A sheet stacking apparatus includes a lowering control unit to lower a sheet stacking portion, a determination unit, an acquisition unit, an identification unit, and a notification unit. The determination unit determines that the sheet stacking portion cannot be lowered by the lowering control unit. The acquisition unit acquires a position of the sheet stacking portion at which the determination unit determines that the sheet stacking portion cannot be lowered. The identification unit identifies an amount of sheets stackable on the sheet stacking portion without removing an obstacle placed under the sheet stacking portion based on the position acquired by the acquisition unit. The notification unit notifies the amount of sheets identified by the identification unit and an amount of sheets stackable on the sheet stacking portion after removal of the obstacle placed under the sheet stacking portion.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet stacking apparatus capable of stacking sheets on a sheet stacking portion, a control method of the sheet stacking apparatus, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there has been provided a sheet stacking apparatus for discharging sheets to a sheet stacking portion that can be lifted and lowered.
The above sheet stacking apparatus discharges the sheets on which images are printed to a sheet stacking portion from a sheet discharge port after the images are printed on the sheets. The sheet stacking portion is lowered every time the sheet is discharged to the sheet stacking portion in such a manner that an uppermost surface of the sheets stacked on the sheet stacking portion is positioned in a vicinity of the sheet discharge port, and thus the sheets discharged from the sheet discharge port can be stably stacked thereon.
In a case where an obstacle which interrupts the lowering of the sheet stacking portion is placed under the sheet stacking portion, the sheet stacking portion may collide with the obstacle in the course of lowering the sheet stacking portion. If the sheet stacking portion is forced to lower after colliding with the obstacle, a load is applied to a driving unit for lowering the sheet stacking portion, and thus the sheet stacking portion or the driving unit may be damaged.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-226022 discusses a technique for displaying a warning message for prompting a user to remove an obstacle while stopping sheet discharge and lowering of the sheet stacking portion when lowering of the sheet stacking portion is interrupted by the obstacle.
In the above conventional technique, stacking sheets without removing the obstacle is not taken into consideration.
A space under the sheet stacking portion is easily accessible by the user because the space is close to the apparatus. Therefore, for example, the user may place bundles of sheets under the sheet stacking portion so that the user can promptly supply a bundle of sheets when there is a shortage of sheets in the apparatus. Further, the user may place a recording agent such as toner or ink under the sheet stacking portion so that the user can promptly supply the recording agent when there is a shortage of the recording agent in the apparatus. Furthermore, the user may place an instruction manual under the sheet stacking portion so that the user can promptly refer to an operation method of the apparatus.
There may be a case where the user would like to stack sheets while intentionally placing these items under the sheet stacking portion.
The user can complete sheet stacking without removing the obstacle in a case where the user stacks a small number of sheets.
On the other hand, if the user stacks a large number of sheets, it is better for the user to stack sheets after removing the obstacle. This is because by removing the obstacle, the user can reduce a possibility of suspending the sheet stacking operation.
However, with the conventional technique, it is difficult for the user to easily determine how many sheets can be stacked after removing or without removing the obstacle.
Therefore, it is difficult for the user to easily determine whether the user should stack sheets after removing or without removing the obstacle.

Sheet stacking apparatus, control method of sheet stacking apparatus, and storage medium


A D/A converter with a Gamma correction circuit according to the invention is designed for C-DAC which takes up much less space than the conventional R-DAC and 2-divided C-DAC. Therefore, this D/A converter has advantages of simple design and low cost. Furthermore, users can freely define the shape of a Gamma correction conversion curve to thereby widen application areas by adjusting terminal voltages.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a D/A converter, and in particular to a D/A converter with a Gamma correction circuit.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, in a conventional digital-to-analog converter (DAC), an output voltage is required to have a linear relation with the input digital data. However, in certain special cases, an output voltage of the DAC must have a non-linear relation with the input digital data. For example, in liquid-crystal display (LCD) applications, the relation between the brightness and voltage of an LCD is not linear. Therefore, a correction circuit generally called a Gamma correction circuit is utilized for compensation.
FIG. 1 shows the structure of a R-DAC with a Gamma correction circuit according to the prior art. In this conventional R-DAC, digital data D0.about.D5 are decoded by the use of a ROM decoder, and then a voltage-dividing resistor is selected from a reference voltage generator 2 to output a corresponding voltage. The above-mentioned approach is simple, but taking an LCD application as an example, the number of gray levels varies directly with the space occupied by its structure. For example, the area of the R-DAC with 256 gray levels is 5.3 times that of the R-DAC with 64 gray levels. Therefore, in the LCD application, the DAC occupies most of the area of a data driver.
FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram of a 2-divided C-DAC with a Gamma correction circuit. Even though the area of the 2-divided C-DAC is smaller than that of the R-DAC, many capacitors which take up a large area are used. Therefore, the area of the 2-divided C-DAC can be further reduced.

Industrial Technology Research Institute


A mixer for use in a transceiver comprises an LO switching pair and a folded transconductor. The mixer can be used as an upconversion or down conversion mixer and provides increased headroom and linearity, while still reducing current consumption. The mixer can be configured for differential inputs and outputs and the folded transconductor can comprises a MOSFET differential pair.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention described herein relate generally to transceiver design and more specifically to the design of mixers for use in a plurality of transceivers.
2. Background
FIG. 1 illustrates an example device 100 that includes a transceiver 104 interfaced with a baseband processing circuit 102. The upper portion of transceiver 104 is the transmit portion and the lower portion of transceiver 104 is the receive portion. Transceiver 104 is configured to transmit and receive RF signals via antenna 132 using the transmit and receive portions of transceiver 104, respectively. The other end of transceiver 104 is interfaced with baseband processor 102.
For the transmit function, baseband processor 102 receives an input signal 110 and converts it into a digital baseband output signal 112. Baseband processor 102 then passes digital baseband output signal 112 to a Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), which is configured to convert output signal 112 into an analog baseband signal that can be upconverted, using upconversion mixer 122, to a RF signal capable of being transmitted via antenna 132. For example, baseband processor 102 can be configured to convert input signal 110 in accordance with the protocols and standards that govern the system in which device 100 is operating and the air interface being used.
A filter, such as filter 118 can be included to filter out unwanted noise and signals from the RF signal after conversion by mixer 122. In addition, a Power Amplifier (PA) 126 is typically included in the transmit portion of many transceivers. PA 126 is used to amplify the RF signal to a level that is sufficient to allow the signal to be transmitted over large distances. A second, bandpass filter 128 can also be included between PA 126 and antenna 132.
The term "baseband signal" is intended to refer to an information bearing signal that resides at DC, or Ø, in the frequency spectrum. In other words, a baseband signal can be said to comprise two components: an information, or data component; and a frequency component, where the frequency component is actually centered at Ø hertz (Hz). Thus, upconversion mixer 122 translates the frequency component of the input baseband signal from Ø Hz to a target, RF frequency, e.g., 900 MHz. But the data component is ideally unaffected by the translation.
The RF signal that results from the upconversion process performed by upconversion mixer 122 is often referred to as the carrier signal, and the RF frequency of the RF signal is often referred to as the carrier frequency, because the data is literally being carried by the RF signal to the destination when the RF signal is transmitted via antenna 132.
On the receive side, an RF signal is received by the receive portion of transceiver 104 via antenna 132. The received RF signal passes through a bandpass filter 130 and is then amplified by Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) 136. LNA 136 is configured to amplify the typically very low level received signal to a level that is sufficient for further handling, while adding very little noise to the amplified signal. The amplified signal is then converted via down conversion mixer 134 from an RF signal to an analog baseband signal. The analog baseband signal can be filtered using filter 128 and converted to a digital baseband input signal 116. Baseband input signal 116 is then converted to a digital baseband input signal 116 by Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) 108. The resulting digital baseband input signal 116 is then passed to baseband processor 102 so that it can process the data included in the baseband signal. Baseband processor 102 can be configured to then generate an output signal 112, such as a voice output signal, from the processed data.
Transceiver 104 is an example of a direct conversion transceiver because it converts the received RF signals directly to a baseband signal using mixer 134. Similarly, transceiver 104 is configured to convert baseband transmit signals directly to an RF signal using mixer 122. But it will understood that alternative transceiver architectures, e.g., Intermediate Frequency (IF) architectures, are also used in communication applications. All of these architectures have in common the need to translate signals from one frequency to another.
Mixers are well known circuits used to translate signals between different frequency bands. Frequency translation is implemented by multiplying the signal with a Local Oscillator (LO) signal, thereby translating the signal up or down to the new desired signal band. This type of translation is often referred to as modulation. For example, in transceiver 104 up conversion mixer 122 converts the baseband signal to an RF signal by modulating the baseband signal with an LO signal, which is generated, e.g., by a Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) circuit 124. Mixer 122 combines the baseband and LO signals in accordance with the following equations:
                                                                                V                  RFOUT                                =                                  A                                                                                cos                                                              (                                              2                        *                        π                        *                        fo                                            )                                                        *                  B                                                                                cos                                                              (                                              2                        *                        π                        *                                                  f                          LO                                                                    )                                                                                =                                                      (                                          1                      /                      2                                        )                                    *                  A                  *                  B                                                                                cos                                                                                [                                          2                      *                      π                      *                                              (                                                  fo                          ±                                                      f                            LO                                                                          )                                                              ]                                                                                f          RF                =                              f            0                    ±                                    f              LO                        .                                              (        1        )                            Where: ƒ0=the baseband center frequency;                    ƒLO=the LO center frequency; and            ƒRF=the target RF center frequency.
In other words, a mixer, e.g., mixer 122, combines the two input signals, i.e., the baseband signal and the LO signal, and produces two possible output signals: one characterized by the frequency (ƒ0+ƒLO); and one characterized by the frequency (ƒ0−ƒLO). The signal with the desired output is then selected, while the undesired signal is filtered out. For mixer 122, the signal characterized by the frequency (ƒ0+ƒLO) is selected while the signal characterized by the frequency (ƒ0−ƒLO) is filtered out, e.g., using filter 118. Thus, the output of mixer 122 is a signal characterized by the following frequency:ƒRF=(ƒ0+ƒLO)  (2).
In this case, ƒ0=Ø, because the signal is a baseband signal, which is defined as a DC or Ø frequency signal. Thus, ƒLO=ƒRF.
Conversely, the output of mixer 134 is a signal characterized by the following frequency:ƒ0=(ƒRF−ƒLO)  (3)
Broadband transceivers for many applications including, e.g., wireless communication applications, such as Wireless Local Area Networking (WLAN) applications, digital satellite applications, and cable TV applications, to name a few, all require an upconversion mixer on the transmit side to translate the frequency component of a baseband signal up to a carrier frequency in the Radio Frequency (RF) range, as well as a down conversion mixer 134 configured to translate received RF signals to baseband signals.
The design constraints are different for upconversion versus down conversion mixers, because the design constraints for the corresponding transmitters and receivers are different. For example, receivers must amplify signals spanning a wide dynamic range spanning several orders of magnitude of input signal power with low noise and minimum distortion. As a result, the noise figure and linearity must be optimized simultaneously to maximize the overall dynamic range. Conversely, the signal levels in a transmitter are typically large in amplitude. As a result, the design strategy on the transmit side is often focused on highest linearity performance together with lowest power consumption for longest battery life. Thus, the design of the upconversion and down conversion mixers, should take these design constraints into consideration as well.
Conventional mixers are often Gilbert Cell mixers. FIG. 2 illustrates a common Gilbert Cell topology that uses CMOS technology. The Gilbert Cell mixer 200 of FIG. 2 can be seen to comprise a transconductor 202 and a oscillator switching pair 204. Transconductor 202 comprises CMOS transistors M1 and M2. Oscillator switching pair 204 comprises CMOS transistors M3-M6. A bias current generator 206 is also included for biasing transconductor transistors M1 and M2. In mixer 200 all transistors M1-M6 are NFET devices.
For upconversion applications, the input transconductor converts a differential, baseband voltage signal (BBIN) into a baseband output signal current that is supplied to LO switching pair 204. Switching pair 204 is driven by a differential LO signal (LOIN) to modulate the baseband signal current. This modulated current is then converted to a voltage with the load resistors R1 and R2. The voltage output (VOUT) then comprises the baseband data signal (BBIN) translated up to the RF carrier frequency by the LO signal (LOIN).
Differential signals are used for their inherent rejection of common mode noise and for improved port to port isolation. For example, often a portion of the LO signal (LOIN) will "leak" into the BBIN input port. This LO leakage then mixes with itself, producing a DC offset on the output of the mixer. In a direct conversion receiver, for example, the DC offset produced by this self-mixing process can saturate the remaining stages of the receiver. Therefore, it is critical to minimize this LO to BB leakage using differential topologies.
For transmitters, the ability to eliminate unwanted noise and improve port to port isolation can be important, because, e.g., they often fall outside of the intended frequency spectrum, or channel, and into adjacent channels. The unwanted noise or leakage then interfere with devices operating on those adjacent channels. Such interference is referred to as adjacent channel interference, and how well a system or device handles such potential interference is referred to as the device's adjacent channel performance. A device's adjacent channel performance is often measured in terms of the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR). The better a device's ACPR, the better the device's adjacent channel performance. Often, a device will be required to meet a certain minimum ACPR in order to comply with the operational requirements of a specific system.
A mixer can impact a device's adjacent channel performance if it is not designed well. Several criteria should be considered when designing a mixer in order to ensure good adjacent channel performance. These requirements include low LO signal leakage, good linearity, and low power consumption. Often, meeting the requirements for good adjacent channel performance requires a trade off among one or more of these criteria. The importance of low LO signal leakage was addressed above. Good linearity is important for adjacent channel performance because modulated signals passing through any weakly non-linear circuit broaden the bandwidth of the transmitted signal spectrum. This increased bandwidth, also called spectral re-growth, results in adjacent channel interference, because it encroaches on the bandwidth associated with the adjacent channels.
Low power is important because devices, such as device 100 are often powered by batteries, making power conservation imperative to sustain longer battery lifetimes. Moreover, applications that use double-balance mixers in highly integrated transceivers place additional emphasis on low power consumption. This is because the mixer often shares the same substrate with many other power-hungry RF blocks within the transceiver including power amplifiers, low noise amplifiers, variable gain amplifiers, and voltage controlled oscillators. Integrating all of these blocks on one die in the same package leads to a very stringent power budget.
With regard to LO leakage, the double-balanced Gilbert cell mixer of FIG. 2 is a fundamental topology that minimizes LO signal leakage, when the layout is optimized to ensure that the best possible matching is achieved. With regard to linearity, many topology variations of the standard double-balanced mixer exist. Often, the differences in these topologies are related to techniques for improving, or optimizing the linearity of the input transconductor.
For example, a widely used approach to achieve greater linearity is series feedback using emitter degeneration with respect the transconductor transistors M1 and M2. The degeneration can be in the form of a resistance or an inductance placed in series with the emitters, or in the CMOS case the sources, of transistors M1 and M2, although inductance is often only helpful for frequencies up to about 200 MHz. Emitter degeneration techniques offer good linearity and high 3rd order Intercept Point (IP3); however, such techniques also suffer several drawbacks including higher current, which results in higher power consumption, higher noise figure, and headroom problems at lower supply voltages. Also, degeneration is much more effective in technologies that use NPN devices as opposed to CMOS devices.
Another approach to the linearization problem in mixers is the multi-tanh technique. The advantage of the multi-tanh transconductor is higher linearity with smaller degradation in noise figure; however, the shortcomings of such designs include, higher current, similar to emitter degeneration, and a limited input linear range dependant upon the number of multi-tanh stages used. The extra current is necessary because two tail currents are needed to implement the piecewise linear transconductor.
Still another approach suggests using multiple gated MOSFETs by linear superposing several common source devices in parallel to improve linearity in mixers and low noise amplifiers (LNA). The main drawback to such techniques is that the DC biasing, critical for successful linearization, is complicated to achieve. Also, such techniques are specialized for down conversion in receivers and will not necessarily work for broadband, upconversion mixers.
Accordingly, conventional mixer designs present tradeoffs with respect to low power and high linearity requirements, and do not allow for optimization of both in the same design. As a result, there are many topologies for transconductors and mixers that achieve high linearity at the expense of increased power dissipation, or visa versa, but none that achieve optimal performance in all areas, namely low LO leakage, high linearity, and low power consumption.

Systems and method for a highly linear, low power mixer


High conversion efficiency processes are disclosed for the anaerobic bioconversion of syngas to alcohol by microorganisms having metabolic processes that utilize sulfur in limited amounts. The processes remove hydrogen sulfide from the gas leaving the bioreactor assembly by forming sulfur compounds that are beneficial to the microorganisms. The sulfur compounds can be returned to the bioreactor assembly to meet a portion of microorganism sulfur demand.

Anaerobic fermentations of hydrogen and carbon monoxide involve the contact of the substrate gas in an aqueous fermentation broth with microorganisms capable of generating alcohols such as ethanol, propanol, i-butanol and n-butanol. The production of these alcohols requires significant amounts of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. For instance, the theoretical equations for the conversion of carbon monoxide and hydrogen to ethanol are:6CO+3H2O→C2H5OH+4CO2 6H2+2CO2→C2H5OH+3H2O.
As can be seen, the conversion of carbon monoxide results in the generation of carbon dioxide. The conversion of hydrogen involves the consumption of hydrogen and carbon dioxide, and this conversion is sometimes referred to as the H2/CO2 conversion. For purposes herein, it is referred to as the hydrogen conversion.
Typically the substrate gas for carbon monoxide and hydrogen conversions is, or is derived from, a synthesis gas (syngas) from the gasification of carbonaceous materials, from partial oxidation or reforming of natural gas and/or biogas from anaerobic digestion or landfill gas or off-gas streams of various industrial methods such as off gas from coal coking and steel manufacture. The substrate gas contains carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide and usually contains other components such as water vapor, nitrogen, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and the like.
These substrate gases are typically more expensive than equivalent heat content amounts of fossil fuels. Hence, a desire exists to use these gases efficiently to make higher value products. The financial viability of any conversion process, especially to commodity chemicals such as ethanol, will depend, in part, upon the costs of the feedstocks, conversion efficiency and operating and capital costs for generating the substrate gases; and upon the capital costs, the efficiency of conversion of the carbon monoxide and hydrogen to the sought products and the energy costs to effect the conversion of the substrate gases to the higher value products.
In a bioreactor, hydrogen and carbon oxides pass from the gas phase to being dissolved in the aqueous broth, and then the dissolved hydrogen and carbon oxides contact the microorganisms for bioconversion. Due to the low solubilities of carbon monoxide and, especially, hydrogen in aqueous media, mass transfer can be a limiting factor rate and conversion in the bioconversion to alcohol. Therefore challenges exist in the design of commercial scale bioreactors that provide for the sought mass transfer while still enabling a high conversion of gas substrate at capital and operating costs that enable such a facility to be commercially competitive.
The off gases from bioreactors contain substrate that was not bioconverted and diluents such as methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and other impurities. Also, the microorganisms present in the bioreactor metabolize components to impurities such as hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen and other gases. The byproduct off gas can be combusted to produce heat and electricity, but this is not without concern. Specifically, hydrogen sulfide is toxic and if released to the atmosphere has a propensity to produce acid rain. Upon combustion of the raw off gas, the hydrogen sulfide present will form sulfur oxides, which are stack gas pollutants. Environmental regulations typically require removal and disposal of such stack gas pollutants. Commercial processes for removing sulfur before or after combustion are known; however, the treating of sulfur containing gas and sulfur recovery have significant cost and operating disadvantages that can impact commercial viability. Also, while various processes for sulfide recovery via alkali, for example sodium hydroxide, calcium hydroxide, and so forth, are known, the acidic nature of the off gas due to the co-produced carbon dioxide would result in excessive alkali consumption. More specifically, a lower and more acidic pKal of 6.37 for carbon dioxide compared to a pKal of 7.04 for hydrogen sulfide means increased alkali consumption to recover sulfide from the carbon dioxide containing bioreactor off gas. Accordingly, the costs associated with the equipment and its operation to recover sulfide by treating bioreactor off gas with alkali can make such recovery impractical.
Sulfur compounds, such as but not necessarily limited to, hydrogen sulfide, bisulfite, thiosulfate, and so forth, play a complex role in bioreactors and the effect on the microorganisms used in the anaerobic fermentation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The microorganisms that bring about such anaerobic fermentation generate very little metabolic energy, and do require some sulfur to maintain biological activity. Consequently, the relatively slow growth of the microorganisms, which often continue substrate fermentation during the non-growth phase of their life cycle to gain metabolic energy for their maintenance, can depend on available sulfur. While sustaining the microorganisms requires a certain presence of sulfur in the bioreactor feed, sulfur too much in excess of microorganism needs may be detrimental to microorganism activity for the anaerobic fermentation of hydrogen and carbon monoxide to liquid products.
Although known processing steps exist to remove hydrogen sulfide from bioreactor off gas to produce sulfide, large chemical consumption, particularly alkali, detracts from the commercial viability of the disclosed process.
Processes are therefore sought that can provide removal and conversion of off gas hydrogen sulfide to sulfur compounds that can be fed to the bioreactor to meet microorganism sulfur demand. Desirably such processes can operate at atmospheric pressure and low temperatures without the excessive cost of expensive chemicals and operate without the generation of hazardous and/or toxic wastes.

Sulfur management for processes and control systems for the efficient anaerobic conversion of hydrogen and carbon oxides to alcohols


A method for electrolysis-ozone-corrosion inhibitor/electrolysis-ozone-hydrogen peroxide-corrosion inhibitor coupling treatment on toxic and refractory wastewater includes the following steps: adding toxic and refractory wastewater to be treated into a wastewater treatment reaction tank equipped with a plate anode and a plate cathode, and starting a direct current (DC) power supply connected to the plate anode and the plate cathode to treat the toxic and refractory wastewater at an appropriate current density under stirring, during which a corrosion inhibitor and hydrogen peroxide are added to the toxic and refractory wastewater to be treated and ozone is introduced into the toxic and refractory wastewater to be treated through an aeration device. The method can increase the production rate and production quantity of free radicals in a reaction system, effectively improve the treatment efficiency for toxic and refractory wastewater, and reduce the treatment cost.

The rapid development of the national economy promotes the process of industrialization in China, but also results in the production of a large amount of toxic, harmful, and refractory industrial wastewater. The sharp increase in the toxic wastewater discharge poses a serious threat to human health. There are many types of toxic and refractory wastewater, such as printing and dyeing wastewater, papermaking wastewater, pharmaceutical wastewater, oil field wastewater, electroplating wastewater, coking wastewater, and other organic synthesis chemical wastewater. The toxic and refractory wastewater has a complex composition and may contain other production raw materials and by-products, such as halides, nitro compounds, anilines, and phenols. These compounds generally have high toxicity, and may even have mutagenic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic effects. These pollutants are not easily decomposed in the environment and may easily enter the human body through a food chain, thereby seriously threatening human health. Since the toxic and refractory wastewater has high contents of toxic and harmful substances and poor biodegradability, it is difficult to achieve an expected treatment effect using a traditional physical, chemical, or biological technology, and a treatment cost is relatively high.
Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) belong to wastewater pretreatment and advanced treatment technologies, and can reduce the toxicity of wastewater and improve the biodegradability of wastewater, and thus AOPs have been used to treat toxic and refractory pollutants in wastewater. In AOPs, a catalyst is typically used to catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, persulfate, ozone, and other oxidants to generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) with high oxidation potential, and ROS can non-selectively decompose and convert toxic and refractory pollutants in wastewater, thereby achieving the purpose of reducing the wastewater toxicity and improving the biodegradability. More and more research has been focused on the treatment of organic pollutants by electrochemical process/AOP coupling technologies, where an electrochemical process/ozone process coupling technology can efficiently treat organic pollutants, such as electrochemical-peroxone technology or photoelectrochemical-peroxone technology. In the electrochemical-peroxone system, H2O2 can be generated in situ by introducing a mixed gas of O3 and O2 into an electrochemical reactor equipped with carbon-polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) electrodes; and the generated H2O2 and O3 can undergo a peroxone reaction (a reaction between H2O2 and O3) to generate hydroxyl radicals (.OH). However, electrodes used in existing electrochemical-peroxone systems are expensive electrodes such as Pt, boron-doped diamond (BDD), and carbon-PTFE, and the high electrode cost limits the applications of these systems. The research on using iron plates as electrodes to couple with ozone has also been proposed. Although the cost of the iron plate electrode is significantly lower than the cost of the above-mentioned expensive electrode, the use of iron plate electrodes has brought new problems, such as rapid electrode corrosion and short service life, so that the iron plate electrodes need to be replaced frequently, and the corrosion of the iron plate electrodes in a wastewater treatment process will result in a large amount of iron mud, easily causing secondary pollution. How to deal with a large amount of iron mud reasonably has become a new problem. Therefore, in general, the use of iron plate electrodes in the art cannot effectively reduce the treatment cost of toxic and refractory wastewater.

Method for electrolysis-ozone-corrosion inhibitor/electrolysis-ozone-hydrogen peroxide-corrosion inhibitor coupling treatment on toxic and refractory wastewater


Provided is a cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe) single crystal including a main surface that has a high mobility lifetime product (μτ product) in a wide range, wherein the main surface has an area of 100 mm2 or more and has 50% or more of regions where the μτ product is 1.0×10−3 cm2/V or more based on the entire main surface, and a method for effectively producing the same.

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) which is a group II-VI compound of cadmium (Cd) that is a group II (Group 2B) element and tellurium (Te) that is a group VI (Group 6B) element has a relatively large band gap (up to 1.44 eV). Further, cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe) having a further increased band gap by replacing a part of Cd of CdTe with zinc (Zn) that is an element belonging to the same group is also a group II-VI semiconductor material similar to CdTe. It is widely used for various applications utilizing its characteristics.
Generally, light incident on a semiconductor material excites a part of electrons in the semiconductor, and if an energy (photon energy) of light is larger than a band gap of the semiconductor, electrons existing in a valence band will transition beyond a forbidden band to generate positive holes in the valence band, so that a movable charge (carrier) pair is generated. The phenomenon that carriers are generated in the semiconductor material by the incidence and irradiation of light is referred to as a (internal) photoelectric effect. The carriers generated by the photoelectric effect disappear due to charge recombination or the like after a predetermined period of time is passed. The time until this disappearance is referred to as "lifetime" of the carriers.
As described above, if the movable carriers generated by the photoelectric effect are taken out as current in the form of an electric signal, applications as various semiconductor devices utilizing the photoelectric effect will be possible. In this case, a degree of a collection efficiency of the carrier that can be taken out as an electric signal can be evaluated by a mobility lifetime product (μτ product) which is a product of the lifetime (τ) of the carrier as described above and a mobility (μ) which is ease of movement of the carrier in the semiconductor material. That is, the semiconductor material having a higher μτ product can be a semiconductor material having a higher carrier collection efficiency, which also can improve performance of a device.
Since the carrier mobility (μ) and the carrier lifetime (τ) of the semiconductor as stated above are characteristics significantly affected by crystallinity of the semiconductor material and a state relating to impurities, respectively, the index of the μτ product which is a product of them can be regarded as an index that is inherent to a material and multiply reflects characteristics as semiconductor materials. Therefore, the μτ product can be used as an index for evaluating an inherent performance of a semiconductor material as a material.
From such a point of view, for CdZnTe, the μτ product can be an index capable of evaluating the performance of CdZnTe as a semiconductor material. Prior arts referring to the μτ product of the CdZnTe material can include the following Patent documents and the like.

Compound semiconductor and method for producing the same


A dental or medical instrument containing device includes a container and a supporting material. The supporting material supports an instrument, such as an endodontic file, within the container. A disinfecting solution within the container permeates the supporting material such that a distal insertion end of the instrument is immersed within the disinfecting solution. The disinfecting solution is preferably capable of maintaining the distal insertion end of the instrument in at least an aseptic condition. The supporting material maintains the instrument in an upright position such that the proximal end of the instrument is readily grasped.

1. The Field of the Invention
This invention is useful in the dental and medical arts. The invention relates to a container configured to maintain a portion of a dental or medical instrument in at least an aseptic condition. Additionally, the invention enables instruments to be easily grasped with a mechanical handpiece and to then be repositioned within a supporting material.
2. The Relevant Technology
When engaging in dental procedures, it is important that the dental instruments employed do not introduce infection into the mouth of the patient. Avoiding the introduction of microorganisms to the area of a tooth being treated is particularly important when performing root canal therapy since infections cause significant problems in root canals. In fact, the inability to successfully counteract harmful microorganisms in a root canal is the primary reason that infected or potentially infected tissue is removed from a root canal during endodontic or root canal therapy. Accordingly, it is important to avoid introducing any additional microorganisms into the root canal.
As part of the root canal therapy, the practitioner typically employs endodontic files to file the root canal and remove infected material. Endodontic files typically comprise a thin, distal insertion end and a proximal gripping end held by a practitioner or inserted into mechanical instruments such as a drill. The thin distal insertion end is often a delicate, flexible tip with sharp edges to enable efficient cleaning of the root canal.
To reduce the possibility of causing infection while working within a dental patient's mouth, it is vital that endodontic files and other dental instruments be maintained in a disinfected environment before and during use. In light of this need for a sterile technique, a variety of different disinfecting dental instrument containers have been developed.
For example, certain dental instrument containers have been produced which are capable of being placed in an autoclave, thereby sterilizing the instruments in the container. Other dental instrument containers have been developed which contain a disinfecting solution for placement of dental instruments into the solution. U.S. Pat. No. 3,248,167 to Friedman, for example, discloses a magnetic dental burr holder. The magnetic burr holder features a box-like container which contains a sterilizing solution. The container includes a hinged lid having a magnetized inner surface. Dental burrs are demountably coupled to the magnetized inner surface such that when the lid is closed, the tips of the dental burrs are immersed in the sterilizing solution.
However, magnetized containers may only be employed to maintain certain metal instruments within a solution. The magnetic container could not be employed to maintain a plastic instrument or the plastic portion of an instrument in a desired position. Endodontic files, for example, often include a non-metallic (e.g. plastic) proximal gripping end. Furthermore, containers made from some metals can be corroded through contact with certain liquids. Additionally, use of metal containers can also be disadvantageous due to their relative weight and due to their cost, which may prevent their use on a disposable basis.
Other containers include a well or reservoir for containing both a sterilizing solution and an instrument immersed in the solution, such as the container disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,306,862. However, a mere reservoir fails to maintain a portion of the dental instrument outside of the reservoir. Thus, when a practitioner desires to grasp the dental instrument, the practitioner must immerse the practitioner's fingers or another dental instrument into the sanitary solution, potentially permitting infectious material to pollute the solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,784 to Hesselgren discloses a stand for instruments for medical use. This stand features sheets of paper arranged vertically close together. The sheets are held close together by the stand. Dental instruments are inserted between the sheets for storage during a sterilization process. To protect the dental instruments from corrosion during a sterilization process, the sheets are impregnated with a corrosion inhibiter. The sterilization process involves either autoclave sterilization in saturated water vapor at 120.degree. C. to 130.degree. C. or by means of dry sterilization at 180.degree. C.
One of the problems associated with a paper stand as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,784 is that the instrument must be placed between the paper sheets. The practitioner must therefore take time to ensure that the instrument is not directed into the paper which may potentially bend the instrument. The corrosion inhibitor may cause the papers to clump together, thereby losing their ability to receive a dental instrument. Furthermore, if papers on one side clump together, the papers on an opposing side could be separated too broadly, such that the dental instruments would slip between the cracks, precluding convenient gripping of the gripping end. The paper could also flake off onto the tips when wet or when ripped from the container. Additionally, as stated at column 3, lines 3-6 after having been used a number of times the instrument stand is considered expended. The stand cannot be used to maintain an instrument in a desired position after a few insertions of instruments as the instruments either break or weaken the fiber matrix of the paper or due to the debilitating impact of either the corrosion inhibitor or sterilization process on the paper.
As an additional difficulty within the art, typical dental instrument containers are complex and expensive structures containing a variety of reservoirs, ports and apertures for the placement of solution and instruments. The formation of these reservoirs, for example, for holding particular instruments therein, requires molding and extrusion processes which are expensive and complex. In addition, in use, the dental instrument must be placed in a specific hole or in a hole selected from a specific series of holes.
Another problem within the art is that sterilizing containers typically do not allow a practitioner to remove debris from the instruments placed within the containers. Instead, relatively large pieces of debris may remain disposed on the instrument while the instrument is placed in a sterilizing solution, hampering the sterilization process.
Based on the foregoing, there is a substantial need within the art for a container which is configured to maintain a dental instrument in at least an aseptic condition. There is also a substantial need for such a container which features efficient cleaning of a dental instrument within the container. Additionally, there is also a substantial need for a container which can be repeatedly used to enable an instrument to be positioned at various locations in the container without damaging the instruments, to be supported in an upright position and to then be easily grasped by hand or by a mechanical handpiece. There is also a substantial need for a container which enables a practitioner to remove debris from a dental instrument and to minimize the potential for cross-contamination between instruments. Further, there is also a need in the art to provide an improved container which is inexpensive, efficient to manufacture, and is disposable. Finally, there is also a substantial need for a kit, and methods of use and manufacture relating to such a container.

Apparatus and method for disinfecting endodontic instruments during use and storage


The present invention comprises a novel, lightweight, massively parallel device comprising microelectromechanical (MEMS) fluidic actuators, to reconfigure the profile, of a surface. Each microfluidic actuator comprises an independent bladder that can act as both a sensor and an actuator. A MEMS sensor, and a MEMS valve within each microfluidic actuator, operate cooperatively to monitor the fluid within each bladder, and regulate the flow of the fluid entering and exiting each bladder. When adjacently spaced in a array, microfluidic actuators can create arbitrary surface profiles in response to a change in the operating environment of the surface. In an embodiment of the invention, the profile of an airfoil is controlled by independent extension and contraction of a plurality of actuators, that operate to displace a compliant cover.

In aerial vehicles, fixed profile airfoils are typically employed having a design that is optimized for performance within a primary flight condition. These fixed profile airfoils are then sub-optimal in many other operating conditions that may include take-off, landing, maneuvering and dual-mode cruising velocities. Modern aircraft are required to maneuver efficiently over super-sonic and sub-sonic flight conditions. What is needed is a means for replacing or modifying the conventional fixed profile control surfaces of an aircraft with controlled reconfigurable surfaces, for which the profile of an airfoil can be adjusted on demand, to maintain optimal performance of a vehicle as flight conditions change. The present invention presents a solution to this problem by providing a novel, lightweight, massively parallel device comprising microfluidic actuators, to sense, control and reconfigure the profile of a surface.


An arrangment is disclosed for reducing edge artifacts produced when printing a digital image on a digital printer, which printer is capable of producing multiple output levels, said digital image being represented as a rectangular array of pixels. In this arrangement, the following steps are accomplished by: computing difference signals between a center pixel value and pixel values of a set of one or more neighboring pixels; determining a pixel correction value responsive to the computed difference signals; and computing a new center pixel value by modifying the center pixel value using the pixel correction value.

Digital printers are devices that are used to produce hardcopy reproductions of digital images. Digital images are digital representation of an image, typically expressed as a rectangular array of pixel values, or as a set of encoded information that can be used to generate such an array of pixel values. Some printers are binary in nature, only being able to produce white and one other output level for any particular pixel. Other printers are capable of producing multiple output levels. Thermal dye transfer printers are one common type of digital printer that produce multiple output levels by varying the amount of heat applied to a thermal dye donor ribbon. Other types of printers would include digital silver halide printers, electrophotographic printers, and ink jet printers.
Color digital printers are used to produce color reproductions of color digital images. Typically color digital printers work by producing multiple color planes using different colorants for each color plane. Commonly, the color planes are cyan, magenta, and yellow (CMY), or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK), although many color printers use other special colorants as well.
The images formed by digital printers frequently suffer from a number of artifacts. Artifacts can be defined as undesirable image characteristics. One such class of artifacts is edge artifacts. Edge artifacts occur on the boundaries between various image regions. Although there are a number of kinds of edge artifacts, many of them result when a digital printer produces an undesirable density profile at the edge.
For example, consider FIG. 1 (a) which shows one type of image that is prone to exhibit edge artifacts. The image consists of an inner square 10 of one color, surrounded by an outer square 12 of another color. For the purposes of this example, consider the inner square to be cyan, and the outer square to be magenta. Therefore if this image is printed with a CMY printer the inner square will be printed using the cyan colorant, and the outer square will be printed using the magenta colorant. Frequently when this image is printed, an edge artifact occurs where the boundary between the outer square and the inner is not accurately reproduced. This is shown figuratively in FIG. 1(b) which illustrates an edge artifact 14 in the form of a white ring around the inner square. Depending on the severity of the artifact, the ring may be white, or it may simply be lighter than the surrounding patches.
One cause for the edge artifact shown in FIG. 1, is illustrated in FIGS. 2 (a)-(d). Consider an edge in the image between a cyan region on the left, and a magenta region on the right. FIG. 2(a) shows graphs of the cyan image content 20, and the magenta image content 21, as a function of the image position x. For x positions to the left, there is cyan image content, but no magenta image content. For x positions to the right, the opposite is true. The corresponding cyan pixel values 22 and magenta pixel values 23 used to represent the image content for the cyan and magenta color planes, respectively, are shown in FIG. 2(b). If this image were reproduced on a thermal dye transfer color digital printer, the pixel values will be converted into thermal energy applied to the thermal dye donor ribbon to transfer dye to the receiver layer. Figurative representations of the cyan thermal energy 24 and the magenta thermal energy 25 are shown in FIG. 2(c). It can be seen that the thermal energy profile for the uniform image regions is shown to be somewhat non-uniform, and that some of the thermal energy near the edges has dissipated to the nearby pixels. Also shown on the graphs are the cyan thermal threshold 26 and the magenta thermal threshold 27 corresponding to the thermal energy levels necessary to transfer dye. Energy levels below these thresholds will result in no dye transfer to the receiver layer. The resulting cyan density profile 28 and magenta density profile 29 are shown figuratively in FIG. 2(d). It can be seen that there is some non-uniformity across the uniform image regions, and that the edge profiles are different from the ideal edge profiles shown in FIG. 2(a). The result when the two color planes are superimposed is shown in FIG. 3. At the boundary between the cyan density profile 30, and the magenta density profile 32 there is an edge artifact 34 where the density falls to a much lower value, resulting in a white line similar to that shown in FIG. 1. Other edge artifacts which are closely related to this example include a thinning or a loss of density in narrow lines, and a rounding of comers on objects.

Reducing edge artifacts on a digital printer


A photosensitive composition containing a compound having a group represented by formula(I) or (II), said group, when irradiated with actinic radiation, forming a carboxylic acid or a sulfonic acid: ##STR1## wherein R.sub.1 represents hydrogen, an alkyl group, or an aryl group; and. R.sub.2 to R.sub.6 may be the same or different and each represents hydrogen, a halogen, an alkoxyl group, an aryloxyl group, cyano group, or an alkyl group, provided that at least one of R.sub.2 to R.sub.6 represents an alkoxyl or aryloxyl group and two of R.sub.2 to R.sub.6 may link to form a ring.

Conventionally known as so-called positive-acting photosensitive materials, which become soluble upon exposure to actinic radiation when used in the production of lithographic plates, etc., are orthoquinone diazide compounds. This type of compounds have actually been used extensively in lithographic plate production and other applications. Examples of such orthoquinone diazide compounds are disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,766,118, 2,767,092, 2,772,972, 2,859,112, 2,907,665, 3,046,110, 3,046,111, 3,046,115, 3,046,118, 3,046,119, 3,046,120, 3,046,121, 3,046,122, 3,046,123, 3,061,430, 3,102,809, 3,106,465, 3,635,709, and 3,647,443 and many other publications.
Use of these orthoquinone diazide compounds takes advantage of their property that when irradiated with actinic radiation, the compounds decompose to form five-membered-ring carboxylic acids and become soluble in alkaline solutions. However, there have been problems that the photodecomposition yields a nitrogen gas and this causes lifting of the original which was in intimate contact with the photosensitive layer, resulting in print blurring, and that the undecomposed orthoquinone diazide compound causes a coupling reaction during development.
On the other hand, for forming resist patterns for use in producing electronic devices such as semiconductor elements, magnetic-bubble memories, integrated circuits, etc., photoresists having sensitivity to ultraviolet or visible light have conventionally been put to practical use extensively. Photoresists are categorized into two types, negative and positive; negative photoresists are those in which the portions exposed to light become insoluble in developing solutions, whereas positive photoresists are those in which the exposed portions become soluble. Since the negative photoresists are superior in sensitivity to the positive photoresists and are also excellent in the properties required for wet etching, such as adhesion to substrate and chemical resistance, they were mainly used until recently. However, because the widths of the lines constituting resist patterns and the spaces between such lines have been reduced greatly with the recent trend toward higher packing density and higher integration for semiconductor elements and other electronic elements, and because dry etching has come to be used for etching the substrates, photoresists have come to be required to possess high resolution and good resistance to dry etching and, hence, the positive photoresists are presently being employed in most cases. Among the positive photoresists, those of the alkali development type based on alkali-soluble novolac resins are mainly used in the present-day processes because of their excellent sensitivity, resolution, and dry etching resistance. Examples of these alkali development type positive photoresists are described, for example, in J. C. Strieter, Kodak Microelectronics Seminar Proceedings, 116(1976).
However, as electronic devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and made to have more functions recently, finer resist patterns are strongly desired in order to attain higher packing density and higher integration.
Under the above circumstances, photoresists sensitive to shorter-wavelength radiations are currently being developed, from the photoresists sensitive to g-beam radiation (436 nm) to those sensitive to i-beam radiation (365 nm) and further to those sensitive to deep-UV light (200-300 nm). However, since the orthoquinone diazide compounds used as photosensitive material in the conventional positive photoresists well absorb light in the deep-UV region and have poor photo-bleaching properties in this region, there has been a problem that use of deep-UV light as exposure light results in impaired resist pattern shapes.
In order to eliminate the above problem, several proposals have been made with respect to photosensitive compositions that are positive-acting without using an orthoquinone diazide compound. One of these is to use compounds having a 2-nitrobenzyl ester or 2,6-dinitrobenzyl ester group, as described in, for example, JP-B-56-2696 (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication"); U.S. Pat. No. 4,551,416; J. Vac. Sci. Technol., Vol. 19, p. 1338 (1981); and J. Electrochem. Soc., Vol. 129, p. 2552 (1982) and Vol. 130, p. 1433 (1983). Another proposal is to use compounds having a 2-nitrobenzyl sulfonate or 2,6-dinitrobenzyl sulfonate group, as described in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,554,238; Macromolecules, Vol. 21, p. 2001 (1988); and SPIE, Vol. 920, p. 67 (1988). The above-proposed compounds, however, also absorb light in the deep-UV region and do not undergo photo-bleaching, thus posing the same problem.
Proposed as a method for improving photo-bleaching properties in the deep-UV region is to use compounds having a 2-diazo-1,3-dione ##STR2## group, as described in, for example, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, Vol. ED-28, p. 1300 (1981); SPIE, Vol. 771, p. 2 (1987) and Vol. 920, p. 51 (1988); J. Photopolym. Sci. Technol., Vol. 2, p. 392 (1989); U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,522,911, 4,601,969, 4,622,283, 4,624,908, 4,626,491, 4,752,551, 4,808,512 and 4,910,123; and JP-A-63-163340, JP-A-64-33543, JP-A-1-106034, JP-A-1-106035, JP-A-1-106036, JP-A-1-106037, JP-A-1-124849, JP-A-1-152451, and JP-A-1-188852 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). Although these compounds do show photo-bleaching properties in the deep-UV region, there are problems that these compounds themselves are apt to sublime during baking and that they are poor in the ability to prevent the unexposed areas from being dissolved by alkaline developing solutions.
Further, as a method for obtaining a positive pattern, use of photoresists employing substituted benzyl ester compounds of various kinds has been proposed in JP-A-1-140144. Such photoresists undergo a decarboxylation reaction upon exposure to light to thereby decrease the ability of the exposed areas not to be dissolved by alkaline developing solutions. The proposed photoresists, however, have a problem that the difference in solubility in alkaline developing solutions between exposed and unexposed areas is not sufficiently large.


The present method is directed to methods of detecting mismatches, polymorphisms, and methylation in multiple genes or the same gene in multiple individuals.

The detection of changes in nucleic acid sequences such as exhibited by mutations and methylation has been an area of great interest in recent years. For example, mutations in certain genes have been associated with a variety of disorders—ranging from blood disorders to cancers. Genetic tests are thus becoming an increasingly important facet of medical care. Consequently, there has been an emphasis on the ability to rapidly and efficiently detect mutations and polymorphisms.
Many electrophoretic techniques have been developed to rapidly screen DNAs for sequence differences by which such mutations can be detected. Denaturing Gradient Get Electrophoresis (DGGE) [Myers, R. M., Maniatis, T. and Lerman, L., Methods in Enzymology, 155, 501-527 (1987)], Constant Denaturant Gel Electrophoresis (CDGE) [Borresen, A. L., et al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 88, 8405 (1991)], Single Strand Conformation Polymorphism (SSCP) [Orrita, M., et al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 86, 2766-2770 (1989)], Heteroduplex Analysis (HA) [Nagamine, C. M., et al., Am. J. Hum, Genet., 45,377-399 (19?9)] and Protein Truncation Test (PTT) [Roest, P. A. M., et al., Hum. Molec. Genet., 2,1719-1721 (1993)] are frequently used methods. Many labs use combinations of these methods to maximize mutation detection efficiency. All these methods require gel electrophoresis. Methods that do not require gel electrophoresis also exist. For example, selective hybridization on immobilized target sequences allows screening for rare known mutations [Zafiropoulos, A., et al., Biotechniques 223, 1104-1109 (1997)], while mass-spectrometry has been used to detect mutations by analyzing molecular weight of proteins [Lewis, J. K., et al., Biotechniques 24, 102-110 (1998)].
A fundamental problem with most currently existing mutation and polymorphism detection methods is that they only screen for mutations in a single gene at a time (i.e. the method is directed to looking at a 'gene of interest', that is suspected of having a mutation). Given that the human genome has 35,000-100,000 genes, this is a severe limitation. It is likely that unknown mutations and polymorphisms in several other genes both known and unknown, exist simultaneously with mutations/polymorphisms in the 'gene of interest'. However, mutations in those other genes would likely not be identified. Therefore a method that can perform 'mutation/polymorphism scanning' in a wide array of genes simultaneously, without the initial need for identifying the gene one is screening, would be useful. Gel-electrophoresis—based methods are essentially restricted to examining mutations in a single gene at a time. Attempts have been made to devise non-gel electrophoretic methods to identify mutations, that would not be restricted to a single gene [Cotton et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA vol. 85, pp 4397-4401, (1988)] [Nelson, S. F. et al., Nature Genetics, 4, 11-8, (May 1993)] [Modrich, P., et al., Methods for Mapping Genetic Mutations. U.S. Pat. No. 5,459,039, (1995)]. These methods, however, have had limited success (Nollau P. and Wagener C., Clinical Chemistry 43:1114-1128 (1997)) since they are complicated, typically requiring several enzymatic steps, and they result in a large number of false positives, i.e. they frequently score mutations and polymorphisms in normal DNA. It would be desirable to have a method that allows highly sensitive and specific identification and rapid purification of sites that contain mutation/polymorphism over large spans of the genome.
Although DNA arrays and methodologies that can simultaneously scan a large set of DNA fragments for gene expression (e.g. the 'repertoire' and amount of genes expressed in normal vs. cancer cells) are known [Wodicka L, Nature Biotechnology 15: 1359-1367 (1997); Lockhart, D J, Nature Biotechnology 14: 1675-1680 (1996); Schena, M., Trends Biotecnnol 16: 301-306, (1998); Yang, T. T., Biotechniques 18: 498-503, (1995)], the ability to scan a large set of random DNA fragments for unknown mutations is a much more demanding process for which the technology is lagging [Ginot F., Human Mutation 10: 1-10 (1997)]. Thus far DNA array-based methods to scan for polymorphisms (SNPs) and mutations has been restricted to specific genes [Lipshutz, R. J., Biotechniques 19: 442-447 (1995); Wang, D. G., Science 280: 1077-1082 (1998)]. Whereas detection of unknown mutations over several genes requires a selectivity and sensitivity not currently achievable by present arrays [Ginot F., Human Mutation 10: 1-10 (1997)]. For example, when it comes to unknown mutation detection, even a single gene with a coding sequence of the size of APC (8.5 of kb) is difficult to screen in a single experiment, especially when an excess normal alleles is simultaneously present [Sidransky D., Science 278: 1054-1058 (1997)]. Thus, current arrays do not scan whole genes from the 5′ to the 3′ end, but selectively sample the gene. For example, expression arrays are biased to the 3′ end. U.S. Pat. No. 6,174,680 described a method and an array that could be used to screen and identify a plurality of changes. However, additional methods for identifying changes are desirable. It would also be desirable to have a number of methods that could sample genes over larger portions of a gene and multiple genes. A method that permits identification of additions, substitutions, deletions, methylation and glycosylation changes over large spans of the genome would also be desirable.

Methods for rapid screening of polymorphisms, mutations and methylation


A method of processing heated metal logs in a metal extrusion process. The remainder of each log is attached to the succeeding log. Specifically, the abutted ends of the two log segments are aligned with a saw. The saw is actuated to simultaneously remove material from both of the abutted ends. The cut ends are friction welded together through relative rotation of the log segments. The process creates a heated log column that is effectively endless, eliminating log remainders.

The present invention relates to aluminum extrusion, and more particularly to the process of cutting billets from aluminum logs exiting a furnace.
Aluminum extrusion is a well known and widely practiced technology. Aluminum logs are heated within a log furnace to a temperature suitable for extrusion. As each log exit the furnace, billets are cut from the log and transferred to an extrusion press. With the press, the billet is extruded through a die to create an article having a desired shape and length. The total length of the extruded shape is a multiple of the length of the pieces to be cut from the shape plus process scrap. The required billet length is directly proportional to the desired extrusion length.
Cutting billets of desired lengths from a heated aluminum log creates remainders or off-cuts. One challenge in aluminum extrusion is to use the remainders or off-cuts without resorting to recycling or re-melting due to the inherent costs involved. The preferred method for the use of remainders or off-cuts is to combine them with another log segment (known as a "short-cut piece") to create a two-piece billet. The two-piece billet is loaded into the press container, and the two pieces fuse together as the abutting faces of the two pieces pass through the extrusion die. Unfortunately, the spaces and gaps between the two pieces entrap air that produces unacceptable blisters in the finished product. Furthermore, the oxide film on the two abutting faces of the two-piece billet produces defective or unsound fusions or welds between the faces as the aluminum moves through the extrusion die.
One prior art attempt has been made to create an effectively "continuous" log as input to the furnace. Specifically, sequential logs are attached together in end-to-end fashion as the logs are moved into the furnace. The attachment is created by "friction stir welding" or surface welding the abutting logs. This technique has at least two problems. First, the ends of the logs are rarely square; and the logs are rarely straight. Consequently, the connected logs result in a log column that is non-linear (i.e. snake-like). The log column does not lay evenly on the supporting rollers; and the log column is difficult to move through the furnace. Second, this technique does not resolve the above noted problems of entrapped air and oxide.

Method of welding heated log segments in an aluminum extrusion process


An optical semiconductor device for emitting a light beam includes an outer envelope that forms an indentation in which a light emitting element is positioned. The indentation is divided into a first indentation part corresponding to a lower part of the indentation, and a second indentation part corresponding to an upper part of the indentation. A projection strip between the first and second indentation parts, projects from the inner surface of the outer envelope. A conductive lead supplies an electrical power to the light emitting element.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an optical semiconductor device and a manufacturing method thereof, and more particularly to an optical semiconductor device including a semiconductor device which emits a light beam and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A package for an optical semiconductor device such as a surface-mounted LED, is formed by inserting an electrically conductive lead in a thermoplastic resin. Japanese Patent Publication (kokai) No. 2000-183407 discloses such a package. FIG. 5 is a vertical section of a package 100 for an optical semiconductor device. Package 100 is provided with a conductive lead 101 and a base 102. Base 102 includes an indentation 102a provided on an upper surface 101a of lead 101. A light emitting element 104 is positioned on lead 101. Indentation 102a is filled with translucent resin to form a translucent part 103. A wire 105 made of gold, electrically connects emitting element 104 and lead 101. A light beam emitted from light emitting element 104 radiates from package 100 through translucent part 103.
Package 100 is manufactured as described next. First, lead 101 is inserted into a die. Then, injection molding is carried out by filling the die with thermoplastic resin to form base 102. After a conductive adhesive is applied on one electrode of lead 101, light emitting element 104 is positioned on the applied conductive adhesive. Wire 105 is bonded to the other electrode of lead 101 to complete a conductive connection to light emitting element 104. Then, after filling into indentation 102a, translucent resin is cured under a certain curing condition to form translucent part 103. As a result, package 100 is produced.
A light beam emitted from element 104 radiates through translucent part 103. The angle of the beam spread ranges from 100-degree to 120-degree. Therefore, it is difficult to focus the light beam outputted from package 100 without a focusing lens or a light reflector. Consequently, package 100 is not suited for illuminating a specific limited region.
In order to illuminate a specific region, some packages have a wall for reflecting a light beam to control a directivity thereof. FIG. 6 is a vertical section of a package 200 for an optical semiconductor device as one example of such packages. Package 200 includes a lead 201 and an outer envelope 202. Outer envelope 202 includes a first indentation part 202a and a second indentation part 202b which surrounds first indentation part 202a. A translucent part 203 is formed by filling first indentation 202a with phosphor mixed silicon resin. An inner wall of second indentation part 202b serves as a reflecting wall 204 to reflect a light beam emitted from light emitting element 205. A wire 206 made of gold electrically connects a light emitting element 205 and one of electrodes of lead 201. Q in FIG. 6 designates light rays of the light beam emitted from light emitting element 205.
FIG. 7 illustrates a problem that may be experienced with package 200 having reflection wall 204 and translucent part 203 which is made by filling sealing resin. As shown in FIG. 7, phosphor mixed silicon resin creeps up reflection wall 204 in the process of filling and curing the resin. As a result, the area of reflection wall 204 is substantially reduced. Further, a surface shape of translucent part 203 differs from a desired designed shape. Consequently, reflection wall 204 does not perform as expected. Moreover, the phosphor mixed silicon resin creeping up reflection wall 204 also results in translucent part 203 being concave. As a result, an optical path of a light ray passing through the center of translucent part 203 is shorter than that of a light ray passing through the periphery of translucent part 203. This causes a different excitation and luminescence of the phosphor between a center and a peripheral part of translucent part 203. Consequently, color tone deteriorates.

Optical semiconductor device and method of manufacturing optical semiconductor device


Aspects of the subject disclosure may include, for example, obtaining a first request for a first virtual object, obtaining first data regarding the first virtual object responsive to the obtaining of the first request, analyzing the first data to identify a first plurality of characteristics for the first virtual object, wherein the first plurality of characteristics include a first visual aspect of the first virtual object, a first auditory aspect of the first virtual object, a first scent aspect of the first virtual object, and a first haptic aspect of the first virtual object, and responsive to the analyzing of the first data, enabling at least a first sensory unit of a plurality of sensory units to render the first virtual object in accordance with the first plurality of characteristics. Other embodiments are disclosed.

As the world continues to become increasingly connected over vast communications networks, opportunities exist for enhancing or augmenting an environment where people or users of devices are located. For example, X reality (XR) (also referred to as cross reality) is a form of a mixed reality (MR) environment that is a result of a fusion/union of ubiquitous sensors/actuator networks and shared online virtual worlds. XR technology enables content creation, generation, and provisioning for virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and cinematic reality (CR) environments. For example, XR technology is used to generate new or alternative forms of reality by incorporating virtual objects (e.g., holograms) into the physical world and incorporating physical objects in a virtual (e.g., digital) world. In this respect, XR technology incorporates aspects of a MR, where traditional dividing lines between the physical world and the virtual world are blended, obscured, or even eliminated.

Method and apparatus for generating virtual objects


A portable computer that conserves power when the computer operates from its portable power source. The portable computer has a processor operatively coupled to an input device, an output device, and a memory device. The portable computer also includes a portable power source operatively coupled to the processor, and a selectively operable cooling system that is adapted to create a heat transfer zone in which heat dissipates from the processor. The cooling system has a cooling unit that may be selectively disabled in a desired power-saving mode during which the processor may continue to operate. The cooling unit is preferably disabled by electrically disconnecting the cooling unit from the portable power source to de-energize the cooling system, or by physically disconnecting the cooling system from the portable computer.

Portable computers, or laptop computers as they are also called, are easily transportable computers that operate from either an external power source in a base operating mode, or a portable power source in a portable operating mode. External power sources are generally electrical outlets that have a supply of alternating current (AC) power, while portable power sources are generally rechargeable batteries that are housed in the computer. The processor is coupled to one or more input devices, such as a key board or mouse, and output devices, such as a printer or display unit. In use, an operator generally inputs data to the processor through the input devices, and the output devices visually present to the operator the data generated by the processor.
One objective of portable computers is to maintain an adequate processor operating rate for running software applications. Processor manufacturers continually develop faster, more powerful processors as measured by the number of calculations that may be performed in a second. In general, more powerful processors consume more electrical energy and produce more heat energy than earlier generations of slower processors. For example, the more powerful Intel.RTM. Pentium Pro processor consumes approximately 23.2-31.7 W of power, while the slower Intel.RTM. 486 processor only consumes about 1.4W-6W of power. As a result, more powerful processors produce more heat than slower processors. One difficulty in using more powerful processors is that their operating temperatures increase with increasing operating speed. Thus, high speed portable computers generally have cooling systems that dissipate heat from the processors.
Conventional cooling systems in computers are typically active cooling systems that consume power, or a combination of active cooling systems and passive cooling systems. Examples of active cooling systems include electrical fans that blow air across the processor, or thermoelectric heat pumps that draw heat away from the processor. Passive cooling systems are generally heat sinks attached to the processor to increase the surface area over which heat dissipates from the processor.
One general problem created by more powerful processors is that their high power consumption significantly reduces the period during which a portable computer can operate from its portable power source. The high-powered processors not only consume more power themselves, but the conventional cooling units on the portable computers also consume more power to dissipate the additional heat generated by the processors. Therefore, to increase the period during which the computer can operate from its portable power source, it is generally desirable to reduce the rate at which the computer components consume power from the portable power source.
A more specific problem of conventional active cooling systems is that they continuously operate and consume power throughout the operation of the computer. Since the new, more powerful processors consume even more power than earlier generations of processors, continuously operating the cooling unit further reduces the period that a computer can operate from its portable power source. Thus, it would be desirable to develop a cooling system that conserves power when the computer operates from its portable power source.
Another problem of conventional cooling systems is that their size and weight generally reduce the portability of portable computers. Yet, an important aspect of portable computers is minimizing their size and weight to make them easier to carry and store. Thus, it would also be desirable to develop a cooling system that enhances the portability of portable computers.

Portable computer with selectively operable cooling unit


A trigger type fluid dispenser (100) according to the invention includes a body (110) having a discharge flow path (111) and a cylinder (112) disposed in parallel with the discharge flow path (111), and a piston (140) in the cylinder (113) is caused to slide by a trigger (130). The trigger (130) is configured so that a hook portion (131) thereof is held to be swingable by the body (110), a turned-down portion (131) of an extension portion, which is an elastic portion (132) integrally extending from a swinging portion (114) of the hook portion (131), is held with respect to the body (110), and a tip end (132e) of the extension portion is positioned to be capable of coming into contact with the hook portion (131). The body (110) is configured so that a cover (120a) is installed to form an internal space (R) between the cover (120) and the discharge flow path (111), and a core element (150) is inserted in the discharge flow path (111) and the internal space (R). The core element (150) is integrally provided with a tongue-shaped element (153), serving as a discharge valve, near a discharge port (111a) of the discharge flow path (111), and also integrally provided with a tongue-shaped element (154), serving as a suction valve, in the internal space (R).

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a trigger type fluid dispenser having a body which is provided with a discharge flow path for discharging a fluid in the horizontal direction and a cylinder disposed under the discharge flow path, a trigger which is held to be swingable with respect to the body, and a piston which slides in the cylinder in cooperation with the trigger.
2. Prior Art
A trigger type fluid dispenser is configured so that the user pulls a trigger with his/her finger to bring about a pumping action, by which a content filled in a container body is discharged. The trigger type fluid dispenser is usually provided with a body which has a discharge flow path for discharging a fluid in the horizontal direction and a cylinder arranged in parallel with the discharge flow path, a trigger which is held to be swingable by a pin provided in the body, and a piston which slides in the cylinder in cooperation with the trigger. The piston brings about a push-in action in the cylinder in cooperation with the pulling operation of the trigger by the contact of the piston with a protrusion provided on the trigger, and brings about a push-back action in the cylinder by an urging force of a return spring disposed in the cylinder when the finger is removed from the trigger.
Moreover, the trigger type fluid dispenser has a discharge valve consisting of an elastic valve which is opened by the push-in action of piston to discharge the fluid in the discharge flow path to the outside, and a suction valve consisting of a ball valve which is opened by the push-back action of piston to suck the fluid into the discharge flow path, and is insertedly provided with an intake having a valve seat common to these valves in the body thereof. The intake has a communicating hole which is in alignment with a communicating hole provided in the cylinder, and is also provided with a dip tube for sucking the content in the container body, and a cap for installing the dip tube on a mouth of container body via a sealing member.
In addition, the trigger type fluid dispenser is provided with a nozzle in the discharge flow path via a spin element. The content sucked from the container body by the user's trigger operation is discharged as a mist form from a discharge port via the discharge flow path while spinning in a portion between the spin element and the nozzle.
The conventional trigger pump is formed by many parts as described above, and hence it has a problem in that the assembling work is complicated and the cost increases. In particular, since the return spring is formed of a metal such as stainless steel, and is disposed between the piston and the cylinder, the conventional trigger pump has a disadvantage that the return spring is liable to come into contact with the content via the communicating hole, and not only the assembling is difficult to perform, but also it is necessary to sort the return spring from other resin-made parts when disposing.


A visible pattern is obtained by modulating the digital sum value. Because the digital sum value modulation allows the choice of several different channel bits groups between DC control points, the selection of a group of channel bits resulting in a change of reflection. This creation of a visible pattern is highly suitable for Blueray as the parity preserving property of the channel code guarantees disparity inversion by the DC-control bit, which keeps the DSV excursions between hard limits. As a result only small DSV deliberate variations are required to produce a grating, which will not deteriorate the bit-detection margin of the optical disc.

Such a disc is known from U6496541 where a channel code for recording an optical disc is disclosed. This 17PP channel code is parity preserving. To create watermarks on the optical disc such a code is extended with extra code words so that when encoding a choice exists between code words that yield higher or lower reflectivity. This is however not always possible if most code words are already used by the code and not many additional unused code words are available, so that the result is of low quality because not always the optimal reflectivity can be obtained. In addition adding extra code words to the code means that the decoder has to be modified in order to correctly decode these additional code words, resulting in a loss of backwards compatibility with the installed base.
The visual pattern is a form of watermark allowing the inspection of the disc to determine whether it is a genuine disc or not.
Watermarking and other copy protection measures are taken to stop home copying and professional pirates.

Optical disc comprising a watermark and a method and recorder for recording such a disc


An incubated state evaluating device includes an image reading unit, a feature value calculating unit, a frequency distribution calculating unit, and an evaluation information generating unit. The image reading unit reads a plurality of images in which a plurality of cells incubated in an incubation container are image-captured in time series. The feature value calculating unit obtains each of feature values representing morphological features of cells from the images for each of the cells included in the images. The frequency distribution calculating unit obtains each of frequency distributions of the feature values corresponding to the respective images. The evaluation information generating unit generates evaluation information evaluating an incubated state of cells in the incubation container based on a variation of the frequency distributions between images.

An art evaluating an incubated state of cells is a basic technology in a wide range of fields including a sophisticated medical field such as a regenerative medicine and a screening of medical products. For example, there is a process proliferating and differentiating cells at in vitro in the regenerative medicine field. In the above-stated process, it is inevitable to accurately evaluate the incubated state of cells to manage results of the differentiation of cells, and presence/absence of canceration and infection of cells. As an example, an evaluation method of cancer cells using a transcription factor as a marker is disclosed in Patent Document 1.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-195533

Incubated state evaluating device, incubated state evaluating method, incubator, and program

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY CORPORATION NAGOYA UNIVERSITY


In one example, a method for detecting failover in a database mirroring system that begins when a determination is made as to the time of the most recent backup of the principal database. Next, the time of the most recent backup of the mirror database is determined. Then, the time of the most recent backup of the principal database is compared to the time of the most recent backup of the mirror database to determine if the principal database was backed up most recently. Finally, if the mirror database is the database that was backed up most recently, it is established that failover has occurred.

1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for backing up data. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to systems and methods for backing up data based on the detection of failover events in a database mirroring environment.
2. Related Technology
Database mirroring is a process of synchronizing data between two databases, each of which resides on a respective database server. At any given time in the database mirroring process, one database performs the role of principal database, and the other database performs the role of mirror database. Initially, the data on the mirror database is an exact duplicate of the data on the principal database. As users interact with the database mirroring system, all requests for updates to the data are directed toward the principal database. Each time an update request is performed on the principal database, the same update is automatically performed on the mirror database. Thus, as long as the database mirroring process is functioning properly, the data on the mirror database will continue to be an exact duplicate of the data on the principal database.
Maintaining synchronized copies of a database on two separate servers allows for failover. Failover is a process that automatically switches the "principal" and "mirror" roles of the two databases in a database mirroring environment. After failover, the pre-failover mirror database takes on the role of principal database, and the pre-failover principal database might take on the role of mirror database, if the pre-failover principal database is still available. Thereafter, the mirror database will be continually updated with each update made to the principal database.
Failover is an important fault tolerance function of mission-critical systems that rely on uninterrupted accessibility. Failover is desirable, for example, in the situation where the database server on which the principal database resides becomes unavailable. A database server may become unavailable because of, for example, a hardware or software or network failure. Where failover has occurred because the pre-failover principal database has become unavailable, and due to failover the pre-failover mirror database has been redesignated as the principal database, the data on the mirror database will not be updated with the updates made to the data on the principal database during the time that the mirror database is unavailable. However, once the mirror database becomes available and the mirror relationship is re-established, all updates made to the principal database since failover will automatically be made to the mirror database.
One goal of many failover processes is to make the failover occur as seamlessly as possible from the perspective of the end user, so that the user is not made aware that the pre-failover principal database has become unavailable or that the failover has even occurred. The capacity for automatic failover allows for normal database function despite interruptions caused by problems with the database server where the pre-failover principal database resides. However, failover processes can sometimes present challenges to the implementation of database backup processes that are performed on the principal database.
Data backup in a database mirroring environment is a process that typically involves making a copy of the data stored in the principal database. Data backup makes possible the restoration of the principal and/or mirror databases. For example, in the event that the principal database and mirror database become temporarily or permanently unavailable, the principal and mirror databases can be restored using the copy of the data created during data backup. Systems and methods for performing database backup are typically configured to perform a variety of types of backup to prevent data loss, depending on the state of the database at the time of backup. For example, a failover event can affect the state of the database, which can in turn affect the type of backup which should be performed.
Current database mirroring technology that implements failover does not notify a software application that is run intermittently or on an ad hoc basis that failover has occurred. Since data backup software applications are typically run intermittently instead of continuously, detecting failover is a challenge for intermittently-run data backup software applications.

Detecting failover in a database mirroring environment