Methods are disclosed utilizing DCL, a metabolic derivative of loratadine, for the treatment of allergic rhinitis, and other disorders, while avoiding the concomitant liability of adverse side-effects associated with other non-sedating antihistamines.

The methods of the present invention comprise administering a therapeutically effective amount of a metabolic derivative of loratadine. Chemically, this derivative is 8-chloro-6,11-dihydro-11-(4-piperidylidene)-5H-benzo[5,6]cyclohepta[1,2-b]pyridine and known as descarboethoxyloratadine (DCL). This compound is specifically described in Quercia, et al. Hosp. Formul., 28: 137–53 (1993) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,659,716.
Loratadine is an antagonist of the H-1 histamine receptor protein. The histamine receptors H-1 and H-2 are two well-identified forms. The H-1 receptors are those that mediate the response antagonized by conventional antihistamines. H-1 receptors are present, for example, in the ileum, the skin, and the bronchial smooth muscle of man and other mammals.
Loratadine binds preferentially to peripheral rather than to central H-1 receptors. Quercia et al., Hosp. Formul. 28: 137–53 (1993). Loratadine has been shown to be a more potent inhibitor of serotonin-induced bronchospasm in guinea pigs than terfenadine. Id. at 137–38. Its anti-allergenic activity in animal models was shown to be comparable to that of terfenadine and astemizole. Id. at 138. However, using standard animal model testing, on a milligram by milligram basis, loratadine was shown to be four times more potent than terfenadine in the inhibition of allergic bronchospasm. Id. Moreover, loratadine's antihistaminic activity was demonstrated in humans by evaluation of the drug's ability to suppress wheal formation. Id. Clinical trials of efficacy indicated that loratadine is an effective H-1 antagonist. See Clissold et al., Drugs 37: 42–57 (1989).
Through H-2 receptor-mediated responses, histamine stimulates gastric acid secretion in mammals and the chronotropic effect in isolated mammalian atria. Loratadine has no effect on histamine-induced gastric acid secretion, nor does it alter the chronotropic effect of histamine on atria. Thus, loratadine has no apparent effect on the H-2 histamine receptor.
Loratadine is well absorbed but is extensively metabolized. Hilbert, et al., J. Clin. Pharmacol. 27: 694–98 (1987). The main metabolite, DCL, which has been identified, is reported to be pharmacologically active. Clissold, Drugs 37: 42–57 (1989). It is also reported as having antihistaminic activity in U.S. Pat. No. 4,659,716. This patent recommends an oral dosage range of 5 to 100 mg/day and preferably 10 to 20 mg/day.
Loratadine's efficacy in treating seasonal allergic rhinitis is comparable to that of terfenadine. Quercia et al., Hosp. Formul. 28: 137, 141 (1993). Loratadine also has a more rapid onset of action than astemizole. Id.
Clissold et al., Drugs 37: 42, 50–54 (1989) describes studies showing loratadine as effective for use in seasonal and perennial rhinitis, colds (with pseudoephedrine), and chronic urticaria. It has also been suggested that loratadine would be useful for the treatment of allergic asthma. Temple et al. Prostaglandins 35: 549–554 (1988).
Loratadine may also be useful for the treatment of motion sickness and vertigo. Some antihistamines have been found to be effective for the prophylaxis and treatment of motion sickness. See Wood, Drugs, 17: 471–79 (1979). Some antihistamines have also proven useful for treating vestibular disturbances, such as Meniere's disease, and in other types of vertigo. See Cohen et al., Archives of Neurology, 27: 129–35 (1972).
In addition, loratadine may be useful in the treatment of diabetic retinopathy and other small vessel disorders associated with diabetes mellitus. In tests on rats with streptozocin-induced diabetes, treatment by antihistamines prevented the activation of retinal histamine receptors which have been implicated in the development of diabetic retinopathy. The use of antihistamines to treat retinopathy and small vessel disorders associated with diabetes mellitus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,591.
It has also been suggested that loratadine, in combination with non-steroidal antiinflammatory agents or other non-narcotic analgesics, would be useful for the treatment of cough, cold, cold-like and/or flu symptoms and the discomfort, pain, headache, fever, and general malaise associated therewith. Such compositions used in the methods of treating the above-described symptoms may optionally include one or more other active components including a decongestant (such as pseudoephedrine), a cough suppressant/antitussive (such as dextromethorphan) or an expectorant (such as guaifenesin).
Many antihistamines cause adverse side-effects. These adverse side-effects include, but are not limited to, sedation, gastrointestinal distress, dry mouth, constipation or diarrhea. Loratadine has been found to cause relatively less sedation as compared with other antihistamines. Moreover, the incidence of fatigue, headache, and nausea was similar to those observed for terfenadine. See Quercia et al., Hosp. Formul. 28: 137, 142 (1993).
Furthermore, compounds within the class of non-sedating antihistamines, including loratadine, astemizole, and terfenadine, have been known to cause other severe adverse electrophysiologic side-effects. These adverse side-effects are associated with a prolonged QT interval and include but are not limited to ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrhythmias, such as ventricular tachyarrhythmias or torsades de pointes. Knowles, Canadian Journal Hosp. Pharm., 45: 33, 37 (1992); Craft, British Medical Journal, 292: 660 (1986); Simons et al., Lancet, 2: 624 (1988); and Unknown, Side Effects of Drugs Annual, 12: 142 and 14: 135.
Quercia et al., Hosp. Formul. 28: 137, 142 (1993) noted that serious cardiovascular adverse side-effects, including torsades de pointes and other ventricular arrhythmias, were reported in "healthy" patients who received terfenadine concurrently with either ketoconazole or erythromycin. Quercia et al., also states that arrhythmias have also been reported with the concomitant administration of astemizole and erythromycin or erythromycin plus ketoconazole. Thus, he cautions against using loratadine concurrently with ketoconazole, itraconazole, and macrolides, such as erythromycin.
Additionally, it is also known that ketoconazole and/or erythromycin interfere with cytochrome P450, and thereby inhibit the metabolism of non-sedative antihistamines such as terfenadine and astemizole. Because of the interference with the metabolism of loratadine, there exists a greater potential for adverse interaction between loratadine or other non-sedating antihistamines and drugs known to inhibit cytochrome P450, such as but not limited to ketoconazole, itraconazole, and erythromycin.
In Brandes et al., Cancer Res. (52) 3796–3800 (1992), Brandes showed that the propensity of drugs to promote tumor growth in vivo correlated with potency to inhibit concanavalin A stimulation of lymphocyte mitogenesis. In Brandes et al., J. Nat'l Cancer Inst., 86: (10) 771–775 (1994), Brandes assessed loratadine in an in vitro assay to predict enhancement of in vivo tumor growth. He found that loratadine and astemizole were associated with growth of both melanoma and fibrosarcoma tumors. The dose for loratadine in this study was 10 mg/day.
None of the above references teach or enable the methods of the present invention comprising administering DCL to a human while avoiding adverse side-effects associated with the administration of other non-sedating antihistamines; nor do the references alone or in combination suggest these methods. Thus, it would be particularly desirable to find methods of treatment with the advantages of known non-sedating antihistamines which would not have the aforementioned disadvantages.

Methods for the treatment of allergic rhinitis


A system, article, and method to provide lens shading color correction using block matching.

Electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and wearable computers are being miniaturized for the user's convenience, which in turn involves the miniaturization of electronic components in such devices. This includes digital cameras capable of producing digital images. While reducing form factors may increase user convenience, it often does so by sacrificing performance or quality. With respect to digital cameras, slimmer form factors place lenses and filters so close to the camera's sensors that resulting digital images often have color artifacts and discolorations. Thus, better quality digital images are desired.

Method and system of lens shading color correction using block matching


A print medium for use with a printer, the print medium comprising:a laminar substrate defining first and second opposite faces; first coded data in a first data format disposed in a first data region on the laminar substrate, the first coded data encoding first information; and second coded data in a second data format disposed in a second data region on the laminar substrate, the second coded data encoding second information; wherein the first information is indicative of the second information.

As described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 6,792,165, filed on Nov. 25, 2000 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/778,056, filed on Feb. 17, 2004, a Netpage pen captures, identifies and decodes tags of coded data printed onto a surface such as a page. In a preferred Netpage implementation, each tag encodes a position and an identity of the document. By decoding at least one of the tags and transmitting the position (or a refined version of the position, representing a higher resolution position of the pen) and identity referred to by the decoded tag, a remote computer can determine an action to perform. Such actions can include, for example, causing information to be saved remotely for subsequent retrieval, downloading of a webpage for printing or display via a computer, bill payment or even the performance of handwriting recognition based on a series of locations of the Netpage pen relative to the surface. These and other applications are described in many of the Netpage-related applications cross-referenced by the present application.
When printing a Netpage, a printer in a mobile telecommunications device can print the Netpage tags simultaneously with visible user information. The association between the tags and information can already exist on a remote Netpage server, such as where the printer is printing a fully rendered page (including tags) provided by the Netpage server or another computer. Alternatively, the mobile telecommunications device can generate the tags (or source them remotely) and define an association between the tags and user information. The association is then recorded in the remote Netpage server.
The problem with these options is that they require the mobile telecommunications device to include Netpage tag printing capabilities. This requires an additional row of print nozzles in the printhead, and reduces the amounts of ink that can be stored for non-tag use. Whilst this is less of an issue with large, mains-powered printers, it can be an issue in small form-factor articles such as mobile telecommunications devices.
Alternatively, the mobile telecommunications device can be configured to print on print media that is pre-printed with Netpage tags. That way the printer need only print the user information and record an association between the visible information and the pre-printed tags.
One way of doing this is to use a Netpage sensing device that scans the page as it is printed to determine the content of at least one of the tags and positions of various elements of the user information relative to the tags. This requires that the printer include a Netpage sensing device, which may be somewhat bulky for use in mobile applications, and requires additional processing capacity. Even if a Netpage sensing device is provided to enable the mobile telecommunications device to act as a Netpage pen in a more general sense, it is undesirable for a user to have to separately scan a portion of the pre-printed media to determine parameters of the coded data before inserting the media for printing.
It would be desirable to overcome the problem of associating user information to be printed onto media at least partially pre-printed with Netpage tags.

Print medium with coded data in two formats, information in one format being indicative of information in the other format


A localized multimodal haptic system includes one or more electromechanical polymer (EMP) transducers, each including an EMP layer, such as an electrostrictive polymer active layer. In some applications the EMP transducer may perform an actuator function or a sensor function, or both. The EMP polymer layer has a first surface and a second surface on which one or more electrodes are provided. The EMP layer of the EMP actuator may be 5 microns thick or less. The EMP transducers may provide local haptic response to a local a stimulus. In one application, a touch sensor may be associated with each EMP transducer, such that the haptic event at the touch sensor may be responded to by activating only the associated EMP transducer. Furthermore, the EMP transducer may act as its own touch sensor. A variety of haptic responses may be made available. The EMP transducers may be used in various other applications, such as providing complex surface morphology, keyboard, braille display, and audio speakers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to transducer; in particular, the present invention relates to transducers that based on electromechanical polymer (EMP) layers, and designed for such applications as controllable structures, deformable surface, thin profile keyboard, high-definition haptic feedback responses, audio speakers, or pressure sensors.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Transducers are devices that transform one form of energy to another form of energy. For example, a piezoelectric transducer transforms mechanical pressure into an electrical voltage. Thus, a user may use the piezoelectric transducer as a sensor of the mechanical pressure by measuring the output electrical voltage. Alternatively, some smart materials (e.g., piezoceramics and dielectric elastomers (DEAP)) deform proportionally in response to an electric field. An actuator may therefore be formed out of a transducer based on such a smart material. Actuation devices based on these smart materials do not require conventional gears, motors, and cables to enable precise articulation and control. These materials also have the advantage of being able to exactly replicate both the frequency and the magnitude of the input waveform in the output response, with switching time in the millisecond range.
For a smart material that has an elastic modulus Y, thickness t, width w, and electromechanical response (strain in plane direction) S1, the output vibration energy UV is given by the equation:UV=½YtwS12  (1)
DEAP elastomers are generally soft, having elastic moduli of about 1 MPa. Thus, a freestanding, high-quality DEAP film that is 20 micrometers (μm) thick or less is difficult to make. Also, a DEAP film provides a reasonable electromechanical response only when an electric field of 50 MV/m (V/μm) or greater is applied. Thus, a DEAP type actuator typically requires a driving voltage of 1,000 volts or more. Similarly, a DEAP type sensor typically requires a charging voltage of 1,000 volts or more. In a handheld consumer electronic device, whether as a sensor or as an actuator, such a high voltage poses safety and cost concerns. Furthermore, a DEAP elastomer has a low elastic modulus. As a result, to achieve the strong electrical signal output needed for a handheld device application requires too thick a film. The article, "Combined Driving Sensing Circuitry for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators in Mobile Applications," by M. Matsek et al., published in Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2011, Proc. Of SPIE vol. 7975, 797612, discloses providing sensor functions in dielectric elastomer stack actuators (DESA). U.S. Pat. No. 8,222,799 to Polyakov, entitled "Surface Deformation Electroactive Polymer Transducers," also discloses sensor functions in dielectric elastomers.
Unlike a DEAP elastomer, a piezoceramic material can provide the required force output under low electric voltage. Piezoelectric materials are crystalline materials that become electrically charged under mechanical stress. Converse to the piezoelectric effect is dimensional change as a result of imposition of an electric field. In certain piezoelectric materials, such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), the electric field-induced dimensional change can be up to 0.1%. Such piezoelectric effect occurs only in certain crystalline materials having a special type of crystal symmetry. For example, of the thirty-two classes of crystals, twenty-one classes are non-centrosymmetric (i.e., not having a center of symmetry), and of these twenty-one classes, twenty classes exhibit direct piezoelectricity. Examples of piezoelectric materials include quartz, certain ceramic materials, biological matter such as bone, DNA and various proteins, polymers such as polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polyvinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene [P(VDF-TrFE)]. For further information, see, for example, the article "Piezoelectric Transducer Materials", by H. JAFFE and D. A. BERLINCOURT, published on pages 1372-1386 of PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 53, No. 10, October, 1965.
The strain of a piezoelectric device is linearly proportional to the applied electric field E:S1˜E  (2)
As illustrated in equation (2), when used in an actuator device, a piezoelectric material generates a negative strain (i.e., shortens) under a negative polarity electric field, and a positive strain (i.e., elongates) under a positive electric field. However, piezoceramic materials are generally too brittle to withstand a shock load, such as that encountered when the device is dropped.
Piezoceramics and dielectric elastomers change capacitance in response to a mechanical deformation, and thus may be used as pressure sensors. However, as mentioned above, DEAP elastomers are generally soft, having elastic moduli of about 1 MPa. Thus, a freestanding, high-quality DEAP film that is 20 micrometers (μm) thick or less is difficult to make.
Unlike the piezoelectric materials that require a special type of crystal symmetry, some materials exhibit electrostrictive behavior, such as found in both amorphous (non-crystalline) and crystalline materials. "Electrostrictive" or "electrostrictor" refers to a strain behavior of a material under an electric field that is quadratically proportional to the electric field, as defined in equation (3)S1˜E2  (3)
Therefore, in contrast to a piezoelectric material, an electrostrictive actuator always generates positive strain, even under a negative polarity electric field (i.e., the electrostrictive actuator only elongates in the direction perpendicular to the imposed field), with an amplitude that is determined by the magnitude of the electric field and regardless of the polarity of the electric field. A description of some electrostrictive materials and their behavior may be found, for example, in the articles (a) "Giant Electrostriction and relaxor ferroelectric behavior in electron-irradiated poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) copolymer", by Q. M. Zhang, et al, published in Science 280:2101 (1998); (b) "High electromechanical responses in terpolymer of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene-chlorofluoroethylene)", by F. Xia et al, published in Advanced Materials, 14:1574 (2002). These materials are based on electromechanical polymers. Some further examples of EMPs are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,423,412, 6,605,246, and 6,787,238. Other examples include the EMPs whose compositions disclosed in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/384,196, filed on Jul. 15, 2009, and the EMPs which are blends of the P(VDF-TrFE) copolymer with the EMPs disclosed in the aforementioned U.S. patents.
To achieve a substantially linear response and mechanical strains of, say, up to four (4) percent, in a longitudinal or transverse direction, the electrorestrictive EMPs discussed above requires an electric field intensity between 50 to 100 MV/m. In the prior art, to provide adequate mechanical strength and flexibility, the polymer films are at least 20 μm thick. As a result, an actuator based on such an electrostrictive EMP requires an input voltage of about 2000 volts. Such a voltage is typically not available in a mobile device.
Polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) and poly[(vinylidenefluoride-co-trifluoroethylene (P(VDF-TrFE)) are well-known ferroelectric sensor materials. However, these materials suffer from low strain, and thus perform poorly for many applications, such as keys on a keyboard. An EMP sensor based on a high modulus, high strain material is therefore desired.
One area that EMPs find application is haptics. In this context, the term "haptics" refers to tactile user input actions. As software applications in portable electronics devices (e.g., cellular telephones, e-readers and tablets) have become more numerous and more diverse, greater data manipulation capabilities are required. In these devices, to interact with the software applications, users prefer the touch screen than secondary tethered input devices (e.g., mechanical keyboards). A touch screen is also more intuitive, as compared to other input devices, which may require user training and some requisite motor agility. However, typing on a virtual keyboard displayed on the limited space of a touch screen is necessarily slow and error-prone, as user does not receive the familiar "confirmation" of action of a mechanical keyboard.
The deficiency of the virtual keyboard on a touch screen can be overcome using haptics. A haptics-enabled touch screen may generate an immediate haptic feedback vibration when the touch screen is activated by user input. The feedback vibration makes the virtual element displayed on the touch screen more physical and more realistic. In a portable device (e.g., a mobile telephone), a haptic feedback action can reduce both user input errors and stress, allow a higher input speed, and enable new forms of bi-directionally interactions, Haptics is particularly effective for touch screens that are used in noisy or visually distracting environments (e.g., a battlefield or a gaming environment). For soldiers operating electronics or machines that uses multimodal or multisensory interactions (e.g., together with visual and auditory sensations), haptics can reduce input error rates and improve response speed. Similar advantages can be achieved by gamers using handheld video game devices.
A handheld device with basic haptics typically generates single-frequency, single-amplitude vibrations. In such a device, an actuator is typically mounted at a corner of the device casing, so as to maximize the vibration felt by the user holding the device. Such an arrangement, however, generates a vibration throughout the entire device, rather than locally (i.e., at the point where the user's finger contacts the device).
Recently proposed high-definition (HD) haptics may provide significantly more tactile information to a user, such as texture, speed, weight, hardness, and damping. HD haptics uses frequencies that may be varied between 50 Hz to 400 Hz to convey complex information, and to provide a richer, more useful and more accurate haptic response. Over this frequency range, a user can distinguish feedback forces of different frequencies and amplitudes. Such a capability is applicable to typing on a HD haptics-enabled smart telephone that has a touch screen. In such a device, the feedback vibration is expected to be controlled by software. For a user to experience a strong feedback sensation, HD haptics in this frequency range, switching times (i.e., rise and fall time) between frequencies of 40 milliseconds (ms) or less are required. The ability to provide such HD feedback vibrations in the 50 Hz to 400 Hz band, however, is not currently available. In the prior art, a typical device having basic haptics has an output magnitude that varies with the frequency of the driving signal. Specifically, the typical device provides a greater output magnitude at a higher frequency from the same input driving amplitude. For example, if a haptic driving signal includes two equal-magnitude sine waves at two distinct frequencies, the output vibration would be a superposition of two sine waves of different magnitudes, with the magnitudes being directly proportional to the respective frequencies. Such a haptic response is not satisfactory. Therefore, a compact, low-cost, low-driving voltage, and robust HD haptics actuation device is needed.
Haptic responses need not be limited to 50 Hz to 400 Hz vibrations. At lower frequency, a mechanical pressure response may be appropriate. Vibrations in the acoustic range can be made audible. A haptic response that can be delivered in more than one mode of sensation (e.g., mechanical pressure, vibration, or audible sound) is termed "multimodal." DEAP films or piezoelectric materials cannot provide the elastic moduli, strain, and robustness appropriate for multimodal haptic responses over the relevant frequency range.

EMP actuators for deformable surface and keyboard application


A media storage service may store a plurality of copies of a same media recording in cloud DVR, one copy specific to one of a plurality of clients. The client may interact directly with the media storage service based on path-based indexing techniques for playback of the media recording. The client may send a request, including a path of a manifest file associated with the copy specific to the client, to the media storage service. The manifest file may include information indicating respective paths of one or more segments of the copy. The media storage service may identify and return the manifest file to the client. The media storage service may further receive requests from the client to access the segments of the copy. The requests may include the respective paths, based on which the media storage service may retrieve the segments for the client to play.

Cloud Digital Video Recorder (DVR) allows media contents (e.g., TV programs, movies, audio or video streaming, etc.) to be recorded and saved for clients to play at the clients' convenience. Compared to traditional DVRs, cloud DVR saves the media recordings in network-based storage resources (e.g., a service provider's cloud) rather than local storage devices, thus providing more cost-efficient storage and better resilience. Certain policies require the service provider to maintain separate copies of the media recording specific to the clients (even though the contents of the copies are identical), so that one copy can be played only for one specific client like the client's private copy. Traditionally, playback of a media recording by the client may require a recording manager to function as a middle layer to implement retrieval of the copy specific to a client from the plurality of copies from the storage resources. For instance, the client may utilize a media player to submit a HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) based message to the recording manager. The player may include an index number in the header of the HTTP message, which indicates the specific copy to be retrieved. The recording manager may resolve a location of the specific copy on the storage resources based on the index number, retrieve the private copy and return it to the client to play back by the player. There may be a few issues in such playback approaches. One, the recording manager needs to track information of copies of media recordings in order to be able to resolve the location based on a given index number. When the number of clients and/or recordings increase, the information needed to be tracked by the recording manager may become large and complicated. Two, since the playback has to use the recording manager as the middle layer, this adds latency and can cause negative user experience. Three, most media players request playbacks by visiting websites, e.g., Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), via web browsers. It is not common for the players to alter the URLs to add the indexing information, e.g., in the header in a HTTP message. Thus, a client may have only limited choices of players to use to perform the above described playback. Thus, it is desirable to have a flexible solution to access cloud DVR recordings stored in a media storage service.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word "may" is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). The words "include," "including," and "includes" indicate open-ended relationships and therefore mean including, but not limited to. Similarly, the words "have," "having," and "has" also indicate open-ended relationships, and thus mean having, but not limited to. The terms "first," "second," "third," and so forth as used herein are used as labels for nouns that they precede, and do not imply any type of ordering (e.g., spatial, temporal, logical, etc.) unless such an ordering is otherwise explicitly indicated.
"Based On." As used herein, this term is used to describe one or more factors that affect a determination. This term does not foreclose additional factors that may affect a determination. That is, a determination may be solely based on those factors or based, at least in part, on those factors. Consider the phrase "determine A based on B." While B may be a factor that affects the determination of A, such a phrase does not foreclose the determination of A from also being based on C. In other instances, A may be determined based solely on B.
The scope of the present disclosure includes any feature or combination of features disclosed herein (either explicitly or implicitly), or any generalization thereof, whether or not it mitigates any or all of the problems addressed herein. Accordingly, new claims may be formulated during prosecution of this application (or an application claiming priority thereto) to any such combination of features. In particular, with reference to the appended claims, features from dependent claims may be combined with those of the independent claims and features from respective independent claims may be combined in any appropriate manner and not merely in the specific combinations enumerated in the appended claims.

Using path-based indexing to access media recordings stored in a media storage service


A method, system, and computer program product for the prioritization of code execution. The method includes accessing a thread in a context containing a set of code instances stored in memory; identifying sections of the set of code instances that correspond to deferrable code tasks; executing the thread in the context; determining that the thread is idle; and executing at least one of the deferrable code tasks. The deferrable code task is executed within the context and in response to determining that the thread is idle.

The present disclosure relates to asynchronous code execution, and more specifically, to post-return asynchronous code execution.
Work may be required to produce an intended result of a function within a computer application. Often, additional work is required after the intended result is achieved, but the additional work may not be critical to the intended result. The additional work may include logging or housekeeping tasks. Typically, these tasks are executed by the processor before returning the result from the function, which may be sub-optimal for performance.

International Business Machines Corporation


The present invention provides a force sensor correcting method which is simple and capable of performing correction, with the force sensor remaining mounted at the end of an arm without an exchange of an end effector. In the present invention, a force sensor 1 of one robot 101 has already been corrected, and a force sensor 2 of the other robot 102 is an object to be corrected. First, hands 3a, 3b of a pair of robots 101, 102 are made to abut on each other (abutting step). A detected signal of the corrected force sensor 1 of the one robot 101, generated by execution of the abutting step, is converted into a measured value indicating a force or a moment (measurement step). Based on the measured value obtained in the measurement step, a value indicating a force or a moment acting on the hand 3b of the other robot 102 due to a reaction generated by the abutting step is obtained (calculation step). The conversion data is updated such that a detected signal, outputted by the force sensor 2 as the object to be corrected of the other robot 102 in the abutting step, is converted into an identical value to the value indicating the force or the moment obtained in the calculation step (correction step).

There is known an industrial robot system which includes a robot provided with an end effector such as a hand at the end of an arm via a force sensor. In this kind of robot system, in the case of the robot performing assembly of parts, a force or a moment component generated at a wrist portion at the time of an assembly operation is detected by the force sensor, to control a posture of the robot including the hand.
At the manufacturing stage of a force sensor, variations in output with respect to an external force occur, and hence the output needs to be corrected. Therefore, when the sensor is a six-axis force sensor, respective axes, such as forces Fx, Fy, Fz and moments Mx, My, Mz, are provided with a force by means of weights or the like, to perform correction based on the outputs. This corrected force sensor is mounted on the arm and used.
Meanwhile, when the robot mounted with the force sensor is in use, an excessive load may be erroneously applied, to cause occurrence of plastic deformation or the like, thereby leading to lower measurement accuracy. In that case, what has been done is to temporarily remove the force sensor from the arm and perform a re-correction operation, which requires time and trouble. As opposed to this, there has been proposed one that corrects a force sensor in a mounted state. For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H11-237296, In PTL 1, first, reference data is previously acquired when the force sensor is normally functioning. Then, when the force sensor needs to be corrected, the correction is performed such that a posture of a robot is changed in a predetermined pattern, thereby to change a posture of the force sensor and obtain a changed amount of an output signal of the force sensor, which is compared with reference data and then updated. It is described that by the above manner, the correction can be performed with the force sensor remaining mounted in the robot.
However, in the foregoing conventional correcting method, the reference data needs to be acquired beforehand. Further, there has been a problem in that, when an end effector provided at the end of the arm is not the end effector at the time of acquiring the reference data, the end effector has to be exchanged, which requires time and trouble.
In recent years, a robot system provided with a pair of robots set so as to perform collaboration work has been proposed and a method for correcting a force sensor in a simpler manner in the case of a large number of robots has been desired.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a force sensor correcting method which is simple and capable of performing correction, with the force sensor remaining mounted at the end of an arm without an exchange of an end effector.


A method for making a core plate (42) having multiple friction material segments (54) on the surface where the method includes the use of a die (24). Friction material (34) is first trimmed to conform to die (24) and is then fed into die (24). Die (24) then cuts friction material (34) to form a leading edge (57) where fibers in friction material (34) at leading edge (57) are positioned in a direction toward core plate (42). Friction material (34) is then fed through die (24) which cuts a trailing edge (55) in friction material (34) where fibers in friction material (34) at trailing edge (55) are positioned in a direction toward core plate (42). Cutting of trailing edge (55) is a common cut along trailing edge (55) of a leading segment (54) and leading edge (57) of an immediately following segment (54) such that formation of segments (54) is substantially scrapless with respect to friction material (34). Segment (54) is then positioned on an adhesive (43) on core plate (54) where the fibers at leading and trailing edges (57) and (55), respectively, are positioned in adhesive (43). Core plate (42) is then rotated and the above steps are repeated until a predetermined number of segments (54) are positioned on core plate (42).

The present invention relates generally to a method for making a core plate having a friction material facing. More specifically, the invention is directed to a method for making a core plate having multiple friction material segments.
Apparatus and methods for producing core plates having segmented friction material are known in the art. It has been found that these prior art methods have various disadvantageous. First, the prior art methods are slow. Second, the prior art methods result in a great deal of waste. Finally, the friction material segments produced by the prior art methods have edges that are deficient.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method that is relatively fast, reduces waste and results in friction material segments that have superior edges. The present invention satisfies this need.

Method for making a core plate having multiple friction material segments


A top cover installation station with a feeder assembly and a robotic assembly for installing a top cover with top cover fasteners on a basedeck of a disc drive. The feeder assembly supports top cover wireframe caddies, each caddy containing top covers. A dial assembly transports each caddy into alignment with an elevator assembly that aligns the top cover with an escapement assembly that removes the top cover from the caddy. The robotic assembly has a positioning assembly supporting a pair of Z-axis end effector assemblies, the positioning assembly transporting the pair of effector assemblies to predetermined positions. A first end effector assembly picks and places the top cover adjacent the basedeck and a second end effector assembly grips and secures the top cover onto the basedeck via the top cover fasteners.

The present invention relates generally to the field of disc drive data storage devices, and more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to an automated assembly of a disc drive head-disc assembly which includes an automated top cover installation station for installing top covers on disc drives.
Modern hard disc drives are commonly used in a multitude of computer environments ranging from super computers through notebook computers to store large amounts of data in a form that can be made readily available to a user. Typically, a disc drive comprises one or more magnetic discs that are rotated by a spindle motor at a constant high speed. The surface of each disc serves as a data recording surface and is divided into a series of generally concentric recording tracks radially spaced across a band between an inner diameter and an outer diameter. The data tracks extend around the disc and data is stored within the tracks on the disc surface in the form of magnetic flux transitions. The flux transitions are induced by an array of transducers otherwise commonly called read/write heads. Typically, each data track is divided into a number of data sectors that store fixed sized data blocks.
Each read/write head includes an interactive element such as a magnetic transducer which senses the magnetic transitions on a selected data track to read the data stored on the track. Alternatively, the read/write head transmits an electrical signal that induces magnetic transitions on the selected data track to write data to the track. As is known in the art, the read/write heads are supported by rotary actuator arms and are positioned by the actuator arms over a selected data track to either read or write data. The read/write head includes a slider assembly having an air-bearing surface that causes the read/write head to fly relative to the disc surface. The air bearing is developed by load forces applied to the read/write head by a load arm interacting with air currents produced by disc rotation.
Typically, several open-centered discs and spacer rings are alternately stacked on the hub of a spindle motor, followed by the attachment of a clampring to form a disc pack. The hub, defining the core of the stack, serves to align the discs and spacer rings around a common centerline. Movement of the discs and spacer rings is typically constrained by a compressive load maintained by the clampring. The complementary actuator arms of an actuator assembly, commonly called an E block, support the read/write heads to access the surfaces of the stacked discs of the disc pack. The read/write heads communicate electronically with a printed circuit board assembly (PCB) through read/write wires and a flex circuit attached to the E-block. When the E-block is merged with the disc pack into a base deck and a cover is attached to the base deck, a head-disc assembly (HDA) is formed. For a general discussion of E-block assembly techniques, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,636 issued to Stefansky et al. and assigned to the assignee of the present invention.
The head-disc assembly (HDA) of a disc drive is typically assembled in a clean room environment. A clean room environment (free of contaminants of 0.3 micron and larger) is necessary to ensure that the head-disc interface remains unencumbered and damage free. The slightest damage to the surface of a disc or read/write head can result in a catastrophic failure of the disc drive. The primary causes of catastrophic failure, particularly read/write head crashes (a nonrecoverable, catastrophic failure of the disc drive), are generally characterized as contamination, exposure to mechanically induced shock and non-shock induced damage. The source of non-shock induced damage is typically traced to the assembly process, and generally stems from handling damage sustained by the disc drive during the assembly process.
Several factors that bear particularly on the problem of assembly process induced damage are the physical size of the disc drive, the spacing of the components, the recording densities sought to be achieved and the level of precision to be maintained during the assembly process. The high levels of precision required by the assembly process are necessary to attain the operational tolerances required by the disc drive. The rigorous operational tolerances are in response to market demands that have driven the need to decrease the physical size of disc drives while simultaneously increasing disc drive storage capacity and performance characteristics.
Demands on disc drive mechanical components and assembly procedures have become increasingly more critical in order to meet the strenuous requirements of increased capability and size reduction in the face of these new market demands. Part-to-part variations in critical functional attributes in the magnitude of micro-inches can result in disc drive failures. Additionally, as disc drive designs continue to require size reduction, smaller read/write heads, thinner substrates, longer and thinner actuator arms, and thinner gimbal assemblies must continue to be incorporated into the drives. This trend significantly exacerbates the need to improve assembly processes to protect the read/write heads and discs from damage resulting from incidental contact between mating components. The aforementioned factors resultantly increase the difficulty of assembling disc drives, and as the assembly process becomes more difficult, the need to invent new tools, methods and control systems to deal with the emerging complexities pose unique problems in need of solutions.
Coupled with the size and performance demands is the further market driven requirement for ever increasing fault-free performance. The progression of continually thinner disc thickness and tighter disc spacing, together with increasing track density and increasing numbers of discs in the disc pack, has resulted in a demand for tools, methods and control systems of ever increasing sophistication. A result has been a decreasing number of assembly tasks involving direct operator intervention. Many of the tasks involved in modern methods are beyond the capability of operators to reliably and repeatedly perform, further driving the need for automated equipment and tooling.
In addition to the difficulties faced in assembling modern disc drives of high capacity and complex, physical product performance requirements have dictated the need to develop new process technologies to ensure compliance with operating specifications. The primary factors driving more stringent demands on the mechanical components and the assembly process are the continually increasing areal densities and data transfer rates of the disc drives.
The continuing trend in the disc drive industry is to develop products with ever increasing areal densities, decreasing, access times and increasing rotational speeds. The combination of these factors places greater demands on the ability of modern servo systems to control the position of read/write heads relative to data tracks. The ability to assemble HDAs nominally free from the effects caused by unequal load forces on the read/write heads, disc pack imbalance or one of the components of runout, velocity and acceleration (commonly referred to as RVA) poses a significant challenge as track densities increase. The components of RVA are disc runout (a measure of the motion of the disc along the longitudinal axis of the motor as it rotates); velocity (a measure of variations in linear speed of the disc pack across the surface of the disc); and acceleration (a measure of the relative flatness of the discs in the disc pack). By design, a disc drive typically has a discrete threshold level of resistance to withstand rotationally induced noise and instability, below which the servo system is not impaired. Also, a fixed range of load forces must be maintained on the read/write head to ensure proper fly height for data exchange. The operating performance of the disc drive servo system is affected by mechanical factors beyond the effects of mechanically induced read/write head oscillation from disc surface anomalies. Errors are traceable to disc pack imbalance and RVA noise sources. Even with improved approaches to the veneration of position error signals in the disc drive servo system, the ability of the system to deal with such issues is finite. The limits of the servo system capability to reliably control the position of the read/write head relative to the data track must not be consumed by the noise present in the HDA resulting from the assembly process. Consumption of the available margin by the assembly process leaves no margin in the system to accommodate changes in the disc drive attributes over the life of the product. An inability to accommodate changes in the disc drive attributes leads to field failures and an overall loss in product reliability, a detrimental impact to product market position.
Taken in combination the above discussed factorsxe2x80x94the tasks involved in assembling a modern disc drive exceeds the capability of manual assemblers; the susceptibility of the disc drive to damage during the assembly process; the level of precision assembly required by increasing areal densities; and the need to minimize adverse effects of mechanically induced noise on the disc drive servo systemxe2x80x94have culminated to render prior disc drive assembly method archaic. Thus, in general, there is a need for an improved approach to disc drive assembling technology to minimize the potential of damage during assembly, to produce product that is design compliant and reliable, and to minimize mechanically induced system noise. More particularly, there is a need for a top cover installation station for installation of a top cover on a disc drive.
The present invention provides a top cover installation station with a feeder assembly and a robotic assembly for installing a top cover onto a basedeck of a disc drive by top cover fasteners. The feeder assembly supports several top cover wireframe caddies containing covers, and an escapement assembly for removing the top covers from the caddie. The escapement assembly includes a linear positioning assembly that supports and transports a rotary actuator that has a locating pin for registering the top cover to the rotary actuator prior to removal of the top cover from the top cover wireframe caddy, and the rotary actuator rotates the top cover for directional consistency with the disc drive. An elevator assembly of the feeder assembly lowers the top cover wireframe caddy until the first available top cover is disposed on a rotary actuator assembly. With the top cover secured on the rotary actuator assembly, the linear positioning assembly positions the top cover in a cover pick-up position for pick-up by the robotic assembly.
The robotic assembly has an X-Y-axis positioning assembly supporting Z-axis end effector assemblies, the positioning assembly transports the effector assemblies to predetermined positions. A first end effector assembly picks and places the top cover adjacent the basedeck, the second end effector assembly grips and secures the top cover onto the basedeck via the top cover fasteners.

Top cover installation station for a disc drive


A device for discriminating an attribute of an image in a block area contained in a document image includes a device for performing a Fourier transformation based on image data in the block area and for determining a spatial frequency spectrum relating to the image in the block area; and a neural network for outputting a discrimination result as to whether or not the attribute of the image in the block area is a halftone dot image based on the spatial frequency spectrum output from the Fourier transform device.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a neural network and generation method, and further relates to an image area attribute discriminating method and device for use with a neural network. This image area attribute discrimination may be used in image processing in, for example, copying machines.
2. Description of the Related Art
Neural networks accomplish information processing by learning many examples. Since neural networks are capable of high speed processing of complex information, they have been used in various fields such as image recognition, voice recognition, voice synthesis, automatic translation, and the like. An example of such uses is image area attribute discrimination.
In digital copying machines, for example, various image processes are used to improve image quality relative to multi-level digital images obtained by reading a document image. Such image processing is used for various types of documents. For example, edge enhancing processing and binarization processing are performed to sharpen text characters of text images, processing stressing halftone gradient qualities are performed on photographic images, and smoothness processing is performed on dot images to prevent moire.
There are occasions when text images, photographic images, dot images, and the like are mixed in a document. In such instances, the document image must be divided into the respective image areas. When making area divisions, a document image is divided into hypothetical minute areas (block areas), and the image data contained in each block area is sequentially extracted, and the attributes of each block area are discriminated based on the extracted image data.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. HEI 4-114560 discloses a method wherein image data corresponding to block areas of 64.times.64 pixels are extracted from a document image, and histogram feature quantity and line density feature quantity are extracted based on the extracted image data, and said data are input to a neural network to discriminate attributes.
Inoue et al. propose a method in "Image Area Separation Methods Using Neural Networks" (Japan Simulation Society, 13th Simulation Technology Conference, June, 1994), wherein average luminance and maximum density difference are extracted as feature quantities from small areas of 8.times.8 pixels, and said data are input to a neural network to discriminate attributes.
The former method, however, cannot accurately discriminate whether or not an area is a halftone dot area via a neural network because when a histogram feature quantity and a line density feature quantity are input to a neural network, the information expressing periodicity of pixels is not contained in said feature quantities. Thus, a document which contains halftone dot areas pose a problem insofar as block area attributes cannot be accurately discriminated.
Furthermore, the latter method is unable to accurately discriminate whether or not an area is a halftone dot area or a photographic area even when the average luminance and maximum density difference are input to a neural network as feature quantities.
Conventionally, a single image datum, which corresponds to a single target area that is to be discriminated for attributes, is extracted, and attribute discrimination is accomplished based on said single image datum, such that discrimination errors occur in the relatedness of the actual type of image of the target area and the target area size (magnitude) and, thus, accurate discrimination cannot be accomplished.
When, for example, the target area of an image is a halftone dot area and the size of the target area is relatively small compared to the halftone period, there is the possibility that a dot image will be erroneously discriminated as a photographic image (variable density image) because information related to halftone dot periodicity is not contained in the image data. Furthermore, when the image of the target area is a text image and the text is large, and even when halftone dot lines and dots are thick in the case of dot images, there is a possibility of erroneous discrimination as a photographic image because the halftone dot features and text of the target area are not input.
Three perception levels comprising an input level, intermediate level, and output level, or improvements thereof are used as neural networks in the previously described methods. Furthermore, various feature quantities extracted from the image data of block areas are used as input signals to the neural network. That is, attribute discrimination by neural networks is conventionally accomplished by combining various feature quantities having a physical meaning.
When, however, area attributes must be discriminated in real time as in the case of copying machines, the circuitry for extracting feature quantities becomes complex and the construction of the circuits themselves becomes difficult, which presents disadvantages in terms of processing speed, flexibility, and cost. It is extremely difficult to determine threshold values for each feature quantity of a variety of documents to be copied; extensive experimentation and knowhow are required, such that a good deal of time and effort are necessary for the experiments for threshold value determination.
Speaking in general, when neural networks are used in new fields, it is often unclear what data should be input as feature quantities to accomplish discrimination by the neural network. In such instances, it is anticipated that accurate discrimination results cannot be obtained by a neural network without extensive circuitry for extracting feature quantities and a great deal of time expended to create programs.

Network and image area attribute discriminating device and method for use with said neural network


An automatic test handler system for automatically supplying IC devices to be tested to an IC tester and sorting the tested IC devices based on the test results. The system includes a testing machine for testing the IC devices by contacting the IC devices with test contactors. Test signals are provided from the IC tester and the resulting signals from the IC devices are received. The testing machine is installed in a test room in which dust, temperature and humidity are controlled in a high degree. A sorting machine is installed outside of the test room for sorting the IC devices that have been tested based on the test results. The sorting machine has a plurality of sort stations for receiving the IC devices based on categories defined in the test results. Tray cassettes hold a plurality of IC trays containing the IC devices, and both the tray cassettes and IC trays are provided with identification numbers. The trays are horizontally transferred on the testing machine and the sorting machine, and a data communication network connected between the testing machine and the sorting machine transmits the test results and position information of the IC devices in the IC trays.

In testing IC devices, an automatic test handler is frequently used in combination with an IC tester to automatically provide IC devices (DUT) to be tested to a test position at a test head of the IC tester. There are generally two types of test handlers, a vertical transfer type handler wherein the IC devices to be tested are transferred in a vertical direction with their own gravities and a horizontal transfer type handler wherein IC devices placed on a tray or carrier module are transferred in a horizontal direction to the test position.
In a typical horizontal transfer type test handler, IC devices to be tested are aligned on a tray in a loading area and picked, one by one, and transferred to a test head of an IC tester and placed on a test socket or contactor of the test head by a pick and place mechanism or a movable arm of the test handler. The tested IC devices are taken out from the test head and transferred to an unloading area. The tested IC devices are classified to two or more trays in a sorting area based on the test results.
Such a horizontal transfer type test handler is described in detail in a Japanese patent application No. 5-275570 filed by the same assignee of the present invention. FIG. 5 is a plan view showing the configuration of the conventional test handler disclosed in the Japanese patent application No. 5-275570.
In FIG. 5, a test handler 9 includes a movable arm 12 which is movably mounted on a pair of rails 11.sub.1 and 11.sub.2. The movable arm 12 moves on the rails 11.sub.1 and 11.sub.2 in a X direction on the surface of the test handler 9. On the movable arm 12, there is provided a movable carrier 13 which moves along the movable arm 12 in a Y direction on the surface of the test handler 9. Thus, the movable carrier 13 can take any positions on the surface, i.e., the X-Y plane of the test handler 9 within the area determined by the rails 11.sub.1 and 11.sub.2 and the movable arm 12.
In the movable area of the carrier 13, a loader 14, an unloader 23, and an empty tray area 26 are provided as well as a heater area 15. Sorters 24 and 25 are also provided in the movable area of the movable carrier 13. More sorters may be provided depending on the numbers of classification of the tested DUTs. In the right hand side of FIG. 5, within the movable area of the carrier 13, the test handler 9 includes buffers 16 and 22.
Another set of a movable arm and a movable carrier is used in a test area 33 of the test handler 9. A movable arm 18 is movably mounted on a pair of rails 17.sub.1 and 17.sub.2. The movable arm 18 moves on the rails 17.sub.1 and 17.sub.2 in a X direction on the surface of the teat handler 9. On the movable arm 18, there is provided a movable carrier 19 which moves along the movable arm 18 in a Y direction on the surface of the test handler 9. Thus, the movable carrier 19 can take any positions on the surface, i.e., the X-Y plane of the test handler 9 within the area determined by the rails 17.sub.1 and 17.sub.2 and the movable arm 12. A test contactor 21 is provided in the test area of the handler 9 which is connected to the IC tester.
In the loader 14, a plurality of trays 7 are piled in a tray cassette (not shown). Each of the trays 7 carries a plurality of DUTs 10 aligned thereon. The DUTs in the uppermost tray are taken out, one by one, or two or more at the same time, by the movable carrier 13. The DUTs are placed on the heater area 15, if necessary, to receive the heat for raising the inner temperature to a predetermined level. This heating process is commonly used in an automatic test handler to proceed a high temperature test for DUTs. A test handler may also include a cooler to perform a low temperature test.
The heated DUTs are then placed on the buffer 16 which moves in the X direction to the dotted line position in FIG. 5 in the test area 33. In the test area 33, the movable carrier 19 picks the DUT 10 on the buffer 16 and places the DUT on the test contactor 21. Although not shown, test signals from the IC tester are provided to the test contactor 21 and applied to the DUT 10. The resulting output signals from the DUT 10 are transmitted to the IC tester through the test contactor 21 to be evaluated by the IC tester by comparing them with expected data.
After the test, the DUT 10 is picked by the movable carrier 19 and placed on the buffer 22 which is positioned in the test area 33 as shown in the dotted line of FIG. 5. The buffer 22 returns to the original position where the movable carrier 13 is transferred to the unloader 23. In this example, when the DUT is non-defective, it is placed on the unloader 23, but if the DUT is defective, it is placed on the sorter 24 or 25 depending on the type of defects. The emptied trays in the loader 14 are shifted to the empty tray area 26.
As in the foregoing, the conventional automatic test handler 9 of FIG. 5 handles the DUTs 10 and transfers the DUTs to the test head of the IC tester to test various electric performances of the DUTs under the predetermined environmental conditions such as the high or low temperature. The DUTs are classified based on the test results, such as (1) conforming devices (2) defective devices or (3) devices need retest. If necessary, the defective devices are further classified depending on the causes of the defects.
FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram showing a perspective view of the automatic test handler of FIG. 5 in which the parts corresponding to FIG. 5 are denoted by the same reference numerals. With reference to FIG. 6, the outer configuration of the automatic test handler for the IC tester is explained. Numeral 31 designates a loader and unloader. When opening the cover by a handle 36, there is shown the loader and unloader 31 wherein tray cassettes are respectively provided. A plurality of IC trays 7, for example more than twenty IC trays, are installed in each tray cassette. Each of the IC tray 7 carries, for example 50 or more DUTs, depending on the size of the DUT. Since the loader 14 has a capacity of 20-50 IC trays, 1000-3000 DUTs are installed in the loader 14 prior to the start of the test. As noted above, the DUTs are transferred horizontally over the surface of the test handler.
The heater 15 is used for testing the DUTs under the high temperature. Numeral 33 designates the test area where the DUTs are placed on the test contactor. Although not shown, the test head of the IC tester is fixed to the opening provided under the test area 33. The test head of the IC tester and the test contactor in the test area 33 of the handler are electrically connected so that the DUT is provided with the test signals from the IC tester when placed on the test contactor. After the electrical test, there may be a visual test in which an outward appearance of the IC devices such as a shape, color, surface roughness and the like are tested. The DUTs are then proceeded to the sorting process based on the test results.
A control and power source 34 works as a system controller to control the operation of the test handler 9 as well as provide power to the test handler 9. A TV monitor 35 is to monitor the positioning between the DUT and the test contactor. By opening the cover with the handle 36, the surface of the test handler as shown in the plan view of FIG. 5 will be disclosed.
As shown in the foregoing example, the conventional test handler is integrally formed of the test area, the loader and unloader, and the sorting area. The IC tester and the automatic test handler are fixed together and installed in a special test room in, for example, a semiconductor production plant. The test room is a clean room in which temperature, humidity and dust of air are controlled in a degree higher than the ordinary factory. Since the recent semiconductor devices are complicated, miniaturized and high speed, such a clean room is necessary to fully evaluate the devices.
As a consequence, the cost per square meter of the test room is significantly higher than the other facilities in the semiconductor production plant. Because the floor space cost of the test room is high, the overall test cost of the IC devices becomes high. Thus, there is a need to effectively use the surface area of the test room to decrease the test cost of the IC devices.
The IC tester has been reduced in size by using high density electronics parts and by incorporating an improved electrical and mechanical design. However, since most of the functional blocks in the horizontal transfer type test handler are formed of mechanical parts, it is difficult to decrease the overall size of the test handler. For example, the size of the automatic test handler of FIGS. 5 and 6 is 180 cm by 106 cm in plan view, which is considered to be large relative to the size of the IC tester. Thus, the size of the automatic test handler tends to limit the reduction of the overall test cost, since it occupies a relatively large area of the test room.
Further, the time required for testing the DUTs in the test area and the time required for sorting the DUTs are usually different. For example, the testing time may be longer than the sorting time for specific kinds of DUTs or specific type of test. In other instances, the testing time may be shorter than the sorting time. In either case, the overall time required for the automatic test handler to evaluate the IC devices is determined by the slowest step. Thus, for example, even if an automatic test handler has an ability of high speed testing, the overall test efficiency is limited by the low speed of sorting.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 6-95125 discloses a structure of an automatic test handler in which a test area and a sorting area are mechanically separated. This technology includes an information storage which is attached to each tray cassette, an information write-in device for writing the position (coordinates) and the test results of each DUT in a tray in the information storage which is attached to the tray cassette, and an information read-out device for reading the data stored in the information storage attached to the tray cassette.
In this conventional example, the information for the DUTs is provided for every tray cassette. Thus, IC trays in the tray cassette are not identifiable from one another, which requires that the IC trays have to be strictly united to the tray cassette. In case where the order of the IC tray in the tray cassette has accidentally changed, the information regarding the DUTs becomes useless. Further, since all the test information of the DUTs in the tray cassette are stored in the information storage provided to the tray cassette, the volume of the information to be stored is limited by the capacity of the storage. Thus, there is a disadvantage in which the detailed test data, such as designations of the IC tester, test area and test sockets and the like are not available through the information storage.

Automatic test handler system for IC tester


A conductive substrate with a resistance layer comprising a substantially flat high conductivity substrate roughening treated on its surface by a resistance component and provided with a resistance layer by the resistance component so as to enable the interface between the high conductivity substrate and resistance component layer to be substantially flattened, enable acquisition of a thin film resistance layer with a stable resistance after dissolving away the high conductivity substrate, and able to maintain the peel strength with the insulating support, and a resistance board using the same.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a conductive substrate with a resistance layer useful for the production of a resistance circuit board and to a resistance board using that conductive substrate with a resistance layer, more particularly relates to a conductive substrate with a resistance layer and a resistance board capable of maintaining the uniformity of the resistance layer in a step of etching away a high conductivity substrate of the conductive substrate with a resistance layer so as to leave the resistance layer on an insulating board.
2. Description of the Related Art
A printed circuit board material embedding resistors (hereinafter called a "resistance circuit board material") is generally provided in the form of a multilayer body of an insulating board and a resistance layer adhered to that board and copper foil or other high conductivity bases adhered to that resistance layer.
A printed resistance circuit using a resistance circuit board material is produced by the subtractive method (mask etching method) giving insulating regions where all of the resistance layer and conductive base on the insulating board are removed, resistance regions where the high conductive base is removed, and all remaining conductive regions in accordance with the targeted pattern of the circuit.
In the past, as the material forming the resistance layer, a carbon-based resistance material was generally used. As other methods using metal thin films, electroplated nickel including phosphorus (Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 48-73762 and Japanese National Publication No. 63-500133), electroplated nickel including tin (Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 54-72468), etc. have been proposed. With these types of metal thin resistance layers, however, while it is possible to obtain a film with a high sheet resistance by reducing the thickness, in general, if the thickness is reduced, the uniformity of the metal film is lost and a constant sheet resistance cannot be obtained, so there are limits to the reduction of thickness.
That is, in the production of a conductive base with a resistance layer, a thin resistance layer is formed on a conductive base by electroplating, but to raise the bonding strength of the conductive base with a resistance layer to the insulating substrate, the surface of the conductive base is roughened, then is plated with the Ni—P etc. serving as resistance layer. With this method, however, since the resistance layer is present on the rough surface of the conductive base, in particular on the finely roughened surface by fine particles, even right after plating, the uniformity of thickness of the plating is poor and the sheet resistance lacks stability.
Further, dissolution of part of the resistance layer cannot be avoided since the layer of the conductive base is etched away when used as a resistance circuit board material. Further, if there is unevenness in thickness in the Ni—P plated resistance layer, there is the defect that part of the resistance layer is also etched out in order to completely remove the layer of the conductive base. It was extremely difficult to stably leave resistors and produce a printed resistance circuit board. In particular, when roughening treating with copper etc., then plating a resistance layer, the cross-section exhibited knobbed relief shapes due to the roughening with copper and it was difficult to dissolve away all of the copper layer without dissolving the resistance layer. If sufficiently removing the roughening treating layer, the resistance layer was inevitably dissolved and therefore obtaining a stable resistance value was not possible. Further, when producing a multilayer printed resistance circuit board, the printed resistance circuit board is hot pressed. There are therefore the defects that at this time, cracks occur at the portion of only the resistance layer (parts where conductive base is etched away), the resistance increases, or sometimes the circuit becomes open.
In forming a resistance layer by such Ni—P alloy plating, nickel ions, phosphorous acid ions, and phosphoric acid ions are essential. A plating bath for forming the resistance layer also includes sulfuric acid ions and chlorine ions. A conductive base with a resistance layer obtained by plating on a conductive base by using such a bath suffers from ununiform color at the time of plating and variations in the plating layer microscopically. In a wide material used at the time of mass production (for example, having a width greater than 300 mm), variation easily occurs in the plating thickness and phosphorus content in the width direction and the fluctuation in resistance of the resistance circuit becomes greater.
In the case of a resistance layer made of a Ni—Sn alloy, tin oxides or hydroxides remain on the insulating board when the resistance layer is etched to form insulation regions (dissolving the Ni—Sn) and the problem of poor insulation arises. Further, Ni—Cr, Ni—Cr—Al—Si, etc. formed by vapor deposition have been developed for the same purposes, but problems of cost and productivity and also problems of a low bonding strength with the insulating material have been pointed out.

Conductive substrate with resistance layer, resistance board, and resistance circuit board


Method and device for aiding the guidance of an aircraft having to comply with at least one time constraint. The device can determine and present on a screen of the flight deck an offset in distance (ΔD) between the aircraft (AC) and a reference aircraft (Aref) which is defined to fly along the flight plan (TV) at an optimal speed to comply with the time constraint.

The invention pertains to the field of navigation and relates to a flight management functionality relating especially to a flight management system of FMS type. This system allows flight planning, management and prediction in both the horizontal and vertical plane. In particular, the invention targets the flight predictions associated with constraints. A constraint is an input of the pilot or of the air traffic controller (typically the altitude, the speed, a time, etc. at a point of the flight plan) that the aircraft must comply with. Constraints serve especially within the framework of air traffic regulation for civil aircraft.

Method and a device for aiding the guidance of an aircraft


A method of managing a data packet queue in a buffer associated with the radio layers of a wireless network, the buffer storing packets prior to their transmission over the radio interface. The method comprises defining minimum and maximum threshold levels for the packet queue, and for a data packet received by the buffer 1) performing a congestion avoidance procedure if the buffer queue exceeds said maximum threshold level, or 2) not performing said procedure if the buffer queue is less than said minimum threshold level, or 3) if the buffer queue lies between said maximum and minimum thresholds, performing said congestion avoidance procedure for said packet, and not performing the procedure for at least one or more subsequent packets.

In data packet based communication systems, i.e. in which information to be transmitted is divided into a plurality of packets and the individual packets are sent over a communication network, it is known to provide queue buffers at various points in the network. A buffer may be a sending or input buffer (i.e. a buffer for data packets that are to be sent over a link) or a receiving or output buffer (i.e. a buffer for data packets that have already been sent over a link).
Packets for transporting data may also be called by any of a variety of names, such as protocol data packets, frames, segments, cells, etc., depending on the specific context, the specific protocol used, and certain other conventions. In the context of the present document, all such packets of data shall generically be referred to as data packets. The procedures for placing data packets into a queue, advancing them in the queue, and removing data packets from the queue are referred to as "queue management".
A phenomenon that is known in data packet transmission networks is that of congestion. Congestion implies a state in which it is not possible to readily handle the number of data packets that are required to be transported over that connection or link. As a consequence of congestion at a given link, the number of data packets in a queue buffer associated with said link will increase. In response to a congestion condition, it is known to implement a data packet dropping mechanism referred to as "drop-on-full". According to this mechanism, upon receipt of a new data packet at the queue buffer, a queue length related parameter, such as the actual queue length or the average queue length, is compared to a predetermined threshold. If the predetermined threshold is exceeded, then a data packet is dropped. The threshold indicates the "full" state of the queue.
The data packet which is dropped can be the newly arrived packet, in which case the mechanism is called "tail-drop". Besides the technique of tail-drop, it is also known to perform a so-called "random-drop", where a data packet already in the queue is selected according to a random function, or a so-called "front-drop", where the first data packet in the queue is dropped. Such drop-on-full mechanisms not only serve to reduce the load on the congested link, but also serve as an implicit congestion notification to the source and/or destination of the data packet.
The so-called "Transmission Control Protocol" (TCP) is a commonly used protocol for controlling the transmission of data packets (or "packets") over an IP network. When a TCP connection between peer hosts is initiated, TCP starts transmitting data packets at a relatively low rate. The transmission rate is slowly increased in order to avoid causing an overflow at routers of the IP network (which would result in the loss of data packets and the need to resend these lost packets). The rate at which data packets can be transmitted is defined by two variables, cwnd and ssthresh. TCP uses acknowledgement messages to control the transmission rate, and is constantly probing the link for more transmission capacity.
The variable cwnd defines the number of unacknowledged data packets which the TCP sender may have in "flight" at any given time. At the beginning of a communication, cwnd is set at a low value (e.g. one segment) and the system is in a "slow start" mode. Following receipt of the first acknowledgement from the receiver, cwnd is increased in size by one packet (to two packets). Two further packets are then sent. When an acknowledgement is received by the sender for each further packet, cwnd is increased by one packet. Once both packets have been acknowledged, the size of cwnd is four packets. This process is repeated resulting in an exponential opening of the congestion window. The variable ssthresh is initially set to some fixed level (e.g. 65535 bytes), and the slow start mode continues until cwnd>ssthresh. Thereafter, a "congestion avoidance" mode is entered during which cwnd is increased by just 1/cwnd each time a successful transmission acknowledgement is received. The variable cwnd has an upper limit defined either by the sender or by an advertisement message sent from the receiver.
If congestion occurs as indicated by a timeout (of a controlling timer at the sender), ssthresh is set to one half of the previous value of cwnd, and cwnd is set to 1. Thus, the slow start mode is re-entered and continued until such time as the transmission rate (defined by cwnd) reaches half the rate which last caused congestion to occur. Thereafter, the congestion avoidance mode is entered. If congestion is indicated by receipt of a third duplicate acknowledgements by the sender (indicating that a given data packet has not been received by the receiver despite the receipt of three subsequent segments), ssthresh is set to one half of the previous value of cwnd whilst shrinks to ssthresh. Receipt of three duplicate acknowledgements causes the TCP sender to retransmit the missing data packet using the "fast retransmit" mechanism. After retransmitting the missing data packet, fast recovery takes over. The value of cwnd is set to ssthresh+3, and is increased by 1 packet for each additional duplicate acknowledgement received. An acknowledgement which acknowledges the retransmitted data packet sets cwnd to ssthresh, putting the sender back into congestion avoidance mode.
In any IP packet transmission path, bottlenecks will occur which limit the transmission rate of the available transmission route (or link). In conventional networks, bottlenecks may occur for example at IP routers. Routers handle bottlenecks by using buffers to queue incoming data. If the tail dropping mechanism described above is used to deal with congestion, there is a high probability that two or more packets from the same connection will be dropped. The loss of two or more packets from the same sending window of a TCP connection may cause the TCP sender to enter the slow start mode. This timer-triggered loss recovery may lead to under-utilisation of the link, in particular when the link incorporates significant delays. This in turn results in a waste of link resources and perceived poor link performance on the part of the user.
The tail dropping mechanism may also cause problems due to "global synchronisation". This phenomenon arises when several TCP connections simultaneously reduce their load. The queue serving the connections may be drained resulting in large fluctuations in the buffer level.
In order to avoid the adverse effects of tail dropping, methods to detect congestion before the absolute limit of the queue is reached have been developed. In general these Early Congestion Detection methods make use of one or more queue threshold levels to determine whether or not a packet arriving at a queue should be accepted or dropped. In the so-called "Random Early Detection" method, RED, [IETF RFC2309], a minimum threshold level Tmin and a maximum threshold level Tmax are defined. If the queue size remains below the minimum threshold level, all packets arriving at the queue are accepted and placed at the back of the queue. If the queue size exceeds the maximum threshold level, all packets arriving at the queue are dropped. If the queue size is between the maximum and minimum thresholds, packets are dropped with a certain probability. However, this tends to result in only a fraction of the large set of TCP connections (that share the congested router) reducing their load simultaneously. For a queue fill level greater than the maximum threshold, RED works according to the conventional tail drop scheme. The key to the RED algorithm lies in the early congestion notifications that are transmitted to randomly chosen TCP users by dropping a few packets probabilistically when the queue level exceeds the minimum threshold. Since the congestion feedback is transmitted to a limited number of link users, global synchronisation can be avoided.
In order to allow for a certain level of short-term fluctuations in the queue caused by packet bursts (a property inherent to IP transmissions), the RED algorithm does not operate on the instantaneous queue level, but rather on a moving average measure of the queue level qavg(•). When using the RED algorithm, there are four parameters that have to be set by the operator; a queue filter constant wq, the two queue thresholds Tmin and Tmax, and the parameter pmax which defines the maximum probability for a packet discard when Tmin<qavg(•)<Tmax.
RED is reported to work well with high capacity routers. A large number of TCP connections are required to overload such capacity. RED relies heavily on this fact: at congestion there are a large number of connections sharing the queue. It thus makes sense to "signal" congestion to only a small fraction of users at the same time in order to avoid global synchronisation.
In the paper "Random Early Detection Gateways for Congestion Avoidance" by Sally Floyd and Van Jacobson, IEEE/ACM Transactions on networking, August 1993, an extensive discussion of the RED algorithm is given, where the minimum threshold minth, maximum threshold maxth, and the maximum probability maxp are all set as fixed parameters. Regarding the choice of minth and maxth, it is mentioned that the optimum values for these thresholds depend on the desired average queue size, and the optimal value for maxth depends in part on the maximum average delay over the link. Furthermore, it is stated that maxth should at least be twice as large as minth.
In an internet document discussing the setting of RED parameters, published by Sally Floyd at http://www.acir.org/floyd/REDparameter.txt, it is mentioned that the optimum value for fixing minth will depend partly on the link speed, the propagation delay and the maximum buffer size.
In the article "Techniques for eliminating packet loss in congested TCP-IP networks" by Wu-chang Feng et al., November 1997, a so-called adaptive RED is proposed, in which the probability parameter maxp is adapted to the traffic load. Although the detailed algorithm described in this document uses fixed thresholds, it is indicated that the threshold values could also be made dependent on the input traffic. A similar proposal is made in the article "A self configuring RED gateway" by Wu-chang Feng et al., Infocom '99, March 1999.
Another proposal for improving RED is made in WO 00/60817, in which a differentiation is introduced between traffic originating from rate adaptive applications that respond to packet loss. This document suggests introducing at least two drop precedent levels, referred to as "in profile" and "out profile". Each drop precedent level has its own minimum threshold minth and/or maximum threshold maxth.
From WO 00/57599 a queue management mechanism is known in which drop functions are selected according to ingress flow rate measurements and flow profiles.
From U.S. Pat. No. 6,134,239 a method of rejecting ATM cells at an overloaded load buffer is known. The concept of RED is mentioned. According to this document, a first threshold related to the overloaded buffer queue, and a second threshold associated with a specific connection are monitored, and incoming packets are dropped for the specific connection if both thresholds are exceeded.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,389 describes a method for controlling access to a buffer and is specifically concerned with ATM buffers. The use of one or more thresholds and the dynamic control of such thresholds is mentioned, where the dynamics are determined on the basis of incoming and outgoing traffic.
EP-1 028 600 describes a buffer management scheme with dynamic queue length thresholds for ATM switches. A common threshold is dynamically updated every time a new cell arrives, where the new value is determined based on traffic condition.
Another improvement proposal for RED is described in EP-0 872 988, which has the object of providing isolation when connections using different TCP versions share a bottleneck link. The solution proposed in this document is the use of bandwidth reservation guarantees for each connection. If one connection is being under-utilised, then another connection may use a part of the under-utilised connection's bandwidth. When the connection needs to reclaim its buffer space a predetermined package dropping mechanism is operated, such as a longest queue first (LQF) mechanism.
It will be appreciated that mechanisms such as RED may be employed to trigger the "marking" of data packets when a buffer queue starts to be full. Thus, rather than dropping a packet, the mechanism may add a tag to a packet forwarded to a receiver to notify the receiver that action should be taken to avoid congestion. The receiver may in turn notify the sender. Alternatively, a marked data packet or other notification may be returned directly to the sender.
Whilst much of the state of the art in this area is concerned with IP network routers and the like, the problems of congestion and buffer queue management also arise in mobile communication systems such as cellular telephone networks.
It will be appreciated that queue management of buffers is required when handling packet data traffic which is time critical, such as streaming media content. It may not be possible to tolerate excessive delays in the delivery of such traffic (streaming data may be sent over a UDP connection rather than a TCP connection). Some of the principles and solutions discussed above and below may be applicable to this situation.

Congestion and delay handling in a packet data network


An ion exchanger according to a non-limiting embodiment may include an open cell polymer support and a microporous polymer matrix charged within the open cell polymer support. The microporous polymer matrix includes an ion conductive polymer. The ion conductive polymer may be obtained by polymerizing monomers having at least one ion exchange functional group and at least one cross-linkable functional group with a cross-linking agent having at least two cross-linkable functional groups.

1. Field
An ion exchanger, a method of manufacturing the same, and an ion exchange filter device and an electro-deionization device including the same are disclosed herein.
2. Description of the Related Art
A separation technology for selectively permeating cations and anions using an ion exchange membrane includes an electro-dialysis (ED) process and an electro-deionization (EDI) process. According to the ion concentration of water, the electro-dialysis process is used when the ion concentration is high, and the electro-deionization process is used when the ion concentration is low. The electro-deionization process for treating low ion concentration uses an ion exchange resin that may promote ion transfer, in order to reduce electrical resistance that may be generated and decrease protons and hydroxide ions generated by concentration polarization.
The ion exchange resin is not easy to handle due to its bead shape, and the removal efficiency may be decreased due to a decrease in flow rate, effective reaction area, and the like, which may be caused by partial tilting of the ion exchange resin during operation because of gravity. Further, since the effect on the throughput efficiency may be varied according to the charge density of the ion exchange resin, it is important to install it with a constant density, which is difficult if not impossible.
To overcome drawbacks of the ion exchange resin, various ion conductive spacers are being developed. As the example of the ion conductive spacer, an ion exchange fiber is suggested. The ion exchange fiber may be prepared by producing radicals on a polymer substrate using various irradiation sources such as UV, plasma, and the like on a polyolefin-based polymer substrate such as polypropylene, polyethylene, a polypropylene-polyethylene copolymer, and the like, and forming a branched copolymer while a new polymerization reaction occurs when the polymerizable monomers are contacted starting from the radicals. The ion exchange fiber has merits of being light-weight, and having convenient filter preparation and a fast ion exchange speed. If the ion exchange fiber is applied for an electro-deionization device, a high permeability coefficient may be obtained, and a reaction efficiency decrease over time may be overcome. However, the ion exchange fiber has limits as to how large the volume of the fiber can be and has a low charge density (low ion exchange capacity).
To compensate for drawbacks of the ion exchange fiber, a composite filter has been suggested wherein ion exchange resin particles having high ion exchange capacity are combined with the ion exchange fiber using a solvent-type adhesive. For example, a backbone substrate formed of reticular polyurethane foam is impregnated with an adhesive such as one that is acryl-based, urethane-based, vinyl acetate-based, and the like, and an ion exchange resin is attached to the backbone substrate to prepare an ion exchange filter device. However, when the adhesive covers the ion exchange resin particles, ion exchange capacity may be decreased, and the manufacturing process is complicated due to the use of the adhesive.
Although there is an attempt to introduce an ion exchange functional group in the backbone substrate such as reticular polyurethane foam and the like, there is a problem of low ion exchange capacity.

Ion exchanger, method of manufacturing the same, and ion exchange filter device and electro-deionization device including the same