A lubricant applying unit has a residual-toner collection rate X of 50% when the lubricant applying unit has not been used. The collection rate X is obtained by X=(Ta−Tb)/Ta×100, where Ta is weight per unit area of the residual toner on an area of the image carrier that has not come into contact with the lubricant applying unit, and Tb is weight per unit area of the residual toner on an area of the image carrier that has come into contact with the lubricant applying unit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for applying a lubricant to an image carrier in an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a demand for forming high-quality images in an image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a facsimile, or a printer disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-272091, is growing. To fulfill this demand, toner that contains more fine and spherical particles is being developed. Hereinafter, such toner will be referred as fine and spherical toner. The reason behind this is that a dot-reproducibility increases as the size of the toner particles decreases, and a development performance and a transferability increase as the sphericity of the toner particles increases. However, the fine and spherical toner can hardly be produced by the conventional mixing and crushing method. Therefore, polymerized toner produced by a suspension polymerization method, an emulsion polymerization method, or a dispersion polymerization method is becoming popular as the fine and spherical toner.
However, use of the fine and spherical toner leads to the following problems when cleaning an image carrier such as a photosensitive drum after forming images.
It is difficult to scrap the fine and spherical toner with a cleaning blade that is typically employed for scrapping toner from the image carrier in the image forming apparatus. Specifically, when the cleaning blade scrapes off toner from the surface of the image carrier, the cleaning blade is sometimes deformed due to a friction between the image carrier. In case the cleaning blade is deformed, toner is caused to roll in a space between the image carrier and the cleaning blade, so that some toner remains behind on the image carrier. If the amount of toner that remains behind on the image carrier increases, a cleaning failure occurs, resulting in degradation of images such as occurrence of background fog in the images.
Furthermore, the toner that has rolled out of the cleaning blade may be remained on the surface of the image carrier leading to filming. The filming is a phenomenon that mold release agent or fluidizer contained in the toner adheres to the surface of the image carrier as a film. The filming leads to degradation of images such as occurrence of white points in one-colored area of the images.
To improve the performance of the cleaning blade, one approach is to reduce a coefficient of friction of the surface of the image carrier. Such a technique has been disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-207397, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-062709, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-325621, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-251751. Specifically, the coefficient of friction of the surface of the image carrier is reduced by forming a thin film of a lubricant made of metallic salts of fatty acids or the like on the surface of the image carrier. When the coefficient of friction is small, adherence of the toner to the image carrier decreases. As a result, the cleaning performance of the cleaning blade can be improved and the filming can be prevented.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-207397, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-062709, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-325621, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-251751, teach to use a brush to apply a lubricant to the image carrier. However, if images with large image portions are formed continuously, a large amount of toner may be attached to the brush. In this situation, when the brush receives the lubricant, the lubricant may stick to the toner adhering to the brush. As a result, the performance of applying the lubricant to the surface of the image carrier drops. The above problem is more likely to occur in the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-207397 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-062709, in which a lubricant applying device is arranged at a position upstream of a position where an image carrier is cleaned in a moving direction of the image carrier.
On the other hand, a configuration in which a lubricant applying device is arranged at a position downstream of a position where an image carrier is cleaned in a moving direction of the image carrier is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-325621 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-251751. With this configuration, the above problem is less likely to occur. Furthermore, because the lubricant is applied to the image carrier that has been cleaned, application of the lubricant to the image carrier does not depend on what images have been formed on the image carrier.
However, in the configuration as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-325621, when a brush unit only applies the lubricant and does not flatten the applied lubricant on the image carrier, functions of the applied lubricant cannot be obtained sufficiently. On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-251751 discloses a configuration in which a flattening unit that flattens the lubricant applied to the image carrier is arranged. However, arrangement of the flattening unit leads to an increase in costs and size of an apparatus.
To flatten the lubricant applied to the image carrier in a compact apparatus, it is preferable to flatten the lubricant on the image carrier while the configuration as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-207397 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-062709 is assured, in which the lubricant applying device is arranged at a position upstream of a position where the image carrier is cleaned in the moving direction of the image carrier and the image carrier is cleaned by the cleaning blade. However, this configuration leads to degradation of the performance of applying the lubricant to the image carrier as described above.
In the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-062709, a unit that removes toner from the brush unit is provided. However, because this unit removes the toner at a position between a position where the brush unit receives the lubricant and a position where the lubricant is applied to the image carrier in a rotation direction of the brush unit, the lubricant may be removed from the brush unit while the toner on the brush unit is removed. Therefore, the performance of applying the lubricant may degrade. In the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-272091 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-325621, bias is applied to the brush unit. However, a unit for applying the bias needs to be added, which leads to increase in costs.

Lubricant applying device, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus


Disclosed are systems and methods of producing electronic devices. These electronic devices include excess circuits to be used as replacements for circuits that are found to be defective within the electronic device. The excess circuits are included in a different device component than the circuits that are found to be defective. The replacement process occurs after the excess circuits and defective circuits are included in an electronic device including the different device components. Identification of the defective circuits may occur before or after the defective circuits are incorporated in the electronic device. In some embodiments, systems and methods of the invention result in improved manufacturing yields as compared with the prior art.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of electronics and more specifically in the fields of integrated circuit testing and assembly.
2. Related Art
In order to meet the needs and demands of advanced applications, electronic devices are becoming increasingly complex. This complexity makes it difficult and expensive to design single integrated circuits from scratch for specific applications. One approach to meeting the needs of specific applications, while avoiding the use of complex single integrated circuits, is to assemble a set of discrete components into a single package. These discrete components may be a set of previously designed circuits assembled as a system-on-chip (SoC), e.g., a system of discrete circuits on a single semiconductor die, a single system-in-package (SiP), a single system-in-module (SiM), a package-in-package (PoP), or the like.
A disadvantage of generating a single electronic device from a set of discrete components is that the failure rate of the entire device is the product of the failure rate of each of the components. Once discrete components are assembled into a single electronic device, any failure can result in the loss of the entire electronic device. Thus, if a memory component has a five percent failure rate, an electronic device having four of these memory components will have at least an 18 percent failure rate. This aggregated failure rate can be very expensive.
There are systems for testing and repairing individual device components prior to assembly into a single system. For example, circuits can be tested at the wafer lever, before the wafer on which they are produced is cut. They may also be repaired using laser fuses or anti-fuse technology. These repairs involve the use of excess circuits within the same individual device component as replacements for defective circuits. However, these systems cannot detect failures related to the assembly process, and the inclusion of excess circuits within the same individual device component can be costly. There is, therefore, a need for improved systems and methods of testing and/or increasing the yield of multi-component devices.


A Christmas lamp socket includes an inner socket for a lamp to fit therein and an outer shell to hold the inner socket. The inner socket has two supporting base parts defining an intermediate room. The outer shell has an intermediate wall inside and two holding cavities defined by the intermediate wall and an outer wall to retain a respective one of the supporting base parts such that the intermediate wall is received within the intermediate room and forms a pressure upon the supporting base parts for firmly holding leads of a wire between the supporting base parts and the outer shell.

This invention relates to a Christmas lamp socket, particularly one consisting of an inner socket and an outer shell whereby leads of a wire can have firm contact with contacts inside the socket by means of the combination of supporting base parts of the inner socket with the corresponding parts of the outer shell contoured to the shape of the supporting base parts.
A known conventional Christmas lamp socket, as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5, which has been issued by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office with U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,860, includes an inner socket 10 and outer shell 13 as the main parts; the inner socket 10 receives a lamp 1 at upper end portion thereof and has a supporting base 12 at lower end portion thereof. The supporting base 12 has a substantially "H" shaped cross section with guide grooves 121 at two sides. There are several projecting parts 122 on the guide grooves 121. Contacts 11 are disposed at upper portions of two sides of the supporting base 12.
The outer shell 13 has a holding cavity 131 defined by outer wall thereof to receive the inner socket 10 therein such that, referring to FIG. 5, leads 141 of a wire 14 can be each inserted into an aperture between the respective contact 11 and the outer shell 13 with the projecting parts 122 and the outer shell 13 holding the wire 14 in place.
However, because apertures between the supporting base 12 and the outer shell 13 cannot be changed once the socket is made, likely to result in loosening of the connection of the leads 141 to the contacts 11 and eventual loss of power supply to the Christmas lamp.


A method of tuning a summing network of a base station and a band-pass filter provided in such base station. Tuning is performed by arranging a moveable part made of a low-loss dielectric material or ferrimagnetic material in a space between an inner conductor and a tubular conductor in a coaxial cable, the width of the cross-section of the moveable part being different from its length, and tuning the summing network by adjusting the phase angle reflecting from the connector by turning the moveable part about an axle which intersects the cross-section substantially perpendicularly, whereby the distance between the moveable part and the inner conductor and/or between the moveable part and the outer conductor changes.

The invention relates to a method of tuning a summing network of a base station, the summing network comprising: transmitters, filter means with in-connectors for receiving signals supplied by the transmitters and out-connectors for forwarding filtered signals, and combiner means with in-connectors for receiving and combining the signals obtained from the out-connectors of the filter means and an out-connector for supplying the combined signals to antenna means of the base station, at least one of said connectors being a coaxial connector and comprising an elongated inner conductor and a substantially tubular conductor that surrounds the inner conductor and is arranged coaxially with the inner conductor. The invention also relates to a coaxial connector comprising an elongated inner conductor and a substantially tubular conductor that surrounds the inner conductor and is arranged coaxially with the inner conductor. The invention further relates to a band-pass filter comprising a resonator means, an in-connector for receiving signals to be filtered and for supplying them to an electromagnetic field of the resonator, and an out-connector for receiving filtered signals from the electromagnetic field of the resonator means and for supplying them further, at least one of the connectors being a coaxial connector and comprising an elongated inner conductor and a substantially tubular conductor that surrounds the inner conductor and is arranged coaxially with the inner conductor.
The invention particularly relates to a summing network of combiner filters of a base station in a cellular radio system. A combiner filter is a narrowband band-pass filter in resonance with (tuned to) the carrier frequency of a transmitter connected to it. The adjustment range of the filters is usually 2-10% of the medium frequency. The signals obtained from the outputs of the combiner filters are summed by the summing network of the base station and supplied to the antenna of the base station. The summing network usually comprises a coaxial cable which leads to the antenna of the base station and to which the combiner filters are connected. In order that a maximum amount of the transmission power of the transmitters could transfer to the antenna, the summing network must be tuned to the frequency channels used by the transmitters of the base station. To be exact, the summing network is tuned at only one frequency, but with movement away from the optimum frequency, the mismatch will not rise strikingly at first. In the base stations of cellular radio systems, the summing network can thus usually be used at a frequency band with a width of about 1 to 3% of the medium frequency of the frequency band.
Tuning of previously known summing networks is based on the use of transmission lines of a precise defined length, proportional to the wavelength. This sets high requirements to the cabling of a summing network, since the transmission lines must be of exactly the correct length so as to optimize the summing network to the correct frequency. Because of the tolerance requirements for the length of the cables required by the branches of the summing network, summing networks are quite expensive. As the operating frequency grows, the wavelength is reduced, and, on the other hand, as the physical size of the equipment sets certain requirements to the mechanical length of the summing network, the electric length of the summing network easily grows too long and the operating band of the combiner will narrow. The operating frequency band of the transmission combiner is thus in practice determined by the summing network, i.e. if the operating band is to be changed, the summing network or part of the network must be changed.
As automatically (remote control) adjustable combiner filters have become more common, a need has arisen for changing the tuning of the summing network in a simple and quick manner. The useful frequency band of the summing network is in practice so narrow that the frequency channels of the transmitters of the base station can hardly be changed at all if the tuning of the summing network is not adjusted as well. The previously known solution in which an installer goes to a base station site to replace the cabling of the summing network with cabling designed for a new frequency band is naturally too expensive and takes time.

Method of tuning summing network of base station filters via connector with moveable part


An error correction circuit which includes a specification circuit for specifying erroneous portions in a first data set reproduced from a recording medium, a register for storing the reproduced first data set including the erroneous portions thus specified and a reproducing circuit responsive to the reproduced first data set for reproducing again the first data set from the recording medium to obtain retry data, when there exist erroneous portions in the reproduced first data set stored in the register. The correction circuit also includes a data replace circuit, connected to receive the retry data, for replacing information at the specified erroneous portions in the reproduced first data set stored in the register by information at corresponding portions in the retry data.

The present invention relates to a recording device and in particular to a method for error correction and a circuit for realizing the same, which is suitable for recording/reproducing information more precisely.
A prior art method for error correction will be explained. An error correction code (hereinbelow abbreviated as ECC) having an ability to effect correction is added to a prior art data format. The data and an ECC are inputted to a circuit for error correction as input data. When errors are within the ability of error correction, the circuit for error correction corrects them to obtain correct data which is provided as output data. When they exceed the ability of error correction, the data is reread (hereinbelow called retry). Nevertheless, if there are errors exceeding the ability of error correction, it is often impossible to reproduce correct data.
The prior art techniques described above are disclosed in JP-A-48-74753 (corresponding to U.S. application Ser. No. 212544, filed on Dec. 27, 1971), JP-A-49-91560 (corresponding to U.S. application Ser. No. 317986, filed on Dec. 26, 1972), and JP-A-53-132951 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,100,403).

Method for error correction and circuit for realizing same


A dryer according to the present disclosure may be a dryer to which a heat pump system is applied, and may provide a structure in which constant temperature external air is suctioned and supplied to a drum to maintain constant performance of the dryer. An air supply unit configured to supply hot dry air to the drum is isolated from an inside of the main body such that internal air including a foreign material is not introduced into the air supply unit, and a suction port cover is separably coupled to the dryer such that a foreign material introduced with the external air is easily removed.

Generally, a dryer is an apparatus configured to dry an object to be dried in a drum by rotating the drum accommodating a wet object at a low speed and passing hot dry air through the drum. Clothes dryers configured to dry objects, which are completely washed wet laundry, are widely used as a general example of a dryer.
Dryers may be classified into electric dryers and gas dryers according to a method of heating air, that is, a power source. The electric dryer heats air using electric resistance heat, and the gas dryer heats air using heat generated by combusting a gas.
In addition, dryers are classified into discharging dryers and circulating dryers according to a method of processing moisture absorbed from an object to be dried.
A discharging dryer discharges moist air flowing from a drum to the outside via a discharge duct.
A condensing dryer uses a method of removing moisture of moist air, which flows from a drum, via a heat exchanger, and sending the air to the drum to circulate. Since the condensing dryer forms a closed loop airflow, it is difficult to use a gas as a heat source thereof, and maintenance costs are relatively high because electricity is mainly used. However, the condensing dryer has an advantage in that a discharge duct is not needed because air circulates between an object to be dried in the drum and a heat pump system.
However, in the case of the circulating dryer configured not to discharge air, since a condenser and an evaporator are installed in the dryer, a foreign material such as a particle present in the dryer or lint and the like generated while clothes are dried may be suctioned into a heat pump system, and thus efficiency of the dryer may be decreased. In this case, there are problems in that installation of a filter is essential, and, a temperature in the dryer is increased and air suctioned into the dryer is increased as a drying process is continuously performed, and thus drying efficiency of the dryer is decreased. In addition, there are problems in that a filter installation area is needed and cleaning is not easy.


A wireless network assigns a single IP address to the wireless device, which assigns this IP address over to a TE2 device coupled to the wireless device. The wireless device derives a private IP address for communication with the TE2 device. The wireless device forwards packets exchanged between the TE2 device and the wireless network using the single IP address. The wireless device exchanges packets with the TE2 device by (1) using the private IP address for outbound packets sent to the TE2 device and (2) performing either address-based routing or packet filtering on inbound packets received from the TE2 device. The wireless device exchanges packets with the wireless network by (1) using the single IP address for outbound packets sent to the wireless network and (2) performing packet filtering on inbound packets received from the wireless network.

1. Field
The present invention relates generally to data communication, and more specifically to a method and apparatus for supporting wireless data services on a TE2 device.
2. Background
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, packet data, and so on. With advancements in wireless data technology, wireless networks and wireless devices are capable of supporting a multitude of wireless data services. Examples of such wireless data services include geographic position-based services, multimedia streaming and broadcast services, Short Message Service (SMS) and text messaging services, and so on. The spectrum of wireless data services and their capabilities are expanding rapidly, and new data applications are continually being developed to make use of these services.
A wireless device may be coupled to a TE2 device and used to provide or support wireless data services for the TE2 device. The wireless device may be a cellular phone, a user terminal, a data card, or some other device that is capable of providing access to a wireless data network. The TE2 device may be a laptop computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), or some other computing device. The terms "TE2 device" and "terminal equipment" are synonymous and used interchangeably. The wireless device may be coupled to the TE2 device in various manners such as, e.g., as an embedded card, a PCMCIA removable card, a tethered mode phone, and so on. The TE2 device may communicate with the wireless device using various hardware and/or software interconnections. In any case, the TE2 device uses the wireless device to gain access to the wireless data network for general Internet access and/or for other forms of data connectivity.
Many wireless data services are based on wireless device-centric designs. For these designs, the wireless data services are only accessible to the wireless device itself or are readily available to the wireless device. Furthermore, the wireless data services are often available using proprietary methodologies that are designed for specific wireless data network technologies such as Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), Evolution Data Only (EVDO), and so on. The TE2 device typically communicates with, and relies upon, the wireless device to gain access to the wireless data services.
It is highly desirable for the TE2 device to be able to access the wide multitude of wireless data services that are available on the wireless device. This is beneficial for several reasons. First, a mobile user may only be able to access wireless data services if these services are available on the TE2 device. For example, the wireless device may be embedded in the TE2 device (e.g., in the form of a data card) and can no longer be used as a standalone device (such as a cellular phone). The TE2 device (and not the wireless device) would then provide a user interface to the mobile user and the wireless data services would need to be accessible via the TE2 device. Second, having the same wireless data services available on both the TE2 device and the wireless device would allow end applications to more fully utilize the available wireless data services.
There is therefore a need in the art for a method and apparatus for supporting wireless data services on a TE2 device.

Method and apparatus for supporting wireless data services on a TE2 device using an IP-based interface


In many types of construction machines, the frame assembly comprises a rear frame that supports the engine and the majority of the drive train components and a front frame that supports the work implement and related structure. In this type of machine, the two frames are normally pinned together and the front frame is articulated with respect to the rear frame by a pair of steering cylinders to provide steering for the machine. In order to provide the required structural support for the components of the work implement and to accommodate the steering forces, the front frame is necessarily quite large. The present invention provides a front frame (12) structure that includes a pair of main side plates (62, 64) and a substantially planar support plate (74) that is mounted to a first end portion of the side plates (62, 64). The support plate (74) mounts an axle assembly directly thereto and defines a pair of mounting bores (84) that are positioned, on a rearmost portion of the support plate (74). The bores define a mounting point for the steering cylinders (32) which are mounted between the front and rear frames (12, 14) in an orientation that is substantially in line with the support plate to transmit the forces from the steering cylinders (32) directly into the support plate (74).

In the operation of construction machines, it has been found desirable to steer the machine by rotating the front portion of the machine with respect to the rear portion. In order to do this, it is necessary to provide two separate frames that are pinned together about a vertical axis and extend hydraulic cylinders therebetween to obtain the desired rotation or articulation. Typically, the engine and drive train components are mounted on the rear portion of the machine and the work implement is mounted on the front portion of the machine.
In the case of some machines, the articulated wheel loader, for example, the front frame portion is subject to extremely high loads from several different sources. One primary source occurs during the steering function of the vehicle. Since the front axle is mounted to the front frame, there must be substantial support for it as it steered over all kinds of terrain. The forces applied by the steering cylinder to rotate the front frame with respect to the rear frame to steer the axle are also quite large. The support brackets for the steering cylinders are normally positioned on the sides of the front frame assembly at locations that are spaced from the axle centerline, through which the forces are transferred. As this spacing increases, so to do the forces passing therethrough, which ultimately requires exceptionally large support brackets for mounting structures.
These factors inherently result in a structure that is quite large in both height and width. With the increase in size however, come several disadvantages. The overall complexity and weight are exceptionally costly in terms of the numbers of components that must be welded together and the expense of material. Additionally, the operation of the machine is hampered because the large size of the structure can reduce the operators visibility to the work implement. This especially true with respect to the line of sight to the base and the corners of the implement.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above.

Frame assembly for an articulated construction machine


A fragrance dispensing device includes a housing, a fragrance assembly, a cover panel, a fan, and a drive assembly. The housing includes a first portion and a second portion, which moves relative to the first portion. The housing includes an intake opening and an exhaust opening. The fragrance assembly rotates within the housing's interior cavity and defines a plurality of receptacles for receiving fragrance inserts. The cover panel substantially seals one or more receptacles and defines an opening. The fan is coupled to the housing's second portion. The drive assembly rotates the fragrance assembly such that at least a portion of a user-selected fragrance insert is aligned with the cover panel's opening. The fan moves air from the housing's intake opening, across the cover panel's opening, and out the housing's exhaust opening, thereby releasing a fragrance into an environment. The drive assembly may include a shaft with helical threads.

1. Field
The present invention relates generally to devices that dispense a fragrance into an environment.
2. Background
Home owners and businesses owners sometimes desire that an environment have a certain fragrance. For example, homeowners may want to create a pleasant smelling environment free of odors associated with cooking, pets, cigarette smoke, and other odor sources. Accordingly, devices have been developed that can dispense a certain fragrance into an environment, for example, a room. But after a certain amount of time, people become used to the dispensed fragrance, and the fragrance is not as noticeable as it first was. Other times a person becomes tired or dislikes a certain dispensed fragrance and desires a different fragrance.
Accordingly, there is a need for a device that can selectively dispense two or more fragrances into the environment.

Fragrance dispensing devices and methods


The invention is directed to controlling sand production in an oil and/or gas well. A preferred embodiment of the invention is directed to repairing a downhole screen by pumping neutrally buoyant resin coated material into a damaged portion of a gravel pack screen and also into any void behind the damaged portion of the screen. The neutrally buoyant resin provides for the repair of a portion of the screen even if the damaged portion is located on the uphole side of a deviated well. Any excess resin coated material may subsequently be removed from the central passageway of the screen and then circulated to the surface because the resin coated material is neutrally buoyant. Neutrally buoyant resin may be pumped into a well that does not have a sand control system. The porous neutrally buoyant resin allows production of hydrocarbons, but prevents production of sand into the well.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to repairing failed gravel pack screens in an oil and/or gas well. More particularly, one embodiment of the invention is directed to repairing the screen by pumping an ultra-lightweight or neutrally buoyant resin coated material into the screen into the hole(s) in the screen and into any void behind the screen. Any excess resin coated material is subsequently removed from the central passageway of the screen. Other embodiments of the present invention involve controlling sand production in cased wells.
2. Description of the Related Art
One problem facing the oil and gas industry is preventing reservoir sand from being produced with the hydrocarbons into the wellbore, which can build up and restrict hydrocarbon production. An increasing number of reservoirs are being drilled horizontally and many of these wells often require sand control measures to prevent the buildup of sand beds in the well. To prevent and control reservoir sand, a mechanical filter may be placed between the wellbore and the formation. The filter often consists of a media, such as gravel or sand, placed between a screen and the formation. The media is carefully sized to allow the passage of hydrocarbons from the formation, but to prevent the majority of sand and particles that constitute the rock formation from passing into the well and possibly plugging it up.
For many years, the filter system commonly used comprised of media placed between a wire screen and the formation (or casing). The screen typically includes a base pipe that, depending on the size of the openhole or casing, may typically be 3.5 inch or 4 inch in diameter, although both larger and smaller sizes are in regular use. The screen base pipe would typically have a plurality of holes (e.g., ⅜ inches in diameter) drilled through the base pipe. By way of example, 50 or 60 holes per foot may be drilled in the base pipe. The base pipe gives the screen its strength. A plurality of ribs are welded longitudinally along the outer diameter of the base pipe. A wire is then wound around the outer diameter of the base pipe and ribs, the ribs generally provide a small standoff between the wire and base pipe. As the wire is wrapped around the base pipe, the space between successive wraps is sized to be smaller than the filter media, such as gravel, sand, or ceramic shapes placed between the screen and the reservoir rock or casing. Other configurations using wire mesh layers wound around a perforated base pipe are also in common use.
Clean, approximately spherical sand has been one type of media used to prevent the flow of larger particles from the formation to the wellbore. The screen is sized to effectively hold the sand in place against the formation. Properly packing the sand behind the screen can be challenging especially in long horizontal wellbores and could lead to problems with the effectiveness of the filter system. One method of packing the sand behind the screen is done by pumping water, sometimes with a polymer, to circulate the sand down behind the screen and allowing the sand to pack off at the bottom of the screen and formation interface while taking liquid returns through the screen and back to the surface. Gradually the packed sand builds up behind the screen until a uniform, annular sand pack is created between the screen and the formation. An alternative method to create the media sand pack is just pumping the sand and water into the annular cavity between the screen and formation and then squeezing the annular area and letting the liquid just disappear off into the formation.
The sand may not be uniformly compacted in the annular area regardless of what method is used. Achieving a uniformly compacted media behind a screen is sometimes difficult. For example, the screen may not be fully centered within the wellbore, there may be an area that takes fluid more readily than another part of the open hole sections, or there may be excessive liquid lost to the formation. Each of these can result in the sand behind the screen not being perfectly compacted and consolidated.
After the media is in place the well is put into production and reservoir fluids start flowing out of the rock formation through the annular area of filter media, through the screen, and up to the surface. There may be a significant pressure drop between the reservoir and the wellbore if the well is being drawn on to encourage the reservoir to produce. Voids may develop in the sand media if it was not uniformly distributed and compacted behind the screen. The hydrocarbons will preferentially flow to these voids due to there being less resistance than other portions of the media possibly creating a flow channel, which also provides for a higher velocity of flow. The absence of the media also permits the flow of very small (i.e. fine), reservoir particles through the channel.
These "fine" particles travel close to the same velocity as the hydrocarbons and over time these "fine" particles can erode a hole through the screen. A hole in the screen allows larger formation sand particles to be produced through the hole and deposited into the wellbore. Eventually, the sand build up may reach a point that it impedes production until the wellbore is cleaned out. After the cleanout of the wellbore, the sand control system preferably needs to be repaired to prevent a repeat of this problem.
Traditionally a repair would mean removing the screen and filter media and reinstalling a complete new filtering system. This process is very expensive due to the rig costs required to remove the screen and re-install a new screen. The cost also varied depending on how long the screen was. Due to the great expense in this process, a well operator had to determine how many reserves were potentially left in the well to evaluate whether the removal and repair of the screen was an economical procedure. One potential solution to fixing the screen that was not as costly was to run another screen inside the existing screen.
Although inserting a replacement screen within an existing screen may not be as expensive, it also has it limitations. Gravel pack completions on horizontal wells can extend over a thousand feet or longer and rectifying a failure using an insert screen over the whole length can be prohibitively expensive.
In a horizontal well, the existing filter may extend over thousands of feet long and the screens used in these applications can cost hundreds of dollars per foot. Thus, it may not be economical to insert a 2000 foot screen when only a small portion of the existing screen has been damaged. Furthermore, the rig and consequential workover costs associated with placing an insert screen inside a failed screen can also be significant.
Instead of inserting a replacement screen along the whole length, one possible solution is to install an insert screen across the damaged area. This could be possible if there was a technology available to readily locate where the existing screen had failed. The failure normally occurs in the wire or mesh behind the base pipe making failure location especially difficult. Because the screen itself is porous, it allows reservoir fluid to flows in and across the screen further compounding the difficulty of locating the failure. Presently there is no effective technology that may be run into the well to easily determine where the screen failure is located.
There are other limitations of whether insert screens may be used. For example, the size of the well may be too small to accommodate the insertion of another screen. An insert screen may be used as a purely mechanical screen or it may be used in conjunction with media between the existing screen and the insert. Although using media between the insert screen and the existing screen may provide better filtering capabilities it may also affect the production of the well. The use of an insert screen and filter media will normally limit the flow of hydrocarbons as now the hydrocarbons will have to flow through a smaller cross-sectional area resulting from the smaller annular ring of filter material. For the same pressure drop the flow through that smaller cross-sectional flow area is necessarily lower. Additionally, the insert screen reduces the internal diameter of the wellbore and limits options for future intervention operations.
As an alternative to installing insert screens inside a failed screen, one method to repair the failed screen is to try to squeeze resin coated sand into the screen in an effort to repair the failure. It was speculated that the resin coated sand would penetrate through the failure and into the void in the media behind the failure. The resin coated sand would then set up and harden preventing further sand ingress. The success of this method has typically been low and is often employed as a last resort.
One reason for the limited success is that resin coated sand is generally over 2.5 times heavier than water. The resin coated sand is mixed with water and pumped into the hole down to the screen. While the water will flow through the screen, in a vertical well the resin coated sand tends to fall into the bottom of the hole instead of penetrating into the screen and void behind the screen because the resin coated sand is heavier than the water. In a horizontal well, it can be even more difficult to repair a hole on the high side of the well. Gravity causes the resin coated sand to collect at the bottom side of the screen because it is heavier than the water or fluid it is pumped with.
In some instances, a cased well may not include a mechanical sand control system, such as a filter comprised of media and a screen, as discussed above. During the production of hydrocarbons the formation may begin to produce sand along with the hydrocarbons, which enters the cased well because no mechanical sand control system is present. The sand can build up within the well restricting the production of hydrocarbons as discussed above. It would be beneficial to provide a short term solution to control the production of sand providing for the production of hydrocarbons while a rig is procured to install a mechanical sand control system within the well. Alternatively, it may be beneficial to provide a sand control system that prevents the production of sand and that may be established within the cased well without the need of a rig. The sand control system may include a material that bridges within the perforation tunnels of the well. Such a sand control system may be more cost effective than the traditional mechanical sand control systems.
In light of the foregoing, it would be desirable to provide a method of repairing a gravel pack failure downhole even if the failure is located on the high side of a deviated or horizontal well. It would also be desirable to provide a material that is able to penetrate the screen failure and the void behind the failure to build up and prevent further ingress of reservoir sand and formation particles. It would be desirable to provide a repair material that is able to locate a failure in a downhole screen. It would further be desirable to provide a repair material that may repair a failed screen such that excess repair material may be readily removed from the wellbore. It would also be desirable to provide a material that may be used as a temporary sand control system within a cased well until a mechanical sand control system can be installed into the cased well. It would further be desirable to provide a method of squeezing a neutrally buoyant material into perforation tunnels in a cased well that may prevent the production of sand into the cased well.
The present invention is directed to overcoming, or at least reducing the effects of, one or more of the issues set forth above.


A method of modifying the vibration resonance characteristics of a workpiece includes the steps of determining a vibratory resonance condition frequency of the workpiece, determining the mode shape of said vibratory resonance condition, locating an area on the workpiece that includes a maximum curvature for the determined mode shape and vibratory resonance condition frequency; then laser shock peening the located area to create residual compressive stresses within the workpiece to shift the determined vibratory resonance condition frequency. A workpiece such as a gas turbine engine blade is also disclosed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the use of coherent energy pulses, as from high powered pulse lasers, in shock processing of solid materials, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for changing the vibrational frequency and mode shapes of workpieces, such as gas turbine engine blades to improve blade lifetime, and the engine operating envelope.
2. Description of the Related Art
Airfoil failures, i.e., cracking, separation, and distortion, result from a number of different causes, one being vibratory resonance. Gas turbine engine blades occasionally respond in their operating envelope by resonant mode vibration between their start, idle and maximum RPM speeds.
As shown in FIG. 1, there are many possible, ideal fundamental vibration mode shapes that a turbine blade may undergo. Particular sources of low order excitation include inlet distortion, bleed ducts, and frame or vane struts. Such resonance modes may be plotted in relationship between blade frequency and rotor speed as shown in FIG. 2.
Elastic or aerodynamic coupling of blades within a compressor stage, may result in mode vibrations. Furthermore, other types of aerodynamic instability, such as flutter or the like, may create an unstable or self-feeding resonance within the blade.
At particular resonance conditions, these gas turbine engine blades may be subjected to very high amplitude beating, therefore, creating high fatigue stresses at the resonance nodes. In operation, such gas turbine engines are constructed to be operated away from such resonant frequencies of the blades. This, however, is difficult when confronted with many resonance modes in the blade.
Engine designers sometimes find that where they wish to operate a gas turbine engine (for greatest efficiency), a problem arises in that at such speed, resonance conditions occur for at least one set of engine blades.
What is needed in the art is the ability to shift or alter the resonance frequency of a gas turbine engine blade.

Altering vibration frequencies of workpieces, such as gas turbine engine blades


Embodiments of systems and methods for starting an electronically controlled engine of a TRS by supplying power from a battery, are provided. The engine is electronically controlled by an engine control unit (ECU). The systems and methods can achieve a complete engine start even when the ECU experiences a reset during the startup of the engine.

Existing transport refrigeration systems are used to cool containers, trailers, railcars or other similar transport units (typically referred to as a "refrigerated transport unit"). Modern refrigerated transport units are commonly used to transport perishable items such as produce and meat products. In such a case, the transport refrigeration systems are used to condition the air inside a cargo space of the transport unit, thereby maintaining a desired temperature and humidity during transportation or storage. Typically a transport refrigeration unit (TRU) is attached to the transport unit to facilitate a heat exchange between the air inside the cargo space and the air outside of the transport unit.

Methods and systems for starting an electrically controlled engine of a transport refrigeration system


A burner for a vehicle heater of a particle filter regenerator including a combustion air blower, a combustion chamber with a fuel evaporator, a fuel supply with a fuel metering pump by which the fuel is proportionately fed to the evaporator, a glow-plug to ignite a mixture of combustion air and vaporized fuel and a control device, in which the control device switches the flow-plug on to ignite the mixture, starts the fuel metering pump after a first period following the switch-on of the glow-plug and substantially simultaneously with the starting of the fuel metering pump or a second period thereafter initiates a gradual increase in the speed of the combustion gas blower from a standstill or low speed rotation.

Vehicle heaters, which are also called "parking heaters" or "auxiliary heaters" in a passenger car, are also used in trucks, buses, campers, boats, but also construction equipment, besides passenger cars.
These vehicle heaters are operated with gasoline or diesel fuel, with a burner heating a heat carrier (air or water).
There are various types of vehicle heaters, which are distinguished, besides according to the type of the heat carrier, according to the type of the fuel (gasoline/diesel fuel) and according to the type of the burner as well as other design features. Besides burners with mechanical atomizers and rotary distributors, there are especially burners with evaporators. These vaporizing burners are of special interest for the present invention.
Vaporizing burners are used not only in vehicle heaters, but also in regenerators for particle filters, which are increasingly used in diesel engines. The cleaning or regeneration of the particle filter is performed by burning out.
The burner being disclosed here may be used equally for vehicle heaters and such particle filter regenerators.
Vaporizing burners contain, besides the combustion air blower, which is also usually used in other types of burners, and the fuel feed pump, which is also usually used, a fuel-evaporating means, typically in the form of a porous lining in the interior of the combustion chamber. Fuel is pumped by the fuel feed pump into this porous lining, so that the liquid fuel is evaporated by the porous material of the evaporator, which material has a large surface. By feeding in combustion air by means of the combustion air blower, a fuel-air mixture is formed, which is then ignited by means of a glow plug. The glow plug, which is typically designed of late as a sheathed element glow plug and is connected to a power source, is switched on to initiate the combustion. The glow plug is switched off after the ignition.
It has been known that the fuel-air mixture must be "ignitable" to form a flame of a fuel-air mixture. Besides the minimal ignition temperature, which is provided by the glow plug and is, of course, always needed, a certain ratio of air to fuel must be present in order for the ignition to be able to take place.
It was now found that the starting of the burner, especially the ignition of the fuel-air mixture, does not always take place with the desired reliability in the vaporizing burner in question.
It is common practice to start the fuel feed pump and the combustion air blower and to switch on the glow plug to start the burner. The blower and the feed pump are operated such that a maximum air and fuel throughput is reached. The environment of the glow plug is increasingly heated during the start-up phase, and when the ignition temperature is reached, the flame is formed, provided that the fuel-air mixture is indeed ignitable. However, it is not always possible to readily satisfy this condition within a relatively short period of time after the burner has been switched on.

Burner for a vehicle heater or a particle filter regenerator


A charge monitoring apparatus measures an electrical charge deposited on a multiple-layered workpiece, such as a semiconductor wafer, in a plasma processing system. The apparatus includes a charge collection electrode (CCE), a non-conducting patterned layer and a voltage or current sensor. The patterned layer is provided on the CCE and includes a plurality of openings that extend through the patterned layer to the conducting surface of the CCE. The openings create a topology having an adequate aspect ratio to cause electron shading to occur during plasma processing of the workpiece. The voltage or current sensor includes an EEPROM transistor that stores information regarding the amount of electrical charge that accumulates on the CCE during plasma processing.

It is known that certain manufacturing processes such as ion implantation, plasma etching, and other charged beam processes may cause damage to workpieces, such as semiconductor wafers, and the devices and circuits formed therein. In particular, electrical charging is a well known problem which can occur during the plasma processing of semiconductor devices leading to the degradation of the device performance. Electrical charging can, for example, be a problem when there are large antennas of conducting material such as metal or polysilicon attached to a transistor gate that utilizes a very thin (e.g., less than 100 angstroms) gate oxide. These antennas serve to collect a relatively high level of electrical charge by virtue of their large area. This electrical charge may then be funneled down onto a transistor (or other device) leading to performance degradation or outright destruction of the device.
In an effort to measure and/or characterize the charging that occurs during plasma processing, circuits have been developed to measure the resulting voltage potential (or a current flow) between a charge collection area on the surface of the semiconductor device wafer and the substrate of the semiconductor wafer. Circuits, such as these, are typically provided within the semiconductor wafer. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,315,145 describes a charge monitoring device using an EEPROM device that functions as a high impedance voltage sensor and/or current sensor with a memory capability.
By way of example, FIGS. 1a-1c are schemetic cross-sectional views of three semiconductor wafers including different conventional charge monitoring devices. The semiconductor wafer includes a plurality of layers including a substrate 12 and an oxide layer 14. Each of the charge monitoring devices in FIGS. 1a, 1b and 1c includes an electrically programmable memory device having an Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) transistor 16 for measuring and/or characterizing the charge that accumulates on a charge collection electrode (CCE) 18 (e.g., located on the surface of the wafer) during plasma processing.
A voltage sensor 10 is depicted in FIG. 1a. Voltage sensor 10 measures the positive potential between CCE 18 and substrate 12. Voltage sensor 10 includes EEPROM transistor 16 having a control electrode 20, a floating gate electrode 22, and source region 26 and drain regions 27. Control electrode 20 is connected to CCE 18. Floating electrode 22 located within oxide layer 14, includes a projection 24 that extends towards source region 26. Additionally, voltage sensor 10 includes a shunt diode 30 that is connected between CCE 18 and substrate 12. As depicted in FIG. 1a, diode 30 is connected to allow EEPROM transistor 16 to sense a positive potential between CCE 18 and substrate 12. If diode 30 is connected in the opposite direction between CCE 18 and substrate 12, as depicted by diode 30' in FIG. 1b, then voltage sensor 10' measures the negative potential between CCE 18 and substrate 12.
In other charge monitoring devices, diode 30 (or 30') are not required. However, the EEPROM transistor 16 in the resulting voltage sensor is affected by both positive and negative electrical charging during the process.
Furthermore, as depicted in FIG. 1 c, wherein diode 30 (or 30') is replaced by a resistor 32, EEPROM transistor 16 in voltage sensor 10" measures the voltage drop across resistor 32 as a result of the electrical charge accumulated on CCE 18 and the charge flux between CCE 18 and substrate 12. Thus, voltage sensor 10" is essentially a charge flux sensor, or current sensor.
For a workpiece, such as a semiconductor wafer, several charge monitoring devices (e.g., those depicted in FIGS. 1a-c) are typically provided to monitor the wafer during fabrication and processing. To perform the desired measurements using these devices, a threshold voltage (V.sub.t1) associated with EEPROM transistor 16 is programmed prior to exposing the wafer to a process, such as a plasma process. Programming is typically accomplished by probing the wafer and supplying a programming signal to EEPROM transistor 16 via CCE 18.
After the plasma process is completed, each EEPROM transistor 16 is again probed and a resulting threshold voltage (V.sub.t2) is measured. The measurement V.sub.t2 is typically accomplished by a parametric tester (not shown). This programming and measuring procedure is repeatable because each EEPROM transistor 16 is re- programmable.
Once V.sub.t1, and V.sub.t2 for a particular voltage sensor 10 are known, then the surface potential and charging is determined by using a calibration curve 35, as depicted in FIG. 2. Calibration curve 35 is a plot of threshold voltage V.sub.T versus a control gate voltage V.sub.G for an exemplary EEPROM transistor, where V.sub.T equals the difference in absolute magnitude between V.sub.t1 and V.sub.t2. Calibration curve 35 depicts the substantially linear relationship between V.sub.T and V.sub.G.
If V.sub.t2 is higher in absolute magnitude than V.sub.t1, then the right-hand side 36 of calibration curve 35 is used to determine V.sub.G based on V.sub.T. If V.sub.t2 is lower in absolute magnitude than V.sub.t1, then the left-hand side 38 of calibration curve 35 is used to determine V.sub.G based on V.sub.T. In either situation, V.sub.G represents the potential between CCE 18 and substrate 12. Further, if voltage sensor 10 includes a known resistance, such as resistor 32 in FIG. 1c, between CCE 18 and substrate 12, then the current that flowed through the resistor during plasma processing can be determined by applying Ohm's law (e.g., the current equals V.sub.G divided by the known resistance).
Charge monitoring devices, such as the prior art voltage and current sensors depicted in FIGS. 1a-c, are able to detect global wafer charging caused by non-uniformities in the plasma. The non-uniformities, if significant enough, can lead to macroscopic level charging of the wafer. However, prior art charge monitoring devices are less effective in measuring charging occurring at the local microscopic level due to the topology of the fabricated device structure. Microscopic level charging can occur in a uniform plasma and is often dependent upon the pattern of the exposed surface of the wafer. For example, charging due to "electron shading", caused by the physical structure of the device is difficult to measure with the prior art charge monitoring devices.

Methods and apparatus for detecting pattern dependent charging on a workpiece in a plasma processing system


A registration and login method executed by a mobile terminal is provided. The mobile terminal acquires a mobile phone number of the mobile terminal through a server in response to a registration operation, and encrypts the mobile phone number into a register file stored in the mobile terminal. The mobile phone number is inputted as a username to register to the server. The mobile phone number is acquired from the register file in response to a login operation and used as the username to log into the server. The mobile terminal includes an acquiring and encrypting module, a register module and a login module. Thus, a user need not input a username or a password, thereby simplifying the input operation during the registration and login process.

Recently, there are many mobile applications (Shorted as "app") designed for mobile terminals such as mobile phones. When registration and login process to a server is necessary to operate the mobile application or use a specific service provided by the server, a username and a password are usually required to identify the user. For registration process, the user has to specify a username and a password. For login process, the user has to enter the specified username and the password. Then, after the entered username and password are authenticated, the user is allowed to operate the mobile application or use the specific service.
However, it is inconvenient to enter characters of the username and the password through mobile terminals (e.g. mobile phones) during registration and login process. Input errors possibly occur and operation of the mobile terminal is seriously affected.

Registration and login method and mobile terminal

TENCENT TECHNOLOGY (SHENZHEN) COMPANY LIMITED


A system for editing of a target sequence at a locus of a host cell is disclosed. The system has a nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleic acid segment comprising a targeting RNA sequence and an RNA segment that binds a protein. The system also has a nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleic acid segment encoding a polypeptide with endonuclease activity fused to a protein that binds the RNA segment. The system also comprises a double stranded DNA molecule comprising DNA comprising at least one nucleotide sequence that is capable of binding to the target sequence at the locus.

The general strategy in genomic engineering using site-specific nucleases is to select a target nucleotide sequence in the genome, generate a nuclease construct directed at the selected target, deliver the construct to the cell nucleus, and analyze the produced mutations. Nucleases make single- or double-strand breaks in a target site that are repaired by the cell through one of two possible mechanisms: nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), during which errors can occur that result in indel type (insertions, deletions) mutations in the target locus, or homologous recombination (HR), in which an intact homolog serves as a template to restore the original DNA structure. In particular, the following mutations can be produced using site-specific nucleases: NHEJ in the absence of donor DNA mediates deletions or insertions of several nucleotides at the breakage point; in the presence of donor DNA, fragments of more than 14 kb can be inserted through NHEJ-mediated ligation; simultaneous introduction of several double-strand breaks may lead to deletions, inversions, or translocations of the DNA regions located between these breaks; and homologous recombination in the presence of donor DNA with homology arms flanking the donor DNA to be inserted, leads to insertion of nucleotides (or a deletion of the existing sequence), thus altering the existing genomic sequence.
The TALEN genome editing system is based on a naturally occurring system. Effector proteins (transcription activator-like effectors, TALEs) are capable of DNA binding and activating the expression of target genes via mimicking eukaryotic transcription factors. TALE proteins are composed of a central domain responsible for DNA binding, a nuclear localization signal, and a domain that activates the target gene transcription. Chimeric TALEN nucleases encode the DNA-binding domain of TALE. Because the DNA-binding domain of TALEN consists of almost identical repeats, and to increase the efficiency and to accelerate the assembly process, type IIS restriction endonucleases are used to hydrolyze DNA at a fixed distance from the recognition site. A double-strand break can be introduced in any region of the genome with known recognition sites of the DNA-binding domains using chimeric TALEN nucleases. TALEN proteins are methylation sensitive and a specific chimera with defined spacing may be needed for each target site.
Another genome editing system, CRISPR, employs non-coding RNAs and Cas proteins (CRISPR associated). In contrast to the chimeric TALEN proteins, recognition by the CRISPR/Cas system is carried out via the complementary interaction between a non-coding RNA and the target site DNA. In this case, a complex of non-coding RNA and Cas proteins, which have nuclease activity, is formed. In particular, for cleavage of DNA in vitro and in bacterial cells using CRISPR/Cas9, the following components are necessary and sufficient: non-coding RNAs (tracrRNA and pre-crRNA), RNase polymerase III, and the Cas9 protein. Instead of two non-coding RNAs, a single chimeric sgRNA is often introduced, in which mature crRNA is fused with a part of the tracrRNA through the synthetic "stem-loop" structure to simulate the natural crRNA-tracrRNA duplex. The CRISPR system is dependent on protospacer adjacent motifs (PAM) in the target DNA.
Existing genome editing tools, such as TALENS and CRISPR, offer several options to enable modification of genes within multiple research organisms. Each of the currently available tools does, however, have limitations. TALENs can be custom designed to target virtually any DNA sequence. Nevertheless, they are large proteins and the customization step requires engineering the large effector protein, which can be costly or time consuming. CRISPR/Cas systems depend upon the existence of PAM motifs nearby the sequence of interest to enable targeting that specific locus within the genome. If the target locus does not contain a PAM site recognized by the Cas protein, the site cannot be engineered.


An apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from gathering comprises at least three support columns, wire members tightly spanned between adjacent said support columns, and a plurality of magnet members disposed onto said wire members respectively. An improved apparatus according to the present invention includes an oscillation transmission mechanism to transmit oscillating motion from one to another adjacent wire members. In this apparatus, when a single wire oscillates, one and another of adjacent wire members oscillate by means of the oscillation transmission mechanism.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from gathering, more particularly, to an apparatus for preventing pigeons, crows or the like from approaching and perching on buildings or the like, using magnets effectively.
An apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from approaching, which keeps a veranda of an apartment house or the like from contamination of their droppings, generally includes magnetic members which affect on birds' biological magnetism in order to disperse birds. A typical example of such apparatuses is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 2537785. According to the apparatus described in the above-mentioned Utility Model Registration, the apparatus for dispersing birds comprises a plurality of support columns disposed standing upright in an appropriately spaced relationship, a wire member spanned between adjacent support columns, and a plurality of magnetic members fixed onto said wire member respectively. For example, support columns are mounted in aligned relationship onto the upper end surface of an outer wall of a veranda, resulting in many magnetic members being disposed along the upper end surface of an outer wall of a veranda. Pigeons or the like, which dislike magnetic power of magnetic members disposed along an outer wall of a veranda, hesitate to perch on a veranda, and as a result they finally do not approach there.
Also, Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 3029485 discloses a revised apparatus for dispersing birds. In this apparatus, a spring member or spring members are connected to a wire or a wire body so that the wire member deflects a large distance and oscillates vertically when a bird perches thereon. With the structure of this apparatus, birds such as pigeons which perch on a wire member are frightened and fly away. On the other hand, as surrounding magnetic field rapidly changes by the effect of magnetic members which shake accordingly as a wire member oscillate, such birds as not relatively sensitive to magnetism hesitate to approach a veranda or the like. A wire member including one or more spring members provides another effectiveness. For example, in an apparatus installed on a roof-top of a building, when a workman or the like steps on a wire member, the wire member reaches the roof-top without slacking or breaking due to resilience of spring members. And the wire member returns to tightly spanned configuration between two support columns after having been stepped on. Such configuration of this apparatus can prevent said apparatus from breaking easily and shortly.
Meanwhile, it is required to shorten the distance between two adjacent support columns and shorten the length of each wire member so that a wire member does not hang downwardly by gravity thereof and of magnet members connected thereto, and so that a wire member can oscillate in high frequency or at a high speed for a rapid change of magnetic field. However, a wire member formed short in length causes the following inconvenience. When a bird perches on a single wire member and flies thereaway, and then movement upward and downward thereof generates change of surrounding magnetic field. However, magnetic members mounted on a single short wire generate magnetism only in a short distance horizontally, and the area where change of magnetic field generated by the movement of the magnetic members is very narrow and limited. Therefore, the area where other pigeons or the like could be dispersed is also narrowed and limited accordingly.

Apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from gathering


The invention relates to a sound-reproducing transducer (60) connected to a printed circuit (50). This transducer (60) has the shape of a hollow cylinder whose cylindrical wall (66) delimits two circular faces, one front face (66c) and one rear face (66d) that are opposed and planar. The transducer (60) comprises at least one diaphragm (64) that makes it possible to convert electric signals into sound waves and conversely. This diaphragm (64) is a circular membrane parallel to the front face (66c) and rear face (66d) of the transducer (60). The diaphragm (64) delimits two distinct volumes in the transducer (60), the first volume being bordered on one side by the circular face (66c) of the transducer (60) and on the other by the diaphragm (64) while forming a front acoustic cavity (61), and the second volume being bordered on one side by the circular face (66d) of the transducer (60) and on the other by the diaphragm (64) while forming a rear acoustic cavity (62). The invention is characterized in that the cylindrical wall (66) of the transducer (60) has at least one perforation (72, 74, 76, 77, 78).

Manufacturers of mobile communication terminals are currently seeking to miniaturize them as much as possible whilst preserving optimum functional ergonomics.
This optimization of the size of the terminals, of which FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic side view, has impelled manufacturers to reduce their thickness.
A mobile terminal comprises a casing 10 in which are disposed various components such as a battery 20, a keypad 30, a screen 40 and a sound-reproducing transducer 60 connected to a printed circuit 50.
The sound-reproducing transducer or sound transducer 60 is adapted to transform electrical signals supplied to it into sound waves and vice-versa.
The sound transducer 60 may fulfill a plurality of functions such as those of earpiece, loudspeaker, ringer and vibrator.
The earpiece is essentially intended to be placed against the ear of a user when using the device to communicate, the ringer is used to alert the user to an incoming call or any other action, the loudspeaker enables sound reproduction at high volume for hands-free or ringer applications, for example, and the vibrator is used to alert the user discreetly to an incoming call through vibration of the earpiece.
To reproduce the sound waves, the sound transducer 60 consists of two distinct volumes defining a front acoustic cavity 61 and a rear acoustic cavity 62 the shapes and dimensions whereof must be adapted to allow sound reproduction of sufficient quality for the application for which the transducer is intended.
This sound reproduction is obtained by virtue of vibrations of a diaphragm that will be precisely defined hereinafter in the description of FIG. 3.
Moreover, the earpiece function necessitates a smaller component size than that required for a loudspeaker and ringer function which must emit sound at a greater volume. The volume occupied by the sound transducer 60 may not therefore be reduced beyond a certain limit imposed by the loudspeaker function.
Now, the current trend is to reduce the size and in particular the thickness of terminals.
Accordingly, the rear acoustic cavity 62 of the sound transducer 60 of current terminals has a volume of insufficient size and the space between the rear face of the transducer and the printed circuit is too small to allow sound reproduction of sufficient quality.
Inopportune damping of vibrations in the diaphragm of the sound transducer 60 occurs if the space between the rear face of the transducer and the printed circuit is less than 1 mm thick.
Those vibrations generating the sound, this leads to insufficient quality of sound reproduction.


An electro mechanical brake apparatus is provided, in which a counter-measure for the heat of the driving circuit is much improved when configured to be integrated with an electric circuit. An electric circuit portion is provided by sandwiching a motor with brake pads, and a power module is provided so that a heat dissipating surface is opposed to the inner surface of the metallic outer case of the electric circuit portion, and a control circuit board is disposed at the motor side for the power module.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electro mechanical brake, control device generating a braking force by a rotation force generated in an electric motor.
(2) Description of Related Art
An electro mechanical brake, control device is applied to a brake apparatus generating a braking force by an output of the electric motor. The electro mechanical brake, control device (hereinafter referred to an electro mechanical brake apparatus) comprises an electric circuit portion for controlling an output generated by the electric motor, and a mechanical portion generating a braking force based on the output of the motor. The mechanical portion is mounted on a portion close to wheels of a vehicle, and the electric circuit portion is mounted on the portion on a vehicle spring. That is, the mechanical portion and the electric circuit portion are mounted on the positions physically apart of the vehicle.
The inventors of the present application have thought of the integration of the mechanical portion and the electric circuit portion in view of improving mountability of the electro mechanical brake apparatus to the vehicle.
The electro mechanical brake apparatus of a structure having integrated the mechanical portion and the electric circuit portion is disclosed, for example, in Patent Document 1 (i.e. JP-A-2003-137081) and Patent Document 2 (i.e. JP-A-2005-69268).

Electro mechanical brake, control device


An ignition timing control system is provided for an in-cylinder injection internal combustion engine to reduce a torque shock upon switching a fuel injection mode between a compression-stroke injection mode, in which an injection of fuel is performed primarily in a compression stroke, and an intake-stroke injection mode, in which an injection of fuel is performed primarily in an intake stroke, in accordance with an operation state of said internal combustion engine. The ignition timing control system is provided with an injection timing correction unit for correcting ignition timing of a spark plug, which is arranged in a combustion chamber, upon switching said fuel injection mode. A correction amount for ignition timing, by which said ignition timing is corrected by said ignition timing correction unit upon switching from said compression-stroke injection mode to said intake-stroke injection mode, is greater than a correction amount for ignition timing, by which said ignition timing is corrected upon switching from said intake-stroke injection mode to said compression-stroke injection mode.

a) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an ignition timing control system for use with an in-cylinder injection internal combustion engine in which a fuel injection mode can be switched, and especially to an ignition timing control system for an in-cylinder injection internal combustion engine, which can reduce a torque shock upon switching the fuel injection mode.
b) Description of the Related Art
As engines for automotive vehicles, lean-burn engines with a combustion air/fuel ratio set higher than a stoichiometric air/fuel ratio from the viewpoint of an improvement in fuel economy have been proposed in recent years.
A lean-burn engine can generally bring about a greater improvement in fuel economy as its combustion air/fuel ratio becomes higher. Due to deterioration in combustion, however, there is a limitation to the increase in the air/fuel ratio. As a method for raising this limitation as much as possible, a technique has been proposed to perform stratified combustion by making an air-fuel mixture as rich as possible around a point of ignition within a combustion chamber while maintaining a high overall air/fuel ratio within the combustion chamber.
Further, to permit operation of engines with still leaner air-fuel mixtures, in-cylinder injection engines in which fuel is injected directly into cylinders have also been developed. According to these in-cylinder injection engines, fuel can be injected, for example, at a late stage of a compression stroke. Operation of high fuel economy is therefore feasible with an air-fuel mixture extremely lean as a whole while establishing a rich air-fuel mixture only in the vicinity of a spark plug and hence assuring good combustibility by producing a stratified vertical swirl within a cylinder and injecting fuel into the stratified vertical swirl immediately before ignition by the spark plug (for example, at a late stage of a compression stroke).
Upon performing lean-burn operation, the rate of NOx emission is known to decrease as the combustion air/fuel ratio is set higher. In stratified lean-burn operation, however, the air/fuel ratio is relatively low in the vicinity of the point of ignition, thereby imposing a certain limitation on the reduction of the rate of NOx emission.
As a method for achieving such a reduction in the rate of NOx emission, it is contemplated to conduct recirculation of exhaust gas (EGR). For example, a great deal of exhaust gas may be recirculated in a compression-stroke lean fuel injection mode to achieve stabilization-of combustion and a further reduction in the rate of NOx emission.
Further, in such internal combustion engines, target exhaust gas recirculation rates are set according to individual operation modes (fuel injection modes). Upon switching the operation mode, control of an EGR valve is performed so that the exhaust gas recirculation rate can promptly be rendered equal to the corresponding target exhaust gas recirculation rate.
Upon switching the fuel injection mode (operation mode) as described above, an engine torque may vary, leading to production of a shock (torque shock) in some instances.
With a view to overcoming this problem, a target air/fuel ratio A/F is changed by controlling a quantity of air through an air bypass valve (ABV) or an injection quantity of fuel through a fuel injection valve (injector) so that variations in engine torque can be reduced. There is however a delay in the feeding of air into a combustion chamber especially when the fuel injection mode is switched from a compression-stroke fuel injection operation mode to an intake-stroke fuel injection operation mode. Upon such switching of an operation mode, a shock may still not be reduced sufficiently in some instances.

Ignition timing control system for in-cylinder injection internal combustion engine

Mitsubishi Jidosha Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha


A combination heat sink (18, 41, 43) and circuit interface comprises a metallic wafer (15) disposed between an integrated circuit (11) and a printed circuit board (14) in a land grid array package (10). A frame (13) for the integrated circuit (11) is nested within the heat sink (18, 41, 43) and a latch (30) is pivotably mounted on the frame (13) for retaining the overall package (10). The circuit interface comprises a plurality of flexible electrical connectors (19) mounted on the wafer (15).

A land grid array (sometimes referred to in the art as an "LGA") comprises an integrated circuit widely used as an integral component in a variety of products, such as computers, business machines, telecommunication systems and the like. The overall package includes a housing or frame for the integrated circuit, a printed circuit board secured to the frame, a connector array between the integrated circuit and the printed circuit board, and a cap or latch carried by the frame for retaining the overall assembly. The integrated circuit provides a very large number of electronic circuit functions and, typically, has several hundred circuit elements or pads on a ceramic substrate of around one inch square, thereby providing a very high degree of product performance and miniaturization.
In such a high circuit density, high-performance miniaturized package, heat dissipation becomes a problem which may result in premature failure of the integrated circuit, requiring expensive replacement and servicing of the overall product or equipment. Additionally, the mechanical forces between the cooperating circuit pads on the integrated circuit and the printed circuit board, respectively, are appreciable and may require closure forces of 25 to 50 pounds for the overall package. These packages require close manufacturing tolerances, resulting in increased production costs.


A system, method, and computer program product retrieve information associated with the signals. The information retrieval can be performed on a signal by quantizing the signal, forming words, and indexing based on weights of the words. The words are formed by grouping letters together to form a number of words within predetermined threshold values. The weights of the words are determined using a binomial log likelihood ratio analysis. The present invention may be applied to identification of an unknown song.

A. Technical Field
The present invention is related to information retrieval, and more particularly, to retrieving information about a signal such as a music track or song, and creating a database of signals and the information retrieved about the signals.
B. Background of the Invention
In many contexts retrieving information about a sequence of unknown items is desirable. One such context is music. Some electronic copies of a piece of music include not only the music itself but also a tag (also known as meta-data). The tag includes information about the music such as the artist, the album name, and the track name. The tag can include any other information associated with the music entered by a listener.
However, some electronic copies of songs do not include the tag information. In particular, copies of songs downloaded from Napster or other sites where music can be downloaded only rarely include complete tag information. Additionally, as systems for recognizing music are fielded, it is likely that those providing copyrighted music without license will make efforts to evade any filtering system put into place. This has happened already with systems based on file name filtering. Thus, it is reasonable to expect slight variations of songs to be encountered in which the variations do not change the file substantially for the listener, but might make naïve comparison methods unreliable. Examples of such modifications include slight trimming of the beginning of a song, changes in overall volume, band-limiting and changes in equalization.
One way to replace missing tag information is to compare the waveforms of an unknown song (i.e. one that does include tag information) to those of known songs (i.e. songs for which tag information is known). When two waveforms match, tags can be transferred to unknown song. However, this method is inefficient in time and space because direct wave-form comparison is computationally expensive. Also, music files available over the Internet are usually compressed using a compression algorithm such as MP3. Compression makes direct comparison of audio waveforms impossible since there will, by nature, be significant differences between the original signal and the signal recovered from a lossily compressed version. These differences will not generally be audible, but they can be substantial in magnitude, especially when phase information is discarded by the compression algorithm.
An alternative method of determining tag information is to perform feature comparison rather than waveform comparison. Feature comparison is the comparison of analog features associated with the waveform such as correlating spectra or comparing extracted rhythm signatures. Feature comparison is also slow because it involves comparison of analog features that occur over time. Thus, comparison using these analog features requires exhaustive comparison and time-alignment. Moreover, many analog features are not invariant under common transformations such as translation in time, volume scaling and small changes in equalization.
What is needed is a system and method of determining tag information for an unknown music track that avoids the above-described limitations and disadvantages. What is further needed is a system and method that leads to accurate retrieval of tag information for a compressed, trimmed piece of music of limited bandwidth. What is further needed is a system and method that is efficient in time and memory space. Currently available systems require an exhaustive search and expensive comparisons to each exemplar. Both the exhaustive search and the expensive comparison operations should be avoided if possible.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


The present invention relates generally to fabrics used in papermaking, and relates more specifically to fabrics employed in making corrugated board. The invention also relates to a belt for a corrugated board machine, where the belt includes a coating including an anti-friction modifier which can provide one or more of the following advantages: easy application of the coating to the appropriate area of the fabric, the coating is cost effective, the coating provides for increased belt life on the machine, and increased production quality of corrugated board. The present invention also relates to corrugated board machine including a belt which has a coating containing an anti-friction modifier. The present invention also relates to a method of making a coating for a belt, and a method of applying the coating to a belt where the coating includes an anti-friction modifier.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fabrics used in papermaking, and relates more specifically to fabrics employed in making corrugated board. The invention also relates to a belt for a corrugated board machine, where the belt includes a coating including an anti-friction modifier which can provide one or more of the following advantages: easy application of the coating to the appropriate area of the fabric, the coating is cost effective, the coating provides for increased belt life on the machine, and increased production quality of corrugated board. The present invention also relates to corrugated board machine including a belt which has a coating containing an anti-friction modifier. The present invention also relates to a method of making a coating for a belt, and a method of applying the coating to a belt where the coating includes an anti-friction modifier.
2. Discussion of Background Information
During the papermaking process, a cellulosic fibrous web is formed by depositing a fibrous slurry, that is, an aqueous dispersion of cellulose fibers, onto a moving forming fabric in the forming section of a paper machine. A large amount of water is drained from the slurry through the forming fabric, leaving the cellulosic fibrous web on the surface of the forming fabric.
The newly formed cellulosic fibrous web proceeds from the forming section to a press section, which includes a series of press nips. The cellulosic fibrous web passes through the press nips supported by a press fabric, or, as is often the case, between two such press fabrics. In the press nips, the cellulosic fibrous web is subjected to compressive forces which squeeze water therefrom, and which adhere the cellulosic fibers in the web to one another to turn the cellulosic fibrous web into a paper sheet. The water is accepted by the press fabric or fabrics and, ideally, does not return to the paper sheet.
The paper sheet finally proceeds to a dryer section, which includes at least one series of rotatable dryer drums or cylinders, which are internally heated by steam. The newly formed paper sheet is directed in a serpentine path sequentially around each in the series of drums by a dryer fabric, which holds the paper sheet closely against the surfaces of the drums. The heated drums reduce the water content of the paper sheet to a desirable level through evaporation. It should be appreciated that the forming, press and dryer fabrics all take the form of endless loops on the paper machine and function in the manner of conveyors. It should further be appreciated that paper manufacture is a continuous process which proceeds at considerable speeds. That is to say, the fibrous slurry is continuously deposited onto the forming fabric in the forming section, while a newly manufactured paper sheet is continuously wound onto rolls after it exits from the dryer section.
Contemporary fabrics are produced in a wide variety of styles designed to meet the requirements of the paper machines on which they are installed for the paper grades being manufactured. Generally, they comprise a woven or other type base fabric. Additionally, as in the case of fabrics used in the press section, the press fabrics have one or more base fabrics into which has been needled a batt of fine, nonwoven fibrous material. The base fabrics may be woven from monofilament, plied monofilament, multifilament or plied multifilament yarns, and may be single-layered, multi-layered or laminated. The yarns are typically extruded from any one of the synthetic polymeric resins, such as polyamide and polyester resins, used for this purpose by those of ordinary skill in the paper machine clothing arts.
The woven base fabrics themselves take many different forms. For example, they may be woven endless, or flat woven and subsequently rendered into endless form with a woven seam. Alternatively, they may be produced by a process commonly known as modified endless weaving, wherein the widthwise edges of the base fabric are provided with seaming loops using the machine-direction (MD) yarns thereof. In this process, the MD yarns weave continuously back-and-forth between the widthwise edges of the fabric, at each edge turning back and forming a seaming loop. A base fabric produced in this fashion is placed into endless form during installation on a paper machine, and for this reason is referred to as an on-machine-seamable fabric. To place such a fabric into endless form, the two widthwise edges are brought together, the seaming loops at the two edges are interdigitated with one another, and a seaming pin or pintle is directed through the passage formed by the interdigitated seaming loops.
Further, the woven base fabrics may be laminated by placing at least one base fabric within the endless loop formed by another, and by needling a staple fiber batt through these base fabrics to join them to one another as in the case of press fabrics. One or more of these woven base fabrics may be of the on-machine-seamable type. This is now a well known laminated press fabric with a multiple base support structure.
In any event, the fabrics are in the form of endless loops, or are seamable into such forms, having a specific length, measured longitudinally therearound, and a specific width, measured transversely thereacross.
Reference is now made more specifically to industrial fabrics used in the manufacture of corrugated paper board, or box board, on corrugator machines. Such an industrial fabric is used to form corrugator belts. On corrugator machines, corrugator belts support and pull a sheet of liner board and a sheet of paper board which pass over a roll which adds flutes or CD corrugations to the paperboard sheet. Then these at least two paperboard sheets supported by one or more belts are passed first through a heating zone, where an adhesive used to bond the at least two layers of the board together is dried and cured, and then through a cooling zone. Frictional forces between the corrugator belt, specifically the face, or board, side thereof, and the corrugated paper board are primarily responsible for pulling the latter through the machine.
Corrugator belts should be strong and durable, and should have good dimensional stability under the conditions of tension and high temperature encountered on the machine. The belts must also be comparatively flexible in the longitudinal, or machine, direction, while having sufficient rigidity in the cross-machine direction to enable them to be guided around their endless paths. Traditionally, it has also been desirable for the belts to have porosities sufficient to permit vapor to pass freely therethrough, while being sufficiently incompatible with moisture to avoid the adsorption of condensed vapor which might rewet the surfaces of the corrugated paper product.
As implied in the preceding paragraph, a corrugator belt takes the form of an endless loop when installed on a corrugator machine. In such form, the corrugator belt has a face, or boardside, which is the outside of the endless loop, and a backside, which is the inside of the endless loop. Frictional forces between the backside and the drive rolls of the corrugator machine move the corrugator belt, while frictional forces between the faceside and the sheet of corrugated board pull the sheet through the machine.
Corrugator belts are generally flat-woven, multi-layered fabrics, each of which is woven to size or trimmed in the lengthwise and widthwise directions to a length and width appropriate for the corrugator machine on which it is to be installed. The ends of the fabrics are provided with seaming means, so that they may be joined to one another with a pin, pintle, or cable when the corrugator belt is being installed on a corrugator machine.
In a typical corrugator machine, the heating zone comprises a series of hot plates across which the sheet of corrugated board is pulled by the corrugator belt. A plurality of weighted rollers within the endless loop formed by the corrugator belt press the corrugator belt toward the hot plates, so that the corrugator belt may pull the sheet across the hot plates under a selected amount of pressure. The weighted rollers ensure that the sheet will be firmly pressed against the hot plates, and that frictional forces between the corrugator belt and the sheet will be sufficiently large to enable the belt to pull the sheet.
However, corrugator belts currently available typically show preferential wear in the vicinity of the edges. This wear makes the belts unacceptable to manufacture a sheet of corrugated board of even quality across the boards width. In addition, because of wear in the vicinity of the edges of the corrugator belts, service life of the corrugator belts is greatly reduced.
In an attempt to solve premature wear problems associated with corrugator belts, U.S. Pat. No. 5,785,621 to BIRZELE, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses adding more wear resistant and/or more temperature resistant warp threads adjacent to the longitudinal edge of the belt. BIRZELE, however, utilizes the more wear resistant and/or more temperature resistant warp threads such that provides a belt which is complicated and expensive to manufacture.
U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2004/0126544 to JAGLOWSKI, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a fabric coated only on the high spots with a silicone material. JAGLOWSKI, however, utilizes the silicone material across the entire width of the fabric, which may allow migration of the coating material to the inside of the product, modifying its compressibility, and could result in running irregularities. Furthermore, the silicone material applied to the fabric in JAGLOWSKI increases the coefficient of friction of the corrugator fabric. That is, the increased coefficient of friction can lead to increased wear of the fabric.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,276,420 to LANTHIER, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses the use of a coated fabric to resist wear and more effectively allow corrugated board to pass through the machine. LANTHIER, however, utilizes the coating across substantially the whole width of the board. That is, the coating may affect the fabric runnability and productivity.