The invention comprises a peelable membrane for resealably closing a metal end comprising an outer layer, a tacky layer, and a heat seal layer. The heat seal layer is permanently sealed to the metal end to cover at least one opening in the metal end. The tacky layer causes the peelable membrane to be resealable onto the metal end.

A number of products, and particularly food products, are packaged in containers having a metal end, regardless of whether the container itself is metal. For example, a container may comprise rigid paperboard, but may have an affixed metal end which defines an opening into the container. Alternatively, a container may comprise metal or a polymeric material and may have an integral or affixed metal end which defines an opening into the container. The metal end may be integral, may be attached to the top of the container by double-seaming the metal end to a flange at the top of the container, by induction or conduction sealing, or by any other method known in the art. The metal end may comprise one or more openings which allows access to the container interior and contents.
In many cases, the opening of such metal ends is closed with a thin, flexible, peelable membrane comprised of foil, polymeric and/or paper. The membrane is sealed to the metal end (such as via a heat seal) so as to cover the opening defined in the metal end. The container is opened by peeling the membrane from the end of the container to expose the one or more openings into the container. Conventional membranes are not, however, resealable. Instead, conventional membranes are disposable. They are completely removed from the container and an overcap is provided, in some cases, to reclose the container. This solution produces unnecessary waste and is expensive to produce. Through hard work and ingenuity, the inventors have developed a peelable membrane which can be initially sealed to a metal end, can be peeled back to access the container opening, and can be then resealed onto the metal end, without the need for a reclosing overcap.

Peelable resealable membrane for containers


Techniques are described for pacing multiple sites in a patient's heart using overdrive pacing the heart using a pacemaker including techniques where the overdrive pacing rate only increases when at least two intrinsic beats are detected within a determined search period. In one specific technique, an increase in the pacing rate occurs only if two P-waves are detected within X cardiac cycles. In another specific technique, the overdrive pacing rate is increased only if at least two P-waves are detected within a block of N cardiac cycles. In both techniques, the overdrive pacing rate is decreased if no increase has occurred in the last Z cardiac cycles. By increasing the overdrive pacing rate only in response to detection of at least two P-waves within a determined number of cardiac cycles, an excessively high overdrive pacing rate is avoided. Other techniques are described for adaptively adjusting overdrive pacing parameters so as to achieve a determined target degree of pacing of, for example, 95% paced beats. By adaptively adjusting overdrive parameters to maintain a target degree of pacing, the average overdrive pacing rate is minimized while still maintaining a high number of paced beats, thereby reducing the risk of a tachyarrhythmia occurring within the patient.

A dysrhythmia is an abnormal heart beat pattern. One example of a dysrhythmia is a bradycardia wherein the heart beats at an abnormally slow rate or where significant pauses occur between consecutive beats. Other examples of dysrhythmias include tachyarrhythmias where the heart beats at an abnormally fast rate, e.g., atrial tachycardia where the atria of the heart beat abnormally fast.
One technique for preventing or terminating dysrhythmias is to overdrive pace the heart where an implantable cardiac stimulation device, such as a pacemaker or implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), applies electrical pacing pulses to the heart at a rate somewhat faster than the intrinsic heart rate of the patient. For bradycardia, the implantable cardiac stimulation device may be programmed to artificially pace the heart at a rate of 60 to 80 pulses per minute (ppm) to thereby prevent the heart from beating too slow and to eliminate any long pauses between heart beats. To prevent tachyarrhythmias from occurring, the implantable cardiac stimulation device artificially paces the heart at a rate of at least five to ten pulses per minute faster than the intrinsic tachyarrhythmia heart rate of the patient. In other words, a slight artificial tachycardia is induced and maintained in an effort to prevent an actual tachycardia from arising.
It is believed that overdrive pacing is effective in at least some patients for preventing or terminating the onset of an actual tachycardia for the following reasons. A normal, healthy heart beats only in response to electrical pulses generated from a portion of the heart referred to as the sinus node. The sinus node pulses are conducted to the various atria and ventricles of the heart via certain, normal conduction pathways. In some patients, however, additional portions of the heart also generate electrical pulses referred to as "ectopic" pulses. Each pulse, whether a sinus node pulse or an ectopic pulse, has a refractory period subsequent thereto during which time the heart tissue is not responsive to any electrical pulses. A combination of sinus pulses and ectopic pulses can result in a dispersion of the refractory periods which, in turn, can trigger a tachycardia. By overdrive pacing the heart at a uniform rate, the likelihood of the occurrence of ectopic pulses is reduced and the refractory periods within the heart tissue are rendered uniform and periodic. Thus, the dispersion of refractory periods is reduced and tachycardias triggered thereby are substantially avoided.
Thus, it is desirable with patients prone to tachyarrhythmias to ensure that most beats of the heart are paced beats, as any unpaced beats may be ectopic beats. A high percentage of paced beats can be achieved simply by establishing a high overdrive pacing rate. However, a high overdrive pacing rate has disadvantages as well. For example, a high overdrive pacing rate may be unpleasant to the patient, particularly if the artificially-induced heart rate is relatively high in comparison with the heart rate that would otherwise normally occur. A high heart rate may also cause possible damage to the heart or may trigger more serious dysrhythmias, such as a ventricular fibrillation.
A high overdrive pacing rate may be especially problematic in patients suffering from heart failure, particularly if the heart failure is due to an impaired diastolic function. A high overdrive pacing rate may actually exacerbate heart failure in these patients. Also, a high overdrive pacing rate may be a problem in patients with coronary artery disease because increasing the heart rate decreases diastolic time and decreases perfusion, thus intensifying ischemia. Also, the need to apply overdrive pacing pulses operates to deplete the implantable cardiac stimulation device's power supply, perhaps requiring frequent surgical replacement of the power supply. Typically, the power supply is located within the implantable cardiac stimulation device and thus this requires surgical replacement of the implantable cardiac stimulation device.
Problems associated with overdrive pacing are particularly severe for certain aggressive overdrive techniques which trigger an increase in the pacing rate based upon detection of a single intrinsic heart beat. With such techniques, a significant increase in the pacing rate is triggered by detection of a single intrinsic heart beat so as to promptly respond to the occurrence of a high rate tachycardia, such as an SVT. As a result, even in circumstances where a high rate tachycardia has not occurred, the detection of a single intrinsic heart beat can cause a significant increase in the overdrive pacing rate, which may be reduced only gradually. If a second intrinsic heart beat is detected before the overdrive pacing rate has been gradually lowered to a standard overdrive pacing rate, a still further increase in the pacing rate occurs. As can be appreciated, the foregoing can cause the overdrive pacing rate to increase significantly, perhaps to 150 ppm or more, even though a high rate tachycardia has not occurred. The aforedescribed problems are addressed by a copending, commonly-assigned patent application to Florio et al., entitled "Methods and Apparatus for Overdrive Pacing Heart Tissue using an Implantable Cardiac Stimulation Device," the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
An alternative approach to reduce atrial arrhythmias is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,403,356 to Hill et al. (the Hill patent). The Hill patent describes placing at least two electrodes in the atrium, preferably in the triangle of Koch and/or an area of prolonged effective refractory period elsewhere in the atrium. Pacing pulses are then applied to the multiple electrodes either simultaneously or separated by a short delay.
While each approach offers benefits in avoiding incidences of arrhythmia, e.g., atrial arrhythmia, it is believed that treatment can be further improved by combining selected aspects of both approaches to achieve an improved result. Accordingly, the present invention is directed to that end.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Methods and apparatus for preventing atrial arrhythmias by overdrive pacing multiple heart tissue sites using an implantable cardiac stimulation device


A liquid metering system for an agricultural implement is modular, having individual metering pumps for each crop row. The pumps are individually controlled for precise application of the liquid input and are preferable electrically driven. A common pump is used, making the system modular in that varying sizes of implements can be produced by varying the number of pumps. A common supply line is used to supply a liquid input from a reservoir to the pumps. Each pump is connected to the common supply line. By connecting each pump to the common supply line, the difficulty of routing individual hoses from a central pump to each row unit are overcome.

Liquid fertilizer is commonly applied to an agricultural field before, during or after planting of a crop. A typical liquid fertilizer application system includes a tank for holding the liquid fertilizer, a pump for pumping the fertilizer from the tank, a plurality of distribution lines that eventually deliver the liquid to a delivery tube or spray nozzle, for placing the liquid on or in the soil near the plants. Down stream from the pump, various orifices, valves, etc are used to meter the volume of liquid directed to each crop row or outlet to deliver the desired application rate. The size of the pump is dependent on the width of the machine, i.e. the number of crop rows to be treated. Furthermore, the flow control orifices, and or valves must be customized for each row, taking into consideration the length of the line from the pump to the row. This adds considerable complexity to the manufacture of multiple machine models, types and widths.
As the cost of fertilizers and other inputs to an agricultural fields increase, it becomes more important to precisely control the application of inputs to the field to avoid excess application rates, overlaps in application, application to non-crop areas, etc. One such system for doing so is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,395,769. This patent describes a liquid application system with a single pump supplying liquid to a number of bypass valves, one for each row. The bypass valves are controlled to vary the rate of liquid application at each row. This system requires a liquid return line for the bypassed liquid. Furthermore, the size of the pump must vary over a full line of implements widths, or a single maximum sized pump is used on all implements, adding unnecessary cost to those implements not needing the full capacity of the pump.

Modular liquid metering system for an agricultural implement


The echo canceller is designed to be placed between a hands-free acoustical interface and a communications network. It comprises a plurality of processing paths connected in parallel and each allocated to one of a plurality of adjacent sub-bands taken from the spectrum band of the output signal. Each path comprises an analysis filter receiving the echo-containing signal for transmission after correction, a second analysis filter receiving the incoming signal coming from the network, and feeding an adaptive filter that supplies an estimated echo in the respective sub-band to the subtractive input of the subtracter and a synthesis filter. The adaptive filters in at least some of the sub-bands implement a QR decomposition RLS algorithm on the incoming signal, using the fast version thereof, with or without recursive order.

The present invention relates to echo cancellers for use in telephone installations. A major application lies in installations likely to include portable terminals or "hands-free" terminals. Such installations include, in particular, digital cellular radiotelephone systems, videophone terminals operating in narrow band (8 kHz) or in enlarged band (16 kHz), and terminals for the conventional wire network.
The principle of an echo canceller is illustrated in FIG. 1 of the present application. FIG. 1 shows a "near" terminal which may be a teleconferencing set, a "hands-free" telephone handset, etc. The signal x travelling over a receive line LR and coming from a remote terminal 8 is amplified by an amplifier 10 and then broadcast by a loudspeaker 12. The soundwaves coming from the loudspeaker 12 are transmitted by acoustical coupling (represented by path 13) to one or more microphones 14 that are intended for picking up speech of a near speaker. The microphone 14 is connected to an amplifier 16 and the output signal z is transmitted over a send line LE to the remote terminal. The "remote" speaker placed at the remote terminal 8 will consequently hear not only any intended speech, but also an echo of his or her own speech after a delay due to the transmission time via the channels LE and LR, and disturbed by the transfer function of the acoustical path 13.
The echo canceller includes an adaptive filter FA which receives the input signal x and whose output is applied to the subtractive input of a subtracter 18 whose additive input receives the output from the amplifier 16. The coefficients of the filter FA are automatically adapted responsive to the error signal e sent over the send line LE and equal to the difference between the signal z (constituted by the echo when there is no useful signal) and the output from the filter. When the speaker at the near terminal is not speaking, the error signal is constituted merely by residual echo. Often the echo canceller is provided with a detector for detecting the presence of near speaker speech, referred to as a double speech detector (DIP), which stops or slows down adaptation of the filter FA while the local speaker is speaking, so as to prevent the filter from being disturbed by local speech.
In general, the filters of echo cancellers in telephone installations are digital adaptive transversal filters using a simple algorithm such as the gradient algorithm or more commonly the normalized stochastic gradient algorithm, referred to as NLMS.
A major problem in implementing an echo canceller is due to the large number of coefficients required for taking account of the length of the impulse response of the path 13 throughout the telephone band. Several thousands of coefficients are required at the usual sampling frequency of 8 kHz (narrow band) or of 16 kHz (enlarged band). To keep the volume of computation compatible with the computation power of available digital signal processors, proposals have been made to subdivide the passband in which echo cancelling is to be performed into a plurality of sub-bands, each processed by a path having a sub-band analysis filter, a canceller allocated to the sub-band, and a sub-band synthesis filter.
This approach encounters difficulties. Either the filters are designed so that the sub-bands are separate, thereby avoiding spectrum aliasing effects in each sub-band, but causing gaps in the spectrum of the signal as reconstructed by combining the outputs of the synthesis filterbank. Or else, a sub-band-feeding sub-sampling frequency is adopted which is greater than the critical frequency for sub-sampling or decimation in order to form guard bands which avoid spectrum aliasing, but that considerably increases the computation speed required. Or else the sub-bands are allowed to overlap and account is taken of the contribution of adjacent sub-bands in the path allocated to any one sub-band. This solution (U.S. Pat. No. 4,956,838) gives results that are satisfactory, but it suffers from the drawback of considerably complicating the structure of an echo canceller.
It is also known that the algorithms conventionally used in echo cancellers, and in particular the stochastic gradient algorithm, allows significant residual echo to remain in a noisy environment.
A certain number of filtering algorithms are known that make it possible, in theory, to reduce the residual error. In particular, the recursive least squares algorithm or RLS algorithm is known which gives better performance than the NLMS algorithm commonly used in echo cancelling. However it suffers from the drawback of being complex and of having zones of instability. That is why it has not been used in acoustical echo cancellers, in particular because the complexity of implementing it would require a large amount of hardware and computation times that are incompatible with the delays that are acceptable in telephone communications. For example, in the European GSM standard for digital cellular telephony, the maximum processing time allowed to a station is 0.1 s.

Acoustical echo canceller with sub-band filtering


A fabrication process and integrated circuit formed thereby are provided in which relatively thin sidewall spacers extend laterally from opposed sidewall surfaces of a transistor gate conductor. The present invention contemplates forming a gate structure upon a semiconductor substrate. Lightly doped drain impurity areas may be formed in the semiconductor substrate aligned with sidewall of the gate structure. An oxygen-containing dielectric layer is deposited upon the semiconductor topography, followed by deposition of an oxidizable metal upon the dielectric layer. The oxygen-containing dielectric and the oxidizable metal are thermally annealed such that metal oxide spacers are formed adjacent sidewall surfaces of the gate structure. In an embodiment, portions of the dielectric and the metal are selectively removed prior to the anneal. In an alternate embodiment, the metal and the dielectric are annealed first, followed by selective removal of portions of the resulting metal oxide. Following spacer formation, source and drain impurity areas may be formed in the semiconductor substrate aligned with sidewall surfaces of the spacers. A metal silicide may be formed upon upper surfaces of the gate conductor and the source and drain impurity areas.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to integrated circuit fabrication and, more particularly, to relatively thin sidewall spacers extending laterally from opposed sidewall surfaces of a transistor gate conductor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Fabrication of a MOSFET device is well known. Generally speaking, MOSFETs are manufactured by placing undoped polycrystalline silicon ("polysilicon") over a relatively thin gate oxide. The polysilicon material is then patterned to form a gate conductor directly above a channel region of the substrate. A dopant species is implanted into the gate conductor and regions of the substrate exclusive of the channel region, thereby forming source and drain regions adjacent to and on opposite sides of the channel region. If the dopant species used for forming the source and drain regions is n-type, then the resulting MOSFET is an NMOSFET ("n-channel") transistor device. Conversely, if the dopant species is p-type, then the resulting MOSFET is a PMOSFET ("p-channel") transistor device. Integrated circuits utilize either n-channel devices exclusively, p-channel devices exclusively, or a combination of both on a single substrate. While both types of devices can be formed, the devices are distinguishable based on the dopant species used.
While in operation, transistors which have heavily doped source and drain regions arranged laterally adjacent the gate conductor often experience a problem known as hot carrier injection ("HCI"). HCI is a phenomenon in which the kinetic energy of charged carriers (holes or electrons) within the channel region is increased as the carriers are accelerated through large potential gradients. As a result of this increase in kinetic energy, the charged carriers are injected into the gate oxide wherein they may become trapped. The greatest potential gradient, often referred to as the maximum electric field ("E.sub.m "), occurs near the drain during saturated operation. As a result of carrier entrapment within the gate oxide, a net negative charge density forms in the gate oxide. The trapped charge can accumulate with time, resulting in a positive threshold shift in an NMOS transistor, or a negative threshold shift in a PMOS transistor.
To overcome problems of sub-threshold current and threshold shift resulting from HCI, an alternative drain structure known as the lightly doped drain ("LDD") is commonly used. The purpose of the LDD is to absorb some of the potential into the drain and thus reduce E.sub.m. A conventional LDD structure is one in which a light concentration of dopant is self-aligned to the gate conductor followed by a heavier concentration of dopant self-aligned to the gate conductor on which a pair of sidewall spacers has been formed. The purpose of the first implant dose is to produce lightly doped sections within an active area of the substrate near the channel. The second implant dose is spaced from the channel by a distance substantially equivalent to the thickness of each sidewall spacer. The second implant dose forms heavily doped source and drain regions within the active area laterally outside the LDD areas. In this manner, the lateral thickness of each sidewall spacer dictates the length of each LDD area.
Unfortunately, the addition of LDD areas adjacent the channel adds parasitic resistance to the source-drain pathway, leading to many deleterious effects. For example, the parasitic resistance causes an increase in the value of the gate-to-source voltage, V.sub.GS, required for the drive current, I.sub.D, (i.e., current flowing between the source and drain regions of a transistor in its on-state) to reach saturation. Therefore, in order to reduce the parasitic resistance of the source-drain pathway, it has become necessary to reduce the lateral dimensions of the LDD areas. However, the length of each LDD area cannot be reduced below a specific dimension using conventional methods. In particular, the lateral thickness of the sidewall spacers used to define LDD areas generally has a limited minimum size. The sidewall spacers are typically formed by chemically-vapor depositing a layer of spacer material across the substrate and the gate conductor arranged above the substrate. The spacer material is thusly placed upon the opposed sidewall surfaces of the gate conductor, the upper surface of the gate conductor, and the upper surface of the substrate exterior to the gate conductor. The spacer material is then anisotropically etched such that it is removed from horizontally oriented surfaces faster than from vertically oriented surfaces. The duration of the anisotropic etch is preferably terminated after the spacer material has been removed from a significant portion of the horizontally oriented surfaces but before the spacer material can be completely removed from the vertically extending sidewall surfaces.
Although chemical-vapor deposition ("CVD") is not as vertically directed as physical vapor deposition, a CVD deposited material generally still tends to accumulate more quickly upon horizontally oriented surfaces than upon vertically oriented surfaces. In many instances, accumulation of the CVD deposited material is particularly poor upon tall vertical surfaces. As such, the thickness of a gate conductor, and hence the height of the sidewall surfaces which bound the gate conductor, must be maintained above, e.g., 200 .ANG., to ensure that the conductivity of the gate conductor is relatively high. While increasing the width of the gate conductor would also afford good conductivity of the gate conductor, it would undesirably lead to an increase in the threshold voltage, V.sub.T, of the transistor employing the gate conductor. Accordingly, in order to achieve good coverage of the vertically oriented sidewall surfaces of a necessarily thick gate conductor, an adequate amount of spacer material must be deposited across the gate conductor. Reducing the lateral thickness of the sidewall spacers thus cannot be achieved by decreasing the deposition time, and hence the thickness, of the spacer material. Moreover, the lateral thickness of the sidewall spacers cannot be reduced by increasing the anisotropic etch duration of the spacer material. That is, if the anisotropic etch is allowed to proceed too long, the gate conductor and the substrate will be over-etched, undesirably resulting in a significant decrease in the thicknesses of the gate conductor and the pre-existing LDD region within the substrate. In addition to preventing the reduction of the width of the LDD areas, this inability to reduce the lateral thickness of the spacers also limits the amount of packing density that can be achieved for an integrated circuit.
It would therefore be desirable to develop a method for fabricating a transistor having sidewall spacers of relatively small width. Since the lateral thickness of the sidewall spacers employed by a transistor determines the length of the LDDs, effectively controlling spacer thickness is important if parasitic resistance is to be decreased. Sidewall spacers having lateral dimensions reduced over the lateral thicknesses of spacers formed by conventional methods may be useful for producing smaller LDD regions and thus minimizing parasitic resistance in transistors having small lateral dimensions while effectively attenuating E.sub.m and minimizing HCI.

Ultra thin high K spacer material for use in transistor fabrication


A cognitive meeting assistant facility is provided for assisting a moderator in an online meeting. The cognitive meeting assistant facility automatically categorizes chat questions of participants of the online meeting based on content into multiple categories of chat questions. One or more categories of chat questions of the multiple categories of chat questions include multiple questions of different participants of the online meeting. Further, the cognitive meeting assistant facility deploys the multiple categories of chat questions for display to the participants of the online meeting. The deploying includes, for each category of the at least one category of chat questions, providing a category-applicable answer for display to the participants of the online meeting in association with that category of chat questions.

In an online meeting or chat, where tens or even hundreds of participants or users are streaming comments and questions, for instance, as part of a web-user interface for online education, the same question may be asked repeatedly in the same or different form. A moderator, or other participant, can answer the question, but the answer may quickly scroll off the participants' screens as new participants join the chat and ask the same, or other questions, again and again, because they haven't scrolled through the possible hundreds of prior chat messages to see if the question has already been answered. In environments such as these, the moderator can become overwhelmed with questions, and the participants can find it difficult to find the correct answers. This can also impact the value of the session for the moderator, since the moderator may become distracted trying to answer questions and playing catch-up. Further, based on the rolling comments in the chat windows, providing a quality summary of comments upon completion of the meeting may be difficult, if not impossible.

Cognitive online meeting assistant facility

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION


A quad flat package integrated circuit (IC) device has alternating inner and outer leads that protrude from a package body. The inner leads are j-shaped leads and the outer leads are gull-wing shaped leads. The package body is formed such that it includes plastic lead webbings between adjacent leads, which help prevent metal particles from getting lodged between the leads and causing electrical shorts. The webbings are made of the same molding compound as the package body and are formed together with the package body.

The present invention relates to integrated circuit (IC) packaging, and more particularly to the case outline and corresponding mold cavity for a semiconductor device.
In order to assemble a typical packaged integrated circuit (IC) device, an IC die is adhesively mounted on and electrically connected to a lead frame. The lead frame is a patterned sheet metal cutout that includes (1) a die pad, also called a flag, for mounting the IC die, and (2) lead fingers, or leads, for providing electrical connections between device-internal components on the die and device-external components. Device-external components might include power sources and input/output connections on a printed circuit board (PCB) on which the IC device is mounted. Wire bonding is performed after the die is mounted on the lead frame. In wire bonding, metal bond wires are bonded to bond pads on the die and corresponding leads on the lead frame.
Following wire bonding, the assembly, including the die, lead frame, and bond wires, is encapsulated with a molding compound, leaving the distal ends of the leads exposed, and then the molding compound is cured. After encapsulation, usually as part of singulation, the process of separating a plurality of attached IC devices into single chips, the IC device is trimmed and formed to make the packaged IC device that is ready for mounting on a circuit board. The trimming includes cutting and/or removing lead frame support structures that were used to hold the leads in place. The forming typically includes bending the leads into shapes, such as so-called gull wings, to allow for attachments to PCBs.
The above-described encapsulation step includes putting the assembly inside a mold form having a cavity, injecting uncured molding compound into the cavity, curing the molding compound, and then removing the mold form. The cured encapsulant, or molding compound, portion of the IC device is referred to herein as the package body or case. The case outline refers to the outline of the case in a plan view. The conventional case outline is a plain rectangle.
Some IC devices have a relatively small size and a relatively high number of leads, which leads to a relatively narrow lead pitch, or distance between adjacent leads (lead pitch is measured as the distance between the center lines of two adjacent leads). The width of the space between two adjacent leads, referred to herein as the lead gap, is equivalent to the lead pitch minus the width of a lead. Generally, the narrower the lead pitch the greater the risk that an electrical short between adjacent leads might occur since the lead-gap width is narrower if the lead width stays the same. Note that sometimes the actual lead-gap width may be narrower than the nominal lead-gap width because of a post-encapsulation plating step in which the exposed portions of the leads are plated with a material to prevent oxidation. Electrical shorts may occur, for example, during the trimming and forming stage, if stray bits of metal get trapped between two adjacent leads.

Semiconductor device with webbing between leads


A nitride semiconductor light-emitting element 11 is one for generating light containing a wavelength component in an ultraviolet region. The nitride semiconductor light-emitting element 11 has an active region 17 including InX1AlY1Ga1-X1-Y1N well layers 13 (1>X1>0 and 1>Y1>0) and InX2AlY2Ga1-X2-Y2N barrier layers 15 (1>X2>0 and 1>Y2>0). An energy gap difference Eg1 between the InX1AlY1Ga1-X1-Y1N well layers 13 and the InX2AlY2Ga1-X2-Y2N barrier layers 15 is not less than 2.4×10−20 J nor more than 4.8×10−20 J.

Patent Document 1 describes an LED having an active layer of a quantum well structure consisting of AlGaN. In this LED, a difference between an Al composition of barrier layers and an Al composition of quantum well layers in the quantum well structure is within 15% and the Al composition of the quantum well layers is not less than 2%.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-6957

Nitride semiconductor light-emitting element


A plasma torch assembly for receiving electrical energy from an electrical energy source and generating a plasma in a gas from a gas source includes an induction coil to receive electrical energy from the electrical energy source and provide energy to generate an electromagnetic field for the plasma and a shield assembly to shield against energy from the plasma and transfer energy from the induction coil to the plasma. The shield assembly includes a dielectric cylinder, ceramic encasement lining and a plurality of thin walled tubes arranged in a circular array. The tubes are encased by and partially embedded in an encasement lining made of thermal resistant ceramic material that is molded or potted upon the outside surface of and between the metal tubes. The dielectric cylinder, tightly disposed over the encasement lining, provides a water proof barrier for the tubes and supports the ability to draw a vacuum. A water coolant jacket envelope, discharge isolator and the coil surround the shield assembly.

An inductive plasma torch, which is based on inductive coupling to an ionized gas at or near thermal equilibrium and is electrodeless and can be used with any gas desired, is useful for many applications including non-thermal destruction of hazardous waste material. The torch forms a plasma of ions, electrons and neutral particles which is used to act on materials, such as waste material, to dissociate the material so that other compounds or materials may be formed from it. In particular, the plasma torch is used to excite the ions, electrons and neutral particles to an elevated temperature as a result of collisions and ultraviolet radiation.
Forms of such devices which operate based on inductive coupling to an ionized gas are well known. An early version of a plasma torch included a quartz tube of high thermal shock resistance disposed inside and coaxial to an induction coil which excited the plasma. Despite use of a high thermal shock resistance material to form the quartz tube, the early plasma torch suffered from melt or thermal stress cracking of the quartz wall. Numerous efforts were made to overcome this problem, including adding more cooling to the outside of the quartz confinement wall and later on, utilizing double wall jacketed quartz tubes with water cooling. Despite such efforts, early plasma torches failed to contain higher power densities at atmospheric pressures. Consequently, the power input involved in larger diameter systems was limited because of the destruction of the quartz material due to thermal stress.
In later developed plasma torches, segmented copper cooling tubes were arranged in a protective cylinder or sheath, some of which incorporated singular tubes ("Induction Plasma Heater With High Velocity Sheath", TAFA Bulletin 26-D8, July 1968) while others utilized thick wall counterflow tubes (U.S. Pat. No. 4,431,901 to Hull). The TAFA and Hull torches each included a copper tube protector, quartz tube and exciter coil, arranged in order of increasing diameter. The copper tube protector was segmented with individual tubes to reduce its interference with the coupling of the electric field component of the electromagnetic field from the coil. Otherwise, a complete contiguous metal protector would have absorbed much or all of the energy which meant no plasma would have been generated. However, a drawback of these systems is that they continued to use quartz tubes for secondary plasma containment and structural strength to withstand the pressures of the vacuums created primarily for plasma ignitions which are usually done at low pressures to enhance plasma excitation. The quartz was not only very brittle and could crack from simple mechanical stress, but was subject to continued destruction from intermittent electrical discharges between the coil and tube protector or from ionization of the gas space between the coil and tube protector.
The above problems are enlarged with an increase in the excitation frequency of radio energy used and become more serious at a frequency greater than approximately 1 MHz. To overcome such problems, some systems placed the coil in deionized water but the problem of quartz destruction continued with undesirable ionizations occurring within the gas space between the quartz tube and the metal tube protector. With the electromagnetic field strength being the greatest near the coil, undesirable discharges were more likely near the coil if not inhibited or prevented. Both the Hull and TAFA systems suffered from the above problems. Whenever the quartz wall would break, water would enter the system, flooding the apparatus and extinguishing the plasma. Moreover, the copper metal tube protector was subjected to destruction when used in oxidizing or reactive atmospheres.
To decrease electrical discharging problems, which were in part the result of capacitive coupling by the electric field, the technique of reducing the applied excitation frequency was used. Operating at lower frequencies also reduced the charge buildup in the plasma. As a result, many high power, ambient pressure RF plasma torches were forced to operate at reduced frequencies, such as at 0.5 Mhz. A drawback of operating at lower frequencies was that the plasma pinch effect was minimized. At higher frequencies, the plasma pinching effect increases, that is, the plasma is further drawn back from the wall of the containment tube thereby lessening the thermal stress to the wall and allowing for higher input powers with advanced reliability.
Further attempts to overcome the above problems were made, including utilizing ceramic walls with coolant flow between (which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,200,595 to Boulos), radioactively cooled protector walls, porous ceramic confinement, and ceramic containment protectors. However, the above devices were generally subject to the same thermal stresses as quartz and were difficult and costly to manufacture.
The present invention eliminates disadvantages of the prior art and more particularly, improves on the plasma confinement capabilities of the metal tube protector to produce a system which is reliable and robust even at frequencies greater than 1 Mhz.

Plasma torch having a cooled shield assembly

The Regents of the University of California


Interleaving/de-interleaving of data is achieved by storing and subsequently retrieving portions of the data from circular buffers (60,70). The circular buffers (60,70) are addressed such that each circular buffer corresponds to an index of data (B.sub.i). Thus, data (80) is written into a circular buffer (60,70) using a first modulo scheme and read using a second modulo scheme, where the second modulo scheme is based on the interleaving scheme. An index array (20) is used to point to the appropriate entry in the circular buffers(60,70) to ensure a proper interleave/de-interleave process.

In data communications systems such as Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Lines (ADSL), noisy transmission lines can cause data to be corrupted or lost. In order to correct errors and recover lost data, additional error-checking data is often transmitted along with the transmitted data (payload data). The combination of a group of payload data bytes and the error-checking data for the group of payload data bytes is referred to as a codeword, or frame. The receiving end of the data transmission can determine if errors have occurred in a particular codeword based on the payload data and error-checking data received. If the amount of error or loss in a codeword is relatively small, the error-checking data can be used to recover the correct payload data.
Bursts of noise on the transmission media may cause the severity of data corruption in a codeword to be such that recovery is not possible. In order to reduce the impact of these bursts of noise, data interleaving techniques can be employed. By interleaving data from different codewords before transmission and de-interleaving the received data at the receiver, the impact of a burst of noise is spread over a number of different codewords, thus reducing the loss in each codeword to a level where recovery of the payload data in each codeword is possible.
The pattern of interleaving is controlled by two parameters. The first is the number of bytes of data in each codeword, which is represented by the number N. The second is the depth of interleaving to be performed, which is represented by the number D. Convolutional interleaving in ADSL requires that each of the N bytes B.sub.0, B.sub.1, . . ., B.sub.N-1 in a codeword be delayed by an amount that varies linearly with the byte index. Byte B.sub.i (the byte of the codeword with index i) is delayed by (D-1) * i bytes, where D is the interleave depth.
In order to interleave a data stream, memory is required to store the data from multiple codewords before transmission. If a particular byte is to be delayed by 20 bytes, the particular byte must be stored in memory for the next 20 transmissions before its turn to be transmitted arises. In one prior art technique described in the ADSL standard data is stored in memory in interleaved form and transmitted when completed interleaved codewords become available. The amount of memory required to perform the interleave function is equal to N * D bytes. It can be seen that as the number of bytes in a codeword and/or the depth of interleaving increases, the amount of memory required to store the interleaved data increases dramatically. Note that an equivalent amount of memory is required in the de-interleaver of the receiver, as data for different codewords will have to be stored until each de-interleaved codeword is complete.
The ANSI T1E1.4 (ADSL) committee has determined the parameters in an ADSL system regarding the size of each codeword (N) and the depth of interleaving (D). In a particular ADSL example, the size of each codeword (N) may be equal to 255 bytes, and the depth of interleaving (D) equal to 64. Thus, using prior art techniques, 255 * 64, or approximately 16K bytes of memory is required to interleave or de-interleave data. In integrated circuit (IC) implementations of data communications transmitters and receivers, these large memory blocks require a relatively large amount of die area, which increases the die size of the IC and the cost of the data communications system.
Therefore, in order to reduce die area and cost, a need exists for a method and apparatus to reduce the amount of memory required to perform interleave/de-interleaving of data in data communication systems.

Method and apparatus for interleave/de-interleave addressing in data communication circuits


When a playback speed of a recording medium such as a compact disc (CD) or the like is changed, the change of this playback speed is reflected in a clock which controls a tempo of automatic play. In the background of music reproduced from the recording medium, playing data provided during the play is written in a memory (211) in a real time fashion. When the automatic play is carried out in accordance with the content stored in the memory (211), the present invention includes a mode (A) in which the changed state of the playback speed of the CD and the tempo/musical sound pitch states of automatic play are automatically reproduced in the same states as those in the recording timing point, and a mode (B) in which the playback speed of the CD is automatically returned to the original speed before being changed and the tempo/musical sound pitch states of automatic play are automatically changed in response thereto.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for enabling electronic musical instruments to carry out automatic play in synchronism with the playback of data such as audio data, graphics data recorded on a compact disc (CD) or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known that, if a recording medium recorded in a so-called minus-one system (i.e., system in which a piano concerto is recorded except for the part of piano) is reproduced by operating a compact disc player, an analog disc player, a digital audio tape recorder or the like and if the player plays an musical instrument in the background of reproduced sound of this audio data, then a rich reality can be obtained and also the playing timing can be understood, which is very useful in musical training for beginners.
In order to reproduce the above-mentioned playing state by using automatic play, audio data is initially reproduced from the recording medium. Then, the player carries out the musical play by using an electronic musical instrument in synchronism with the reproduced sound of audio data in actual practice. At that time, musical play data is recorded in a sequencer in a real time fashion. After the above-mentioned operation and processing, the audio data is reproduced from the recording medium in synchronism with the playback of the automatic play by the sequencer.
However, the above-mentioned system in which automatic playing data is input in a real time fashion is difficult for the beginner. That is, the beginner cannot control the musical play speed to coincide with the playback speed of the audio data reproduced in the background.
To remove this disadvantage, the audio playback speed is decreased by adjusting the driving state of the recording medium by the user. If the user sets the speed (tempo) suitable for the musical play and inputs the automatic playing data in a real time fashion, then the problem of the speed (tempo) can be solved.
This method, however, cannot solve the following problems.
That is, if the playback speed of the audio data is changed, then the interval (pitch) of the reproduced sound of audio data also is changed accordingly. To remove this problem, a circuit for manually returning the interval of the audio reproduced sound to the original one must be additionally provided or the tuning of the musical sound pitch of the electronic musical instrument must be carried out one more time in unison with the interval of the reproduced sound of the audio data, which is very complex.
Further, if the synchronizing playback is carried out after the user recorded the automatic playing data in the sequencer, then the user must remember the audio playback speed adjusted in the recording mode and the adjusted value in the tuning of the electronic musical instrument. In other words, unless upon playback the user sets again the system setting data such as the audio playback speed and the adjusted value in the tuning of the electronic musical instrument to the same state as those in the recording timing point, then the playback speed of the recording medium and the playback tempo of the automatic play and the interval of the audio reproduced sound and the interval of the reproduced sound of the automatic play do not coincide with each other, whereby the audio playback and the automatic play are disharmonized.
This is also true for the case when the automatic play is carried out in synchronism with the playback of an image. For example, if a landscape and a score are displayed as image data and automatic playing data is recorded in synchronism with the display of the displayed image, then the playback speed of the image and the playback tempo of the automatic play must be synchronized with each other during the playback of the automatic playing data, otherwise the automatic play and the display of the score will not become coincident with each other.

Apparatus for carrying out automatic play in synchronism with playback of data recorded on recording medium


The present invention is directed to a water pump that may be easily constructed from inexpensive parts and materials and that is powered by the water source from which the water to be pumped is drawn. In a preferred embodiment, two pairs of lever arms located on opposite sides of the pump are alternately filled with water from the source and then emptied causing the lever arms to alternately ascend and descend. As the lever arms ascend and descend, they alternately fill and then compress a pair of pistons causing water to be pumped to an outlet of the pump. Water from the emptied lever arms may preferably be returned to the source, thus minimizing any impact of the pump on the environment and downstream users of the water source.

Although there exist a wide variety of water pumping systems for farm irrigation and other purposes, most such systems are complex, expensive, and require electricity or some other form of man-made power for their operation. In many underdeveloped or depressed areas, however, farmers and other persons requiring water for crop irrigation or other purposes cannot afford to install or maintain expensive pumping systems. Moreover, in many contexts, such as relatively small organic farms built to supply produce to local consumers and restaurants, the amount of water needed may not justify a complex pumping system. Furthermore, in remote areas, access to electricity or other man-made power sources may not always be readily available. Accordingly, there exists a need for inexpensive water pumps that are easy to construct and maintain, don't require access to man-made power sources, and can supply water in volumes needed for relatively small farms and other applications with relatively modest water demands.

Water-powered pump for use in irrigation and for other purposes


An internally pressurized fluid vessel, in particular for liquids and/or gases exerting pressure outwards from the container has a sandwich structure capable of withstanding the internal pressure. The vessel has an interior container, an outer jacket in which the container is positioned and a material filling the space between the container and the outer jacket.

The object of the present invention is a vessel for fluid having internal pressure, such as liquids and/or gas exerting a pressure from inside the vessel toward the outside thereof, as well as a process designed especially for its fabrication.
The vessel of the invention will find use in all economic spheres in which fluids having internal pressure are handled and/or stored. Such vessels may, for example, be vessels in which fluid exerts an internal pressure due to its own nature, such as drums containing gaseous and/or fermenting beverages, gas bottles, fire extinguishers or the like. The vessels may likewise be vessels in which, for example, the internal pressure exerted by the fluid comes from the pressure of a distribution network of which they are a part, such as water storage heaters, central heating expansion tanks, pool filters, sand filters, brake circuit reservoirs,. water fountain reservoirs, compressed air or other reservoirs.
Thus, one application involves use of the present invention in, for example, the brewery industry as conditioning vats for nutrient liquids such as beer. However, this is not limiting.
At the present time, it is known that various types of vessels of thermoplastic material, such as polyethylene or polypropylene, may be used to store and/or transport fluids having internal pressure. These vessels have the disadvantage of not being strong enough to withstand internal pressures when they are too high. Their resistance to shocks is likewise low.
On the other hand, various types of principally metal vessels, made of stainless steel or aluminum, are well known. A disadvantage of this type of vessels is that they are costly and heavy. In addition, they oblige their users to engage in numerous efforts, particularly recycling, resulting in an increase in the final cost price.
The object of the present invention is to propose a vessel which makes it possible to mitigate the disadvantages of the known devices and which at the same time is resistant to an internal pressure and is lighter than the principally metal vessels mentioned above.
Another object of the invention is to propose a vessel likewise resistant to external mechanical shocks.
Another object of the invention is to facilitate its use thanks to its characteristics of weight and shape.
Another object of the invention is to propose a vessel exhibiting, in addition, characteristics of thermal insulation and impermeability to gases and liquids associated with the nature and properties of the fluid contained.
Another object of this invention is to propose, secondarily, a disposable vessel, in view of its cost price.
Other objects and advantages of the present invention will appear in the course of the description to follow, which is given only by way of indication and which does not aim to be limiting.


Bearing unit furnished with a bearing retaining part, the bearing retaining part formed from a single, seamless component and furnished with a cylindrical section disposed on the outer periphery of a sleeve of the bearing unit, and with a bottom section closing over the sleeve and the cylindrical section along their undersides. An attracting magnet is disposed on the bottom-section side of the bearing retainer, for magnetically attracting axis-wise the lower-end portion of a shaft of the bearing unit. A magnet holder, formed from a magnetic material, is disposed on the underside of the attracting magnet, with the magnet holder being attached to the bearing retainer.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to bearing units, and to electrically powered motors furnished with the bearing units.
2. Description of the Related Art
With numerous fan motors and drive motors for disk-drive and like applications being installed in electronic devices these days, lower-noise motor operation is being called for, in part because occasions in which such devices are employed in the home and in the office are increasing.
Fan motors that adopt sliding bearings are one answer to this call. In such motors, a rotary shaft serving as the rotor section is inserted into a sleeve, wherein the rotary shaft is rotatably supported via a lubricating oil. Inasmuch as the rotary shaft in this configuration is axially shiftable with respect to the sleeve, a number of techniques have been proposed to prevent the rotary-shaft-furnished rotary section from coming out of the sleeve.
One example of such a technique is to magnetically attract the fore-end portion of the rotary shaft with an attracting magnet via a thrust bearing. The attracting magnet is disposed underneath the rotary shaft and the sleeve, and is accommodated in a cuplike back yoke. In turn, the back yoke is mounted in a holder that retains the sleeve.
In the structure just described, however, the holder and the back yoke are constituted from separate parts; moreover, the back yoke is mounted on the holder. A consequence of this makeup is that the lubricating oil retained in the sleeve can pass the joint between the holder and the back yoke, and leak out to the motor exterior. Oil thus leaking out of the motor dramatically compromises its reliability and endurance.

Bearing unit and electric motor furnished therewith


Technologies described herein relate to modifying visual content for presentment on a display to facilitate improving performance of an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. The visual content is modified to move elements further away from one another, wherein the moved elements give rise to ambiguity from the perspective of the ASR system. The visual content is modified to take into consideration accuracy of gaze tracking. When a user views an element in the modified visual content, the ASR system is customized as a function of the element being viewed by the user.

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are configured to recognize spoken utterances set forth by users. With more particularity, a microphone generates an electrical signal responsive to capturing audio, wherein the audio includes the spoken utterance. The electrical signal is processed to filter noise from the audio and extract features that can be used to recognize the spoken utterance. While performance (e.g., speed and accuracy) of ASR systems has greatly improved over the last several years, conventional ASR systems continue to have difficulty when large vocabularies are considered, when the ASR systems have not been trained with suitable training data that is representative of particular accents or dialects, or when other suboptimal conditions exist. Moreover, ASR systems often have difficulty recognizing spoken utterances set forth in noisy environments, such as when the utterance is set forth in a crowded airport, in a moving automobile, etc.

Modification of visual content to facilitate improved speech recognition


A latching micro magnetic switch includes a magnet located proximate to a supporting structure. The magnet produces a first magnetic field with field lines symmetrically spaced about a central axis or non-uniform field lines. The switch also includes a cantilever supported by the supporting structure. The cantilever has a magnetic material and a longitudinal axis. The magnetic material makes the cantilever sensitive to the first magnetic field, such that the cantilever is configured to move between first and second states. The switch further includes a conductor located proximate to the supporting structure and the cantilever. The conductor is configured to conduct a current. The current produces a second magnetic field, which causes the cantilever to switch between the first and second states.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to latching electronic switches. More specifically, the present invention relates to a latching micro magnetic switch.
2. Background Art
Switches are typically electrically controlled two-state devices that open and close contacts to effect operation of devices in an electrical or optical circuit. Relays, for example, typically function as switches that activate or de-activate portions of electrical, optical, or other devices. Relays are commonly used in many applications including telecommunications, radio frequency (RF) communications, portable electronics, consumer and industrial electronics, aerospace, and other systems. More recently, optical switches implemented with relays (also referred to as "optical relays" or simply "relays" herein) have been used to switch optical signals (such as those in optical communication systems) from one path to another.
Although the earliest relays were mechanical or solid-state devices, recent developments in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technologies and microelectronics manufacturing have made micro-electrostatic and micro-magnetic relays possible. Such micro-magnetic relays typically include an electromagnet that, when energized, causes a lever to make or break an electrical contact. When the magnet is de-energized, a spring or other mechanical force typically restores the lever to a quiescent position. Such relays typically exhibit a number of marked disadvantages, such as they are bulky in size, heavy, slow, expensive, and difficult to manufacture and integrate. Also, the spring required by conventional micro-magnetic relays may degrade or break over time.
Another micro-magnetic relay includes a permanent magnet and an electromagnet for generating a magnetic field that intermittently opposes the field generated by the permanent magnet. One drawback is that the relay must consume power from the electromagnet to maintain at least one of the output states. Moreover, the power required to generate the opposing field is significant, thus making the relay less desirable for use in space, portable electronics, and other applications that demand low power consumption.
Therefore, what is needed is a latching micro magnetic switch that can consume low power, be small, fast, and easy to integrate. The switch can also be reliable, simple in design, low-cost, and easy to manufacture, and can be useful in optical and/or electrical environments.

Micro magnetic latching switches and methods of making same


A thrown toy has a water tank with valves which are opened by centrifugal force. When thrown, the toy is designed to whirl so that the centrifugal force opens a valve and water is dispersed out the valves while the toy is in flight.

This invention relates to water propelling and dispersing toys and more particularly to thrown toys which trail a stream of water as they fly through the air.
For convenience of description, the term "thrown toy" is used hereinafter to generically describe the invention as any suitable device. The structure of the invention will be described hereinafter as a flying disk; however, it should be understood that this description does not limit the invention to this specific structure. Many toys are adapted to be thrown through the air, a few examples of which are balls, disks, rings, boomerangs, or the like.
These and similar thrown toys have a universal appeal going back through time, perhaps to the first person who threw something as a matter of entertainment or sport. Therefore, it is difficult to imagine how any improvement could be made to toys of this type at this late date. On the other hand, in view of the great appeal for throwing things, it is also apparent that new and novel thrown toys are attractions which are often sought.
Accordingly, an object of this invention is to provide new and novel thrown toys. In particular, an object of the invention is to provide thrown toys in combination with a device for dispersing water as the toy flies through the air. Another object of the invention is to provide a safe toy which does minimum damage if it strikes a person or an unintended target.

Thrown water propelling and dispensing toy


A semiconductor device may be provided. The semiconductor device may include a failure information generation circuit configured to generate first failure information. The semiconductor device may include a first latch data generation circuit configured to include the first failure information into first latch data of a first block and configured to output the first latch data including the first failure information. The semiconductor device may include a data synthesis circuit configured to generate first synthesis data.

1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure may generally relate to semiconductor devices, and more particularly, semiconductor devices relating to testing redundancy regions.
2. Related Art
As semiconductor devices become more highly integrated, a failure rate of memory cells of the semiconductor devices has been increased. This increase in failure rate is because of the increase of the number of the memory cells integrated in a limited area. As a result, the semiconductor devices are designed to include a redundancy circuit in order to increase a yield thereof even though defective memory cells exist after fabrication of the semiconductor devices.
The redundancy circuits include redundancy memory cells and fuses for programming repair addresses corresponding to failed memory cells. If fabrication processes of the semiconductor devices terminate at a wafer level, various tests may be applied to the semiconductor devices to sort repairable chips and to obtain addresses of failed memory cells or defective memory cells in the repairable chips. The addresses corresponding to the failed memory cells may be programmed to replace the failed memory cells of the repairable chips with the redundancy memory cells and to improve the yield of the semiconductor devices.
A fuse programming method may be used to program address information corresponding to the failed memory cells. In general, a laser blowing technique may be used in cutting the fuses. In such cases, the fuses may be physically cut using a laser beam. Accordingly, the laser blowing technique can be applied to the semiconductor devices only at a wafer level before the semiconductor devices are encapsulated to form semiconductor packages.
An electrical fuse bowing technique instead of the physical fuse bowing technique may be required to replace the failed memory cells with the redundancy memory cells at a package level. Fuses which can be programmed at a package level may be generally called electrical fuses. This means that predetermined fuses of the electrical fuses can be selectively cut using only an electrical signal. The electrical fuses may be categorized as either anti-type fuses or blowing-type fuses. The anti-type fuses may have an initial state of an open state and may have a short state after an electrical signal is applied thereto. In contrast, the blowing-type fuses may have an initial state of a short state and may have an open state after an electrical signal is applied thereto. Since the electrical fuse bowing technique can be used at a package level, the electrical fuse bowing technique may be very useful in the repair processes of the semiconductor devices.


An improved spigot actuating device is provided for actuating the spigot on a spout of bag-in-box potable liquids. The device comprises a collar for mounting onto a spout of a large standard diameter. A spacer is provided in the shape of an arcuate cuff, that makes all smaller spouts emulate the large standard diameter. The collar is flexible and resilient, arcuate, terminates in legs, and extends around the spout more than half way. The collar mounts graspingly the spout along a grasp arc that is larger than 180.degree., which makes for a secure attachment. Teeth are provided on the collar to render the attachment more secure. A pair of pinchers can be squeezed together to increase the separation between the legs, to permit mounting and removing the collar. The device further includes an actuator that is pivotable with respect to the collar around a rotation axis. The actuator has a handle for the user, and a cam with a specially designed upper surface. As the handle is rotated from a standby position, the upper surface engages the lever and pushes it open. In addition, design is such that the handle can be released at a full open position, where the egress path for the liquid is the widest possible.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the field of dispensing potable liquids from disposable containers that have a spigot supported by a projecting spout, and more particularly to an improved device for actuating the spigots of such containers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Disposable "bag-in box" containers are in widespread commercial use for packaging various liquids including but not limited to milk, fruit juices, water and wine. Such containers typically consist of a flexible plastic bag supported within a relatively rigid cardboard box. The cardboard box is generally rectangular, which permits storage at the wholesale level without needing crates. In addition, such containers allow the consumer to purchase and store relatively large quantities of such liquids with relative convenience.
A particular spout and spigot assembly has been developed for use with cardboard "bag-in-box" containers that is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,211,348. This assembly is provided in a first standard diameter for a 5 liter container, and in a second, smaller standard diameter for a 3 liter container. Briefly, the assembly comprises a spout provided in the plastic bag and supported near the bottom of the box, and a spigot attached to the far end of the spout. The spigot has a flexible stop wall with an integral toggle lever, which the user can manipulate to flex the stop wall. When the lever is raised, the stop wall is flexed and a path of egress is opened for the liquid through an opening in the stop wall. When the lever is released, a biasing snap back force acts to return the stop wall back to its unflexed shape, thereby sealing off the egress path.
The aforementioned spigot and spout assembly is now described in detail with reference to FIGS. 1, 2 and 3. Assembly 20 has an annular flange 22 for sealed connection to the flexible plastic bag containing the liquid. Extending from flange 22 is a hollow, typically cylindrical spout 24, with an interior surface 26 and an exterior surface. The exterior surface has outwardly extending flanges 28, which form between them annular grooves 30, 32 and 34. The flanges are included to facilitate filling of the bag with liquid, and to help stabilize, with respect to the cardboard box, the spout in an extended position for dispensing the liquid. The spout is typically made of plastic.
The spigot is indicated as 36, and is attached to the far end of spout 24. The spigot has a cylindrical outer wall 38, a cylindrical inner wall 40, and a flexible, circular inner wall 42, that is otherwise known as stop wall 42. The two cylindrical walls trap between them the far end of the spigot watertightly. The spigot is typically made primarily of rubber material.
The stop wall is disposed transversely to an axis of the spout, and seals it off. An arcuate portion of outer wall 38 is omitted to form opening 44, through which the liquid is dispensed. The outer edge of stop wall 42 has a sealing bead 46, which presses against interior surface 26 of the spout, to seal it off at opening 44.
Integral with stop wall 42 is a resilient, toggle shaped lever 48 extending from stop wall 42. The lever has an inner end, an outer end, and a flat bottom surface 50. The lever is attached to the stop wall by the inner end, and the bottom surface is to be engaged by a finger of the user. As seen in FIG. 3, the user is supposed to push on the bottom surface of the lever to counteract the biasing snap back force. The direction of the force is such that pushing is first upward, then rotates, and then concludes in the direction shown by arrow 51, i.e. upward and also inward. This will cause bottom surface 50 to be tilted upwards about the inner end. Stop wall 42 will be distorted, and sealing bead 46 will be drawn away from interior wall 26, thereby allowing the liquid to flow through opening 44. Upon release of lever 48, stop wall 42 returns to its normal shape by the action of the snap back force. As seen in FIG. 2, the lever in the closed configuration extends horizontally from the stop wall, and the bead seals off further flow of the liquid.
As can be seen, the lever is positioned entirely within the spout. This makes operation of the spigot cumbersome and uncomfortable for the user, as the user must insert a finger or thumb into the small cylindrical recess, and maintain a force on the lever to counteract the force of the snap back action. The force must be maintained at the awkward angle of arrow 51. The force divided by the small area of bottom surface 50 makes for high pressure against the finger of the user. If the pressure is too high, the user applies less force, thereby opening the egress path only narrowly, and the liquid flow rate is slow.
This problem has been addressed in the prior art by adaptor devices such as is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,402,919 to Atkinson, and shown in FIG. 4. Device 52 is mounted on spout 24, which is supported on cardboard box 53. The device opens the spigot by lifting lever 48.
More particularly, device 52 includes a semicircular collar 54 that is mounted onto the end of the spout. Strictly speaking, the collar is actually mounted over also outer wall 38 of the spigot. In the art it is said, however, that the collar is mounted onto the spout without mentioning the outer wall of the spigot, because it is the plastic spout that provides mounting stability, not the rubber spigot.
The device also includes an actuator 56 pivotably attached to the collar. The actuator has a handle 58 and a cam 60, that rotate together around a rotation axis 62. When the collar is mounted onto the spout, the actuator becomes positioned relative to the spigot in the standby position of FIG. 4. From there the actuator can open the spigot. Specifically, when handle 58 is rotated from the standby position towards the user and downward, an upper surface of cam 60 pushes lever 48 upwards, thereby dispensing liquid in a receptacle that is placed beneath the opening.
Devices of the prior art have problems. First, the spout and spigot assemblies come in two different diameters. The device can only be used on spouts of a single diameter. Thus a different device is required for a spout of a different diameter.
A second such problem arises from fact that the device wobbles and shifts around on the spout, since the mere mounting of the collar onto the spout does not also secure it.
A third set of problems arise from inadequacies in the design of the cam. Cam 60 pushes lever 48 upwards, but never opens the egress path fully, because of the danger of overrotation. Overrotation is undesirable because it will cause the lever to fall off the cam irreversibly, and the snap back force will cause the spigot to shut off. Then the device will have to be removed, the handle put back in the standby position, and the device remounted. To prevent such overrotation, Atkinson teaches to add a rotation stop tab 64. Tab 64 prevents further rotation of the actuator by itself running into the lower rim of the spout, but still does not allow the egress path to be opened the widest.


A controller is provided for a hybrid system including an electric supercharger, a motor generator, and an energy storage system for supplying electric power to the electric supercharger and the motor generator controls the electric supercharger (and the motor generator in accordance with a required torque. Specifically, even when the required torque can be achieved by an engine alone, the controller for the hybrid system activates at least one of the electric supercharger and the motor generator to provide torque assist to the engine when the state of charge of the energy storage system is sufficiently high.

The present invention relates to a controller for a hybrid system and to a method for controlling a hybrid system including an electric supercharger, a motor generator, and an energy storage system for supplying electric power to the electric supercharger and motor generator.
Conventionally, a hybrid system as disclosed in JP 2005-171842 A (Patent Document 1) has been proposed for the purpose of improving fuel economy. In such a conventional hybrid system, the electric supercharger and motor generator are controlled to provide the engine with torque assist depending on comparison between a base torque that can be achieved by the engine alone and a required torque.

Device and method for controlling hybrid system


Concepts and technologies disclosed herein are directed to application-based multiple radio access technologies (“RAT”) and platform control using software-defined networking (“SDN”). According to one aspect of the concepts and technologies disclosed herein, an SDN controller can configure a radio access network (“RAN”) for connectionless services and for connection-oriented services. The RAN can support multiple RATs each capable of providing radio access to a device, such as a UE or an IoT device. The SDN controller can determine a user plane path configuration for an application flow through at least part of the RAN. The SDN controller can provide the user plane configuration to an SDN agent that is stored on and is executable by the device.

Mobile network traffic has been growing at a very fast pace. In addition, the variation of network end points, the variation of applications, and the variation of mobility states of user equipment ("UE") (e.g., whether or not a UE is moving, and if so, how fast) are growing, and this trend will likely continue, particularly as 5G technologies are deployed. 5G technologies will support divergent types of end devices. Some of these end devices will be simple devices, such as meter readers and other Internet of Things ("IoT") and machine-to-machine ("M2M") devices, and some of these end devices will be more complex devices, such as smartphones, that support a wide variety of applications, such as voice calling, video calling, virtual private networking, gaming, multimedia streaming, and the like. Moreover, the evolution to 5G networks will embrace a mosaic of radio access technologies ("RATs"). IoT/M2M devices also can utilize wireline access for concurrent access and/or backup. While existing general packet radio service ("GPRS") tunneling protocol ("GTP") tunnel and bearer concepts may still have a role in supporting some applications and devices, these concepts might not be the best solution for all application and devices, such as IoT/M2M devices and the applications these devices support. This is in part because these concepts are based upon a connection-oriented architecture and will not scale well in networks that adopt the aforementioned new paradigm in which billions of IoT/M2M end points will be deployed.

Application-based multiple radio access technology and platform control using SDN


An apparatus for controlling depth machining in a space and with the use of jigs, includes a body having two sliding parts biased by a spring and suitable for a drilling tool, with some clearance. One part is provided with couplings for assembling on a machine-tool, and the other is provided with a presser and a drill guide. Another spring which is suitable for keeping the tool centered is included and a relative stroke between the two sliding parts is longer than the drilling stroke of the tool.

This invention relates to an apparatus provided with a floating tool for drilling boring, flaring and other machining work, by using jigs where the working depth is to be precisely set.
In particular, this invention concerns an apparatus to be applied to NC automatic machines, with 5 or more degrees of freedom, for drilling flaring and the like, such machining requiring, particularly in the aeronautics industry, the use of an apparatus suitable for both adjusting possible inaccuracies when positioning the tool with respect to the jig hole axis, and for checking the machining depth in a very limited range of tolerance.
The apparatus is expected to be applied to the machines already known, e.g., from U.S. Pat. No. 5,014,542 and consisting of a movable support along three cartesian axes where a movable tool-holder head is installed and which rotates around two orthogonal axes. Generally, the apparatus may translate along its axis for carrying out the machining required.
The invention relates in particular to, but is not limited to, the field of aeronautic construction and aims at the automation of several machining steps through a numerical control computerization thus replacing the previous manual work, but at the same time keeping their general features. The invention as claimed is intended to provide an apparatus suitable for turning some of the manual machining operations into automatic operations while preventing possible inaccuracies in the tool positioning. As noted above, aeronautical construction is one of the main fields where the apparatus can be applied in accordance with the invention, where parts assembling requires for drilling several holes with flaring is within a limited range of tolerance that is often not over a few 100ths of a mm. The parts to be machined are often curved, which complicates things in a manner so that up to now most holes have been drilled manually with the help of special tools and jigs.
Such known systems were based on the use of a jig provided with bushes and to be applied to the workpiece, then the operator is to carry out the different machining steps manually. Obviously, in spite of the accuracy and care taken, a system like that ensures neither a perfect repeatability of the results nor the observance of the working time set depending on the operator's capability and conditions. Moreover, the working time is quite long.
On the other hand, the complete automation of such machining steps is not possible, in particular for parts which were previously jig-machined, since programming for such a machine arrangement would be remarkable expensive and the different parts would be certified again with a great waste of time and money.
For these reasons, there is a need for apparatuses enabling automation while continuing to use the jigs.
The practical difficulties found are several and related to the need for both centering the tool on the hole to be drilled and checking accurately the tool stroke with respect to the surface to be machined since its position is not previously known even with respect to the jig.

Apparatus with floating tool for drilling, boring, flaring and the like at a set depth using jigs


In various embodiments, a lighting system may comprise at least one connection element and at least one luminous band having at least one band-shaped unit circuit board, whereby the unit circuit board is equipped with at least two semiconductor light sources, and has at least one contact area arranged between at least two semiconductor light sources, whereby the contact area is configured so it can be severed and the contact area and the connection element are configured such that after severing of the contact area the connection element can be applied onto the contact area and at least one circuit can be closed on the unit circuit board by applying the connection element onto the contact area.

Quasi endless LED luminous bands are known which for example consist of a contiguous sequence of band-shaped unit circuit boards or unit circuit board sections and which can be divided at defined spacings between two unit circuit boards, for example every 200 mm. Such luminous bands are for example known from the LINEARLight range from the OSRAM company.
A division at spacings other than the predefined spacings between the unit circuit boards (in other words a severing of a unit circuit board) would result in an interruption of the circuit and thereby to the destruction of the LED band. For some applications however, band lengths other than the predetermined band lengths are required, for example in order to be able to run the LED band to fit exactly into a corner.
The provision between two semiconductor light sources of a contact area with bridging contacts which are designed as SMD contacts is known from DE 10 2009 008 095. If the luminous band is now to be divided at such a location, it is possible to close the circuit of the luminous band between the bridging contacts by means of soldered-in SMD resistors. By reason of the shortening of the luminous band and the resulting reduced number of semiconductor light sources, these resistors are to be designed such that the excess voltage decreases at the rated current.
For many users of such luminous bands the manual soldering of SMD resistors is difficult to handle. Furthermore, the resistance values of these termination resistors are dependent on the current of the circuit. This can result in confusion or errors in the choice of suitable resistors.

Lighting system comprising at least one luminous band


An optical information storage medium has multiple information layers. On each layer, information is stored in the form of an electroluminescent material. The pits are organized into regions called pages. A specific page on a specific layer can be addressed through electrodes integrated into the medium. The medium can be read-only or WORM. For the WORM embodiment, a recordable electroluminescent material is combined with a quencher and a free radical generating compound that, when thermally degraded, generates free radicals to bleach the quencher. To amplify the light from an information layer, a photoconductive layer and an additional electroluminescent layer can be provided.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an optical memory such as optical card or an optical disk. In particular, this invention relates to an electroluminescent device that in one embodiment has an organic or inorganic electroluminescent material capable of being driven by either a positive or negative electric field, so that the device is capable of being used with either a forward or a reverse electrical current. Most particularly, the invention relates to optical ROM and WORM devices based on an electroluminescent material device capable of being driven by an alternating electric field. A material for a WORM medium is also disclosed.
2. Description of Related Art
Existing optical memory systems use two-dimensional data carriers with one or two information layers. Most of the previous technical solutions to optical data recording propose registering changes in reflected laser radiation intensity in local regions (pits) of an information layer. Such changes can be a consequence of interference effects in relief optical discs of the CD-ROM type, burning of holes in the metal film, dye bleaching, local melting of polycarbonate in widely-used CD-R systems, change of reflection coefficient in phase-change systems, etc.
Three-dimensional, i.e., multilayer, optical storage systems provide comparatively higher storage capacity. However, they impose specific limitations and requirements on the construction and features of recording media, the techniques for data recording and reading, and especially the depth of the recording media.
Existing optical media, such as CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks, are normally read in reflection mode. However, for a multilayer storage medium to be read in reflection mode, every information layer must have an at least partially reflective coating. As a consequence, when a layer close to the bottom of the medium is read, both the reading beam and the reflected beam pass through many such coatings, thereby attenuating the reflected beam to an unacceptable extent. Also, because existing optical media are read with coherent radiation, both beams are subject to diffraction and interference distortions on pits and grooves of the information layers.
That is why multilayer fluorescent discs with fluorescent reading are preferable, as they are free of partly reflective coatings. Diffraction and interference distortions are also reduced because of the incoherent nature of fluorescent radiation, its longer wavelength in comparison to the reading laser wavelength, and the transparency and homogeneity (similar reflection coefficients of different layers) of the optical media upon the incident laser and the fluorescent radiations. Thus, multilayer fluorescent discs have some advantages in comparison to reflective discs.
Optical memory cards are ROM or WORM media having a credit card form. The cards are highly durable, easily carried in a user's pocket, and unaffected by electrostatic and magnetic fields or heat. Optical memory cards surpass all other card technologies in terms of data capacity.
Information retrieval in fluorescent optical memory systems, in particular, fluorescent ROM and WORM optical memory cards, is realized with the help of external light sources. Reading light is absorbed in a fluorescent material held in information pits and excites the fluorescence of the material.
In an unrelated field of endeavor, inorganic electroluminescence devices were discovered by Destriau in 1936. Destriau observed that when suitably prepared inorganic zinc sulfide phosphor powders activated with small additions of copper were suspended in an insulator and an intense alternating electric field (15 kV) was applied with capacitor-like electrodes, light emission resulted.
Electroluminescent research gained further impetus with the advent of transparent conducting electrodes based on tin oxide (SnO2) in the late 1940's. Typically, early devices were composed of two sheets of electrically conductive material serving as electrodes, one a thin conducting backing and the other a transparent conductive film, placed on opposite sides of a plastic or ceramic sheet impregnated with the inorganic phosphor, such as zinc sulfide doped with small amounts of copper or magnesium. A transparent glass sheet placed next to the transparent conductive sheet served as an outermost protective substrate. Application of an alternating voltage to the electrodes caused an electric field to be applied to the phosphor. Each time the field would change, radiation having a wavelength in the visible range was emitted.
Although a large amount of research and investigation was conducted on the alternating current electroluminescent devices, the devices never achieved practice application although they were originally highly touted as a room lighting sources. Unfortunately, at high brightness levels the AC electroluminescent devices exhibited a very short life, and after about 1963, most of the research into the AC electro-luminescence devices was severely curtailed.
The most recent efforts in this area have been directed to a molecular carbon (e.g., a form of carbon known as fullerene-60) system. The high voltage drive requirements, the associated high cost of drive circuitry, poor stability and lack of color capability have made these devices cost prohibitive.
Two other inorganic devices, 1) direct current (DC) inorganic semiconductor light emitting diodes (LEDs) and 2) fluorescent ion doped inorganic semiconductor thin film devices, trace their origins to the mid-fifties. Light emitting diodes based on forward biased inorganic semiconductor p-n junctions are limited to small area applications as a result of color, efficiency and cost limitations. The other inorganic devices, fluorescent ion-doped inorganic semiconductor thin film devices, require high operating voltages to accelerate electrons or holes to sufficient energies in order to excite or ionize the fluorescent ion centers. Such high operating voltages result in thin-film instability and failure of such devices.
Electroluminescent organic materials include both molecular and polymer forms These materials include light emitting polymeric polypyridines such a poly(p-pyridines), co-polymers such as poly(phenylenevinylene pyridylvinylene) and molecular light emitters such as 8-hyrooxyquinoline. Insulating materials include a wide variety of ceramics such as aluminum oxide and inorganic and organic materials such as polysilane, polymethylmethacyline, nylon, cimeraldine base (an insulating polyaniline polymer) and organic molecules such as 2-(4-biphenyl)-5-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-1,3,4 oxdiazole. Electrodes can be fashioned from any suitable conductor including, but not limited to, a wide variety of conducting materials including 1) indium tin oxide, 2) metals such as gold, aluminum, calcium, silver, copper, and indium, 3) alloys such as magnesium-silver, 4) conducting fibers such as carbon fibers, and 5) conducting organic polymers such as conducting doped polyaniline and conducting doped polymole.
In typical applications where the device is used for lighting and display, at least one of the electrodes is fashioned from a transparent material such as indium tin oxide or a partially transparent material such as conducting doped polyaniline. The insulator between the light emitting material and the transparent or partially transparent electrode is also transparent or partially transparent and fabricated from an optically clear insulating polymer such as polymethylmethacrylate or a partially transparent insulating polymer such as the insulating emeraldine base form of polyaniline. Partially transparent electrodes and insulators can be used to advantage to filter or clip unwanted portions (frequencies) of light emitted from the organic light emitter.
For ease of manufacture and insulation purposes, it is preferable to form the device on a substrate which also serves to protect and typically insulate the device during use. Glass and clear insulating plastic are preferable when the device is used for lighting and display purposes. The AC driven symmetrical device is especially suitable for light emissions from both sides of the device in which case both insulators and electrodes are at least partially transparent as well as any insulating substrates that may be used with one or both electrodes.
In the last decade, there has been an emerging interest in direct current (DC) molecular and polymer electroluminescence devices. A variety of organic molecules and conjugated polymers, copolymers and mixtures have been found to exhibit electroluminescent properties. Light-emitting diodes incorporating these materials have demonstrated all of the necessary colors (red, green, and blue) needed for display applications. However, a need continues to exist to lower the device operating voltages and to increase their light-emitting (output) efficiency. Further improvements in charge injection and the balancing of charge transport are needed. Because of the asymmetry of the device configuration, efficient charge injection occurs only in one direction (forward DC bias). Under reverse bias, most of the devices either degrade quickly or show very poor performance. Although efforts have been made to improve the charge injection efficiency by the use of low work function electrodes such as calcium or magnesium and the use of an electron transporting material to improve negative charge (electron) injection, such devices continue to be operational in only one direction. Similarly, efforts have been made to improve charge injection efficiency by the use of high work function electrodes such as indium tin oxide (ITO) or gold and the use of hole transporting materials to improve positive charge (hole) injection. Such devices also continue to be operational in only one direction.

Electroluminescent multilayer optical information storage medium with integrated readout and composition of matter for use therein


In an image display system that displays the condition of a person under measurement in a visible form, the person carries a PDA (10). The PDA (10) includes a bio-sensor (11) to detect bio-information on the person and an environmental information sensor (12) to acquire information on the environment around the person. The PDA (10) sends the acquired information to an image display device (20) which is connected to the PDA (10) via a network (100). The image display device (20) includes a CPU (29) that judges the condition of the person on the basis of bio-information and environmental information, generates an image representing the condition of the person and displays the image on a display unit (23).

Generally, a person will have an increased heart rate when he or she is nervous, while having a stable heart rate when he or she is calm. The heart rate is a rhythm of heart contraction, and it is a parameter indicating the condition of a person. Data indicating the conditions of a person include respiration, brain wave, etc. in addition to the heart rate. These data are called "bio data" and utilized as parameters quantitatively indicating the conditions of a person in the fields of medicine and service. Also, environmental information quantitatively indicates ambient conditions such as temperature change, wind strength, etc. around a person. Similarly to the bio-information, the environmental information is utilized to know the conditions surrounding the person.
A typical example of the apparatuses utilizing bio-information and environmental information is proposed in the Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2002-282227 (Patent Document No. 1). The apparatus is to acquire an electrocardiogram of a person in a bathtub and generate an image on the basis of the acquired electrocardiogram. This apparatus acquires an electrocardiogram as bio-information and the bathtub temperature as environmental information. An image varying as the information acquisition progresses is presented to the person under measurement of bio-information, and an electrocardiogram is acquired while the person is enjoying the image being displayed.
The apparatus disclosed in the above Patent Document No. 1 is intended to accurately acquire an electrocardiogram but is limited in kind of bio-information to be acquired and purpose of use. Also, this apparatus is to be used by a person under measurement to know his or her own electrocardiogram, but it cannot be used to inform the condition of the person to other people.
As mentioned above, the bio-information and environmental information are characteristic of the affections, bodily condition, surroundings, etc. of the user. Based on bio-information and environmental information, the condition of a person under measurement can be informed to other people. However, since bio-information is provided as a numerical value, experiences and time are required to understand what the numerical value means. Also, vivid display of acquired information on a person is also a pain to the person under measurement. A camcorder may also be installed on part of the person under measurement or in a corner of an examination room to image the person. In this case, the condition of the person can be known at a glance but such an observation of the person will lead to invasion of his privacy.

Image display system, image display device, image display method