A fishing lure having an oval-shaped head portion with a fore-to-aft oriented minor axis and a transversely oriented major axis, a tail portion connected to the head portion wherein the tail portion includes a multitude of strands, a treble hook substantially contained within the multitude of strands, and swivel means connecting the treble hook to the head portion. As the lure is displaced through water by a fishing line, the head portion wobbles causing portions of the treble hook to be intermittently exposed externally of the multitude of strands thereby simulating lifelike thrashing of legs.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to sporting goods and, more specifically without limitation, to accessories for fishing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Fishing is a popular activity enjoyed by millions of people worldwide. Although a large segment of the fisherman population participates largely on a recreational level, it should be recognized that fishing is also one of the largest food-acquiring and -producing industries in the world. Millions of tons of fish of all types are caught and processed annually to feed a large portion of the world's population. Regardless of the reason for fishing, people of all ages enjoy doing so in streams, rivers, lakes, bays, and oceans as the climate and seasons of the year permit.
A fisherman is perhaps one of the most diversely equipped of all outdoor sportsmen. The basic items needed to catch a fish are the proverbial hook, line, and sinker. Bait, of course, is a given in that proverbial combination. So, one might find a fisherman with a bamboo pole, a length of line, and a baited hook. But, for many fishermen, their equipment goes far beyond that simple array. Skilled, experienced anglers generally have a variety of fishing rods, reels, line types, hooks, floats, and artificial lures.
For those who enjoy artificial bait casting, a large variety of such lures are readily available on the market. The purpose of these lures is to simulate live bait. For this reason, they are provided is a wide range of styles. Regardless, they is always room for further improvement of an artificial lure that is more lifelike, such as one that operatively simulates a lifelike bait having kicking and thrashing legs.
What is needed is an artificial lure operatively simulates a lifelike bait having kicking and thrashing legs.

Wobbling fishing lure with thrashing legs


A control valve structure for an oxygen machine uses a motor to link a disc to spin, which activates a pair of valve rods to open and close in sequence through rotation of the motor to control air flow.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a control valve structure for an oxygen machine, and more particularly to a pair of valve rods activated by a disc of a motor to control air passages.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional oxygen maker on the market uses an air compressor to suck air and to filter the air in the compressor before providing it to a user. The basic design is to suck air from outside into the compressor, and then filter the air to produce oxygen.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,062,260 discloses a pair of electromagnetic valves of an air inlet control valve to control two pistons in the control valve to move in sequence so that air flows in and out in a circle status.
However, should any of the electromagnetic valves is not functioning, the air flow in sequence is broken and air flow is out of control, thus oxygen can not be produced properly.

Control valve structure for an oxygen machine


The invention is to suppress a leak current in a photodiode and an unevenness in the leak currents. In a photoelectric converting device including a channel stop area of a higher concentration than in an element isolating insulation film formed between a photodiode, having an n-type semiconductor area formed in a p-type semiconductor, and an adjacent element, and in a p-type semiconductor layer formed under the element isolating insulation film, and a wiring layer formed in a part on the element isolating insulation film, the wiring layers on the element isolating insulation film adjacent to the photodiodes are unified in an effective area and a potential, and a p-type dark current reducing area of a higher concentration than in the channel stop area is provided in at least a part of an area opposed to the wiring layer across the element isolating insulation film.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solid-state image pickup apparatus, and more particularly to a solid-state image pickup apparatus adapted for use in a digital camera, a video camera, a copying apparatus, a facsimile apparatus and the like.
2. Related Background Art
An image sensor, formed by a one-dimensional or two-dimensional array of solid-state image pickup devices including photoelectric converting elements, is frequently employed in a digital camera, a video camera, a copying apparatus, a facsimile apparatus and the like. The solid-state image pickup device includes, for example, a CCD image pickup device and an amplifying solid-state image pickup device.
Recent trend in such image pickup device is toward a larger number of pixels, and a resulting decrease in the area of each pixel leads also to a decrease in the area of each photodiode. It is therefore required to handle a signal charge of a smaller amount.
FIG. 13 shows a circuit configuration of an amplifying solid-state image pickup device. In an amplifying solid-state image pickup device, a photodiode PD is provided in a unit pixel, as shown in FIG. 14. Plural transistors for reading a photosignal accumulated in the photodiode and an amplifying transistor constitute a readout circuit in a pixel.
Also in a readout circuit in a pixel shown in FIG. 3, plural transistors for reading a photosignal accumulated in a photodiode and an amplifying transistor constitute a readout circuit for two photodiodes. This circuit is to secure an area of the photodiode within a unit pixel, thereby achieving a high S/N ratio together with an increase in the number of pixels.
Also FIG. 15 shows a circuit configuration for an amplifying solid-state image pickup device in case of employing the pixel circuit configuration of FIG. 3. A basic readout operation is same in FIG. 13 and in FIG. 15. More specifically, a vertical scanning register (VSR) controls a signal readout of the pixels to a pixel row and a resetting operation, and a readout signal is accumulated in a capacitance C. The signals are outputted by a horizontal scanning register (HSR) in succession for each pixel row.
As described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-258229, FIG. 16 shows a cross-sectional structure of a photodiode in a unit pixel in an amplifying MOS sensor shown in FIG. 13. Also FIG. 17 is a plan view of a unit pixel in the CMOS sensor shown in FIG. 14.
As shown in FIG. 16, an n-type area 1803, constituting a photodiode together with a p-semiconductor layer 1802 on an n-type substrate 1801, is formed by self-alignment with a selectively oxidized film 1804 for element isolation. This structure is to maximize the area of the n-type area 1803 corresponding to the area of the photodiode, to a limit.
Under the selectively oxidized film 1804 of element isolation structure, there are formed a source-drain area 1807 of an adjacent MOS transistor, and a channel stop area 1806 for improving a punch-through voltage to the n-type area 1803 of the photodiode. Also on the selectively oxidized film 1804 for element isolation, a gate wiring layer 1805 of a transistor is formed.
FIG. 5 is a plan view of the unit pixel shown in FIG. 3, and FIG. 1 shows a cross section of FIG. 5. Referring to FIG. 1, an n-type area 103, constituting a photodiode together with an n-semiconductor layer 102 on an n-type substrate 101, is formed by self-alignment with a selectively oxidized film 104 for element isolation. This structure is to maximize the area of the n-type area 103 corresponding to the area of the photodiode, to a limit.
Under the selectively oxidized film 104 for element isolation, there are formed a source-drain area 107 of an adjacent MOS transistor, and a channel stop area 106 for improving a punch-through voltage to the n-type area 103 of the photodiode. Also on the selectively oxidized film 104 for element isolation, a gate wiring layer 105 for a transistor is formed.
In FIG. 16 (or FIG. 1), however, when a high-level potential (for example +5 V) is applied to the gate wiring layer 1805 (105) of the transistor, an effective concentration is lowered in the p-type channel stop area thereunder. Therefore, a minority carrier concentration increases in a lower part of the selectively oxidized film 1804 (104).
Such minority carriers (electrons) diffuse into the photodiode to result in a drawback of an increased dark current of the photodiode.
As a countermeasure against such phenomenon, it is conceivable to increase the concentration in the p-type channel stop area 1806 (106), but such measure results in a drawback of a lowered junction breakdown voltage to the adjacent n++ source-drain area 1807 (107) or an increased leak current through the junction.
Also it is conceivable to increase a thickness of the selectively oxidized film 1804 (104) for element isolation, formed by a selective oxidation, but, in such case, the wiring layer 1805 (105) shows a drawback of an increased step difference, which is unsuitable for forming fine wirings and tends to cause a breakage or a shortcircuiting of wirings.
Thus, an increase in the dark current may lead to an increase in noises and a deterioration of S/N ratio.
In Particular problems arise in a semiconductor solid-state image pickup device as shown in FIG. 15, utilizing a pixel configuration shown in FIG. 3. In such device, there is constructed, for two photodiodes, a readout circuit by plural transistors Tr for reading photosignals accumulated in the photodiodes and an amplifying transistor. Therefore, because of an asymmetry in the arrangements of readout circuits for the photodiodes, different dark currents flow into the photodiodes of n-th row and (n+1)th row, thus resulting a drawback of different S/N ratios between the rows.


This invention relates to a process for minimizing or reducing the amount of residual free hydrazine in polymer latices. The process is particularly useful in the manufacture of hydrogenated nitrile rubber which is resistant to oxidative degradation at high temperatures, as well as resistant to corrosive environments such as acid environments. Nitrile rubbers are useful in the manufacture of fan belts, seals, gaskets, and hoses in increasingly small and hot-running car engines.

Various forms of hydrogenated nitrile rubbers have recently been introduced into the marketplace. Hydrogenated nitrile rubber has the advantage of being resistant to oxidative degradation at high temperature, as well as being resistant to corrosive environments such as acid environments. These materials have found utility in the manufacture of fan belts, seals, gaskets, and hoses in increasingly small and hot-running car engines.
One process for the production of hydrogenated latex polymers, particularly hydrogenated latex rubber, utilizes hydrazine and an unsaturated polymer as the starting materials. This process is more particularly described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,950, assigned to the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. However, the product produced in accordance with the process described in the '950 patent suffers from the disadvantage of containing residual unreacted hydrazine. This residual hydrazine is considered undesirable from an environmental and/or toxicity standpoint.
In view of the above, it would be highly desirable to provide a process for the elimination and/or reduction of the residual hydrazine in the hydrogenated polymer product mixture.

Process for minimizing residual free hydrazine in polymer latices


An exercise chair includes a seat; a base having one or more base supports, the one or more base supports configured to contact a support surface; a seat support supporting the seat, pivotally connected to the base, and biased upward, the seat support including a fulcrum, and wherein downward pressure on the seat by a sitting user causes the fulcrum of the seat support to contact that support surface in addition to one or more of the one or more base supports, forcing the user to maintain a balanced posture on the seat in order to maintain the seat support in a vertical orientation.

Exercise balls are used to perform a variety of exercises to exercise one's core muscles. Exercise balls are large spherical flexible balls filled with air. Sometimes exercise balls are used by office workers to sit on while at one's desk. In this application, the exercise ball not only functions as a support for the office worker to sit on, but also enables one to strengthen one's core muscles while seated because the exercise ball has a tendency to roll if the office worker is not centered on top of the exercise ball.
Some of the problems with these exercise ball office chairs is that they are large, bulky, and do not look professional for an office environment.

Ergonomic exercise posture chair and method of using same


Embodiments of the invention utilize a “data canopy” that breaks statistical measures down to basic primitives for various data portions and stores the basic aggregates in a library within an in-memory data structure. When a queried statistical measure involves a basic aggregate stored in the library over a data portion that at least partially overlaps the data portion associated with the basic aggregate, the basic aggregate may be reused in the statistical computation of the queried measure.

Networked communication systems and the Internet have driven an information revolution and uniquely created a surplus of a valuable new material: data. To infer knowledge from so much information, data scientists may start with an exploratory statistical analysis—an unstructured procedure that allows queries to be performed on large quantities of data in order to compute statistical measures (such as mean, variance, or correlations) thereof, which represent or can be employed to characterize the data meaningfully. Statistical data characteristics may provide insights to summarize variables within a data set, understand trends in variables, and correlate these trends with those of other variables. For example, variance in seismic activity of an area may indicate how prone it is to earthquakes, and correlations between seismic measurements across various sensors may help predict future patterns of seismic activity.
Two queries in data exploration may involve the same statistical computation (e.g., summarizing) on the same portion (or at least a partially overlapping portion) of the data with the same or different resolutions; thus, exploratory statistical analysis generally includes repetitive statistical calculations in nature. FIG. 1 depicts different forms of repetition for various queries of a statistical measure on a given data range.
In addition, repetitive statistical calculations may appear in various workloads. FIG. 2A depicts repetition in two publicly available workloads, SDSS SkyServer and SQLShare, composed of handwritten and computer-generated SQL queries. As shown, up to 97% of the queries repeat at least once in SDSS. While queries repeat less frequently in the SQLShare workload, but up to 55% of the queries still target a non-distinct set of columns.
Conventional tools for exploratory statistical analysis lack a cohesive framework for storing, organizing, and reusing the previously computed statistical measures. As a result, regardless of how many times the statistical measures have been queried and how many times the queried base data have been accessed, a new statistical measure typically must be computed from scratch—i.e., all base data is re-examined. This results in significant computational overhead. For example, FIG. 2B depicts query-response times (bottom) and the amount of data accessed (top) using the conventional tools for computing various statistical measures. Because the conventional tools do not reuse computations and accessed data, a rather stable query response time is required even when the exactly same set of the statistical measures are requested.
Further, because data statistics (such as mean, variance, and correlations) play a critical role in machine learning classifications and filtering algorithms (e.g., linear regression, Bayesian classification or collaborative filtering), failure to store and share statistical computations and data accesses among different users may also undermine the accuracy and robustness of these algorithms. Additionally, as the base data grows, computing statistics from scratch every time disadvantageously results in long-latency response time to incoming queries; this is intolerable in applications such as interactive data analytics.
Accordingly, there is a need for an approach that stores various statistical computations associated with the base data in a manner that permits the stored statistical computations to be reused later, when an incoming query involves the same statistical computations over data portions that at least partially overlap with those of the stored statistical computations.

Systems and methods for accelerating exploratory statistical analysis

PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE


A data transfer method which is capable of transferring a predetermined amount of data in one transaction at only one time, and preventing the number of ports of a master chip and the number of signal lines connected between the master chip and slave chips from being increased. A single master chip and a plurality of slave chips which receive data transferred from the master chip are connected by a ring-like path. Data is transferred from the master chip to the slave chips via the ring-like path.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data transfer method of interconnecting electronic chips, such as IC chips, and a data transfer device.
2. Description of the Related Art
To enable configuration or the like of registers of a plurality of slave chips to be performed between one master chip and the slave chips, the master chip is connected to the slave chips by respective signal lines of address buses, signal lines of writing data buses, signal lines of reading data buses, and chip-selecting signal lines, for configuration of the registers (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-142735).
Further, for resetting as well, reset pins are provided separately for the respective slave chips, and a plurality of signal lines for resetting signals are separately connected to the respective reset pins on a circuit board.
In this case, all the signal lines of the buses and the resetting signal lines need to be connected to the respective slave chips on the circuit board into which the slave chips are integrated.
This increases the numbers of signal lines of the address buses, the writing data buses, the reading data buses, the chip-selecting signals, and the resetting signals, in proportion to the number of slave chips to which they are connected.
Further, each slave chip needs to be provided with input and output pins for configuration of its registers, and a resetting pin, which increases the number of pins of the slave chip.
The initial settings of the slave chip, such as register settings, and various settings before execution of data processing need not be frequently changed, compared with the settings during execution of data processing, and can be sufficiently made at low setting speed.
Therefore, to make register settings between the master chip and the slave chips, the signal lines therefor need not be signal lines of buses, but in most cases, signal lines for serial communication are sufficient for this use.
Actually, however, signal lines of the buses are often used to connect the master chip and the slave chips, causing an increase in the number of lines of wiring and complication of the wiring.
Therefore, by minimizing the number of lines of wiring between the master chip and the slave chips in view of ease of wiring therebetween, the total number of lines of wiring of the whole system can be reduced and the whole system can be designed with ease.
Further, to reset the slave chips, it is necessary to provide resetting signal lines individually for the respective slave chips. Normally, resetting control is provided such that all the slave chips on the same circuit board are reset, but not such that only a selected specific chip is reset.
To control the resetting signals by a chip other than the master chip and the slave chips, resetting signal lines need to be provided separately for the respective slave chips to which the resetting signals are to be supplied, and the other chip needs to control the resetting signals supplied to the slave chips.
This necessitates provision of as many resetting signal lines as the slave chips to be reset, which causes an increase in the number of lines of wiring and complication of the wiring.
If the master chip can reset required one or more of the slave chips connected to the master chip, or all the slave chips, this enables reduction of the number of resetting signal lines and enables resetting only selected one or more of the slave chips.
Further, to serially transfer data from the master chip to the slave chips, the master chip needs to be connected to each slave chip, in one-to-one relationship, for the transfer of data.
In this case, to carry out writing of data into a register of each slave chip and reading of data therefrom, two signal lines i.e. one for transfer of data from the master chip to the slave chip, and the other for transfer of data from the slave chip to the master chip, are required at the minimum.
To transfer data directly from one master chip to all slave chips, it is necessary to provide as many signal lines for transfer of data from the master chip to the slave chips, and as many signal lines for transfer of data from the slave chips to the master chip as the number of the slave chips, and the master chip needs to control the transfer of data to each slave chip. Further, as many chip-selecting signal lines as the slave chips need to be connected from the master chip to the slave chips, to select which of the slave chips the master chip should access for writing or reading of data.
That is, for one master chip to transfer serial data to a plurality of slave chips, it is necessary to additionally provide a signal for selecting a slave chip (hereinafter referred to as "the chip select signal") used for discrimination of a slave chip to which the data is to be transferred, and assert the chip select signal in accessing the intended slave chip.
Further, as many signal lines for the chip select signal as the slave chips are required, which results in an increase in the number of signal lines.
The master chip cannot know the state of a signal level of each signal line via which the data is transferred from the master chip to the associated slave chip, and there is a possibility that noise is added to the signal line depending on the conditions of the circuit board and the wiring conditions of the signal line, whereby the signal level is changed due to the influence of the noise, causing an error in transfer of the data.
To overcome the problem of an error caused by noise in the data received by each slave chip, it is envisaged that the slave chip carries out parity error processing on the received data. In this case, depending on the setting of a parity bit, the processing can sometimes detect an error in the data, but the reliability of the processing is low.
More specifically, when communication by serial data is performed between the master chip and each slave chip, the slave chip determines an error condition of the serial data by parity check or the like, but depending on the bit position of an error, the error cannot be detected. Further, even when it is configured such that an interruption is caused to occur based on a parity error, if the parity error occurs frequently, the performance of a control section, such as a CPU, connected to the slave chip can be degraded due to the control section being interrupted each time the parity error occurs.
To overcome the problem, when the serial communication is executed between the master chip and each slave chip, to post the occurrence of an error to the master chip, there have been used a method of outputting an interruption signal from each slave chip to the master chip and a method of sending back the signal sent from the master chip to each slave chip as it is to the master chip.
In the case of the former method, an interruption signal is output from each slave chip to the master chip, and therefore it is necessary to provide as many interruption signal lines as the slave chips, which results in an increase in the number of signal lines and an increase in the number of pins.
In the case of the latter method, the status of the signal line transferring data from the master chip to the slave chips and the status of the signal line transferring data from the slave chip to the master chip are not the same. Therefore, an error occurs in the data being transferred from the master chip to the slave chip, and when the same data is sent back to the master chip, an error is caused by the influence of noise superposed on the data.

Data transfer method and data transfer device


The disclosure is directed to an approach for discovering novel insecticidal proteins from highly heterogeneous environmental sources. The methodology utilizes metagenomic enrichment procedures that increase the representation of specific genera of bacteria, prior to deep sequencing, in order to access novel variants of insecticidal proteins. In aspects, the taught methods are useful for creating large genomic libraries enriched for Bacillus sp. The enriched genomic libraries are useful for the discovery of novel cry toxin genes, which enable the identification of novel Cry proteins.

It is estimated that by the year 2050 the world's population will have reached over 9 billion people. Estimates by agricultural experts at the United Nations project that in order to feed such a large global population, then total food production must increase by 70% to meet future demands. This challenge is exacerbated by numerous factors, including: diminishing freshwater resources, limited supplies of arable land, rising energy prices, increasing input costs, and environment concerns attached to modern row crop agriculture.
An age old problem, which will continue to be one of the most pressing concerns facing our global agricultural industry, is pesticidal pressure and the associated reduction in yields and reduced productivity stemming therefrom. Traditional synthetic chemicals have been successful in helping farmers battle problematic insects, but these chemicals face increasing scrutiny over concerns about their impact on human health and potential detrimental environmental effects. Consequently, in order to meet the needs of a growing global population, there will be an increased demand for biotechnological solutions to combat agricultural pests.
One leading biotechnological pesticide solution comes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a gram-positive, spore forming bacterium. Bt bacteria were identified as insect pathogens and their insecticidal activity was attributed to the parasporal crystals encoded by the Cry genes, of which there are over 100 known isoforms. This observation led to the development of bioinsecticides based on Bt bacteria for the control of certain insect species. Plants have now been genetically engineered to express the Bt insecticidal proteins, which alleviates the need for external application to the plants. However, similar to the situation where insect resistance develops due to continuous use of chemical insecticides, the continuous expression of these insecticidal Bt proteins in plants also imposes strong selection for resistance in target pest populations. Consequently, the industry has seen an alarming rate of insect populations becoming resistant to current Bt crops.
To further complicate matters, the existing known genetic diversity of Bt has been extensively explored, and there has been a dearth of any new Cry proteins resulting from that research. A likely scenario is that the extensive searching of known microbial diversity contained in existing microbial libraries has already identified the complete repertoire of Cry proteins contained in these databases. Consequently, there appears to be little, or no, further undiscovered Cry proteins in these databases.
Thus, in view of an expanding global population, environmental concerns associated with traditional chemical insecticides, and growing insect resistance to current Bt traits, there is a great need in the art for the identification of novel Bt insecticidal proteins, which can be incorporated into biotechnological products useful for modern agriculture. This need is exacerbated by the fact that known methods of scanning existing microbial libraries for new Cry proteins has not been successful.

Method for creating a genomic library enriched for


An AC recharging device is provided for recharging a photoreceptor in a liquid xerography system in preparation for generating and developing another electrostatic latent image on the photoreceptor. The AC recharging device is useful for all types of liquid developing systems that generate two or more toner images on a photoreceptor, including image-next-to-image, image-on-image, highlight and other types of systems. A method is also provided for recharging a support having a liquid developed image in preparation for generating and developing a second electrostatic image on the support.

1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a recharge apparatus and method for liquid developing electrostatic printing systems. In particular, the invention relates to recharge of a photoreceptor having at least one toner image formed on its surface for subsequent exposure and development of another toner image on the photoreceptor.
2. Description of Related Art
Electrostatographic printing is well known and commonly used for copying or printing documents on a paper substrate. Electrostatographic printing is performed by forming a substantially uniform charge on a photoconductive member and exposing the photoconductive member to a pattern of light. Exposing the photoconductive member to the pattern of light generates a corresponding electrostatic latent image on the photoconductive member. Toner particles are then deposited onto the photoconductive member so that the toner particles are selectively deposited in either charged or discharged areas on the photoconductive member. The developed toner image is then typically transferred to a substrate and fixed to the substrate by heat and/or pressure. The photoreceptor is then cleaned of any residual toner or electric charge in preparation for another charge/electrostatic latent image generating/development process.
Electrostatographic printing systems typically develop an electrostatic latent image using toner particles either in powder form or suspended in a liquid carrier. In liquid developing systems, the liquid developer typically has about two percent by weight toner material distributed in the liquid carrier. An electrostatic latent image is developed by applying the liquid developer to the photoconductive member, whereby the toner particles are selectively attracted to the surface of the photoconductive member in accordance with an electrostatic latent image. Typically, the toner image on the photoconductive member immediately after development contains about 12% by weight particulate toner.
Some liquid developing systems perform an image-on-image (IOI) process in which successive layers of toner are built up on a photoreceptor to create a process color image. Therefore, in an IOI process, after a first toner layer is formed on the photoreceptor, the photoreceptor typically must be recharged and exposed before a next toner layer can be deposited on the photoreceptor. One process for recharging a photoreceptor is a "split recharge" process, in which a first charging device overcharges the photoreceptor and a second charging device applies a charge of opposite polarity to the photoreceptor to reduce the level of charge on the photoreceptor. A split recharge system for a powder developing system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,430 to Folkins et al., which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,430, a first charging device, such as a corona charging device, overcharges the photoreceptor to a level higher than a desired voltage level for exposure. A second charging device applies a charge of opposite potential to the photoreceptor to reduce the charge level on the photoreceptor to a desired pre-exposure level.

AC recharge apparatus and method for electrostatic printing systems using liquid development


A liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction in which a liner is mounted in a cylinder block of an internal combustion engine and is cylindrically shaped to define a space in which a piston undergoes rectilinear motion. A protrusion is formed around an outer circumference of the liner at an upper portion of the liner. A combustion pressure passageway formed in the liner starting from an upper surface of the liner and extending downwardly to a bottom surface of the protrusion. An indentation is formed in the cylinder block corresponding to a position of the protrusion of the liner. An upper O-ring groove formed in the cylinder block above the indentation. A lower O-ring groove is formed in the cylinder block below the indentation, and a center O-ring groove is formed in the cylinder block within the indentation. An upper O-ring is mounted in the upper O-ring groove, a lower O-ring mounted in the lower O-ring groove, and a center O-ring is mounted in the center O-ring groove.

(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction, and more particularly, to a liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction in which the influence of combustion pressure acting on a liner is removed, and floating of the liner is made easy.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In an internal combustion engine, the energy created by the combustion of fuel in a combustion chamber, less the energy lost due to dissipative forces, is used in propelling a vehicle. Since piston friction is one of the major sources of energy dissipation, it is necessary to reduce the energy lost in this manner so that engine power may be increased and fuel consumption reduced.
That is, friction generated between the piston and cylinder liner is not only one of the major sources of dissipation, it is a source of dissipation that can be reduced by better design, whereas many of the other sources may only be reduced minimally if at all and only with limited gains in performance. Therefore, much research has gone into reducing piston friction, as well as into ways to more precisely measure the friction generated between the piston and cylinder liner.
In order to directly measure the friction between the piston and cylinder liner, a strain gauge or load cell is used to measure the force generated by the vertical displacement of the cylinder liner occurring as a result of friction with the piston.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a conventional apparatus and related elements used to measure friction between a piston and a cylinder liner.
As shown in the drawing, a cylinder liner 120 is provided within a cylinder block 110, and a piston 130 is provided within an area defined by the cylinder liner 120. The cylinder liner 120 receives upward and downward force by friction generated by the rectilinear motion in the vertical direction of the piston 130. The cylinder liner 120 is designed to undergo minute movement in the vertical direction by the received force. As a result, the cylinder liner 120 is also referred to as a floating liner.
A device for measuring pressure generated by the vertical movement of the cylinder liner 120 is provided contacting the cylinder liner 120. An example of such a conventional device is shown in FIG. 1. In particular, provided to one side and at a lower-portion of the cylinder liner 120 is a load cell body 170 and a load cell 175.
A small space may result between a cylinder head 140 and an upper end of the cylinder liner 120. When fuel undergoes combustion in the combustion chamber, the explosive force acts in this space to displace the cylinder liner 120 in a downward direction (the explosive force is typically many hundred times greater than the force of friction between the cylinder liner 120 and the piston 130), thereby resulting in experimental error, that is inaccurate measurements of friction. Accordingly, a sealing folder 150 is interposed in the space between the cylinder head 140 and the upper end of the cylinder liner 120. The upper end of the cylinder liner 120 moves vertically within the sealing folder 150 such that the explosive force of combustion is prevented from acting on the cylinder liner 120.
However, in order to install the sealing folder 150 between the upper end of the cylinder liner 120 and the cylinder head 140, the piston 130 must be fabricated such that no contact occurs between the piston 130 and the sealing folder 150. That is, an outer edge of the piston 130 must be clearanced by as much as the sealing folder 150 protrudes into the combustion chamber. As a result, a moment of inertia of the piston 130 is altered such that the rectilinear motion of the piston 130 is also changed. This, in turn, modifies the contact resistance (i.e., friction) between the cylinder liner 120 and the piston 130 such that the precise measurement of friction between these elements cannot be performed.
Further, a lateral direction stopper 160 is used in the prior art to enable more precise measurements of friction between the cylinder liner 120 and the piston 130. The lateral direction stopper 160 acts to limit the side-to-side movement of the cylinder liner 120 by providing an opposing, lateral force thereto so that the friction generated is that of only the vertical motion of the piston 130. However, friction is generated between the lateral direction stopper 160 itself and the cylinder liner 120 by this opposing force in the lateral direction such that errors occur in the measurement of the friction between the piston 130 and the cylinder liner 120.
The present invention has been made in an effort to solve the above problems.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction in which pressure forces acting on a liner are offset, and floating of the liner in a vertical direction is made easier.
To achieve the above object, the present invention provides a liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction in which a liner is mounted in a a cylinder block of an internal combustion engine and is cylindrically shaped to define a space in which a piston undergoes rectilinear motion, the liner mounting structure comprising a protrusion formed around an outer circumference of the liner at an upper portion of the liner; a combustion pressure passageway formed in the liner starting from an upper surface of the liner and extending downwardly to a bottom surface of the protrusion; an indentation formed in the cylinder block corresponding to a position of the protrusion of the liner; an upper O-ring groove formed in the cylinder block above the indentation, a lower O-ring groove formed in the cylinder block below the indentation, a center O-ring groove formed in the cylinder block within the indentation; and an upper O-ring mounted in the upper O-ring groove, a lower O-ring mounted in the lower O-ring groove, and a center O-ring mounted in the center O-ring groove.
According to a feature of the present invention, a plurality of the combustion pressure passageways are formed equidistantly starting from the upper surface of the liner.
According to another feature of the present invention, an area of a bottom surface of the protrusion is equal to an area of the upper surface of the liner.
According to yet another feature of the present invention, an area of an upper surface of the protrusion on which atmospheric pressure acts is equal to an area of a bottom surface of the liner.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, a diameter of the center O-ring is equal to a sum of diameters of the upper and lower O-rings.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, the liner mounting structure further comprises an atmospheric pressure passageway formed in the cylinder block between the upper O-ring groove and the center O-ring groove such that atmospheric pressure is provided in a space defined by the liner, the upper O-ring groove, the center O-ring groove and the cylinder block.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, the liner mounting structure further comprises a lateral supporter mounted in the cylinder block, the lateral supporter preventing displacement of the liner in a lateral direction.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, a plurality of lateral supporters is provided in the cylinder block.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, the lateral supporter comprises a liner support member, an innermost face that is in close contact with the liner, and an outermost face that includes a plurality of support grooves, the liner support member being fixedly mounted encompassing an outer circumference of the liner; a cylinder block support member provided at a predetermined distance from the liner support member in a direction away from the liner, an outermost face of the cylinder block support member being in close contact with the cylinder block, and a plurality of support grooves being formed in an innermost face of the cylinder block support member; and a plurality of support plates inserted in a pair of corresponding support grooves of the liner support member and the cylinder block support member, the support plates being formed at a predetermined thickness.
According to still yet another feature of the present invention, the support plates are formed at identical thicknesses.

Liner mounting structure for measuring piston friction


A desiccant comprises a mixture of a polymeric salt and a nonpolymeric salt.

Control of relative humidity (RH) is desirable in a variety of areas.
Within an electronic instrument it is desirable to control internal RH since the moisture within an instrument may affect performance and reliability. One such example is a disc drive. Control of the moisture or relative humidity within the housing that encloses the disc drive is important since moisture may affect the performance and reliability of the head/disc interface such as head-to-disc disc stiction. High moisture may increase media corrosion. Excessive disc wear has been observed under conditions of low relative humidity. Thus humidity control over an extended period of time within a moisture range is desirable.
Desiccants are used to control relative humidity in a number of situations. One category of desiccants includes polymeric desiccants. Polymeric desiccants are widely used to absorb water in liquid form in diapers and sanitary napkins. Such polymeric desiccants can absorb water many times their own weight and typically are referred to as superabsorbents since their purpose is to absorb as much water as possible. Such prior art superabsorbents are useful for a single cycle absorption of water.
In protecting the electronic instruments from humidity, a desirable desiccant should be able to withstand many absorption-desorbption cycles while still maintaining humidity control over the life of the instrument. Carbon-silica gel desiccants are presently used to maintain humidity control in electronic instruments.


In a semiconductor light-emitting element, a first cladding layer in a first conductive type, a quantum well active layer, and a second cladding layer in a second conductive type are stacked on a semiconductor substrate in this order. A ridge-shaped stripe formed at the second cladding layer forms a waveguide. Rf<Rr and Wf>Wr are satisfied, where the width of the ridge-shaped stripe at a front end face from which laser light is output is represented by Wf, the width of the ridge-shaped stripe at a rear end face is represented by Wr, the reflectance of the front end face is represented by Rf, and the reflectance of the rear end face is represented by Rr. Light in a fundamental transverse mode, a first high-order transverse mode, a second high-order transverse mode, and a third high-order transverse mode is guided in the waveguide.

Conventionally, projection type image display devices such as projectors have been broadly used as one type of devices for efficiently acquiring a large-screen image. The projection type image display device is configured such that a compact spatial light modulation element, such as a liquid crystal panel, for forming an image corresponding to a video signal is irradiated with light emitted from a light source such as a lamp and that the optical image is enlarged and projected on a screen by using a projection lens. In the projection type image display device such as a projector, an extra high pressure mercury lamp having a high light emitting efficiency in a band of wavelength of visible light are typically used as the light source.
In recent years, not extra high pressure mercury lamps but LEDs which are semiconductor elements have been increasingly used as light sources of projectors. The LED projectors have characteristics such as low power consumption, little noise, and a longer lamp life, and the size thereof is small.
However, since the LEDs use spontaneously-emitted light from active layers which are light-emitting layers, the brightness of such light is not sufficient. Thus, attention has been placed on laser projectors each using a watt-class high-power semiconductor laser as a light source and being capable of exciting phosphors by the semiconductor laser to provide sufficient brightness of light in a visible range.
At present, semiconductor lasers using a nitride-based material are capable of emitting light such as visible light and ultraviolet light, and are demanded as semiconductor light-emitting elements suitable as light sources.
For example, if a nitride-based semiconductor laser is used as a light source for blue and green light, and a laser using an AlGaInP-based material is used as a light source for red light, a compact low-power laser projector can be provided.
Not only watt-class high-power operation but also operation for a long period of time of equal to or longer than 10000 hours under a high temperature of equal to or higher than 50° C. have been demanded for semiconductor lasers used as projector light sources.
In order to obtain high-power output from a semiconductor laser, occurrence of catastrophic optical damage (COD) that a resonator end face is melted and damaged by light output therefrom should be reduced. In order to reduce occurrence of COD, it is effective that a front resonator end face from which laser light is extracted is coated with a dielectric film having a low reflectance (AR) of equal to or lower than about 10% and that a rear resonator end face is coated with a dielectric film having a high reflectance (HR) of equal to or higher than about 90%. According to such a configuration, a light extraction efficiency from a front end side can be improved, a slope efficiency (the rate of light output increase to current injection) in association with current-versus-light-output characteristics can be improved, and an operating current value can be decreased to reduce heat generation of the semiconductor laser. Further, even if the semiconductor laser outputs laser light at a certain level, a light density is lower on the front end side in the resonator. As a result, the light output level can be increased without occurrence of COD.
Typically, in the case of semiconductor lasers using an AlGaInP-based material or an AlGaAs-based material, the semiconductor lasers having an end-face window structure have been broadly used in order to ensure the long-term operation of the high-power semiconductor laser requiring operation with a power of equal to or higher than several hundreds megawatts. In this structure, quantum-well disordering occurs by impurities diffused in part of a quantum well active layer in the vicinity of a resonator end face, thereby increasing bandgap energy. Accordingly, the region of the active layer in the vicinity of the resonator end face substantially becomes transparent to laser light. As a result, a decrease in bandgap energy due to heat generation caused by light absorption at the resonator end face can be reduced. This reduces light absorption at the resonator end face, and occurrence of COD can be reduced.
On the other hand, in the case of lasers using a nitride-based material, it is difficult to cause quantum-well disordering by impurity diffusion because of the characteristics of an InGaAlN-based material used for a quantum well active layer. For such a reason, an end-face window structure has not been currently used for such lasers.
At present, in order to reduce a light density at an end face in a ridge-shaped waveguide structure of a watt-class nitride-based semiconductor laser, the following waveguide structure is employed: the semiconductor laser has a wide ridge-shaped stripe with a width of at least about 8 to 15 μm; and an AR coating is formed on a front end face, and an HR coating is formed on a rear end face. This greatly expands the distribution of light in the waveguide in the horizontal direction. Accordingly, the light density at the resonator end face decreases, and the light output level without COD can be improved.
Note that, in the present specification, the direction perpendicular to a resonator direction and parallel to an active layer is referred to as a "horizontal direction," and the direction perpendicular to the resonator direction and parallel to a normal direction of the active layer is referred to as a "vertical direction."
Typically, in high-power semiconductor lasers having a straight stripe structure in which a ridge-shaped stripe width is maintained constant in a resonator direction, if the difference between reflectance Rf on a laser light emission end (AR) side and reflectance Rr on a rear end (HR) side is significantly large, non-uniform light distribution in which the field intensity of light in the direction of a resonator of the laser, i.e., the resonator direction, is higher on the laser light emission end face (AR) side and is lower on the rear end face (HR) side is exhibited. In this case, more carriers injected into an active layer are consumed in the vicinity of the laser light emission end face (AR), whereas few carriers injected into the active layer are consumed in the vicinity of the rear end face (HR). On the other hand, since current is injected such that the density thereof is maintained constant in the resonator direction, non-uniform carrier concentration distribution called "spatial hole burning (SHB)" occurs in the resonator direction. Due to the influence of SHB, sufficient gain cannot be obtained. As just described, in the conventional high-power laser having the straight stripe structure, if the reflectance at the light emission end face is excessively decreased to provide a high slope efficiency, and such an excessive decrease extremely increases the difference in reflectance between the light emission end face and the rear end face, the field intensity becomes non-uniform. As a result, the gain is decreased, and the slope efficiency is lowered. This leads to limitations on light output, and it is difficult to obtain a light output of equal to or greater than one watt.
For the foregoing reasons, in a conventional laser described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-358405 (hereinafter referred to as "Patent Document 1"), a tapered stripe structure in which the width of a waveguide gradually increases in a resonator direction as illustrated in FIG. 32 is used to reduce significant the non-uniform field intensity distribution of light in the resonator direction, thereby reducing occurrence of SHB.
In this case, even if reflectance at a light emission end face is lowered for the purpose of improving a slope efficiency, and the difference in reflectance between the light emission end face and a rear end face extremely increases accordingly, saturation of gain due to occurrence of SHB in the resonator direction can be reduced.
Thus, even if reflectance at a light emission end face is set at equal to or lower than 0.1% to provide a high slope efficiency, and a mirror loss increases accordingly, there is no saturation of gain caused due to SHB, and a high slope efficiency can be provided.
Moreover, since the field intensity of light is not concentrated at the light emission end face of a resonator, occurrence of COD at the light emission end face can be reduced.
The tapered stripe structure is used not only for reducing occurrence of SHB, but also for changing the shape of the distribution of guided light propagating in the waveguide and for cutting off laser light in high-order transverse modes and amplifying and outputting only laser light in a fundamental transverse mode. In addition to the stripe structure described in Patent Document 1, stripe structures described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. H05-067845, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2002-280668, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-012178, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,317,445 have been reported.

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


A controller handles host commands from a host processor and also interfaces the host processor to a serial device. Storage circuitry (e.g., a shift register) of the controller holds a predetermined plurality of data bits. State machine circuitry controls the storage circuitry for serial bit-level communication (e.g., using a PS/2 protocol) between the storage circuitry and the serial device. A processor executes code from a program memory. In particular, the program code causes the processor to detect that a host command has been received by the controller from the host processor and causes an action corresponding to the host command received. Because the processor is not involved with the serial bit-level communication between the storage circuitry and the serial device, the processor executing the software can handle host commands without affecting the serial bit-level communication.

The FORCE-A20 signal is well-known in the art as a signal (typically provided from an output pin of an 8042 keyboard controller) for forcing low the A20 address line of an advanced "host" microprocessor (e.g., an 80286 or 80386 microprocessor) in response to a command from the advanced host microprocessor. As such, the advanced host microprocessor can execute (in real mode) software written to be executed by a less advanced, 8086, microprocessor.
In particular, the address space of the 8086 microprocessor is limited address to being addressed by twenty address lines (i.e., A0-A19) while the advanced microprocessor has more than twenty address lines. By forcing the A20 address line of the advanced microprocessor low, the advanced microprocessor can simulate the "wrap-around" feature employed by some 8086 software. The "wrap-around" feature is discussed in detail in the background portion of U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,530 to Thayer et al. (issued Jan. 10, 1995) and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
In addition, the RESET-CPU signal is well-known in the art as a signal also provided from an output pin of a keyboard controller for addressing the reset input of an advanced microprocessor. This allows the advanced microprocessor to switch from switch from "protected mode" to "real mode". This is also discussed in the background portion of U.S. Pat. No. 5,381,530.
A problem with employing a keyboard controller to implement the FORCE-A20 and RESET-CPU commands is that the keyboard controller's primary function is to control communication with external input/output devices, and the FORCE-A20 and RESET-CPU commands should be handled without affecting this communication. For example, the keyboard controller may communicate with external devices via a "PS/2 protocol". (In addition, the keyboard controller may provide an interface to other devices such as a "smart battery" via a power management bus.) Significantly, if a PS/2 protocol data packet transfer is interrupted (e.g., in the prior art by a command being received by the keyboard controller from the host processor), the data transfer must be re-initiated from the beginning. This is illustrated in FIG. 1-1. Ideally, a 1-2 ms uninterrupted time period is required to properly service a PS/2 transfer. In addition, as host processors become faster, the period between FORCE-A20 commands shrinks, further shrinking the uninterrupted periods available to the keyboard controller to properly service PS/2 transfers.
If the external input/output device is a mouse and the communication with the mouse is interrupted for too long a period, this could result in mouse "sticking" or "jumping". On the other hand, the keyboard controller must handle the FORCE-A20 and RESET-CPU commands in a timely manner since the host processor cannot continue processing after a FORCE-A20 or RESET-CPU command has been issued until the keyboard controller has actually handled the command by asserting the appropriate output.

Interface controller including hardware mechanism to handle PS/2 interface


Disclosed are methods for an invitee to gain admittance to a group. An inviter already in the group and the invitee share a secret password. The inviter uses the password to create an invitation and then issues the invitation to the invitee and to an authenticator. The authenticator creates a challenge key and challenge value and sends the challenge value to the invitee. Using the password and information from the invitation, the invitee recreates the challenge key, uses the challenge key to derive a response value from the challenge value, and sends the response value to the authenticator. The authenticator compares the response value with an expected value and, if they match, knows that the invitee must have been able to recreate the challenge key. The authenticator trusts that this invitee must be the one for which the inviter issued the invitation and admits the invitee to the group.

In an "ad hoc" computer group, each computer directly talks to and shares computing resources and services with other computers in the group. This type of group allows the collective computing power of all members to benefit the entire group. For example, a large computational job calling for significant computational power and resources can be distributed across multiple members of the group, and computation results can be shared directly among the members of the group. Moreover, this type of group allows new members to join the group that never connected to the group before.
For managing and supporting the ad hoc group, each computer takes one of three basic roles, the roles defined by privileges to interact in given ways with other group members. The three basic roles are owner, inviter, and authenticator. The owner establishes the group and has all the privileges defined in the group including the privilege to invite a new member to join the group, the privilege to authenticate a new member and thus to admit the new member to the group, the privilege to change the role of a member, and the privilege to change information about the group. An inviter has the same privileges as the owner except for the privilege to change group information. An authenticator may authenticate a new member into the group, but does not have the privilege to invite the new member to join the group.
Security is one of the major concerns in an ad hoc group. In order to keep the group secure, a new potential member, when trying to join the group, exchanges authentication proofs with an authenticator in the group. This authentication process is repeated by the new group member with every group member with whom the new group member wishes to directly converse. (A first group member may indirectly converse with a second member with whom it has not been authenticated by passing information through a third member with whom the first and second members have been authenticated. This indirect communications method is always available, but does not affect the discussion of the present invention and will not be mentioned again.) Unlike groups with a fixed membership, in an ad hoc group new members may ask to join the group at any time. It is almost impossible for an authenticator in the group to maintain authentication information for all potential members of the group.
Making authentication in an ad hoc group even more of a problem, the new potential member may wish to converse with an authenticator that does not have the privilege necessary to invite the new member to join the group. For example, Alice intends to join an ad hoc group in order to converse with authenticator Bob. Trent is an inviter in the group. Alice gets an invitation to join the group from Trent, but she now wants to be authenticated by Bob in order to converse with him. While Trent trusts Alice (else he would not have invited her to join the group), and while Bob trusts Trent and trusts the invitation Trent gave to Alice, Bob knows nothing about Alice and, hence, does not trust her. Before allowing Alice to join the group, Bob needs to transfer some of his trust for Trent to Alice.
What is needed is a mechanism for an authenticator in a group to securely transfer its trust of an established inviter in the group to a potential group member.

Methods for authenticating potential members invited to join a group


An assembled camshaft (10) for engine includes: a cam lobe piece (12); and a hollow shaft member (11) having at least two shaft fixing surfaces (11A) formed by plasticity process on a portion of the hollow shaft member (11) corresponding to a position between cylinders of the engine.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an assembled camshaft for engine and a production method thereof, and more particularly to the assembled camshaft including a cam lobe piece and a hollow shaft member and the production method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an environment surrounding automobile, an improvement in fuel consumption has become a major social concern, and as its countermeasure, lightening of parts has been received keen attention.
As for the lightening of a camshaft for engine, there suggests an assembly system in which a cam lobe piece is mechanically fastened to a hollow shaft member. In the assembled camshaft, a sprocket which is driven to be rotated by a belt or a chain is fastened by a bolt. For this reason, the camshaft requires a structure for receiving a reaction force at the time of fastening the sprocket.
For example, there suggest a structure having a hexagonal nut shaped part which is inserted and fastened in a mouth expanded manner, a structure having a slit (excavation or groove) (see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-270307 (1999)), and a structure having a plane which is cut to be formed.
However, the structure having the hexagonal nut shaped parts causes an increase in cost due to an increase in number of parts and a loss of a lightening effect. Further, since a size of the hexagon is large, there arises a problem that a degree of a design freedom of an engine, particularly of a cylinder head portion, is lowered.
Since the structure having a slit requires a special exclusive working tool, there arises a problem that attachment/detachment of the camshaft is difficult in a general service factory. Namely, since a work using the special working tool is forcibly required in a machine maintenance business, maintainability has a problem.
Further, in the structure having the plane cut to be formed, lowering of mechanical durability is feared. On the contrary, in the case where an entire thickness is previously kept according to a thickness after the cutting, lightening of parts is inhibited.

Assembled camshaft for engine and production method thereof


CDE is measured for each nozzle array, to enable modification of a mapping between input image data and intended printing marks to compensate for the CDE. Printing proceeds using the modified mapping, which is either an optical-density transformation of data to printing marks or a spatial-resolution relation between image data and intended pixel grid. The density transformation preferably includes a dither mask (but can be error-diffusion thresholding instead); the resolution relation includes scaling of image data to pixel grid. For some invention forms, CDE includes printing-density defects, measured and used to derive a correction pattern—in turn used to modify halftone thresholding. For other forms CDE includes swath-height error, but still this is measured and used to derive a correction pattern etc. For still other forms, however, CDE includes swath-height error and correction takes the form of scaling. When the halftoning forms are applied to plural-pass printing, a printmask is used to map the dither mask etc. to the nozzle array, enabling application of the correction to the mask. Halftone forms ideally uses a gamma function, though threshold or linear corrections are possible instead. Halftone correction is effective in single-pass printing. The swath-height correction can modify heights of all nozzle arrays. Computations are done at most only once for a full image.

Incremental printing is based on accurate deposition of small colorant dots onto specified locations on paper or other printing media. In inkjet printing such placement takes the form of ballistic delivery of ink droplets.
Typically these mechanisms form a rectangular grid of specified resolution, the most common resolutions now being twelve by twelve, or twenty-four by twenty-four, dots per millimeter (three hundred by three hundred or six hundred by six hundred dots per inch). Other formats, however, are continuously evaluated.
At least two important mechanisms give rise to intractable difficulties in the control of CDE. As to the types of CDE associated with dot-density variations, such stringent difficulties occur even in monochrome printing.
As to the types of CDE associated with optimum print-medium-advance variations, such difficulties generally exceed available correction resources in printing that combines different color planes, most-commonly primary colors but also other color sets such as hexachrome or light colors form the images. In this case the major difficulty arises directly from the basic requirement for interrelated delivery of different colorants into common areas.
1. Error Types
For purposes of this document, CDE encompasses at least four main types of directly observable error—each of which can occur alone under some conditions, although these types are generally interrelated in complex ways:                (1) individual-element density error,        (2) swath-height error ("SWE"),        (3) area-fill nonuniformity ("AFNU"), and        (4) ink-media interactions.
The first of these refers to individual printing elements—whether or not correctly aimed—whose printed dots are either too dark or too light. In inkjet printing such error can be due to variation in drop weight, drop shape or other effects.
The second, SWE, refers to swaths that appear too tall or too shallow, most commonly regarded as due to aiming errors near the ends of the array. Some SWE effects, however, can result from density errors in those regions. (The acronym "SWE" derives from earlier popular nomenclature, "swath width error".)
The third type of error, AFNU, refers to nonuniform density in an image field that is printed in response to uniform image-data. This kind of error can result from either of the first two errors—or from aiming error not particularly concentrated at the array ends, or from an undefined complex of dot-placement attributes.
Such placement attributes most likely implicate interactions between colorant and a printing medium on which the colorant is deposited. This is the fourth category of error effects—"ink-media interactions".
(The terminology AFNU, here "area fill nonuniformity", is used in some industrial facilities to connote a more-specific type of defect—a blotchy or mottled appearance. The present inventors wish to point this out simply to avoid confusion due to these slightly different usages. AFNU as used in this document may be regarded as meaning in essence "swath fill nonuniformity".)
The effects and causes discussed above are not related to each other in rigorously the cause-and-effect ways suggested. Thus for example a cause of the third type of error, nonuniform density, can be ink-media interactions; and such interactions, for some purposes, accordingly might be better listed as a cause, rather than an effect. As will be seen shortly, precise categorization of these relationships is not significant to either understanding or validity of the present invention.
While AFNU and SWE may present themselves to a viewer as distinct matters of spatial distribution and spatial deformation respectively, in actuality what appears to be a deformation of swath height (or any other shape) can be caused by perturbed colorant distribution. In other words deformation is nested within distribution error.
2. Shortened Life of Printing Arrays
Currently multielement printing arrays (including for example "printheads" or multinozzle "pens" in inkjet printing) are discarded when they develop serious problems of any of these types—although attempts have been made to deal with SWE in particular by simply accommodating such error through modification of the distance or stroke of printing-medium advance. Premature discarding of printing arrays is very undesirable because it directly elevates the end user's operating cost.
3. Modification of Printing-Medium Advance
Trying to accommodate SWE by modifying the stroke, without more, has drawbacks. Among these perhaps the most prominent is that such modification lengthens or shortens the overall dimension of the image, in the advance direction—and accordingly in some cases the dimension of the printed sheet. This makes impossible, in general, the piecing of several images together in a regular, tidy mosaic to make a large composite image.
In plural-color printing systems, another drawback is that each different color is associated with a respective different printing array and therefore, in general, with a different SWE—requiring, in turn, a different modified stroke. Only one stroke value is possible for the overall plural-array system; hence stroke modification cannot accommodate the height errors for all the colors.
As suggested above, SWE—with a resulting banding appearance—is one particularly conspicuous consequence of inaccurate dot placement, i. e. aiming error. Placement inaccuracy also causes other forms of banding, as well as line discontinuity and roughness, and color anomalies.
There are several contributors to dot-placement inaccuracies. Some of these arise in the multielement printing arrays, and others in other portions of the printing apparatus.
Such inaccuracies can occur along the scan axis (in scanning systems) or the printing-medium advance axis, or both. Some are systematic, while some others follow random patterns.
As to aiming errors, this document focuses upon the systematic component of those errors which lies along the advance axis. A typical source of these particular aiming-error components is advance-axis directionality of individual elements in the printing array.
In inkjet printing, such misdirected elements in turn can be due to relative misalignments between an array of firing resistors (or "heaters") and an array of nozzle orifices (or "nozzle plate"). Such defects, though tiny, cause drop-ejection directionality in both the scan (when applicable) and advance axes, the latter being a particular concern of the present invention.
When manifested as SWE, these defects generate a difference h (FIG. 10) between nominal printhead height H and the actual printed swath height H+h. As the left-hand and right-hand views demonstrate, the error h—identifiable as the quantitative SWE—can be either positive (h>0) or negative (h<0, H+h<H). The center view shows the nominal condition in which the error h is zero, i. e. there is no error.
Generally, techniques of accommodating SWE by adjusting the advance stroke start with assumption of some model that explains observed banding in terms of the SWE and the stroke; such a model in effect establishes a relation between the error and the stroke.
The problem can be made more specific with an example. In attempting to print a uniform area fill (FIG. 11, left-hand view) with one printing array (printhead) in a single-pass mode, the system advances the medium—between successive passes—by a stroke equivalent to the nominal array height H.
If the printhead has a negative SWE (center view), however, then adjacent swath fail to abut; this failure leaves white streaks between consecutive swaths. Such artifacts will be called "white-streak banding".
On the other hand, if the head has a positive SWE (right-hand view) then adjacent swaths overlap; the printed image in the overlap regions appear darker. Artifacts of this second kind will be called "dark banding". As the illustrations make plain, both cases represent a large adverse impact on print quality.
Another typical source of image banding is inaccuracy in the print-medium advance mechanism. Again assuming an ideal uniform fill (FIG. 12 left-hand view), if the medium underadvances, the image contains dark banding (center view)—similar to the appearance discussed above for positive SWE.
If the medium overadvances, then what appears instead is white-streak banding (right-hand view) like that noted above for negative SWE. Either kind of advance error accumulates, so that the overall length of the printed image varies in proportion to the amount of under- or overadvance (h per pass, times a number of passes); whereas with SWE the overall image length varies only by an amount equivalent to one times h, independent of the number of passes.
Now with such a model providing a theoretical relation between SWE and stroke, prior efforts to accommodate SWE include adapting the stroke to the actual effective swath height, or in other words to take into account the SWE. Again comparing with an ideal case of zero SWE, zero stroke adjustment (FIG. 13, left-hand view), a negative SWE is accommodated by a matching stroke reduction (center view) so that the white-streak-separated swaths of FIG. 12 are much more nearly abutted and the overall fill appears much more neatly blended.
A positive SWE, conversely, is accommodated by a matching stroke increase (FIG. 13, right-hand view), so that the overlapping swaths are moved apart to very nearly just abut and again the overall fill appears much more neatly blended. Unfortunately neither increase nor reduction of the stroke can work for more than one print array at a time, if—as is generally the case—the arrays have different effective swath heights (FIG. 14).
For any specified image, however, the stroke can be adjusted to equal some sort of balanced or weighted mean of the several swath heights. This balance can take into account which color is used most in the swath, to minimize banding in that color plane.
To accomplish that, the stroke can be instead adjusted to the actual swath height of the printhead which is used most—in the specific corresponding image data file (either overall or swath by swath)—as taught by Doval, mentioned earlier. Still, when two colors must be used in equal proportions, the best that can be done is only accommodation for the average SWE.
It will be understood from the foregoing that the system need store only a very modest amount of data to accomplish these tasks. More specifically, it may be desired typically to store—for each printhead—both the effective swath height (or some parameter closely related) and the ink usage for a current swath.
In addition it is desired to store the resultant balanced- or weighted-mean swath height—i. e., one additional single number. Hence the totality of data storage for this purpose may be equivalent to a numerical tabulation that has only, say, a number of rows that equals the number of printheads—and two columns (one for effective swath height and the other for current-swath ink usage)—plus the weighted mean.
The number of printheads and therefore rows in the equivalent tabulation is nowadays most typically four, though systems with six or seven printheads are becoming common. In any event the size of the equivalent tabulation, at least currently, is less than ten by two, plus the resultant weighted swath-height value (again, just one single number).
In the course of calibration, and preparation for operation, the system in effect modifies a tabulation of this general size. The rough size of this tabulation or data array may be borne in mind for comparison with later discussions of the invention.
4. Automatic Substitutions and Weighting
As to density error, a current tactic substitutes healthy printing elements for defective ones—either directly or on a statistical, weighting basis—as is taught, for instance, in the above-mentioned earlier patent documents of Garcia-Reyero. This approach, however, has its own distinct limitations.
It requires use of multipass printmodes, which is relatively slow. If many elements behave poorly, this approach may not work or may require switching to an even slower printmode.
The weighting versions of this technique are more broadly applicable, for they allow defective nozzles to be used less than healthy ones—rather than not at all—and thereby tend to make whatever use can be made of each nozzle. As a practical matter weighting appears to be more useful in cases of misdirected elements than weak or overstrong elements.
Density errors due to elements that form too-dark or too-light marks are not corrected adequately by any prior technique—particularly not any that is usable with a small number of passes, e. g. one- or two-pass printmodes. The same is true of ink-media interactions; and the foregoing discussions also cover AFNU, whether associated with SWE or density phenomena.
As is well known, an incremental printing system establishes average density levels through processes called "rendition", which most typically take the form of either dithering or error diffusion. Dithering employs a relatively large dither mask or rendition matrix—a much larger numerical data tabulation than the effective tabulation discussed above as to SWE management.
The dither mask is substantially greater, ordinarily, than a ten-row-by-ten-column table; however, it is set at the factory and ordinarily undergoes no modification in the field. This too may be borne in mind for comparison with later discussion of the invention.
5. Cost
Furthermore, these several limitations of corrective techniques known heretofore are present even though multielement printing arrays are subject to relatively stringent manufacturing tolerances and therefore relatively expensive. Manufacture and use of printing arrays (inkjet pens etc.) could be considerably more economical if the printing apparatus and methods were significantly more tolerant of both aiming and density errors, as well as ink-media artifacts.
6. Conclusion
Inadequate management of the four main error types introduced above has continued to impede achievement of uniformly excellent incremental printing—at high throughput—on all industrially important printing media. Thus important aspects of the technology used in the field of the invention remain amenable to useful refinement.

Apparatus and method for mitigating colorant-deposition errors in incremental printing

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A word pattern recognition system based on a virtual keyboard layout combines handwriting recognition with a virtual, graphical, or on-screen keyboard to provide a text input method with relative ease of use. The system allows the user to input text quickly with little or no visual attention from the user. The system supports a very large vocabulary of gesture templates in a lexicon, including practically all words needed for a particular user. In addition, the system utilizes various techniques and methods to achieve reliable recognition of a very large gesture vocabulary. Further, the system provides feedback and display methods to help the user effectively use and learn shorthand gestures for words. Word patterns are recognized independent of gesture scale and location. The present system uses language rules to recognize and connect suffixes with a preceding word, allowing users to break complex words into easily remembered segments.

Text input constitutes one of the most frequent computer user tasks. The QWERTY keyboard has been accepted as the standard tool for text entry for desktop computing. However, the emergence of handheld and other forms of pervasive or mobile computing calls for alternative solutions. These devices have small screens and limited keypads, limiting the ability of the user to input text. Consequently, text input has been revived as a critical research topic in recent years. The two classes of solutions that have attracted the most attention are handwriting and stylus-based virtual keyboarding.
Handwriting is a rather "natural" and fluid mode of text entry due to the prior experience of the user. Various handwriting recognition systems have been used in commercial products. However, the fundamental weakness of handwriting as a text entry method is its limited speed. While adequate for entering names and phone numbers, handwriting is too limited for writing longer text.
Virtual keyboards tapped serially with a stylus are also available in commercial products. The keyboard provided on the screen is typically the familiar QWERTY layout. Stylus keyboarding requires intense visual attention at every key tap, preventing the user from focusing attention on text output. To improve movement efficiency, optimization of the stylus keyboard layout has been considered both by trial and error and algorithmically. Using a keyboard layout such as ATOMIK (Alphabetically Tuned and Optimized Mobile Interface Keyboard), text entry is relatively faster. Reference is made to S. Zhai, M. Hunter & B. A. Smith, "Performance Optimization of Virtual Keyboards, Human-Computer Interaction," Vol. 17(2, 3), 229-270, 2002.
The need for entering text on mobile devices has driven numerous inventions in text entry in recent years. The idea of optimizing gesture for speed is embodied in the Unistrokes alphabet. In the Unistrokes alphabet, every letter is written with a single stroke but the more frequent ones are assigned simpler strokes. If mastered, a user can potentially write faster in the Unistrokes alphabet than in the Roman alphabet. The fundamental limitation of the Unistrokes alphabet, however, is the nature of writing one character at a time. Reference is made to D. Goldberg, C. Richardsson, "Touch-typing with a stylus," Proc. CHI. 1993, pages 80-87. Reference is also made to U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,496.
Quikwriting method uses continuous stylus movement on a radial layout to enter letters. Each character is entered by moving the stylus from the center of the radial layout to one of the eight outer zones, sometimes crossing to another zone, and returning to the center zone. The stylus trajectory determines which letter is selected. While it is possible to develop "iconic gestures" for common words like "the", such gestures are relatively complex because the stylus has to return to the center after every letter. In this sense, the Quikwriting method is fundamentally a character entry method. Reference is made to K. Perlin, "Quikwriting: continuous stylus-based text entry," Proc. UIST. 1998, pages 215-216.
A design has been proposed to rearrange the keyboard layout so that some common short words or word fragments can be wiped through, rather than pressed character by character. This method did not involve pattern recognition and shorthand production, so only characters in the intended word can be wiped through in the correct sequence. This design estimates that it would take about 0.5 motion per character. Reference is made to "Montgomery, E. B., "Bringing manual input into the 20th century: New Keyboard concepts," Computer, Mar. 11-18, 1982, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,211,497.
Cirrin (Circular Input) operates on letters laid out on a circle. The user draws a word by moving the stylus through the letters. Cirrin explicitly attempts to operate on a word level, with the pen being lifted up at the end of each word. Cirrin also attempts to optimize pen movement by arranging the most common letters closer to each other. However, Cirrin is neither location nor scale independent. It does not uses word pattern recognition as the basic input method. Reference is made to J. Mankoff and G. D. Abowd, "Cirrin: a word-level unistroke keyboard for pen input". Proc. UIST. 1998, pages 213-214.
It is important to achieve at least partial scale and location independency for the ease and speed of text entry. If all the letters defining a word on the keyboard have to be precisely crossed, the time and visual attention demand to trace these patterns is undesirable.
It is also important to facilitate skill transfer from novice behavior to expert performance in text entry by designing similar movement patterns for both types of behavior. The idea of bridging novice and expert modes of use by common movement pattern is used in the "marking menu". Instead of having pull-down menus and shortcut keys, two distinct modes of operation for novice and expert users respectively, a marking menu uses the same directional gesture on a pie menu for both types of users. For a novice user whose action is slow and needs visual guidance, marking menu "reveals" itself by displaying the menu layout after a pre-set time delay. For an expert user whose action is fast, the marking menu system does not display visual guidance. Consequently, the user's actions become open loop marks. However, the marking menu is not used for text entry due to the limited number of items can be reliably used in each level of a pie menu (8 or at the most 12). Reference is made to G. Kurtenbach, and W. Buxton, "User Learning and Performance with Marking Menus," Proc. CHI. 1994, pages 258-264; and G. Kurtenbach, A. Sellen, and W. Buxton, "An Empirical Evaluation of Some Articulatory and Cognitive Aspects of "Marking Menus", Human Computer Interaction, 1993, 8(1), pages 1-23.
A self-revealing menu approach, T-Cube, defines an alphabet set by cascaded pie menus that are similar to a marking menu. A novice user enters characters by following the visual guidance of menus, while an expert user can enter the individual characters by making menu gestures without visual display. A weakness of the T-Cube is that it works at alphabet level; consequently, text entry using T-cube is inherently slow. Reference is made to D. Venolia and F. Neiberg, "T-Cube: A fast, self-disclosing pen-based alphabet", Proc. CHI. 1994, pages 265-270.
Dasher, another approach using continuous gesture input, dynamically arranges letters in multiple columns. Based on preceding context, likely target letters appear closer to the user's cursor location. A letter is selected when it passes through the cursor; consequently, cursor movement is minimized. This minimization, however, is at the expense of visual attention. Because the letter arrangement constantly changes, Dasher demands user's visual attention to dynamically react to the changing layout. Reference is made to D. J. Ward, A. F. Blackwell, and D. J. C. MacKay. "Dasher—a data entry interface using continuous gestures and language models", Proc. UIST. 2000, pages 129-137.
One possibility for introducing gesture-based text entry is the use of shorthand. Traditional shorthand systems are efficient, but hard to learn for the user and difficult to recognize by the computer. Shorthand has no duality; it cannot be used by experts and beginners alike. In addition, shorthand has no basis in a virtual keyboard, so the user cannot identify the required symbol from the keyboard. If the user forgets shorthand symbols, a separate table must be consulted to find the symbol.
One recent approach comprises a form of continuous gesture-based text input that requires minimal visual attention. This approach is based on keyboard entry, recognizing word patterns based on a virtual keyboard layout. Handwriting recognition is combined with a virtual, graphical, or on-screen keyboard to provide a text input method with relative ease of use. The system allows the user to input text quickly with little or no visual attention from the user. Reference is made to Zhai, S. and Kristensson, P.-O., "Shorthand Writing on Stylus Keyboard," CHI 2003, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI Letters 5(1), (Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 2003), ACM."
Although this gesture-based text input system has proven to be useful, it is desirable to present additional improvements. A gesture-based text input system with a larger vocabulary of gestures recognizable as words is desired. In addition, a method for identifying the appropriate word among the larger gesture vocabulary is desired. Further, a method for enhancing user learning that accelerates the acquisition and use of gestures to speed text input is desired. The need for such system and method has heretofore remained unsatisfied.

System and method for recognizing word patterns in a very large vocabulary based on a virtual keyboard layout

International Business Machines Corporation


The invention discloses a computing system such as a computer, a Personal Digital Assistant, or a mobile phone, being connected both to an internal network and an external network and being able to quickly and safely switch therebetween without being shut down while ensuring a physical separation between the two networks. When a user inputs a request of switching, a switching unit will set a trigger thereof and generate a consequent non-maskable interrupt to CPU. After receives the NMI, the CPU controls the switching unit to run a switch program kept therein to back up a current status of the system. Then the switch program backs up a current status, controls the switching unit to interrupt all serving programs and loads the other status other than the current status to the computing system, and finally control the switching unit to reset the trigger.

1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a computing system such as a computer, a Personal Digital Assistant, or a mobile phone, and more particularly, to the computing system being accessible to both an internal network and an external network and being able to quickly and switch therebetween without being shut down.
1. Description of Related Arts
At present, in consideration of information security, an internal network such as an office or a confidential Local Area Network, is usually physically separated from external network such as the Internet. Some home PCs having private data also need physical separation from the external network. The earliest predecessor solution to this problem was using two computers respectively connected to internal and external networks. Bringing high security however requiring two computers, it is too expensive and can not efficiently exchange data between the internal and the external networks. A later resolution was the dual-mainboard solution. Though uses a common computer chassis and shares one display and one keyboard, it still employs two computers essentially. It has the same problem as its ancestors.
Latterly, dual hard disk and then single hard disk solutions came up. The first one means that two hard disks are used by one computer. When using the internal network, a computer boots up with an "internal use only" hard disk and when it needs to be connected to the external network, a user can boot from the other hard disk connected and used by external network only. In this situation, once the external network is started up, the hard disk or network connected to the internal network is physically separated, i.e. the internal system is absolutely not accessible or at least is not able to be effectively read from or written on. Thus, a user is able to use either the internal system or the external system with one computer, with the physical separation of the internal and the external networks and consequent security of the internal data.
Although the solution of dual hard disk securely separated the internal and external networks, it requires two hard disks, which still costs relative high. In the single hard disk solution, the hard disk is divided into two partitions, each having its own operating system used independently by the internal or external network, respectively. A user can choose to boot either, the internal or the external network. In this solution, when the computer is connected to the external network, data of the internal network is not readable and/or writable and more than one operating systems need to be started up, as disclosed in the patented Chinese invention ZL 94,111,461 owned by the same inventor. When more than one operating systems need to be started up, a good way is "twice startup" disclosed in Chinese patent ZL 97,116,855 of the same inventor. At the same time, the single hard drive solution also successfully solves the problem of system recovery when the system collapses. Additionally, in the solution, a swap area is established on the hard disk, which can be read from or written on when the external network is started up, or can be read from however without being written on when the internal is started up. Information is allowed to flow one-way from the external network to the internal, preventing any automatic disclosure of the internal data. The swap area can be arranged to be readable and writable at any time, which will sacrifice certain security performance. Generally, data exchanges between the internal and the external networks can be done flexibly and safely, keeping a secured separation is always desirable.
However, for either the single hard disk solution or the dual hard disk solution, if a user wants to switch between the internal and the external systems, the computer must be rebooted for purpose of security. It is obviously very inconvenient for users. Especially in e-business, a user frequently needs to communicate and exchange information with other external network users via the external network. And when he needs a digital signature, he may hope to enter the internal network where the signature key is placed to prevent any ill-willed hacker from getting it. After the information is safely signed, the user needs to come back into the external system to exchange the information with other relevant external network users. In that way, programs and keys for signature are kept in the internal system to ensure their security, and can be used in e-commerce while security is guaranteed.
The most important issue in the Internet-based e-commerce is security. At client terminals, due to non-one-hundred-percent virus protection, ill-willed hacker invasions, and BOs, there exists the possibility for the information in client terminal computers to be illegally accessed. However, it is unaffordably serious if the information of a key used for digital signature, which is used to identify clients and sign contracts, is so accessed. It means the information of the key must be kept at an inaccessible place. An U.S. Pat. No. 99,806,523 filed on May 13, 1999 by Wave Systems Corp. disclosed a solution that employs a special-use computer for digital signature. But the computer, e.g. a smart card, either works slowly or is expensive, which makes the users have to choose encryption algorithms having relatively weaker security performance. Therefore, the best way is to make full use of the computer at client terminal, making it 1. be able to physically separate the internal and the external systems, making any internal system information inaccessible from any program and individual including the user he himself; 2. when the computer is connected to internal network, the user can selectively send relevant information to the external system, and in order to ensure security, the control program will not be able to be changed by any virus: it should be write-protected; and, 3. the switching between the internal and the external systems should be conveniently and quickly.
The spirit of the invention for above mentioned computer can be applied to all computing devices such as the portable computing devices. A user may access the external network when internet communication is needed. When digital signature is needed, the user can enter the internal system, and then send documents bearing digital signatures to the expected destinations via external network.
A computer which is able to "simultaneously" use two operating systems will also provide convenience for computer education on multiple operating systems.

Computing system being able to quickly switch between an internal and an external networks and a method thereof