core optical fiber connector for collectively joining a plurality of optical fibers together, in addition to a single-core optical fiber connector. FIG. 1 shows a general multi-core optical fiber connector. Tip ends of the optical fibers 62, 62 in tapelike optical fiber cables 60, 60 are collectively connected together by such multi-core optical fiber connector.
The multi-core optical fiber connector comprises a lower plate 10 and a holding plate 80. The lower plate 10 is provided with a plurality of V-grooves 12 formed therein for accommodating the plurality of optical fibers 62 in an arranged manner, and an accommodation groove 16 defined to communicate with ends of the V-grooves 12 for disposition of a covering portion 64 of the optical fiber cable 60. Alignment grooves 14 are defined on both sides of the V-grooves 12 for respectively holding alignment pins (not shown) to position the lower plates 10 relative to each other. The holding plate 80 is provided with an accommodation groove 84 corresponding to the accommodation groove 16, and alignment grooves 82 corresponding to the alignment grooves 14.
The optical fibers 62 are disposed in the V-grooves 12 in the lower plate 10, and the covering portion 64 of the optical fiber cable 60 is disposed in the accommodation groove 16. In this condition, the holding plate 80 is laid on the lower plate 10, and the lower plate 10, the holding plate 80, the covering portion 64 and the optical fibers 62 are integrally secured together by use of an adhesive. The multi-core optical connectors are positioned by means of the alignment pins (not shown) integrally inserted into the alignment grooves 14 and 8, with the end faces of the optical fibers 62 being connected together.
In such a multi-core optical connector, it is necessary to reduce variations in connection loss due to misalignment of the optical fibers 62 and due to a variation in temperature, as much as possible. For this reason, it has been proposed to make lower plate 10 and the holding plate 80 of ceramics, to cut the V-grooves 12 and the alignment grooves 14 with high machining accuracy in the lower ceramic plate 10, and to cut the alignment grooves 82 with high machining accuracy in the ceramics holding plate 80.
When the lower ceramics plate 10 is machined, however, the V-grooves 12 are first made in the entire upper surface of the lower ceramics plate 10 and then, the portions of the V-grooves 12 corresponding to a section for accommodating the covering portion 64 and an upper portion of the lower ceramics plate 10 are removed by counterboring, thereby providing the accommodation groove 16.
A significantly long time is required for performing this counterboring, thereby causing a considerably increased machining cost for the lower ceramics plate 10, resulting in an expensive multi-core optical connector as a whole. Moreover, the accommodation groove 16 is adapted for merely accommodating the covering portion 64 therein and is not a portion requiring accuracy, and nevertheless, it accounts for a significant portion of the machining cost for the lower ceramics plate 10. Further, it is necessary to define the V-grooves 12 first in the entire surface of the lower ceramics plate including a section corresponding to the accommodation groove 16 which will be removed later, and hence, an unnecessary machining cost is taken even for provision of the V-grooves 12.

Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation