A suspension system includes a fluid strut, an accumulator and a reservoir. The accumulator and reservoir are in fluid communication with the fluid strut through an accumulator valve and a reservoir valve respectively. A fluid pump pressurizes the accumulator with an incompressible fluid stored in the reservoir. A piston valve is located within a piston to selectively permit fluid communication between a high pressure side and a low pressure side of the piston. A controller operates each valve and the fluid pump to control flow of the incompressible fluid within the fluid strut to obtain an infinitely variable self centering suspension system.

The present invention relates to a suspension system, and more particularly to an active suspension system that utilizes an incompressible fluid.
Conventional suspension systems isolate the vehicle frame or chassis from impacts and vibrations resulting from vehicle wheels traversing uneven terrain. Vehicle ride characteristics have complex dynamics. Excess vibration results in detrimental consequences.
Current passive suspension systems employ springs, struts, rubber elements, torsion bars, or the like to maintain a centered suspension. Perturbations from the norm initiates a harmonic motion that would continue indefinitely but for the addition of damping mechanisms such as shocks, or other hysterisis or coulomb damping devices. Current suspension technologies are defined in frequency domains with natural frequencies and damping coefficients to define the suspension characteristics. Such passive suspension systems offer a compromise between spring and dampening coefficients of fixed rates.
Current active suspension systems provide powered components which isolate the vehicle frame from vibrations induced by uneven terrain. In active vehicle suspension systems, actuators are provided to actively apply forces which counteract and balance forces applied to the chassis of the motor vehicle. Such active systems utilize relatively complicated control schemes to determine the amount of force which actuators should apply to the vehicle chassis to provide a smoother ride, such as schemes based on balancing the forces acting on the chassis and schemes based on supporting the vehicle chassis at a selected ride height. Active suspension systems may require relatively large power inputs to provide an actuator that is quick enough to compensate for impacts and vibrations which occur at desired traveling velocities over rough terrain. The power requirements for such fully active suspension systems are generally prohibitively demanding.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an active center seeking suspension system which responds rapidly while utilizing minimal power inputs and damping elements.


In a case where a series of operations of an imaging sequence are continuously performed when an imaging switch is continuously in ON state, if the imaging switch is turned into OFF state only for a given period and the given period is not more than a predetermined threshold value, control is exerted such that part of the operations of the imaging sequence is continuously performed.

It is conventionally known that stereoscopic viewing utilizing parallax can be achieved by combining and displaying a plurality of images. Such an image that allows stereoscopic viewing (which will hereinafter be referred to as "stereoscopic image" or "stereo image") is generated based on a plurality of images that are obtained by imaging the same subject from different directions and therefore have a parallax therebetween.
Generation of a stereoscopic image in this manner is used not only in the fields of digital cameras and televisions but also in the field of radiographic imaging. Namely, radiation is applied to the subject from different directions, and each radiation transmitted through the subject is detected with a radiographic image detector to obtain a plurality of radiographic images having a parallax therebetween, and a stereoscopic image is generated based on these radiographic images (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-279516). By generating a stereoscopic image in this manner, a radiographic image that provides feel of depth can be observed, which is more suitable for diagnosis.
On the other hand, a tomosynthesis imaging apparatus, wherein a radiation source is moved to apply radiation to the subject from different imaging directions, similarly to a radiographic imaging apparatus for taking the above-described stereoscopic image, has been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2010-131170). This tomosynthesis imaging apparatus performs imaging operations with applying radiation to the subject from different imaging directions, as described above, and adds up a plurality of radiographic images obtained by the imaging operations to provide an image where a desired slice plane is emphasized.

Radiographic imaging method and apparatus


A process of transferring a flux on electrodes of a semiconductor chip, a film carrier, or a substrate, the process comprising: using a transfer apparatus including a transfer baseplate having protrusions corresponding to said electrodes; dipping the tips of the protrusions of the transfer baseplate in a flux bath to cause the flux to stick to the tips; then aligning the protrusions of the transfer baseplate with the electrodes; and transferring the stuck flux onto the electrodes from the tips.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process and an apparatus for transferring a flux onto electrodes and a process and an apparatus for producing small metal bumps of a low melting point metal or metal alloy.
2. Description of the Related Art
The popularization of portable information devices and portable video cameras increases the need for miniaturized semiconductor packages. The advancing performance of LSI's also increases the number of electrodes. To achieve the miniaturized and multi-terminal packaging, a flip-chip bonding method is used to directly mount a chip on small-pitched electrodes of a substrate. A ball grid array (BGA) and a chip size package (CSP) have also been developed to realize a multi-terminal packaging, not requiring an extremely small pitch, by using a surface arrangement of terminals instead of a peripheral arrangement.
In this conventional technology, it is necessary to form connection terminals, or bumps, of a solder or other low melting point metal or metal alloy, on the electrodes of a substrate, etc. It is an advantageous bump forming method to form bumps by using balls of a solder or other low melting point metal or metal alloy. To form bumps from balls, in order to provide strong bond between the bumps and the electrodes, it is necessary that a flux is applied or transferred onto the electrodes, the balls are provisionally fixed to the electrodes, and the balls are then heated to above the melting point temperature thereof, thereby being melted to form bumps bonded to the electrodes.
The conventional technology has a problem in that, if a flux is also applied or transferred to portions other than electrodes, balls may flow down from the electrodes when melted by heating. This phenomenon can be prevented by transferring a flux only to the electrodes. U.S. Pat. No. 5,284,287 discloses a process comprising holding solder balls having a diameter of 500 to 700 .mu.m on an arrangement baseplate, moving the arrangement baseplate with the balls held thereon to above a flux bath, lowering the arrangement baseplate until portions of the balls are dipped in the flux bath to cause the flux to stick to the balls. The balls having the flux sticking thereto are pressed against the substrate electrodes to provisionally fix the balls to the electrodes. The flux is thus only applied on the electrodes to which the balls are provisionally fixed. The provisionally fixed balls do not flow down from the electrode when melted by heating.
This process of transferring a flux to electrodes only, however, becomes difficult to perform when the ball have a diameter less than 500 .mu.m. Specifically, when the balls have a smaller diameter, the distance between the arrangement baseplate which holds the balls and the tip portions of the balls to be dipped in the flux bath becomes smaller, so that the flux undesirably also sticks to the arrangement baseplate when the balls are dipped in the flux bath. When a baseplate having portions on which the flux is deposited is used again to hold another set of balls, the balls may also stick to the portions causing reduction in the reliability of the process of forming bumps on the electrodes. If the balls have a further smaller diameter, it becomes difficult to cause the flux to stick to the balls in only limited portions of the balls in a well-controlled manner. A problem then arises in that, if an excessive amount of the flux sticks to the balls, the sticking force causes the balls to drop off the arrangement baseplate into the flux bath.

Transfer of flux onto electrodes and production of bumps on electrodes


A method for assessing tyre tread depth and/or tyre condition by taking and analysing a camera image or images of a tyre using portable instrumentation.

This invention relates to tyre tread depth and tyre condition determination.
Vehicle tyres are subject to wear and damage. Worn or damaged tyres can be dangerous on road vehicles, and tyres are checked in routine inspection such as the British Government's Ministry of Transport (MOT) annual test. Tyres that do not have a prescribed minimum tread depth will not pass the test. The annual check, however, means that the tyre could have been worn, and dangerous, for some months before.
It is, of course, the responsibility of the vehicle owner to maintain it, and particularly its tyres, in safe and roadworthy condition. Tyre condition, and, often, tyre inflation, are often overlooked, or not checked regularly enough. Worn or damaged tyres are implicated in around 50% of serious or fatal road injuries.
Tread depth gauges are readily available. They comprise a probe sliding in a cylinder. The probe is inserted into a tyre groove and the cylinder advanced till its end is in contact with the tread. The tread depth is read off a scale, which in some instances is on the other end of the probe projecting from the other end of the cylinder. Such a gauge is best used when the vehicle is on a ramp or when the wheel is off the vehicle, so that the entire width and circumference can be inspected—tyres are often subject to uneven wear through faulty tracking or wheel alignment. Using such gauges when the vehicle is on the road most often means kneeling, squatting or even lying on the ground, and even so only a small part of most tyres will be available for inspection.
Other proposals have been made for tyre inspection, some involving making an image from structured light illumination that can be analysed to give tyre surface contour information from which tread depth can be calculated. The image can be taken across the width of the tyre to detect uneven wear. One such proposal has the imaging arrangement let into a road surface.
There is no available provision, however, whereby tyre tread depth measurement and damage inspection can be carried out easily and objectively whether the tyre is on or off a vehicle and the observations and measurements recorded, that would be available to vehicle owners for regular monitoring or to law enforcement agencies for spot checks on parked vehicles.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Tyre tread depth and tyre condition determination


A self-excitation type switch power supply unit with overcurrent protection. For adopting a simple and reliable current negative feedback protective circuit to coordinate with a complementary bridge circuit, a positive feedback circuit without DC biasing capacitive coupling, an oscillation-starting circuit of the AC power supply, etc., so that the self-excitation type switch power supply can become a practical power supply unit with simple circuitry, small size and low cost.

The self-excitation type switch power supply is a self-excited oscillator as to substance, which can be taken as a high-frequency heating means when output directly from a self-excited oscillation coil and as a DC power supply unit when rectified and output from a rectifier. The self-excitation type switch power supply has the advantages of simple circuitry, small size and lost cost, etc., but owing to lack of a simple and effective method for overcurrent protection, its stability and reliability are poor, which makes the self-excitation type switch power supply unable to become a reliable and practical power supply unit.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a general self-excitation type switch power supply unit comprising: a power source 1, an amplifier 2, a self-excited oscillation coil 3 and a positive feedback coupling circuit 5. The self-excited oscillation coil 3 comprises a master oscillation coil La, a positive feedback coil Lb and an output coil Lc.

Self-excitation type switch power supply unit with overcurrent protection

Block A, 20th Floor Braemer Hill Mansion, 43 Braemer Hill Road


A bearing having two surfaces (60, 72) rotatable with respect to each other, a lubrication medium located in a gap between the tow surfaces during rotation of the bearing and a sinusoidal groove pattern (20) formed on one of the tow surfaces to distribute the lubrication medium over the surface of the bearing and create a pressure distribution in the bearing to create a stiff hydrodynamic bearing.

Disc drive memory systems have been used in computers for many years for storage of digital information. Such information is recorded on concentric memory tracks of a magnetic disc medium, the actual information being stored in the form of magnetic transitions within the medium. The discs themselves are rotatably mounted on a spindle, the information being accessed by means of read write heads supported on a pivoting arm which moves radially over the surface of the disc. The read write heads or transducer must be accurately aligned with the storage tracks on the disc to ensure proper reading and writing of information.
During operation, the discs are rotated at very high speeds within an enclosed housing by means of an electric motor generally located inside the hub or below the discs. One type of motor in common use is known as an in hub or in spindle motor. Such in spindle motors typically have a spindle mounted by means of ball bearing systems to a motor shaft disposed in the center of the hub. However, with the decreasing size of information storage systems, other types of bearings including hydrodynamic bearings are being developed. Useful designs are disclosed in the incorporated applications.
In these types of bearings, a lubricating fluid functions as the actual bearing surface between a stationary base or housing and the rotating spindle or hub and the surrounding stationary portion of the motor. These fluids, either gas or liquid must be sealed within the bearing to avoid loss of the lubricant which would result in reduced bearing load capacity. Otherwise, the physical surfaces of the spindle and housing would contact one another, leading to increased wear and eventual failure of the bearing system. Equally seriously, loss of the seal or failure to control the lubricant level within the bearing system could cause contamination of the hard disc drive with lubricant particles and droplets or outgassing related contamination.
A further critical issue is the need to maintain the stiffness of the hydrodynamic bearing. The stiffer the bearing, the higher the natural frequencies in the radial and axial direction, so that the more stable is the track of the disc being rotated by a spindle on which reading and writing must occur. Thus the stiffness of the bearing in the absence of any mechanical contact between its rotating part becomes critical in the design of the bearing so that the rotating load can be stably and accurately supported on the spindle without wobble or tilt.
A typical prior art grooving pattern is shown in FIG. 1. This pattern was adopted having a constant grooving angle .alpha. which is the angle defined by the groove and the circumference of the cylindrical surface as a constant angle. The pattern provides points of high pressure 10 to seek to optimize the stiffness of the bearing, while providing the desired pumping action of the lubricant to maintain the lubricant surface covered with fluid while minimizing the possibilities of fluid escape. However, because of the sharp angles, at the corners, the grooves are difficult to form, and the tools used to form the grooves wear out quickly.

Sinusoidal grooving pattern for grooved journal bearing


A magnetic ferrite operating well in the GHz zone, and a magnetic device of superior high frequency characteristics which uses the magnetic ferrite for its magnetic core.

Magnetic ferrites have been produced using iron oxide, zinc oxide, nickel oxide, manganese oxide and magnesium oxide as the main components. Namely, Mn—Zn ferrite, Ni—Zn ferrite and Mg ferrite are the basic compositions of ferrites, or the spinel type ferrites. Proportion among the main components and amount of side components added as additive are varied depending on the field of application. Magnetic ferrites have been manufactured in the above-described manner, and used widely in quite a number of electronic circuits operating in the low frequency zone up to the high frequency of approximately 200 MHz.
Magnetic devices used in the electronic circuits are made to demonstrate varieties of characteristics by taking advantage of the following basic functioning rule of the core ferrite:
Complex permeability μ=μ′−μ″×i (μ′: permeability, μ″: loss factor).
Recently, for use in the frequency zone higher than 200 MHz, a hexagonal crystal ferrite containing iron oxide, barium oxide and strontium oxide as the main components was introduced.
Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. H5-36517 discloses an example of the magnetic material containing the hexagonal crystal ferrite.
The above-described conventional magnetic ferrites, however, exhibit the sudden increase of loss factor μ″ at a frequency lower than 1 GHz. This means that the magnetic devices containing conventional magnetic ferrites can be used only in a frequency zone lower than 1 GHz. On the other hand, the high frequency technology is making a remarkable progress in the sector of digital electronic appliances which requires magnetic devices for great numbers.
In order to meet the emerging needs for processing broad band signals at high speed, the circuit components are requested to be capable of handling the signals of still higher frequency.
The present invention addresses the above problem and aims to offer a magnetic ferrite in which the sudden rise of loss factor μ″ occurs only in a frequency zone higher than 1 GHz. The present invention also aims to realize, by making use of the magnetic ferrite, a magnetic device that can be used in the frequency zone higher than 1 GHz.

Magnetic ferrite and magnetic device containing the ferrite

Abstract: The magnetic ferrite includes iron oxide, cobalt oxide and zinc oxide as the main components and at least one item selected from among the group consisting of titanium, tantalum, indium, zirconium, lithium, tin and vanadium as the side component.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A method of searching audio data is provided including receiving a query defining multiple phonetic possibilities. The method also includes comparing the query with a lattice of phonetic hypotheses associated with the audio data to identify if at least one of the multiple phonetic possibilities is approximated by at least one phonetic hypothesis in the lattice of phonetic hypotheses.

The present invention relates to searching audio data. In particular, the present invention relates to matching an input search query within audio data.
The increasing storage capacity and processing capabilities of computers has led to the further development of applications that utilize and store audio data. These applications store audio and video data of voicemails, lectures, meetings, interviews and broadcasts. With a large amount of audio data, methods have been devised to search and retrieve keywords within the audio data.
In some instances, a speech recognizer processes audio data to identify words therein. Search queries can then be matched to recognized words in the audio data. This approach, however, requires a large vocabulary and is not adept to recognizing specialized keywords, such as person and place names. Other approaches utilize phonemes to match search queries. In some phoneme-based approaches, language knowledge utilized by respective systems is limited and the amount of data needed to run the systems is large. As a result, a system that utilizes language knowledge of adequate size is needed for searching of audio data.


To reduce power consumption in an image pickup apparatus that captures a plurality of pieces of image data.

From the past, for simultaneously capturing a plurality of pieces of image data, a compound-eye image pickup apparatus including a plurality of solid-state image pickup devices has been used. For example, there is proposed an image pickup apparatus that captures color image data using a solid-state image pickup device including a color filter, and captures monochrome image data using a solid-state image pickup device including no color filter (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). Here, since incident light is not attenuated by a color filter, the monochrome image data becomes that much brighter than the color image data. This image pickup apparatus simultaneously captures and synthesizes those color image data and monochrome image pickup data.

Image pickup control apparatus, image pickup apparatus, control method for image pickup control apparatus, and non-transitory computer readable medium

Abstract: An image pickup apparatus includes a signal processing unit and a control unit. The signal processing unit executes, in accordance with a predetermined control signal, either compound-eye processing for synthesizing a plurality of pieces of image data by carrying out signal processing on each of the plurality of pieces of image data or monocular processing for carrying out the signal processing on any one of the plurality of pieces of image data. The control unit supplies the predetermined control signal to the signal processing unit and causes one of the compound-eye processing and the monocular processing to be switched to the other one of the compound-eye processing and the monocular processing, on a basis of a result of a comparison between a measured predetermined physical amount and a predetermined threshold value.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation


An enossal single tooth implant for a fixed dental prosthesis includes an essentially cylindrical base member which is insertable into a bore introduced into a jaw bone and which has a blind bore open toward one coronal end to form a face edge, a spacer sleeve attached in an anti-twist fashion to the face edge of the member, an implant post directly or indirectly introduced into the blind bore of the base member and at least partially penetrating the spacer sleeve. The spacer sleeve has a circumferential surface which forms part of a fastening head for the dental prosthesis and has an annular joining shoulder for engaging an edge of the prosthesis that has a peripherally varying spacing from the face edge of the base member to allow for adaptation to the anatomical conditions.

The invention is directed to an enossal single tooth implant for a fixed dental prosthesis, comprising an essentially cylindrical base member insertable into a bore introduced into a jaw bone, said base member comprising a blind bore open toward its coronal end, which faces away from the bone and toward the dental prosthesis, a spacer sleeve attached in anti-twist fashion to the coronal face edge of the base member, an implant post directly or indirectly introducible into the blind bore of the base member and at least partially penetrating the spacer sleeve, and a fastening head for the dental prosthesis.
Enossal implants of this type, as disclosed, for example, in German Letters Patent 40 28 855, have definitely proven themselves in practice. Since this type of implant has no adequate means for attaching a dental prosthesis in the form of a crown, which is adapted to the anatomy of the respective patient, there are occasions when this implant is considered inadequate.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,568 discloses a seating device for the crown structure of an implant that exhibits a curved contour, so that a favorable matching to the natural shaping of the gums can ensue. The above-described problem can be corrected by this structure.

Enossal single tooth implant with spacer sleeve


A reaming tool includes a tool body having a longitudinal axis and an upper end opposite a lower end and at least one blade extending outwardly from the external surface of the tool body. The blade includes a rolling element defining the gauge of the reaming tool, and a blade surface arranged undergauge of the rolling element and comprising a cutting surface.

In the oil and gas industry, wells are formed using vertical and directional drilling techniques. The drilling process involves initially drilling a pilot borehole using a drill string with a drilling bottom hole assembly (BHA) having a drill bit at the leading end thereof. The pilot borehole must be subsequently reamed so as to accommodate casing, production pipe, etc., and to improve borehole gauge, shape and condition, using one or more reaming tools. The so formed well is then "completed", i.e. made ready for production by installing casing (if applicable), production pipes and associated tools and perforating and stimulating the bottom hole.
Generally, the drill bit is advanced downward until the drill bit has reached the target depth. The drillstring is then pulled out and a reaming BHA is attached at the leading end of the drillstring. This reaming BHA is then pushed downhole, reaming and conditioning the borehole prior to well completion and subsequently pulled out while at the same time reaming the borehole on the way out. As discussed above, this type of reaming requires a specific reaming run after the pilot hole has been created and prior to performing well completion, which is inconvenient and inefficient. The necessity to pull the drilling BHA out of borehole to replace it with a reaming BHA results in expensive non-production time.
Certain reaming tools currently available are only suitable for improving the borehole gauge in soft formations, and are less suitable for reaming hard formations. In most wellbores, the formation generally changes from soft to hard formation and vice-versa. Therefore there is a need for a tool and method providing a high borehole quality for both soft and hard formations. There is also a need for reducing excess torque caused while rotating the drillstring while the reaming surface is contacting the formation. Further, there is a need for a reaming tool that can be easily replaced or repaired after being subject to wear from use in a wellbore.

Reaming tool and methods of using the reaming tool in a wellbore


A bale monitoring system includes an imaging device that is operable to capture a stereoscopic image of a bale. A computing compares the stereoscopic image of the bale to a three-dimensional standard to identify a deviation of the bale from the three-dimensional standard. The computing device may then assign the bale a shape quality score based on the deviation of the bale from the three-dimensional standard. The shape quality score may indicate a magnitude of the deviation of the bale from the three-dimensional standard. Additionally, the stereoscopic image may be analyzed to identify characteristics of the bale, such as a broken wrap material or an improperly formed bale.

A baler implement gathers crop material and forms the crop material within a baling chamber into a defined shape. The defined shape may include, but is not limited to, a cylindrical shape, e.g., a round bale, or a rectangular parallelepiped, e.g., a large square bale. A wrap system may then wrap a wrap material around the circumference of the bale to retain the bale in its formed shape. The wrap material may include, but is not limited to, twine, a mesh net wrap material, or a solid wrap material. Once wrapped with the wrap material, the bale may be discharged from the baling chamber, often onto a ground surface.
Upon being discharged from the baling chamber, the shape of the bale may differ from an intended or desired final bale shape. For example, if the wrap material is broken or torn, the discharged bale may include a bulge that extends outward from the defined shape. In another example, if an operating parameter of the baler implement is improperly set, then the baler implement may fail to properly form the crop material into the desired bale shape.


A digital image processor is described in which the output from a linear array of electro-optic sensors, first having been signal conditioned and digitized, is then loaded into a RAM image memory forming a part of the microprocessor-based template matching processor. The image memory functions like a shift device and as the sensor image signals are shifted therethrough, they are compared on a bit-by-bit basis with digital signals stored in a PROM which comprise a plurality of templates with which the scanned image is to be compared. The extent of correspondence between the image being sensed and the templates is then accumulated and if the sum exceeds a predetermined threshold, a match between the image being sensed and the template is established. The system is implemented using gate array technology such that the common template concept is feasible in those applications requiring very small size and low power dissipation.

Imaging sensor systems are routinely employed in military applications to provide information used in surveillance or in the guidance of a weapon system to a particular target. Such systems typically employ a scanning electro-optic sensor sensitive to certain portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Such sensors are thus able to discriminate the emitted radiation of various target features in the sensor field-of-view.
A common prior art electro-optic sensor employs a linear array of infrared sensors. The linear array is combined with imaging optics and a scanning mirror such that it can be swept through a specific angle representing a field-of-view while the electrical output of each detector element is sampled at discrete intervals to form a set of "M" samples. In this manner, the field-of-view is quantized into a set of samples comprising N-rows by M-columns. It is the task of the image processor to analyze each set of input data, to determine if a particular object is present in the field-of-view and, if present, to determine, in effect, its coordinate location. Although a variety of techniques for such processing has been proposed and practiced, the most effective and widely used is to employ what is known as template matching.
In this arrangement, features of the object or objects of interest are stored as a digital template and are systematically compared to the input data from the sensor array. This is a very demanding and computationally intensive task in that to perform the template match, the template must be shifted for each condition of variability which may exist in the field-of-view. At a minimum, the template must be translated for all possible X-Y coordinate conditions that it might be found in the field-of-view. Additionally, the template may also have to be tested for various values of size commensurate with various ranges from the sensor to the object. Further, if the rotational position of the object is unknown, the template must be varied for all conditions of rotational orientation.
Although template matching algorithms have been extensively developed for implementation in general purpose programmable computers, such implementations are typically not practical for real-time, low-cost, low-power and very small size systems which could be deployed in a weapon guidance system, for example.


Provided is a piezoelectric material including a lead-free perovskite-type composite oxide which is excellent in piezoelectric characteristics and temperature characteristics and is represented by the general formula (1):xABO3-yA′BO3-zA″B′O3 in which A is a Bi element; A′ is a rare earth element including La; B is at least one element selected from Ti, Zn, Sn and Zr; A″ is at least one element selected from Ba, Sr and Ca; B′ is at least one element selected from divalent, trivalent, pentavalent, tetravalent, and hexavalent elements; and x is a value of 0.10 or more and 0.95 or less, y is a value of 0 or more and 0.5 or less, and z is a value of 0 or more and 0.7 or less, provided that x+y+z=1.

There is a market in which a piezoelectric material composed of an ABO3 perovskite-type oxide is used as an ink jet head or an ultrasonic transducer. The piezoelectric material used in the field is mainly lead zirconate titanate (PZT).
However, PZT contains lead as an element in the A site and is thus considered problematic for its influence on the environment. Accordingly, piezoelectric materials using lead-free perovskite-type oxides have been proposed.
As piezoelectric materials consisting of lead-free perovskite-type oxides, those materials including Bi as an element in the A site have been extensively studied. For example, Bi (Zn0.5, Ti0.5) O3 is described in Matthew R. Suchomel, et al. in Chem. Mater. 2006, 18, 4987-4989. According to a theoretical calculation in simulations, Bi (Zn0.5, Ti0.5) O3 has been reported to have high piezoelectric properties or a high Curie temperature. However, the poling procedure of Bi (Zn0.5, Ti0.5) O3 has been known to be difficult, and there is no example of reports in which its poling procedure was successfully achieved and its piezoelectric characteristics and Curie temperature were actually measured. The difficulty in poling procedure of Bi (Zn0.5, Ti0.5) O3 is considered attributable to its high Curie temperature and high anisotropy (c/a=1.21), but the reason for the difficulty is not revealed.
Because of the difficulty in poling procedure of Bi (Zn0.5, Ti0.5) O3, expected high piezoelectric characteristics cannot be exhibited, thus making its applications limited.
H. Nagata, et al., Ceramic Transactions, Vol. 167, No. 2, pp. 213 to 221, 2005 have described (Bi0.5, Na0.5) TiO3, that is, a material having Bi and Na employed as a composite in the A site.
However, although (Bi0.5, Na0.5) TiO3 exhibits excellent piezoelectric characteristics at or near room temperature, there is a problem that it shows abrupt degradation in the piezoelectric characteristics at 150° C. or more and is therefore not suitable for use in devices that operate at high temperatures.
Further, when an alkali metal is contained as a component in a piezoelectric body, the piezoelectric body when used as a thin film is not suitable for silicon process because of its deliquescency or the like, thus posing the problem of durability as a bulk piezoelectric body used in devices such as piezoelectric transducers. Accordingly, the piezoelectric material is desirably free from an alkali metal.
The present invention has been accomplished in light of such background art and provides a piezoelectric material having a high Curie temperature and solving the difficulty in poling procedure, employing a Bi-based piezoelectric body which is excellent in performance as the piezoelectric body.


A method for decorative molding capable of reducing a preparation time at the time of replacing a mold and expecting improvement in positioning accuracy of a decorative pattern in a molded article includes supplying a film on which a decorative pattern is formed between a first mold and a second mold in a mold open state of a mold, imaging a mold-side alignment mark recorded in the mold and a film-side alignment mark recorded in the film by a camera, positioning the film with respect to the mold by moving the film so that the film-side alignment mark comes close to the mold-side alignment mark, injecting resin into the mold in a mold closed state in which the film is sandwiched between the first mold and the second mold and cooling the resin to form a molded article and opening the mold and taking out the molded article in which the decorative pattern of the film is transferred to the surface.

A method for decorative molding in which a decorative pattern is transferred to the surface of a molded article formed of resin by injecting a molten resin into a mold for molding to decorate the surface at the same time as the resin molding is known. In this method, the mold is closed and the molten resin is injected between a first mold and a second mold forming a cavity of the mold for molding in a state where a film on which the decorative pattern is printed is sandwiched and the resin is cooled, then, a molded article is taken out by opening the first mold and the second mold, thereby transferring a portion of the decorative pattern on the film to the surface of the molded article. As the film, a belt-like film is used.
In Japanese Patent No. 3621961 (Patent Literature 1), a technique of correcting positional displacement of the film by driving the position of the belt-like body with respect to the mold for molding in a longitudinal direction and a width direction is disclosed.
The method for decorative molding and the technique of Patent Literature 1 will be explained with reference to FIG. 7.
Here, a first mold 21 forming the cavity of the mold for molding is shown by a solid line and a second mold 22 is shown by a virtual line. A roll-shaped film wound body 4 is installed in an unwinding part 1. A film 7 in the film wound body 4 is pushed to a feeding motor shaft 6 by a pinch roller 5 and drawn out from the film wound body 4 by driving of the feeding motor shaft 6. The film 7 passes between the first mold 21 and the second mold 22 in the mold-open state and is stretched in a winding part 3. In the winding part 3, the film 7 is pushed onto the surface of a pull-in motor shaft 9 by a winding pinch roller 10. The film 7 passing the pull-in motor shaft 9 is connected to a used film wound body 11.
The first mold 21 and the second mold 22 are closed and the molten resin is injected and cooled, thereby transferring the decorative pattern of the film 7 to the surface of the molded article. A used section of the film 7 from which a portion of the decorative pattern is removed is wound by the used film wound body 11 by opening the first mold 21 and the second mold 22 and driving the feeding motor shaft 6 and the pull-in motor shaft 9. At the same time, an unused section of the film 7 is supplied from the film wound body 4 between the first mold 21 and the second mold 22.
Generally, a decorative film and a functional film are already printed or transferred/laminated on the film 7 in the film wound body 4, and the film 7 in the state in which tension is acted is installed so that flat surfaces on mold parting surfaces of the first mold 21 and the second mold 22 are parallel to the film 7.
Next, an already-printed film-side alignment mark 15 is set to have enough illuminance to be detected by a camera 13 when being lit up by a lighting device 14, and further, a position of the film-side alignment mark 15 reflected on a mirror unit 12 is detected by the camera 13. Positioning is performed by moving the film 7 in the longitudinal direction and the width direction so that the film-side alignment mark 15 the position of which is detected by the camera 13 comes close to a setting mark previously set inside a camera view.
Next, the film 7 is fixed to the first mold 21 by suction or/and fixed by a clamp jig 8.
Next, the second mold 22 is moved to be closed with the first mold, then, the molten resin is injected to form a molded article. At this time, a decorative film on the film 7 is transferred to the molded article. After cooling, the molded article is taken out. The film 7 in the used section is wound by the used film wound body 11 after the molding.

Method and apparatus for decorative molding

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


This invention relates to a photoluminescent layer in the optical and adjoining spectral regions based on a solid solution of organic dyes. The photoluminescent layer consists of organic dye molecules with a low dye concentration and a matrix material of metal oxides, with the matrix material having a slightly sub-stoichiometric oxygen content. A method and a device for producing the photoluminescent layer are described.

A more or less effective luminescence conversion has already been used for some time in various fields, for example in radiation detector technology. In general, functional units that are used for luminescence conversion are based on absorption/emission processes. Utilized is the fact that there is a shift of luminescence to longer wavelengths compared to absorption in most cases, for energetic reasons. This phenomenon can be used, for example, for spectral matching of detector sensitivity to a radiation source. Furthermore, the property of luminescence radiation no longer to be bound to the direction of the incident radiation is of interest, since concentration of radiation in a medium can be realized by total reflection at the interfaces.
A recent example is the production of "white" light by way of partial conversion of the radiation from a blue luminescent diode. The LUCOLED (P. Schlotter, R. Schmidt, J. Schneider, Appl. Phys. A 64, 417 (1997)) utilizes this principle. A portion of the high-energy blue luminescent radiation is absorbed by a suitable layer in the beam direction and is emitted again shifted toward lower energies, so that a white color impression is produced by additive mixing.
DE 196 25 622 A1 describes such a light-radiating semiconductor component with a semiconductor body emitting radiation and with a luminescence conversion element. The semiconductor body has a sequence of semiconductor layers that emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength λ of ≦520 nm, and the semiconductor conversion element converts radiation of a first spectral subregion of the radiation emitted by the semiconductor body from radiation originating from a first wavelength region into radiation of a second wavelength region, so that the semiconductor component emits radiation from a second spectral subregion of the first wavelength region and radiation of the second wavelength region. Thus, for example, radiation emitted by the semiconductor body is absorbed with spectral selectivity by the luminescence conversion element and is emitted in the longer-wavelength region (in the second wavelength region). In this method, organic dye molecules are imbedded in an organic matrix.
DE 196 38 667 A1 also discloses a semiconductor component with a semiconductor body emitting radiation and a luminescence conversion element that emits mixed-color light, with the luminescence conversion element having a luminous inorganic substance, in particular a phosphor.
Besides spectral suitability with regard to the corresponding application, such a layer has two principal requirements: The photoluminescence quantum yield must be high, usually clearly greater than 50%, and its stability must permit long service lives, usually more than 10,000 hours.
The basic concept for realizing such a layer with organic dyes consists of separating and immobilizing molecules in a matrix so that they behave like monomers with optical properties similar to a liquid solution, particularly with high quantum yield. Polymers and sol-gel layers are known as matrices.
Mixed layers that were produced from the organic dyes 3,4,9,10-perylenetetracarboxylic acid dianhydride (PTCDA) and SiO2 by co-vaporization onto quartz substrates under high vacuum are described in H. Fröb, K. Kurpiers, K. Leo, CLEO'98, San Francisco/CA, May 1998, 210; 1998 OSA Technical Digest Series Vol. 6, published by Optical Society of America ("The Fröb publication"). The concentration range studied was 0.65–100 vol. %. It was observed that the absorption and emission spectra for decreasing concentrations gradually approach those in a liquid solution, and for the lowest concentration a photoluminescence quantum yield of about 50% is achieved at room temperature (FIG. 6, corresponding to FIG. 2 of the Fröb publication).
A device used for this purpose is described by M. A. Herman, H. Sitter, Molecular Beam Epitaxy, Ch. 2 (Sources of Atomic and Molecular Beams), Springer 1989, pp. 29–59. A dye vaporizer and a metal oxide vaporizer are provided in a vacuum chamber, whose vapor beam is aimed at a substrate, with the dye vaporizer being cup-shaped and consisting, viewed from the inside toward the outside, of a quartz cuvette, a graphite block, a heater, a shield, and a jacket, with a thermocouple being placed between the quartz cuvette and the graphite block in the bottom center of the cup.
FIG. 7 shows the normalized absorption and emission of 30-nm thick layers for a pure and a diluted dye layer. It is important that the spectra of the diluted layers can be fitted to those of monomers with their typical vibrational progression. It is found that the line width remains constant for all low concentrations; its enlargement compared to that observed in liquid solution is not surprising, considering the inhomogeneous conditions of the surroundings of the molecule.
The authors hold a weakening Förster transfer because of the increasing mean molecular separation responsible for the increase of quantum yields toward lower concentrations, and they expect a maximum at about 0.1 vol. %, but of course without experimental confirmation of this. No predictions are made about the lifetime, with regard to which all organic conversion layers so far have foundered.

Photo-luminescence layer in the optical spectral region and in adjacent spectral regions


A stackable storage container for storing articles has a box having a bottom, a pair of opposed side walls, and a pair of opposed end walls. The walls extend up from the bottom to a free edge, and the opposed walls angle away from each other as they extend from the bottom towards the free edge. The bottom and the walls define a storage space for articles. The free edge defines an opening for access to the storage space. A cover has a top and a downwardly depending lip for engaging the walls adjacent to the free edge for releasably retaining the cover on the box and an upward projecting rim for engaging the walls of a second box adjacent its bottom for releasably retaining the second box on the cover. One of the end walls has a cut-out therein opening onto the free edge. A ledge bordering the cut-out and projecting outboard has a track for receiving and retaining a movable insert panel there for selectably opening and closing the cut-out. The track being arranged so that the panel when inserted into the track is at an angle to the end wall having the cut-out such that the upper region of the panel extends further from the wall than the lower region of the panel.

It is common to store articles not currently being used in containers, whether merchandise in a store or shoes at home. However, it is a common problem finding locations to store these containers and it is unusual to have the opportunity to have only one level on the floor or shelf; therefore the person is typically required to stack these containers upon one another to store them. In fact it is quite common to stack containers located in storage rooms or closets. Ideally, all the storage containers being used are rectangular and of the same size, thereby allowing relatively easy stacking. However, difficulty occurs when the stack of containers reaches a height and are not prefectly placed on top of each other such that the stack begins to lean and becomes unstable.
In addition, with the stack of containers it is difficult to determine what is in a lower container and remove the contents without unstacking all of the containers and then re-stacking them afterwards. In addition, the constant unstacking and stacking of the containers tends to result in the person not stacking the containers as neatly as possible and therein inducing the likelihood of the stack being unstable and leaning.
It would be desirable to have a stackable storage container wherein the shape of the container lends itself to sturdy stable stacking and allows access to the storage area in lower containers.


A method for model-based control and regulation of an internal combustion engine. An emission class for operating the engine is read from a first library by an optimizer; a maximum mechanical component load is read from a second library by the optimizer using the engine type; and the emission class and the component load are set as mandatory for a combustion model and a gas path model. Injection system target values for actuating injection system actuators are calculated using the combustion model based on a target torque. Gas path target values for actuating gas path actuators are calculated using the gas path model based on the target torque. A quality measurement is calculated by the optimizer based on the injection system and gas path target values. The quality measurement is minimized by the optimizer by changing the injection system and gas path target values within a prediction horizon. The injection system and gas path target values are set as decisive for adjusting the operating point of the engine by the optimizer using the minimized quality measurement.

The invention relates to a method for model-based control and regulation of an internal combustion engine in the case of which an emission class for operation of the internal combustion engine is read in by an optimizer from a first library, a maximum mechanical component load is read out by the optimizer from a second library on the basis of the internal combustion engine type, the emission class and the maximum component load are set as binding for a combustion model and a gas path model, and in the case of which, as a function of a setpoint moment, injection system setpoint values for actuating the injection system actuators are calculated via the combustion model and gas path setpoint values for actuating the gas path actuators are calculated via a gas path model.
The characteristics of an internal combustion engine are decisively determined via an engine control unit as a function of a power requirement. To this end, corresponding characteristic lines and characteristic fields are applied in the current software of the engine control unit. The actuating variables of the internal combustion engine are calculated via said characteristic lines and characteristic fields from the power requirement, for example, a setpoint moment, for example, the start of injection and a necessary rail pressure. These characteristic lines/characteristic fields are populated with data at the manufacturer of the internal combustion engine on a test stand. The plurality of these characteristic lines/characteristic fields and the correlation of the characteristic lines/characteristic fields to one another nevertheless result in a high adjustment outlay.
Attempts are therefore made in practice to reduce the adjustment outlay by the use of mathematical models. DE 10 2006 004 516 B3 thus describes, for example, a Bayes network with probability tables in order to specify an injection quantity and US 2011/0172897 a method for adaptation of the start of injection as well as the injection quantity via combustion models by means of neuronal networks. It is critical here that only trained data are mapped which only have to be learned in the case of a test stand run.
US 2016/0025020 A1 discloses a model-based regulation method for the gas path of an internal combustion engine. The gas path comprises both the air side and the exhaust gas side in addition to exhaust gas recirculation. In a first step of the method, the current operating situation of the internal combustion engine is ascertained from the measurement variables of the gas path, for example, the charge air temperature or the NOx concentration. In a second step, a quality measure within a prediction horizon is then also calculated from the measurement variables via a physical model of the gas path. The actuating signals for the actuators of the gas path are then in turn specified in a third step from the quality measure and the operating situation. The indicated method relates exclusively to the gas path and is based on a linearized gas path model. A loss of information is unavoidable as a result of the linearization.

Method for the model-based control and regulation of an internal combustion engine


An adjustable wrench and method for loosening or tightening a fastener includes a handle member having a fixed jaw segment, a substantially transverse channel therethrough, and a void in communication with the channel. Also, a movable jaw member having a serrated toothed rack that is slidably engaged within the channel. In addition, a beam that is slidably engaged within the void, the beam including a toothed rack that selectably matably engages with the movable jaw toothed rack to help secure the jaw in position. Finally, included is a trigger member that is pivotally attached to the movable jaw member and is slidably engaged with the handle member, the trigger facilitates manual movement of the movable jaw from the closed state to the open state and vice versa, when the movable jaw toothed rack and the beam toothed rack are selectively disengaged.

Manually hand operated adjustable wrenches having variable jaw adjustment within a range, for use with a particular size fastener are old in the art. The most traditional type is typically called a crescent wrench. The design of a crescent wrench includes a movable jaw slide and a guide track that is opposed to a fixed jaw, wherein the movable jaw is adjusted by means of a worm gear that is supported within the housing that forms an end portion of the adjustable wrench handle. Typically, the worm gear functions as a thumb wheel, wherein rotating the worm gear causes the jaw to move toward and away from the fixed jaw. One issue with the crescent wrench is the speed of adjustment that is attainable, thus to have a higher speed of adjustment with the worm gear and thumb wheel would require a steeper helical angle to be constructed for the cut of the worm gear, however, this steeper angle decreases the ability of the movable jaw to reliably hold a secure position upon the fastener, especially when the fastener is under a high level of force as against movable jaw, in effect causing the worm gear to rotate in a manner to loosen or in other words drive the two jaw faces apart. This results in causing the problem of rounding off of the fastener points which is undesirable and can also cause injury to the user's hand, in that as the wrench slips around the points of the fastener while the user is applying force to the end of the handle furthest from the jaws can result in scraped and cut knuckles. As a practical matter, the steepness of the helical angle of the thumb driven worm gear is about 30 degrees off of a perpendicular axis of rotation for the worm gear.
Another drawback of the typical traditional crescent wrench, is that in order to adjust the jaws relative to one another the user's hand must move from its advantageous position on the handle which is at the furthest distance from the jaw portion of the handle that results in maximum torque applied from the force of the user's hand, wherein the users hand to adjust the jaws relative to one another must be moved toward the jaw portion of the handle for the user's fingers to engage the worm gear to facilitate jaw adjustment. This requirement of the user having to move their hand on the handle of the wrench can be especially inconvenient when the wrench is being used in a tight or confined space around the fastener. Thus, the aforementioned description of a typical crescent wrench has identified three major problems, the first problem being the slow speed of adjustment between the jaws, the second problem being the inconvenience of the user having to reposition their hand on the handle to make the jaw adjustment, and the third problem being the lack of a secure holding of a position of the movable jaw especially while under load from the function of tightening or loosening the fastener causing not only damage to the fastener itself but also potential injury to the user's hand. These three problems have been well recognized in the prior art and the following is a partial summary of some of the solutions that have been put forward in the prior art of manually hand operated adjustable wrenches. One type of adjustable wrench in the prior art utilizes a serrated tooth rack, wherein a pair of separated tooth racks matably engage with one rack on the movable jaw segment and another rack on a spring loaded plunger, wherein the spring urges the racks to matably engage thus securing the movable jaw segment in a particular position relative to the fixed jaw segment. To move the movable jaw segment the plunger is manually pulled back against its urging to disengage the tooth racks, thus allowing the movable jaw segment to freely move.
One example is given in U.S. Pat. No. 1,501,214 to Garrison that discloses a sliding jaw wrench wherein the lower jaw is movable and lockable against an acute angle serrated tooth rack interface with a mating serrated rod or plunger. In Garrison the rod is selectively manually moved by a thumb piece to allow free adjustment of the movable jaw segment, and when in use the user must manually close the immovable jaw segment against the fastener and then simultaneously release the rod for the serrated toothed rack interface to engage thus locking the movable jaw in a secure position. Although Garrison overcomes the problem of the movable jaw not being securely locked in position by virtue of the toothed rack interface, there is a problem in that the movable jaw must be manually positioned by the user's second hand as against the fastener while the users first hand must manually hold the rod away from the movable jaw segment at the same time, this can be especially difficult in tight or confined areas around the fastener. Another prior art example is in U.S. Pat. No. 2,724,301 to Parent et al. that discloses a sliding jaw wrench wherein the lower jaw is movable and lockable against an acute angle serrated rack interface with a mating serrated block that has a rack interface similar to Garrison in structure and function, with the exception that the block axially slides on a pin transverse to the jaw faces.
Also, U.S. Pat. No. 5,152,198 to Schmitz, Jr., disclosed is a snap lock adjustable wrench that utilizes a spring to urge the movable jaw closed and is otherwise similar to Garrison in having an acute angle serrated rack interface between the jaw and the rod, one additional feature is an axially locking threaded knob on the rod to compress the serrated rack interface. Again, U.S. Pat. No. 1,523,093 to Wilcox, disclosed is an adjustable sliding jaw wrench that is similar to Garrison in structure and function with the exception of the spring loaded rod being shorter and having two sandwich plates that have their respective serrated racks offset or staggered which is to allow a finer adjustment of the movable jaw. Further, in U.S. Pat. No. 1,053,181 to Iring, disclosed is an adjustable wrench utilizing a movable lower jaw with a serrated rack, however, being matably engaged with a parallel positioned serrated rack bar that is mounted on a spring loaded pivot, thus the bar must be manually disengaged by one hand while the movable jaw is selectably positioned by the other hand as in the other prior art examples given in this paragraph. A final prior art example in this area is in U.S. Pat. No. 1,397,214 to Hose the discloses a wrench with a mating acute angle serrated rack similar to Wilcox except for the spring loaded rod not being two pieces and the rack being inclined slightly with the stated purpose to allow for a more firm engagement of the mating rack when the jaws are loaded from tightening or loosening of the fastener, in addition the incline acts to allow easier sliding of the mating racks for pushing the movable jaw closed with set screws that can further hold the rod axially.
None of the aforementioned prior examples address the problem of the speed with which the movable jaw can be placed into its selected position and all require the use of two hands to both manually disengage the rod serrated tooth interface from the movable jaw serrated tooth interface and at the same time requiring the user to manually move the movable jaw into the selected position, consuming both of the user's hands at the same time and causing difficulty where there is a tight or confined space around the fastener.
Other prior art approaches to the manually adjustable wrench have a higher degree of complexity such as in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. U.S. 2002/0112574 A1 to Marks that discloses a slide switch adjustable wrench, allowing through a mechanical linkage adjustment of the movable jaw from the handle portion opposite of the jaw portion thus overcoming the two hands required problem as previously discussed and assisting in the speed of adjustment issue of the movable jaw, however, as Marks still uses the helical thumb wheel to adjust the movable jaw there's still the aforementioned issue of the movable jaw not being secured in a selected position as against the fastener. Another solution is given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,490 to Carlmark that utilizes an adjustable spanner having a crescent gear segment meshed with a toothed rack on the movable jaw with the disadvantage being, of having to initiate a separate locking device to fix the movable jaw position.
Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,791 to Seward, III utilized is a geared thumb wheel that mates with a rack gear on the movable jaw, being similar to Carlmark in requiring a separate selectable lock to engage the rack gear of the movable jaw to secure the movable jaw's position. Further, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,954 to Lenker, a pivoted handle is used having a pinion that engages the toothed rack movable jaw not having any auxiliary device for locking the movable jaw into a selected position other than the force exerted on the pinion that is that the end portion of the handle upon the movable jaw rack. Finally, in U.S. Pat. No. 1,317,546 to Bryant disclosed is an adjustable wrench with a spring loaded thumb pivot that engages and disengages a serrated rack from a slide bolt for locking the movable jaw into a spring loaded position from a lever with the thumb pivot also acting to open the movable jaw by an arm against the lever when the slide bolt is disengaged from the serrated rack operating through a complex linkage, which does allow one-handed operation for setting and locking the movable jaw, however, the adjustable wrench must be held near the jaw portion and not the handle end portion that opposes the jaw for proper and efficient use as previously described.
What is needed is an adjustable wrench for manual use that only requires one hand operation from the user with the user's hand positioned in its normal location on the wrench handle which is on the end portion opposite of the wrench jaw portion, thus to allow the wrench jaws to be positioned in tight or confined spaces around the fastener and for a way to quickly and easily set the movable jaw into the selected position and have the movable jaw securely locked into the selected position, thus having the added benefit of one handed ratcheting of the fastener.


A computer-implemented method of detecting memory that may be reclaimed from application data objects that are no longer in use. When at least a first virtual memory region is newly committed for heap block storage, a pre-leak detection scan of other virtual memory regions can be performed to identify at least one non-pointer data item in the other virtual memory regions, the non-pointer data item comprising data that corresponds to an address of a memory location within the first virtual memory region, but that is not a memory pointer. A leak detection scan can be performed to identify potential memory pointers, wherein the identified non-pointer data item is excluded from the identified potential memory pointers. A list of leaked heap blocks can be output. Each leaked heap block can exclusively comprise memory locations that do not have a corresponding potential memory pointer.

The embodiments disclosed within this specification relate to runtime analysis of application program code. More particularly, the embodiments relate to detecting memory leaks in an application.
A memory leak is a particular type of memory consumption by an application where the application is unable to appropriately release system memory it has acquired. A memory leak can diminish the performance of the system on which the application is instantiated by reducing the amount of available memory. If too much of the allocated memory remains un-released, the amount of available memory will be excessively depleted, and all or part of the system typically will cease to function properly. For example, the application may fail or the system may slow down unacceptably due to thrashing, which is a degenerate situation on the system where increasing resources are used to do a decreasing amount of work. A software application that leaks memory excessively can run out of available virtual memory and can, as a result, cease to function, which is commonly known as a crash.
Techniques such as garbage collection are sometimes used in an attempt to reclaim memory from application data objects that are no longer in use. Garbage collection works effectively only in certain environments such those that are available for Java and managed code. Garbage collection is not very efficacious for native code (ie. C/C++) programs. The difference is that Java/managed code treats all object references dynamically such that the objects are relocatable when a garbage collection occurs. The garbage collector recognizes all references as such, and can clean up any objects whose reference count has dropped to zero. Native code programs use actual data pointers that do not change while the program is running; the objects referenced by these static pointers are not reference counted and thus can be leaked if the situation arises where no pointers reference them.

Pre-leak detection scan to identify non-pointer data to be excluded from a leak detection scan

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION


An image coding apparatus includes a quantization matrix coding unit configured to code quantization matrices, wherein the quantization matrix coding unit is configured to code a difference between a coefficient to be coded and a coefficient adjacent to the coefficient to be coded, and to use, when coding the difference having a positive value, a coding table that uses a code of a bit number equal to or less than that of a code used to code the difference having a negative value having the same absolute value as the absolute value of the positive value.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image coding apparatus, an image coding method, an image decoding apparatus, an image decoding method, and a storage medium. More particularly, the present invention relates to a coding/decoding method of a quantization matrix in an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a compression recording standard of a moving image, there is known H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (hereinafter referred to as H.264). (ITU-T H.264 (March 2010) Advanced video coding for generic audiovisual services) Regarding H.264, each element of a quantization matrix can be changed into an arbitrary value by coding scaling list information. According to chapter 22.214.171.124.1.1 of H.264, by adding a delta scale being a difference value between an element and the previous element, each element of the quantization matrix can take an arbitrary value.
Regarding H.264, a delta scale, which is the above-described difference value, is coded by a method called signed Exp-Golomb coding illustrated in FIG. 5A. For example, if the difference between an element in the matrix and its previous element is 0, a binary code 1 is coded. If the difference is −2, a binary code 00101 is coded. According to this coding method, the length of the binary code is increased as the absolute value of the value to be coded is increased. Thus, regardless of whether the difference value is a negative value or a positive value, if they have the same absolute value, they have the same code length.
Further, regarding H.264, elements of the quantization matrix are scanned in the direction from the element at the upper left corner of the two-dimensional quantization matrix, which corresponds to a low frequency component, to the element at the bottom right corner, which corresponds to a high frequency component. Generally, in performing image coding, elements corresponding to low frequency components are reduced and elements corresponding to high frequency components are increased so that they match the visual feature of the user. Thus, the value of the element of the scanned quantization coefficient at the lower right is greater than the value of the element at the upper left. Thus, regarding the difference between an element to be coded and its previous element, the probability of the difference being a positive value is higher than the probability of the difference being a negative value.
However, since the code length of the positive value of the signed Exp-Golomb code used in H.264 is equal to that of the negative value, the amount of code of the quantization matrix will be increased.

Image coding apparatus, image coding method, image decoding apparatus, image decoding method, and storage medium


A wheeled support structure assists in supporting a cutting head of a string trimmer within a cutting plane which is parallel to, but vertically spaced above, ground surface. The wheeled support structure includes a wheel, and an extension shaft having an upper end which is connectable to a main shaft of the string trimmer rearwardly of the cutting head, and a lower end which is journally coupled to the wheel. In such a manner, the wheel is oriented in a rolling plane which is substantially transverse to the cutting plane within which the cutting head of the string trimmer is supported, and is capable of rolling movement over the ground surface. The wheel thereby establishes a point about which the cutting head of the string trimmer may be pivoted by an operator while assisting the operator in maintaining the cutting head of the string trimmer within the cutting plane. Vegetation can thus be cut by the cutting head of the string trimmer at a substantially uniform height throughout an arcuate segment.

Lawn string trimmers are widely used as a means to trim vegetation in areas not easily accessible to lawn mowers. However, conventional lawn string trimmers must be supported physically by the user above the ground so that the vegetation is trimmed at the desired height. Prolonged use of conventional lawn trimmers, therefore, is quite fatiguing.
In addition, it is difficult for a user to support the lawn trimmer to achieve a constant cutting height resulting in height variations of the cut vegetation. As a result, the use of lawn trimmers is typically reserved for those vegetation regions where such height variations will not be noticed and/or that cannot be reached by other powered trimming tools.
The art has recognized the problems associated with conventional lawn string trimmers briefly described above and has proposed a variety of devices which provide supplemental support for the lawn string trimmer during use. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,894,916 to Nimz et al, a single wheel support structure is provided which is attached to the shaft of a lawn string trimmer so as to provide rolling support of the trimmer cutting head over the surface of the ground.
The wheel of the support structure proposed by the Nimz et al '916 patent, moreover, is oriented so that it remains in a plane that is parallel to the cutting plane of the trimmer's head. That is, according to the Nimz et al patent, the wheel is mounted for rolling movement to the plate bracket via a cotter pin which inserted through a rigidly fixed axle. As a result of such orientation, the support wheel of the Nimz et al '916 patent may be brought to bear against a vertical surface (in which case the trimmer's cutting head is supported in a horizontal plane) or a horizontal surface (in which case the trimmer's cutting head is supported in a vertical plane).
As can be appreciated from the prior art represented by the Nimz et al '916 patent, the orientation of the support wheel precludes movement of the string trimmer along the ground surface so as to trim vegetation along a substantially constant horizontal cutting plane in the absence of a vertical surface being present. Thus, the supplemental trimmer support structure proposed by the Nimz et al '916 patent is unsuitable for use in trimming vegetation in a relatively open space.
It would therefore be quite advantageous if supplemental support structures were provided which enables a lawn string trimmer to be supported a relatively fixed distance above the ground's surface and which could be rolled easily along such surface to allow a relatively open expanse of vegetation to be trimmed at a desired fixed height. It is towards providing structure which attains such advantages that the present invention is directed.
Broadly, the present invention is embodied in a wheeled support structure for lawn string trimmers whereby the support caster is oriented in a vertical plane which is perpendicular to the horizontal cutting plane of the string trimmer. More specifically, the present invention includes an elongate extension rod having an upper end fixed (preferably by means of a removable bracket assembly) to the shaft of the trimmer. A ground-engaging caster is mounted to the opposite end of the extension rod such that the extension rod (and hence the trimmer to which it is attached) is capable of swivelling movement relative to the ground.
The extension rod is of sufficient length so that the operator can maintain the cutting head of the trimmer in substantial parallel alignment with the ground. Moreover, as noted briefly above, the journalled attachment of the caster to the lower end of the extension rod is such that the caster wheel is oriented in a plane which at all times is transverse to the cutting plane of the trimmer head. In this manner, therefore, the support structure of this invention allows the operator to supportably move the trimmer over the ground and easily change the direction of such movement without disrupting the substantially parallel orientation between the cutting head and the ground being trimmed. As a result, the vegetation on the ground can be trimmed to a substantially uniform level.
Further aspects and advantages of this invention will become more clear after careful consideration is given to the following detailed description of the preferred exemplary embodiment thereof.

Wheeled support structure for lawn string trimmers


Systems, apparatuses and methods may provide for technology that assigns confidence levels to data bins containing similarity data and length of stay data, wherein the similarity data and the length of stay data correspond to a plurality of previous admissions. Additionally, the confidence levels may be weighted based on a distribution metric that assigns higher weights to denser regions. A length of stay of a target admission may be predicted based on the weighted confidence levels.

When a new patient is admitted to a medical center (e.g., hospital, emergency care facility), nurses and/or doctors may provide an estimate of the length of stay of the patient in the medical center based on an initial diagnosis and/or test results. The estimate may be revised over time as procedures are undertaken, medicines are administered and the treatment progresses. Numerous revisions to the length of stay estimate may present difficulties to the medical center, the patient, as well as the patient's family. For example, the uncertainty may hinder efforts to effectively manage medical center resources/manpower.
Moreover, the uncertainty may lower patient morale and prevent the family from effectively planning for the discharge of the patient. Other challenges such as frequent readmissions of the patient to the medical center may also lower morale and increase health care payer and/or provider costs.

Automatic prediction of patient length of stay and detection of medical center readmission diagnoses


In one preferred embodiment, a patient moisture control support surface coverlet to draw moisture from a patient reposed thereon, the coverlet including: an outer layer of an air-tight, water-vapor-permeable material; an inner layer of an air- and vapor-impermeable material underlying the outer layer and sealed to the lower surface of the outer layer to define therebetween a volume to underlie a substantial portion of the patient; apparatus to introduce a flow of air to at least a portion of the volume; and apparatus to permit the flow of air to exit at least a portion of the volume.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to moisture control therapy generally and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to novel patient moisture control support surface coverlet and method that are economical and easily used on a variety of supporting structures.
2. Background Art
A major problem in health care facilities is with bed-bound patients who cannot turn or roll over. Failure of a patient to turn or roll over relatively frequently causes restriction of blood flow in the area of bony protruberances on a patient's body which, in turn, causes ulcerated bed, or pressure sores. Such sores are extremely long-healing and, with a chronically or terminally ill patient, frequently occur. According to hospital industry sources several years ago, it was estimated that to cure a single bed sore cost society an average of $40,000 and many patients died from bed sores.
Recently, "low-loss air beds" or mattress structures have been developed for the treatment and prevention of bed sores. In such a bed, typically, the standard mattress is replaced with a plurality of air bags disposed perpendicularly to the axis of the bed from its head to its foot. A plurality of small streams of air flow from the upper surfaces of the air bags which are covered by a polyurethane coated, vapor-permeable sheet which has a breathable, loose weave, uncoated, Nylon backing layer. The streams of air flow from the air bags, through the backing layer, and along the under surface of the vapor-permeable sheet to dry any moisture vapor which permeates through the sheet and, therefore, help remove a cause of bed sores and reduce the frequency of bedding changes. An air bed system of the type generally described above is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,768, issued Jun. 8, 1993, and titled BED SYSTEM, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference hereinto.
While low-loss air beds and mattress structures have greatly improved the care given immobile patients, such devices of conventional construction are relatively expensive because of the cost of construction of the air bags and because the devices require the use of air blowers that must produce a relatively high pressure air output to inflate the air bags.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide patient moisture control device and method that are economical.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such device that can be used with a variety of supporting structures.
Other objects of the present invention, as well as particular features, elements, and advantages thereof, will be elucidated in, or be apparent from, the following description and the accompanying drawing figures.

Patient moisture control support surface coverlet


A power transmission system of a hydraulically driven working vehicle comprises: a prime mover supported by a vehicle frame, the prime mover including a prime mover output shaft projecting in the fore-and-aft direction of the vehicle; a pump housing; a hydraulic pump disposed in the pump housing, the hydraulic pump including a pump shaft projecting from the pump housing in the fore-and-aft direction of the vehicle so as to be drivingly connected to the prime mover output shaft; a first hydraulic motor disposed outside the pump housing so as to be fluidly connected to the hydraulic pump; a transaxle supported by one of front and rear portions of the vehicle frame, the transaxle including a transaxle housing, a pair of axles disposed in the transaxle housing so as to be driven by the hydraulic motor, and a differential gear unit disposed in the transaxle housing so as to be drivingly interposed between the hydraulic motor and the pair of axles; a PTO shaft; and a working power train extracting a part of power transmitted from the prime mover output shaft to the pump shaft and transmitting the extracted power to the PTO shaft.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a power transmission system for a hydraulically driven working vehicle, especially, for a large-size vehicle.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, there is a well-known hydraulically driven working vehicle, equipped with a hydraulic pump disposed in a housing and drivingly connected to a prime mover (engine), and with a hydraulic motor disposed outside the housing and fluidly connected to the hydraulic pump so as to drive an axle. U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,828 discloses an example of this type of vehicle, wherein a hydraulic pump is disposed in a pump housing, a hydraulic motor for driving an axle is disposed in a transaxle housing separated from the pump housing, and a belt transmission system is interposed between a vertical output shaft of an upright engine and a working device.
The upright arrangement of the prime mover (engine) with the vertical output shaft is available because the vehicle is small-sized, particularly, in the fore-and-aft direction. If a working vehicle having such an arrangement of hydraulic pump and motor is large-sized, horizontal arrangement of a prime mover (engine) with a horizontal shaft is advantageous for ensuring a large space for other equipment including a working device (such as a midship mower) in the vertical direction. However, the thing to be considered is layout of a power transmission system for drivingly connecting the prime mover to the hydraulic pump and the working device without hindering arrangement, attachment and detachment of the working device.

Power transmission system of hydraulically driven working vehicle


An aromatic compound containing farinaceous flour, salt, water and at least one essential oil with aroma-giving properties are provided. A carrier oil is preferably provided to lubricate the mixture and blend, dilute and diffuse the essential oil through the compound. The product is made by forming a mixture of ingredients following by heating, cooling, and agglomeration. In use, the aromatic compound can be manually manipulated so that an aroma pleasing to the user emanates from the compound.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of aromatherapeutic products. In particular, the present invention is concerned with an aromatic modeling compound containing a mixture of farinaceous flour, salt, water, a carrier oil and at least one essential oil with aroma-giving properties.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The term "aromatherapy" dates to 1928 when it was first used by a chemist in a French perfume company. It traces its roots to ancient civilizations which used aromatic herb and flower oils for healing purposes.
In more modern times, some people have found not only nice smells but also benefits of a therapeutic nature by inhaling particular aromas from scented lotions, soaps, sprays, candles and the like. Most of these aromatherapeutic products are meant to used during bathing, body care, or to scent a particular area of the body. A few of the scents popular for their therapeutic effects are essential oils of lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint and rosemary. While useful at home, the products of the prior art generally cannot be used at work, while traveling, running errands or the like because of bulky packaging, potential spillage, or other problems with portability and versatility. The perceived benefits include a soothing or relaxing effect attributable to the natural characteristics and scents of the products which, in contrast to synthetic fragrances, have the unique ability to penetrate the skin and enter the bloodstream, interacting with the body's own chemistry to promote proper balance of health and well being.
It is also well known to provide self-sustaining or semi-self sustaining compounds which have a putty-like consistency for amusement. Such products include toy compounds sold under the trademarks SILLY PUTTY and PLAY-DOH. Children enjoy the ability to shape these compounds and react well to the colorful appearances, although these products have no perceived smell or certainly none with aromatherapeutic aspects.
I have perceived a need for a product which provides a relaxing and soothing effect through a synergistic combination of tactile and olfactory input, two of the senses less commonly used for information gathering.
There is also a need for a product which is non-tacky and not sticky and can be carried with a person for idle grasping in the hand and which has a pleasing aroma so as not to disturb others.
There is further a need for a product which comforts the user and provides a localized pleasing smell to abate the effect of other less desirable odors.
In addition, there is a need for a product which can be played with in the hands and provides aromatherapy benefits during use; with lingering aromatherapy benefits after use by the transfer of fragrance from an essential oil scent from the product to the user's skin.

Aromatic compound containing essential oil and method of producing same


A strap retainer comprising a flexible elongated member is formed in a partially closed loop. The elongated member may have an approximately straight segment near one end, and an L-shaped restraining member is positioned on the elongated member adjacent to the straight segment. The strap fastener has an un-locked, open position, and a locked, closed position, such that when in the locked, closed position the elongate member forms a closed loop. When a webbing strap passes through the strap fastener in its unlocked, open position, the strap may be placed between the L-shaped restraining member and the straight segment, whereby the L-shaped restraining member inhibits the strap from moving longitudinally along the elongate member.

The present invention relates to strap retainers, and more particularly to strap retainers for securing child restraining straps onto shopping carts or other vehicles.
Shopping carts are often equipped with straps for securing a child in a seating area. The straps typically include a length of nylon, polyester or polypropylene webbing that is secured to the cart with one or more strap retainers. The strap retainers may be D-rings, clips, or other fasteners to ensure that the strap does not detach from the cart when in use. Often the child strap apparatus will include a buckle to make it easier for a shopper to clip the strap around a child.
Some prior art strap retainers include two ends that form a locking member, such that the strap retainer forms a closed loop when the locking member is locked, but comprises an open post when the locking member is unlocked. The strap retainer may attach to the webbing by passing the open post of the unlocked member through a loop in the webbing. These designs allow an operator to place the open post of the unlocked strap retainer around a frame member or other feature on the shopping cart, and then lock the locking member to form the closed loop that secures the strap retainer to the shopping cart.
A strap manufacturer may assemble the components of the strap assembly and then ship them to a cart manufacturer to install onto new carts, or a retail store to replace worn or damaged straps. Many manufacturers prefer to ship the strap assemblies with the strap retainers attached for easy assembly onto the shopping carts at their destination.
A disadvantage in the prior art strap retainers is that when the open post engages a loop in the strap or webbing, the loop can easily slide off of the open post during shipping. This results in an unnecessary cost in time and effort to reassemble the straps and retainers at their destination.
Some prior art strap retainers try to overcome this disadvantage by shaping the unlocked strap retainer in a mostly closed triangular shape, such that a portion of the unlocked retainer blocks the opening. The shape of these retainers makes it less likely that a webbing loop will accidentally slide out, but these retainers require significant distortion to lock them.
Other prior art strap retainers try to overcome this disadvantage by placing the locking member in a position where a webbing loop is less likely to slide out. However, nothing restrains the webbing loop from sliding out of the retainer.
Still other prior art strap retainers try to overcome this disadvantage by providing a sew tab, so that the strap retainer is sewn to the webbing. But when this style of retainer becomes damaged, it cannot merely be removed and replaced in the retail store because it is sewn to the webbing. The retainer and the attached webbing must be replaced together, causing unnecessary cost.
Accordingly, there is need for providing an improved strap retainer that overcomes one or more of these problems.

Strap retainer for shopping cart seatbelts


A information processing apparatus and a program are disclosed which make it possible to perform processing of an application on a secondary memory apparatus without the necessity for alteration to an OS incorporated in the information processing apparatus. The information processing apparatus includes a central processing unit, a main storage apparatus and a secondary storage apparatus, and starts and executes a program on the main storage apparatus under the control of an OS incorporated therein. Even where the OS does not provide a function of handling an application on the secondary storage apparatus, a first program for performing supporting for copying the application into the main storage apparatus and executing the application is provided in the mains storage apparatus. A second program including place information of the application on the secondary storage apparatus and a starting code for starting the first program is produced on the first storage apparatus. A launcher can operate the second program similarly to the other applications on the main storage apparatus.

This invention relates to a technique for making it possible for an information processing apparatus and a program, by which an application stored in a secondary storage apparatus is copied into a main storage apparatus and executed, to perform processing of an application on the secondary storage apparatus without involving extensive modification to an operating system or an application starting program (launcher).
An operating system (hereinafter referred to simply as "OS") incorporated in computer apparatus provides various functions necessary for processing of applications. Where an apparatus is configured such that an OS therein does not provide a function of handling an application on a secondary memory (flash memory, optical disk, network server or the like) like a PDA (Personal Digital Assistance), it is necessary to take a countermeasure for causing the application to be read into a main storage apparatus and executed. Therefore, for example, another application called launcher for starting the application supports execution of the application on the secondary memory apparatus. In short, the launcher copies an application on the secondary storage memory designated by a user into the main storage apparatus and then starts the application.
However, conventional apparatus have a problem in that, as viewed from the OS, it is difficult to equivalently handle an application on the main storage apparatus and another application on the secondary storage apparatus.
For example, where there is no necessity to take restrictions on the storage capacity of the main storage apparatus into consideration, it is possible to copy all applications on the secondary storage apparatus into the main storage apparatus first and then designate and execute a desired one of the applications. However, the storage area is a limited source, and particularly to apparatus of the portable type, excessive increase of the application size makes a problem. Therefore, an application which cannot be placed into the main storage apparatus is stored into the secondary storage apparatus and started from the launcher as occasion demands. Therefore, the application just mentioned and an application on the main storage apparatus are distinguished as applications of different categories in management from each other. Further, where it becomes necessary to modify the launcher in order to cope with a new application or the like or change an application set or for some other purpose or where another launcher is to be produced from the launcher, it is necessary to include codes for handling an application on the secondary storage apparatus (codes for copying into the main storage apparatus, for starting of the application and so forth) into the launchers. This gives rise to problems that it has an influence on the storage capacity of the main storage apparatus and that the convenience to the user degrades.
Naturally it is possible to change the OS itself so that applications on the main storage apparatus and applications on the secondary storage apparatus can be handled equivalently to each other. However, this compels to substantially modify design specifications.

Information processing apparatus and program


A router architecture with one or more network interfaces, processing, switching and forwarding elements, each which has one or more processing units capable of processing network traffic to provide at least a portion of a network service. The switching element is capable of acting as a proxy to the processing elements while each of the forwarding elements are capable of receiving network traffic on the network interface and are capable to delegate processing of network traffic toward processing elements through at least one switching element.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to routers and, more specifically, to a new adaptive router architecture.
2. Description of the Related Art
Researchers and designers face major challenges when researching, studying, and developing new software features to extend the set of Internet Protocol (IP) services or functions that current commercial routers support beyond the usual forwarding service. This could be for experimental system, pilot network deployment or field implementation. The main problem in developing, validating and deploying new IP services stems from the lack of open and programmable routers. This could be particularly useful to experiment new IP services, for new IP service validation as well as for complete network implementation. Such an architecture, in order to be effectively used as described, should further have the following characteristics:                Scalable;        Dependable (i.e. no single point of failure); and        Predictable (e.g. in terms of performance).
However, today's commercial routers, whether they are hardware based or software based, do not have the necessary elements and interfaces that would allow new IP services and applications to run thereon. As a result, carrying out a deployment in a production network requires involvement of the router vendor to develop and implement the necessary IP services and protocols. A router vendor is not likely to invest the required resources in the development and implementation of new features, except if it sees major compensation in return for the effort. Still when router vendors can be persuaded to implement new features, the process to change their implementation is laborious and time-consuming. Likewise, network operators are unlikely to ask for new features unless they have trust in the research results or can conduct trials in their own network to validate the results.
As can be appreciated, there is currently a need for an open and programmable router architecture. The present invention provides such a solution.