Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide for the use of polycycloolefins in electronic devices and more specifically to the use of such polycycloolefins as interlayers applied to fluoropolymer layers used in the fabrication of electronic devices, the electronic devices that encompass such polycycloolefin interlayers and processes for preparing such polycycloolefin interlayers and electronic devices.

Electronic devices, for example field effect transistors (FETs) are used in display devices and logic capable circuits. A conventional FET typically includes source, drain and gate electrodes, a semiconducting layer made of a semiconductor (SC) material, and an insulator layer (also referred to as "dielectric" or "gate dielectric"), made of a dielectric material and positioned between the SC layer and the gate electrode. The semiconductor is for example an organic semiconductor (OSC), and the electronic device is for example an organic electronic (OE) device.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,029,945 B2 discloses embodiments of an organic field effect transistor (OFET) wherein the gate insulator layer is made of a dielectric material having a permittivity (∈) (also known as relative permittivity or dielectric constant (k)) of less than 3.0. Such materials, generally referred as "low k materials", are reported to provide good mobility regardless of whether or not the organic semiconductor layer is disordered or semi-ordered. U.S. Pat. No. 7,029,945 B2 further reports that commercially available fluoropolymers such as Cytop™ (from Asahi Glass) or Teflon AF™ (from DuPont) are exemplary low k materials.
In WO 05/055248 the use of Cytop as gate insulator materials is disclosed as being advantageous for solution processed OFET devices where the OSC material is selected from soluble, substituted oligoacenes, such as pentacene, tetracene or anthracene, or heterocyclic derivatives thereof. These OSC materials are soluble in most common organic solvents. Therefore, when preparing a top gate FET, the solvents for the gate dielectric formulation have to be carefully chosen to avoid dissolution of the OSC material by the solvent of the gate dielectric formulation when deposited in adjacent layers. Such a solvent is generally referred to as being orthogonal to the material of the OSC layer. Similarly, when preparing a bottom gate device, the solvent for carrying the OSC material onto a previously formed gate dielectric layer is selected to be orthogonal to the gate dielectric material.
However, the above-mentioned fluoropolymers have certain drawbacks with regard to the mass production of OFET devices, specifically poor integration into processing and limited structural integrity. Regarding processability, fluoropolymers often do not adhere well to other layers, for example the substrate and OSC layer, among others, and often exhibits poor wettability. Regarding structural integrity, many fluoropolymers, such as those of the Cytop™ series, have low glass transition temperatures Tg (˜100-130° C.) which can be problematic when applying a metallized gate electrode layer over such a layer by a physical deposition method such as sputtering. If the fluoropolymer is heated to or above its Tg during such a sputtering process, cracking of the polymer due to built-in stress can occur and where such cracking is avoided, differential expansion between the fluoropolymer and any adjacent layer can result in wrinkling of the polymer. On the other hand, fluoropolymers with higher Tg, like those of the Teflon AF™ series (e.g. Teflon AF 2400 with Tg=240° C.), may overcome the wrinkling or cracking problems, but often do not coat substrates well and exhibit poor adhesion to additional layers.


Provided is a wavelength distribution measuring apparatus (24), which includes a diffuser plate (52) for dispersing light beams radiated from an object to be measured (11) and a light beam homogenizing optical element (53) for reflecting, by the side surface (53b), at least part of the light beams dispersed by the diffuser plate (52) so that the light beams approximate to the direction of the perpendicular of a light receiving surface and also for guiding the light beams to the light receiving surface, and an optical receiver (56) including a plurality of light receiving elements for detecting the light beams, the light receiving elements being different from one another in spectral sensitivity characteristic. With this configuration, substantially parallel light beams radiated from the object to be measured (11) are homogenized at the light receiving surface including the periphery of the light receiving surface.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wavelength distribution measuring apparatus for homogenizing light dispersed from a predetermined region of an object to be measured, to thereby detect wavelength distribution characteristics.
2. Description of the Related Art
A colorimeter is one of the measuring apparatuses for measuring the spectrum of light beams radiated from an object to be measured. A colorimeter is an apparatus for numerically measuring color information, and used for inspecting the color quality of industrial products and goods in various fields such as automobile, foods, printing, and the like, and for performing color correction in a microscope.
There is known a colorimeter which has an optical system for uniformizing light beams radiated from a predetermined region on an object to be measured and irradiating the light beams onto an optical sensor including a color filter transmitting different wavelength components and a plurality of light receiving elements such as CCD and CMOS. There are various optical systems for a colorimeter which uses a plurality of light receiving elements to perform measurement.
As an optical system for homogenizing light beams, there are known an optical system including an optical fiber (see, for example, JP H06-273232 A) and an optical system including a light beam homogenizing optical element such as a light pipe (see, for example, JP 2008-096777 A). Light beams are reflected a plurality of times by the inside surface of the light beam homogenizing optical element, to thereby homogenize illuminance distribution of the light beams, so that an optical sensor can be irradiated with homogenous light beams.
On the other hand, when a microscope is used to measure a spectrum of light beams, a specimen may be enlarged via an objective lens to form an intermediate image, and the intermediate image thus formed may be defined as a field of measurement. In this case, the enlarged image of the specimen serves as a field of measurement, and therefore, the divergent light beams from the specimen have a smaller numerical aperture (NA) in the field of measurement, and often approximate to parallel light beams. When such light beams are made incident on the light beam homogenizing optical element, there arises a problem that the light beam homogenizing optical element needs to be increased in length in order to homogenize the light beams through reflections by the inside surface of the light beam homogenizing optical element.
In view of the above, a diffuser plate is disposed between the field of measurement and the light beam homogenizing optical element. The diffuser plate allows substantially parallel light beams to be converted into divergent light beams, to thereby reduce the total length of the light beam homogenizing optical element, which makes it possible to attain size reduction of the apparatus.

Wavelength distribution measuring apparatus


A computing system and method receive a query; separate a plurality of information sources into individual elements of content (EOC); tag each EOC with metadata that indicate source, date, and other relevant information; pattern match each EOC; calculate the respective distance function from every EOC to every other EOC; and output EOC to a set of virtual buffers (404) containing appropriately related EOC less than a given distance value. The method further creates virtual summary buffers (406); then concatenates the EOC in each virtual buffer (404); applies a comparative analysis filter (318) to remove redundant sub-elements; and presents the results as summary digests (408).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the field of computer based search systems, and more particularly relates to a system and method for synthesizing information-bearing content from multiple channels.
2. Description of Related Art
The explosive growth of content available on the World-Wide-Web has led to an increased demand and opportunity for a means of collaborating information. People are increasingly finding it difficult to sort through the great mass of content available with apparent relevance to even a narrowly defined need. They are overwhelmed with information and greatly desire appropriate tools or services that can aggregate relevant content and produce appropriate distillations or summarizations. Further, the ease with which content can be made available on the Internet, along with the greater speed with which "raw" content is generally made available, has created a greater-than-ever need for efficient means of judging the correctness of information. Strictly human-based editorial judgment is becoming no longer viable or desirable.
A typical search engine possesses a user interface with a search window where the user enters an alphanumeric search expression or keywords. The search engine sifts through a database of information for the user's search terms, and returns the search results in the form of HTML pages. Each search result includes a list of individual entries that have been identified by the search engine as satisfying the user's search expression. Each entry or "hit" includes a hyperlink that points to a location within the database. In addition to the hyperlink, certain search engine result pages include a summary or abstract that describes the content of the document. Other information may also be returned as part of a search result in response to a user's request.
Although search engines have made tremendous strides at improvement in recent years, the tremendous volume of the content simply makes the search engine cumbersome to use. The user is forced to manually sort through a long list of results to try and determine what is most important to him. Additionally, many of the results returned contain the same information, making it even more difficult to find the true article of interest.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above, and particularly for a method of synthesizing the information-bearing content from multiple channels into condensed digests in order to maximize efficiency of a search.

Synthesizing information-bearing content from multiple channels

International Business Machines Corporation


The present invention relates to a wiping apparatus for an ink jet printer, which apparatus prevents the area surrounding the wiping apparatus from being contaminated by ink. The wiping apparatus reduces the amount of ink splashed on the surroundings when a wiper is out of the lower part of a cartridge. The apparatus comprises a housing having an upper part which is open, a cartridge which can be moved from one side to another side in an upper part of the housing, a nozzle for ejecting ink and provided on one side of the cartridge, a wiper installed on an upper part of the housing and made of an elastic material for cleaning the nozzle, a holding unit for holding the wiper and rotatable in a direction of the nozzle when the wiper is bent in one direction for cleaning the nozzle, and an operation unit which operates the holding unit and is provided to move together with the cartridge.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink jet printer and, more particularly, to an ink jet printer having a wiping apparatus which can prevent ink smeared on a wiper from splashing onto the surroundings when the wiper, wiping out ink remaining on a nozzle of a cartridge, is restored to its original state.
2. Related Art
In general, an ink jet printer is an apparatus which prints text or image data on a paper by ejecting ink from a cartridge in a vapor state through a nozzle.
Such an ink jet printer generally has a printing unit and a maintenance station, and the maintenance station has a wiping apparatus wherein a wiper is installed for cleaning ink smeared on the nozzle from ink ejected through the nozzle of the cartridge. The wiper is usually made of an elastic material, and the nozzle is cleaned by the wiper as the cartridge proceeds to the right and left of the wiper.
In an ink jet printer set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,310, two wipers of different sizes are installed to wipe ink smeared on a nozzle of a cartridge, and an installed wiper portion is capable of going up and down by means of a spring. According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,310, the extent of wiper bending can be reduced to a small extent because the installed wiper portion can go up and down. However, because the restoration of the wiper by self elasticity after cleaning the nozzle cannot be controlled, the splashing of the remaining ink smeared on the wiper onto the surroundings cannot be effectively controlled.
In Japanese Patent Publication No. 9029986(Feb. 4, 1997), in order to partially overcome the latter problems, there is disclosed an apparatus which prevents ink on the wiper from splashing onto the paper by preventing nozzle cleaning when the wiper is restored in the direction of the paper when the wiper is separated from the nozzle during the nozzle cleaning by the wiper. According to the Japanese Patent Publication No. 9029986, the splashing of the remaining ink in the nozzle onto the paper can be prevented. However, the splashing of the ink in the contrary direction cannot be prevented.
Thus, according to the conventional technology, cleaning of the nozzle provided in the cartridge of the ink jet printer, or prevention of the splashing of ink smeared on the wiper onto the paper, can be provided. However, the problem of ink smeared on the wiper splashing onto the surroundings of the wiping apparatus, thus contaminating the wiping apparatus itself, cannot be prevented.
Therefore, if the ink smeared on the wiping apparatus by the wiper accumulates continuously and becomes hardened, it contaminates the bottom of the cartridge or the bottom surface of a carriage, and if the contaminated cartridge and carriage move to the paper for printing, the paper itself is contaminated.
The present invention has been completed in view of the above-described problems involved in the prior art, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an ink jet printer which can prevent ink smeared on a wiper from splashing onto a wiping apparatus of the ink jet printer after cleaning a nozzle.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an ink jet printer having a wiper holding unit to prevent ink from a wiper from splashing onto the surroundings of a wiping apparatus by minimizing a restoration distance of the wiper itself when the bent wiper is restored during cleaning a nozzle and after completing the cleaning of the nozzle.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an ink jet printer having an operation unit for operating a wiper holding unit which holds and supports a bent-wiper during cleaning of a nozzle.
According to one aspect of the present invention, a wiping apparatus of an ink jet printer comprises: a housing having an upper part which is open; a carriage which can be moved from one side to another side in an upper side of the housing; a cartridge which is transported by the carriage, and wherein ink is stored; a nozzle which is installed facing the housing and on an outer side of a bottom surface of the cartridge, and which ejects ink from the cartridge during printing; and a wiper installed on the top of the housing and which is made of an elastic material for cleaning the nozzle. The wiping apparatus further comprises: a moving member which moves upward when moving to one side from a top of the housing under the guidance of a slant guide hole formed on a side wall of the housing, and which moves downward when the cartridge moves to another side of the housing; a locking member which moves together with the moving member, being joined axially to one side of the moving member, and which has an attaching/detaching projection attached/detached to/from an attaching/detaching groove formed on the bottom of the housing in order to maintain the elevated position of the moving member when the moving member has been elevated; a holding unit for holding a wiper by rotating in the direction of the nozzle and bending if the wiper is bent to one direction during cleaning of the nozzle; and an operation unit which operates the holding unit, the latter being provided so as to move together with the cartridge.
A holding unit according to the present invention comprises: a rotation rod whose lower part is joined axially to a locking member so as to be rotated by the operation unit, and a holding rod which supports one side of a wiper, and which extends to the wiper from the rotation rod. In addition, the holding unit comprises a restoring unit to restore the holding unit when an external force applied from the operation unit is removed. The restoring unit is constructed with a tension spring having one end which is engaged to the locking unit and another end which is connected to the rotating rod. Moreover, the operation unit includes an operation rod extending toward the rotating rod from a cartridge. One end of the rotating rod comprises a projecting portion extending toward the housing, and the holding unit is adjacent to one side of a wiper, and extends toward the wiper from a projection. Thus, the holding unit prevents the splashing of ink from the wiper by controlling the restoration operation of the wiper after the wiper has cleaned the nozzle.
A holding unit according to the present invention comprises: a rotating rod whose lower part is joined axially to a locking member so as to be rotated by the operation unit, and a holding unit which supports one side of a wiper, and which extends to the wiper from the rotating rod. In addition, the holding unit comprises a restoring unit to restore the holding unit when an external force applied from the operation unit is removed. The restoring unit is constructed with a tension spring having one end which is engaged to the locking unit and another end which is connected to the rotating rod. Moreover, the operation unit includes an operation rod extending toward the rotating rod from a cartridge. One end of the rotating rod comprises a projecting portion extending toward the housing, and the holding unit is adjacent to one side of a wiper, and extends toward the wiper from a projection. Thus, the holding unit prevents the splashing of ink from the wiper by controlling the restoration operation of the wiper after the wiper has cleaned the nozzle.


In a modularly structured coupling network in multi-stage reversal grouping wherein short-paths can be switched, a special wiring of the switching modules of the first stage is provided to input and output lines connected to the switching network. This yielding a reduction by one-third of the plurality of switching elements to be provided at these switching modules.

In a switching network, a plurality of trunks or links come together in a network node. Switching networks are provided in the network nodes for random connection of the trunks.
For example, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 9, No. 8, October 1991, discloses a two-stage, modularly constructed switching network in reversal grouping, wherein the switching network is connected to a plurality of duplex trunks each respectively established by a simplex input line and a simplex output line. The switching network is formed by a plurality of switching modules arranged in stages. Every switching module has the same number of simplex inputs as simplex outputs and every simplex input of a switching module is connectable to every simplex output of the same switching module. Every switching module is formed with a plurality of switching elements having twice as many simplex inputs as simplex outputs. The switching elements are arranged in two rows. A switching element of the second row together with two switching elements of the first row whose simplex outputs are connected to the simplex inputs of the switching element of the second row form a switching element group. The simplex inputs of the switching modules of the first stage are connected to the simplex inputs of the switching elements of the first row belonging to the switching module and are available for the connection of input lines. The simplex outputs of a switching module are established by simplex outputs of a switching element belonging to the switching module. For switching short-paths, portions of the simplex inputs and of the simplex outputs of a switching module of the first stage that are of the same size are connected to input or output lines, respectively, that belong to the same trunk, whereas the remaining simplex inputs or simplex outputs are connected to links that deliver signals from switching modules of the second stage or forward signals to switching modules of the second stage. Only output lines or only links are connected to the outputs of one and the same switching element group. This switching network has the capability of switching short-paths in the first stage.

Switching network wherein short-path connections can be switched


A down pressure adjustment mechanism for a planter provides a self-contained spring cartridge holding a preloaded compression spring that may be moved between a limited number of mounting points to provide for convenient and significant changes in down pressure without the need for specialized tools or the like.

The present invention relates to seed planters for dispensing individual seeds at a controlled rate into a seed furrow, and specifically, to an adjusting mechanism controlling the down pressure on a planter unit.
Seed planters dispense seeds at a controlled rate into a seed furrow as a planter is advanced along the ground. In a typical arrangement, a tractor is coupled to tow a toolbar to which is attached, in parallel spaced apart relationship, a plurality of planting units.
Each planting unit typically includes a seed hopper and a seed meter for dispensing seeds at a controlled rate as the planting unit moves over the ground. The planting unit may include on its lower surface a furrow-opening disk for opening a furrow for the seeds, a furrow closing disk for closing the furrow about the seeds, and a trailing wheel that tamps the earth down on the furrow. In order that these disks and wheels properly engage the soil, the planting unit may be coupled to the tow bar with a pivoting four-bar linkage. A tension spring mounted between the tow bar and one of the arms of the linkage provides a downward pressure on the planting unit ensuring that it tracks the ground surface regardless of changes in height of the tow bar relative to the surface under the planter.
It may be desirable to adjust the down pressure on the planting units according to the condition of the field. A soft till field may require less pressure, for example, than a field with no till and greater surface irregularity. For this purpose, the tension spring may have a threaded adjuster or the like that may be turned to change the tension on the spring.
Changing the down pressure on many planting units using a threaded adjuster can be time consuming. The threaded elements are prone to contamination or corrosion making it difficult to turn the adjusters without special tools and the nature of the adjustment process makes it difficult to provide consistent down pressure on multiple planting units.


A rotor for a motor which can provide a great supply of mechanical power using only slightly more input power, because magnetization is sped up when the rotor is rotated by a rotating magnetic field from a stator. The rotor includes laminated sheets of silicon steel. The weight of the rotor is separated into several pieces by inserting a non-magnetic plate between laminated sheets of silicon steel which make up the rotor. The phase angle of the rotor therefore remains synchronized with the rotating magnetic field from the stator.

Conventionally, the rotor for a motor is formed from a lamination of silicon steel sheets (e.g. S-18 silicon steel sheets having the composition of 18% silicon by weight). Such an arrangement, although generally effective, does have certain disadvantages. For example, a lot of energy is required to rotate the rotor because the rotating magnetic field generated by the stator bears a heavy load due to the rotor's own weight. In addition, the wear on the rotor is heavy because significant slipping occurs between the rotating magnetic field and the rotor, and therefore, a significant amount of heat is generated from the stator.

Rotor for a motor including non-magnetic plates laminated between silicon steel sheets


The present invention provides for the efficient downloading of data set addresses from among a plurality of host computers, using a plurality of web crawlers. Each web crawler identifies URL's in data sets downloaded by that web crawler, and identifies the host computer identifier within each such URL. The host computer identifier for each URL is mapped to the web crawler identifier of one of the web crawlers. If the URL is mapped to the web crawler identifier of a different web crawler, the URL is sent to that web crawler for processing, and otherwise the URL is processed by the web crawler that identified the URL. Each web crawler sends URL's to the other web crawlers for processing, and each web crawler receives URL's from the other web crawlers for processing. In a preferred embodiment, each web crawler processes only the URL's assigned to it, which are the URL's whose host identifier is mapped to the web crawler identifier for that web crawler. Each web crawler filters the URL's assigned to it by comparing them against a database of URL's already known by the web crawler and removing the already known URL's. If a URL is not already known to the web crawler, the data set corresponding to the URL is scheduled for downloading.

Documents on interconnected computer networks are typically stored on numerous host computers that are connected over the networks. For example, so-called "web pages" may be stored on the global computer network known as the Internet, which includes the world wide web. Web pages can also be stored on Intranets, which are typically private networks maintained by corporations, government entities, and other groups. Each web page, whether on the world wide web or an Intranet, has a distinct address called its uniform resource locator (URL), which at least in part identifies the location or host computer of the web page. Many of the documents on Intranets and the world wide web are written in standard document description languages (e.g., HTML, XML). These languages allow an author of a document to create hypertext links to other documents. Hypertext links allow a reader of a web page to access other web pages by clicking on links to the other pages. These links are typically highlighted in the original web page. A web page containing hypertext links to other web pages generally refers to those pages by their URL's. A URL may be referred to more generally as a data set address, which corresponds to a web page, or data set. Links in a web page may refer to web pages that are stored in the same or different host computers.
A web crawler is a program that automatically finds and downloads documents from host computers in an Intranet or the world wide web. A computer with a web crawler installed on it may also be referred to as a web crawler. When a web crawler is given a set of starting URL's, the web crawler downloads the corresponding documents. The web crawler then extracts any URL's contained in those downloaded documents. Before the web crawler downloads the documents associated with the newly discovered URL's, the web crawler needs to find out whether these documents have already been downloaded. If the documents associated with the newly discovered URL's have not been downloaded, the web crawler downloads the documents and extracts any URL's contained in them. This process repeats indefinitely or until a predetermined stop condition occurs. This process is demanding for a single web crawler due to the large number of URL's to download and process. As of 1999 there were approximately 800 million web pages on the world wide web and the number is continuously growing. Even Intranets can store millions of web pages.

System and method for distributed web crawling

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A system and method for inspecting a specimen, such as a semiconductor wafer, including illuminating at least a portion of the specimen using an excimer source using at least one relatively intense wavelength from the source, detecting radiation received from the illuminated portion of the specimen, analyzing the detected radiation for potential defects present in the specimen portion.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of optical imaging and more particularly to optical systems for microscopic imaging, inspection and/or lithography applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many optical systems and electronic systems are available to inspect surface features of a specimen for defects, including specimens such as a semiconductor photomask or partially fabricated integrated circuit. Defects on such specimens may take the form of particles randomly localized on the specimen surface, scratches, process variations, repeating pattern defects, and so forth. Techniques and devices for inspecting specimens for these microscopic defects are generally available in the art and are embodied in various commercially available products, including those available from KLA-Tencor Corporation of San Jose, Calif., the assignee of the present application.
The aim of virtually any type of inspection system or technique is to rapidly and efficiently detect defects. With smaller and smaller features on specimen surfaces and the use of new materials and new manufacturing processes, detection of new and finer defects is required. It is also preferable to rapidly inspect a specimen surface in as short an amount of time as possible, from loading the specimen to removing it from the inspection position and characterizing the defects. Such speed requirements in the presence of smaller features mandates continuous improvements in the available techniques to accurately and adequately find specimen problems.
Inspection systems are available for wafer inspection, while still others target photomask inspection. The inspection systems currently available are highly complex, requiring a sophisticated combination of light source, illumination, imaging, positioning, automatic focusing, image sensor, data acquisition, and data analysis subsystems. A complete change in the inspection system may be required to allow the detection of new and smaller defects on a specimen.
Of the currently available systems, it should be noted that most use a non-pulsed light source from an arc lamp or a laser. A non-pulsed lamp or laser provides a relatively constant power to the specimen and is more easily implemented in a high speed inspection system. However, relatively constant and non-pulsed energy sources suffer from particular drawbacks. Short wavelengths have desirable characteristics for inspecting small defects. Few non-pulsed sources are available with the required power and brightness for high speed inspection at wavelengths below 300 nm. In addition, non-pulsed laser light sources do not produce light energy with relatively low spatial and temporal coherence, which can be a problem in certain circumstances. For this reason, these non-pulsed laser sources suffer from interference and speckle induced illumination discontinuities. Overcoming these problems requires time averaging of speckle patterns, such as by using a rotating ground glass plate.
It would therefore be desirable to have a system for inspecting a specimen that improves upon the systems previously available, and in particular for enabling inspection of specimens such as wafers and photomasks with short wavelength light that do not have the adverse effects associated with non-pulsed light sources.


A single-ended charge-domain pipeline of at least two stages is provided. Each stage comprises a charge-storage node, a charge-transfer circuit for conveying charge from said charge-storage node out of said stage, a charge-control capacitor connected to said charge-storage node and driven by a periodic clock voltage, a comparator which compares the voltage of said charge-storage node to a reference voltage, and a digital latch which latches the state of said comparator output under control of a second periodic clock voltage and provides a latched digital output from said stage. The second stage of the pipeline further includes a first charge-redistribution capacitor connected to the charge-storage node of the second stage and driven by a conditional voltage responsive to the latched digital output from the first stage. The charge output from each stage of said pipeline is substantially identical to the charge input to said stage.

In charge-domain signal-processing circuits, signals are represented as charge packets. These charge packets are stored, transferred from one storage location to another, and otherwise processed to carry out specific signal-processing functions. Charge packets are capable of representing analog quantities, with the charge-packet size in coulombs being proportional to the signal represented. Charge-domain operations such as charge-transfer are driven by periodic clock voltages, providing discrete-time processing. Thus, charge-domain circuits provide analog, discrete-time signal-processing capability. This capability is well-suited to performing analog-to-digital conversion using pipeline algorithms. Charge-domain circuits are implemented as charge-coupled devices (CCDs), as MOS bucket-brigade devices (BBDs), and as bipolar BBDs. The present invention pertains to MOS and bipolar BBDs.
Charge-redistribution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) implement a successive-approximation A/D conversion algorithm by iterated comparison and conditional capacitor switching in a single stage. They are capable of providing very high precision and resolution (up to 18 bits in currently-known implementations) at relatively low sample rates, with low power consumption.
Pipelined analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are commonly used in applications requiring high sample rates and high resolution. Pipelined ADCs implement the successive-approximation algorithm by resolving one or several bits at each pipeline stage, subtracting the quantized estimate from the signal at that stage, and propagating the residue to the next pipeline stage for further processing. Pipelined ADCs have been implemented using a variety of circuit techniques, including switched-capacitor circuits and charge-domain circuits. The present invention pertains to charge-domain pipelined ADCs.

Charge-domain pipelined charge-redistribution analog-to-digital converter


A line-type inkjet recorder for printing a desired image onto paper by discharging ink from plural nozzles provided in a head part, the inkjet recorder includes: an image data processing part for converting image data to be printed into print data for each of the nozzles; a temperature detection part for detecting a temperature of the head part and outputting head temperature information based on the detected temperature; and a head control part for, based on states of a continuous non-discharge nozzle and a continuous discharge nozzle adjacent thereto included in the nozzles and extracted based on the head temperature information from the temperature detection part and the print data from the image data processing part, controlling frequencies of idle discharge from the continuous non-discharge nozzle and continuous discharge nozzle extracted.

1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a line-type inkjet recorder, and more specifically to an inkjet recorder that prevents discharge failure accompanying ink quality change occurring in a non-discharge nozzle during printing.
2. Description of the Related Arts
A line-type inkjet driving device is conventionally known which selectively controls ink discharge to form a monochromatic or full-color image on a print recording medium (hereinafter indicated as paper), such as a paper sheet.
The inkjet driving device of this type has a nozzle (hereinafter indicated as non-discharge nozzle) that does not perform discharge even once depending on an image to be printed. This non-discharge nozzle does not discharge ink during printing. For example, if ink is discharged from a nozzle adjacent to the non-discharge nozzle, due to driving of a discharge ink chamber thereof, ink near a discharge port of the non-discharge nozzle may vibrate. After a lapse of long non-discharge time under the condition that the ink near the discharge port of the non-discharge nozzle vibrates as described above, there arises a problem that, as a result of contact of the ink near the discharge port with air, this ink changes in quality and also its drying is promoted, which is likely to cause ink discharge failure and non-discharge.
Thus, to address such a problem, for example, an inkjet recorder disclosed in Patent document 1 is suggested.
An inkjet recording method performed in the inkjet recorder disclosed in Patent Document 1 measures the continuous non-discharge time for each nozzle and discharges non-image ink droplets from each nozzle in a predetermined discharge pattern during print operation to thereby achieve ink droplet discharge maintaining processing without stopping the print operation. This method maintains highly accurate printing by measuring the continuous non-discharge time for each nozzle from print driving data for each nozzle and forcibly discharging ink droplets from each nozzle in a discharge pattern predetermined separately from the print driving data during print operation.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-178534
However, the inkjet recorder disclosed in Patent Document 1 prevents discharge failure in the continuous non-discharge nozzle by way of so-called "idle discharge" that periodically discharges non-image recording ink droplets from the non-discharge nozzle in a less conspicuous manner. However, this method controls idle discharge by the continuous non-discharge time, so that, when the continuous print time or the continuous non-discharge time is long, ink consumption unnecessarily increases for operations other than printing, which is not economical.


There are provided an information processing method and apparatus, which can composite an image at a link destination into document data upon printing document data that describes address information as a link to an image file, can obviate the need for additional access by the user, and can improve user's convenience. This information processing apparatus prints document data that describes address information of an image on a server which can be accessed via the Internet. An operation unit (107) issues a print instruction of an image, and makes its setups. Address information is detected from document data, and that image is accessed via the Internet. It is checked if the accessed image can be embedded in the document data. If the accessed image can be embedded, that image is downloaded. The downloaded image is embedded at a predetermined position in the document upon printing the document data.

Along with the development and prevalence of the Internet, documents that describe address information as links to uploaded images and the like on the Internet are increasing. With the conventional technique, when document data that describes address information of a link destination is printed, that address information is normally printed as characters. Therefore, in order to print an image at the link destination, the user must independently access that image at the link destination by, e.g., clicking the address information and print it, resulting in troublesome operations.
On the other hand, a method that allows reception of home page data corresponding to a URL included in mail data together with the mail data upon reception of an e-mail message is disclosed (for example, patent reference 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-216210)). With this method, since home page data is received together with mail data, the user need not re-establish connection to a provider upon accessing the URL described in that mail data, thus slightly reducing user's manual operations.
However, even when the method described in patent reference 1 is used, the user must independently access and print an image file received in addition to document data upon printing an image, thus requiring user's labor and time. In addition, a document and image are separately output as print data, resulting in inconvenience.

Information processing method and apparatus


A magnetic resonance imaging system (10) includes a transmit coil (22) and one or more receive coils (32). The transmit coil includes one or more circuit segments (44, 44, 80, 90) including a light-sensitive metal-insulator-semiconductor capacitor (50) which is connected by an optic fiber to one of a plurality of variable light sources (68). In the set-up mode, the transmit coil transmits RF pulses into an examination region (14). A plurality of the receive coils are disposed around the imaging region. The tuning processor (60) analyzes the received RF fields from around the imaging region and determines adjustments to the amount of light transmitted to each light-sensitive capacitor to shim or tune the transmit coil to optimize RF field homogeneity. Further, the receive coils (32) include a light-sensitive capacitor whose illumination is changed during RF transmission to detune the receive coil.

The following relates to automated decoupling and tuning of radio frequency (RF) resonance coils. It finds particular application with coils that receive and/or transmit RF signals in magnetic resonance imaging, and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that the invention may also find application in decoupling and tuning of signals in magnetic resonance spectroscopy and the like.
During the transmission and receipt of signals in a magnetic resonance environment, various techniques are employed to improve image quality. Such techniques include the decoupling/detuning of coils, noise adjustment of preamplifiers, mutual decoupling of coil elements, retuning for the purpose of multi nuclei operation, load dependent fine tuning of resonant frequencies, and radio frequency (RF) shimming of magnetic resonance coils. In magnetic resonance (MR), surface and local receive coils commonly use positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) diodes for decoupling and coupling during transmission and reception, respectively. Typically, the PIN diode of the receive coil is biased such that the coil is detuned or decoupled from the resonance frequency during resonance excitation. For signal reception, the PIN diode is biased such that the surface coil is tuned to the resonance frequency. Other solid-state elements can also be used to switch between the tuned receive mode and the detuned mode.
This kind of detuning has several disadvantages. First, the detuning lines to surface coils are prone to electromagnetic interference. A significant problem is coupling of RF to these detuning lines during transmission. In high field systems, common mode RF resonances on these cables may cause local heating of the patient. As a result, the detuning lines are insulated for the relatively high reverse bias which adds to the bulkiness of the coil cable. Cable bulkiness problems are compounded in multi-element surface coil arrays. If the detuning lines of many surface coil elements are bundled in one cable, the forward currents add and may cause B0 inhomogeneities. Moreover, the Lorentz force on the cable may be disturbing.
During manufacture, whole body and other coils are tuned to the Larmour frequency of the system. The tuning is accomplished by manually adjusting tunable capacitors distributed around the coil while loaded with an average patient in a standard position. In a bandpass birdcage type coil, for example, there is typically one or more adjustable capacitors in each of the 8 to 32 rods and a like number of adjustable capacitors in each end ring. Other whole body coils, such as SENSE coils, also have complex and time consuming tuning issues. Each capacitor is manually adjusted to tune the mode spectrum, a lengthy and costly iterative process. In addition, when a patient is introduced into the assembled scanner, the mode spectrum can change (e.g., by 400 kHz in a 3 T body coil) based on variation in the size and position of the patient. Due to the manual tuning process, it is not feasible to tune the whole body coil whose capacitors are in the interior of the scanner construction on a patient by patient basis.
For systems with field strength of 3 T and more, the wavelength of the RF within the patient is in the same order of magnitude as the spatial dimensions of the patient. This results in RF resonance effects within the patient leading to B1 inhomogeneities. Moreover, the elliptic shape of a patient leads to different loads for different portions of the body coil resulting in additional B1 inhomogeneity. It has been shown that these effects can be compensated by adjusting various distributed capacitors within a whole body coil or resonator. However, utilizing conventional manual means, most distributed capacitors within the whole body coil are not readily accessible for manual adjustment.

Optical decoupling, tuning and shimming of magnetic resonance coils


A process of producing a polyester composition includes carrying out an esterification reaction of a dicarboxylic acid component with a diol component, and then carrying out a polycondensation reaction, wherein the diol component is added twice or more during a time from completion of the esterification reaction until beginning the polycondensation reaction, and alkali metal phosphate is added with an amount of COOH terminal groups of an esterification reactant being not more than 150 eq/ton.

Polyester has excellent mechanical properties, thermal properties, chemical resistance, electrical properties, and formability and has been used in various applications.
However, because polyester decreases its mechanical properties due to hydrolysis when used over a long period of time or used in humid situations, various studies to suppress hydrolysis have been carried out. Particularly in films for a solar battery, the outdoor lifetime of 20 years or more is required and, therefore high hydrolysis resistance is required.
JP 2001-114881 A describes a process for producing polyester containing phosphate of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. Further, JP 2007-277548 A describes a process for producing polyester containing inorganic phosphate, and phosphoric acid is used in combination in Examples. JP 2008-007750 A describes polyethylene terephthalate containing a buffer phosphorus compound, and a phosphorus compound is used in combination in Examples.
Only by a metal phosphate, as in the process of producing polyester disclosed in JP '881, initial COOH terminal groups can be suppressed. However, it is difficult to suppress an increase in the amount of COOH terminal groups due to hydrolysis, and sufficient hydrolysis resistance cannot be obtained in applications that require long-term durability such as solar battery application.
In the case of the process of producing polyester disclosed in JP '548, because the ratio of phosphoric acid to inorganic phosphate and their amount were inappropriate, inorganic phosphate readily turned into a foreign body and, although the short-term hydrolysis resistance was excellent, the hydrolysis resistance over a long period of time required in solar battery applications and the like was insufficient, and mechanical properties of a film was reduced by the foreign bodies.
In the case of polyethylene terephthalate disclosed in JP '750, appropriateness of the type, ratio, amount and the like of the phosphorus compound is insufficient and, therefore, hydrolysis resistance and mechanical properties are insufficient for solar battery applications.
Examples of the process of producing polyester include the method in which polycondensation is carried out after esterification reaction using dicarboxylic acid as a main raw material (direct polymerization method) and the method in which polycondensation is carried out after transesterification reaction using dicarboxylic acid ester as a main raw material (DMT method). The DMT method disperses particle components well and is excellent in suppression of foreign bodies, but has a problem in that the raw material cost is high compared to the direct polymerization method. On the other hand, the direct polymerization method allows an esterification reaction without a catalyst and further is very cost-effective because the raw material is inexpensive, but has a problem in that the hydrolysis resistance decreases because the amount of COOH terminal groups in the resulting polyester is high compared to the case of the DMT method.
Thus, there is a need to provide a process of producing a polyester composition suitable for use in a film with excellent hydrolysis resistance.

Method for producing polyester compositions


A two-phase charge pump is provided that is controlled by first and second clock signals in phase-opposition. The charge pump has a sequence of cascade-connected stages. Each stage includes a capacitive element driven by one clock signal such that capacitive elements of adjacent stages are driven by different clock signals, a pass transistor that transfers electric charge to the capacitive element from the capacitive element of a previous stage, a first biasing circuit that enables the pass transistor during a first phase of the one clock signal, and a second biasing circuit that disables the pass transistor during a second phase of the one clock signal. Also provided is a two-phase charge pump having two branches that each include a sequence of such cascade-connected stages, with each stage of one branch having a corresponding stage in the other branch. A method of operating two-phase charge pumps is also provided.

A charge pump is a particular voltage booster circuit, which is used to generate a voltage higher than its power supply voltage. For example, charge pumps commonly find application in an integrated circuit including a non-volatile memory with floating-gate transistors. In this case, a high-voltage is needed to program and/or erase the memory. In order to avoid the need to provide an external power supply voltage of high value, the integrated circuit is designed to have one or more internal charge pumps for producing the high-voltage from the (lower) power supply voltage.
Operation of a charge pump is based on the continuous accumulation and transfer of electric charge in a sequence of pumping capacitors, which are connected through corresponding switching elements. Particularly, each pumping capacitor has a free terminal, which is controlled by a signal switching between a low-voltage and a high-voltage; the control signals of adjacent pumping capacitors are always anti-phase. In this way, when the control signal is at the low-voltage the pumping capacitor is charged by the previous pumping capacitor; when the control signal switches to the high-voltage, the accumulated charge is transferred to the next pumping capacitor.
A classic implementation of the charge pump in which the switching elements consist of diodes is described in John F. Dickson, "On-Chip High-voltage Generation in NMOS Integrated Circuits Using an Improved Voltage Multiplier Technique", IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 374-378, June 1976, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. A drawback of this charge pump is the unavoidable loss in its output voltage due to the threshold voltage and to the conduction resistance of the diodes. This drawback is exacerbated by increasing the number of stages of the charge pump, because each additional stage further decrements the output voltage.
Alternatively, the diodes are replaced with pass transistors. For example, each pass transistor can be an NMOS transistor having the drain terminal connected to an input of the stage and the source terminal connected to an output of the stage; the gate terminal of the pass transistor is controlled by a signal that maintains the gate to source voltage of the pass transistor higher than its threshold value during the increasing of the source voltage due to the charge transfer process. A known solution for obtaining this result is to use a four-phase architecture, with two additional control signals dedicated to over driving the gate terminals of the pass transistors. This solution, however, requires a more complex circuit for the generation of the control signals.
A different solution with a two-phase architecture is based on the use of pass transistors of the low-voltage type, which exhibit a reduced threshold voltage. In this case, the output resistance of the charge pump (whose value influences the efficiency of the entire circuit) can be favorably reduced by increasing its operating frequency and using transistors with lower parasitic capacitances. Furthermore, it is possible to use smaller pumping capacitors, thus saving silicon area on the chip. However, it is necessary to introduce a dedicated circuit architecture that allows the utilization of low-voltage transistors (typically based on two cross-coupled branches). An example of such a charge pump is described in R. Pelliconi et al., "Power Efficient Charge Pump in Deep Submicron Standard CMOS Technology", IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, vol. 38, no. 6, June 2003, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference. According to this document, in each stage the charge transfer occurs through the use of two pass transistors of opposite type at a time; as a result, the effects of their threshold voltages are canceled (being of opposite signs). However, the two pass transistors that are series connected in each stage double its conductive resistance.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 08-322241, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference, illustrates a solution for solving the threshold voltage loss drawback (in a two-phase charge pump of the high-voltage type) using a dynamic system for biasing the pass transistors. Particularly, each pass transistor is a PMOS transistor having the source terminal connected to the input of the stage and the drain terminal connected to the output of the stage. The gate terminal of the pass transistor is selectively connected to the input of the preceding stage (to turn it on), or to the output of the stage (to turn it off). This solution, however, is not suitable for use with low-voltage transistors that withstand a gate to source voltage swing at most equal to the supply voltage. In the circuit architecture proposed by this solution, each pass transistor is driven by a gate to source voltage that is higher than the supply voltage (particularly, equal to twice the supply voltage).

Charge pump circuit with dynamic biasing of pass transistors


A method of producing a ferroelectric capacitor includes preparing a semiconductor substrate having MOSFETs with an impurity diffused area in a memory cell area and a peripheral circuit area; forming a first interlayer insulating film on the semiconductor substrate; forming a conductive plug in the first interlayer insulating film to be electrically connected to the impurity diffused area; forming a second interlayer insulating film on the first interlayer insulating film; removing a portion of the second interlayer insulating film in the memory cell area to expose the first interlayer insulating film and the conductive plug; laminating a first conductive layer, a ferroelectric layer, and a second conductive layer sequentially on the first interlayer insulating film and the second interlayer insulating film to form a capacitor forming laminated film; forming an etching mask on the capacitor forming laminated film; and etching the capacitor forming laminated film to form a ferroelectric capacitor.

The present invention relates to a method of producing a ferroelectric memory.
Recently, a semiconductor memory (ferroelectric memory) using a ferroelectric capacitor has been focused as a non-volatile memory. A ferroelectric has a characteristic of holding a bi-polar aligned in a voltage application direction even after a voltage is removed (self-polarization). Accordingly, the ferroelectric memory can be used as a non-volatile memory. A ferroelectric switches polarization thereof at a rate of an order of nano-second. It is also possible to decrease a voltage for switching polarization of the ferroelectric about 2.0 V through optimization of a manufacturing method of a ferroelectric layer. For these reasons, as compared with a flash memory or an EEPROM (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory), the ferroelectric memory has significant advantages in terms of a re-writing speed and an operation voltage. Further, it is possible to re-write the ferroelectric memory more than 1012 times. The ferroelectric capacitor has been commercially available as an RAM (random access memory).
A conventional method of producing a ferroelectric memory will be explained with reference to FIGS. 6(A)–6(C) and 7(A)–7(C) (refer to Patent References 1 to 3).
First, an element separation film 20 is formed on a silicon substrate 10 or a semiconductor substrate to define a memory cell area 12. A first MOSFET 21a, a second MOSFET 21b, and a third MOSFET 21c are formed in the memory cell area 12 and a peripheral circuit area 14 outside the memory cell area 12. The first MOSFET 21a is provided with a gate electrode 25a, an impurity diffused area 28a as a source area, and an impurity diffused area 28b as a drain area. The second MOSFET 21b is provided with a gate electrode 25b, the impurity diffused area 28b as a source area, and an impurity diffused area 28c as a drain area. The third MOSFET 21c is provided with a gate electrode 25c, an impurity diffused area 28d as a source area, and an impurity diffused area 28e as a drain area.
After the first to third MOSFET 21a to 21c are formed on the silicon substrate 10, a silicon oxide film is deposited to form a first interlayer insulating film 35. The impurity diffused areas 28a, 28c, 28d, and 28e are formed in the first interlayer insulating film 35 as the source and drains areas of the first to third MOSFET 21a to 21c. Further, conductive plugs 44 are formed in the first interlayer insulating film 35 for electrically connecting to a ferroelectric capacitor or a metal conductive pattern (FIG. 6(A)). As shown in FIG. 6(A), a bit wiring 34 is formed in the first interlayer insulating film 35 to be connected to the impurity diffused area 28b.
In the conventional method, the bit wiring 34 is embedded in the first interlayer insulating film 35. Accordingly, it is not necessary to provide a space between the ferroelectric capacitor and the conductive plug of the bit wiring for preventing the conductive plug from contacting the ferroelectric capacitor to be formed in a later step. As a result, it is possible to reduce an area of the element.
In the next step, the first interlayer insulating film 35 is polished with a chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) method. A first conductive layer 60, a ferroelectric layer 62, and a second conductive layer 64 are sequentially laminated on the first interlayer insulating film 35 to form a capacitor forming laminated layer 67a (FIG. 6(B)).
In the next step, the capacitor forming laminated layer 67a is processed with photolithography and dry etching to form ferroelectric capacitors 67 each having a lower electrode 61, a ferroelectric layer 63, and an upper electrode 65 (FIG. 6(C)). The ferroelectric capacitors 67 are electrically connected to the conductive plugs 44 in the memory cell area 12. Normally, after the ferroelectric capacitors 67 are processed with dry etching, an annealing process is performed under oxygen atmosphere (for example, at 750° C. for one minute) to restore damage in the ferroelectric capacitors 67 due to etching. Then, a silicon oxide film is deposited on the first interlayer insulating film 35 to embed the ferroelectric capacitors 67 with a CVD method to form a second interlayer insulating film 52 (FIG. 7(A)).
In the next step, an entire upper surface of the second interlayer insulating film 52 is polished. In this step, when the second interlayer insulating film 52 is polished with the CMP method as is, a portion of the second interlayer insulating film 52 above the memory cell area 12 having a high packaging density tends to protrude relative to a portion of the second interlayer insulating film 52 above the peripheral circuit area 14 having a low packaging density, thereby forming a step portion called a global step in the surface of the second interlayer insulating film 52. In order to eliminate the global step, first, the portion of the second interlayer insulating film 52 above the memory cell area 12 is removed with half etching, so that a height of the portion is reduced in half (FIG. 7(B)). Then, the second interlayer insulating film 52 is polished with the CMP method to flatten the upper surface thereof (FIG. 7(C)).
After the upper surface of the second interlayer insulating film 52 is flattened, additional conductive plugs are formed in the second interlayer insulating film 52 for electrically connecting the conductive plugs 44 of the upper electrodes 65 of the ferroelectric capacitors 67 and the conductive plugs 44 in the peripheral circuit area 14 with a known method. A metal conductive pattern is formed on the second interlayer insulating film 52.
Patent Reference 1; Japanese Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 10-178157
Patent Reference 2; Japanese Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2002-217381
Patent Reference 3; Japanese Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2003-86776
In the conventional method described above, the conductive plugs in the memory cell area and the peripheral circuit area are formed in the same step as shown in FIGS. 6(A) to 6(C), thereby causing the following problems. When the ferroelectric capacitors are formed with etching, a vicinity of the surface of the first interlayer insulating film is also etched due to over etching after the lower electrode is formed. During the over etching, the conductive plugs in the peripheral circuit area are exposed in an etching atmosphere, thereby losing the conductive plugs or causing surface roughness. Further, in a state that the conductive plugs made of tungsten are exposed, when the annealing process is performed to restore damage in the ferroelectric capacitors, the conductive plugs are oxidized.
In order to prevent the damage on the conductive plugs described above, in Patent Reference 2, a silicon oxide film is formed on an interlayer insulating film to prevent oxidation of the conductive plugs. In Patent Reference 3, a silicon nitride film is formed on an interlayer insulating film. In the methods disclosed in Patent References 2 and 3, it is necessary to provide an additional step of forming the films to prevent oxidation of the conductive plugs.
In view of the problems described above, an object of the present invention is to provide a method of producing a ferroelectric memory, in which it is possible to prevent damage of a conductive plug when an etching process is performed to form a ferroelectric film or an annealing process is performed to restore a ferroelectric film.
Further objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following description of the invention.

Method of producing ferroelectric capacitor


To control selection of content in a non-volatile memory, control information is stored in the non-volatile memory, where the control information is to control selection of content in the non-volatile memory. An algorithm is used to update the control information in the non-volatile memory to cause different content in the non-volatile memory to be selected, wherein the algorithm sets the control information to an initial value that enhances use of programming of the non-volatile memory to update the control information, and reduces use of erasing of the non-volatile memory to update control information.

In many types of systems, non-volatile memory devices are used to store data and/or software code. Examples of non-volatile memory devices include flash memory, electrically erasable and programmable read-only memory, and so forth.
An issue associated with certain types of non-volatile memory devices (such as flash memories) is that data bits in these non-volatile memory devices can be programmed (or written) to change states in just one direction (e.g., from a "1" state to a "0" state). The data bits of such non-volatile memory devices cannot be programmed (or written) to change states in the opposite direction (e.g., from a "0" state to a "1" state). To change back from a "0" state to a "1" state, an erase operation would have to be performed. However, an erase operation typically involves the erasing of a block of data at one time. In contrast, programming (or writing) the non-volatile memory can be performed on a byte-by-byte (or word-by-word) basis. A block is usually much larger than a byte or word.
As a result, updating the content of certain types of non-volatile memory devices can be inefficient, since an erase operation may have to be first performed before updated content can be written to the non-volatile memory.

Updating control information in non-volatile memory to control selection of content


With a device for error detection of adjustable flaps on aircraft wings, it is proposed that each flap is provided with a tube as a transmission element arranged in the wing span. The tube is connected fixedly at one end with the flap and is rotatably held. On the free end of the tube, a measuring arm is fixedly arranged on the tube and a sensor fixed to the flap structure is arranged. When an error occurs, the flap twists, whereby a distance change between the sensor and measuring arm occurs. The signals of the sensor are transmitted for error localization of each flap to an evaluation device, which switches off the drive via a control device with occurring errors.

With assemblies of a device for error detection of adjustable flaps, in the event of an error of a local actuating drive, synchronization may no longer provided and the flap twists and cants. If the error is not recognized in a timely manner and the flaps are further actuated, this may lead to destruction of the flap structure.
According to EP-B-922 633, it is already known to assign a torsion and cant via an arrangement of the flap positions of each drive station, whereby the flap positions are supplied with a rotary sensor via rod/crank assemblies. It was shown, however, that this type of embodiment with a rod or a crank assembly is disadvantageous, since its tolerances negatively affect the measurement accuracy. This has the result that the flap structures and fittings have to be designed at unnecessarily high error strengths. With flaps with fixed rotational axes, a high number of additional components, therefore, are required.

Device for error detection of adjustable flaps


An apparatus for producing mounts for pictures or documents comprises a cutting head which is movable over a mount blank in a longitudinal axis and in a transverse axis. A controller is provided which is so designed that the cutting head is automatically movable over the mount blank to be cut. The controller is adjustable such that the cutting head is moved according to the size of the over-cut required with a predetermined thickness of the mount blank over the greater distance required for obtaining the desired width of the mount cut-out. The oblique cut edges, meeting in the corners, of the interior, to be removed, of the mount blank are completely severed without the cut being greater than necessary. The individual cut edges can be cut precisely and easily with this apparatus. It is therefore possible even for operators who are not very skilled practically to produce a relatively large number of greatly different mounts within a short period of time.

Various apparatuses for producing a mount, i.e. a cardboard frame for receiving a picture or a document, are known. They all have the common feature that the mount blank fixed on a base plate can be cut by means of an oblique blade capable of travelling along a rail. In the former apparatuses, it is usually possible to cut only along a single axis, the cutting operation necessary for cutting out the frame taking place in a second axis at right angles to the first axis in such a way that the mount blank has to be released and turned through 90.degree..
In order to cut out a mount frame, the above-mentioned rail has two adjustable stops which have to be shifted and fixed along the rail according to the desired size of the mount cut-out. The rail has a millimeter scale for this purpose. Once this adjustment has been made, the carriage carrying the blade is pushed manually to the second stop beginning at the first stop, the blade being pressed downwardly into the cardboard. As the cut edges of a mount cut-out are oblique and these oblique cut edges meet one another in the frame corners, this work demands some skill to achieve an attractive result.
In addition, the blade has to issue with a point so that it can penetrate the cardboard at the beginning of a cut. This means that the cutting edge of the blade is inevitably oblique, i.e. extends diagonally as viewed from the side. It is difficult to make a cut from a desired starting point to a desired end point. To enable this cut to be located, as proposed and in adaptation to the respectively parallel cut on the opposite side of the frame, the diagonal cutting edge of the blade has to be moved out by a certain amount beyond the established cut end, at least in the end region of the cut, in order to sever the cardboard completely. It is not easy for an inexperienced operator to find the correct amount of over-cut here. An excessively large cut should not be made either, as the over-cut would be visible on the finished mount. The over-cut required is considerably complicated in that the corresponding amount of over-cut depends on the thickness of the respective cardboard to be cut. The thicker the cardboard, the great the over-cut has to be. If various mounts with different cut edges are also to be produced, i.e. for example on the one hand with a cut angle of 40.degree. and, on the other hand, with a cut angle of 60.degree. so that the cutting face of the oblique cutting edge visible on the finished mount changes, a further problem arises during the cutting work. From the foregoing it will be seen that the production of a mount, on the one hand, demands some experience as well as practical skill and, on the other hand, is time-consuming, making fast, economic work for the professional production of a large number of mounts difficult.

Apparatus for producing mounts for pictures or documents


A safety system for vehicle occupants includes a control unit and sensors situated remotely from the control unit and connected via conductors to the control unit. The safety system encompasses means for testing the sensors and the conductors to the sensors.

A safety system is known, for example, from the essay by W. Suchowerskyj "Evolution en matiére de détecteurs de choc" [Developments in impact detectors] in Ingénieurs de l'Automobile 1141 (1982) No. 6, pp. 69-77, Paris. The safety system encompasses a sensor suite having a plurality of sensors, at least one control unit, and a plurality of restraint means, for example airbags and/or belt tensioners. The sensor suite of a safety system of this kind serves to sense and evaluate an accident situation. On the basis of the data obtained, the points in time for triggering of the appropriate restraint means are determined.
Acceleration sensors, but also rotation-rate sensors and pressure sensors, are common today. They serve to measure acceleration, rotation rate, or an intrusion into the vehicle in the various axes, and thus to detect the progression and severity of an accident. The sensors can be disposed in a central control unit or also as external components in the front region or the side regions of the vehicle. As with all components of a safety systems, monitoring of these sensors is of critical importance in terms of the reliability and availability of the entire safety system. The safety system can provide its intended protective effect only if fault-free operation of the sensor suite is ensured.
The external sensors are usually connected via a two-wire conductor to a control unit. The conductor supplies the sensors with electrical energy from the control unit, and also serves to transfer digital data from the sensors to the control unit. For that purpose, the data are transmitted from the sensors, preferably serially, as current values. The monitoring of such external sensors is of particular importance because short circuits or interruptions are always a possibility in the case of a wiring harness routed in a vehicle. The monitoring system must on the one hand protect the electronic components, i.e. in particular in the context of short circuits to ground or to battery voltage. On the other hand, it is important specifically in the case of external components to detect the actual cause of a fault as accurately as possible, so that a repair can be quickly and cost-effectively performed in the shop.
With the monitoring that is common today, an analog measurement of the voltage on the supply conductor is performed for this purpose. Short circuits to ground or to the battery can be detected thereby because the potential then deviates from the normal supply voltage of the external sensors (e.g. 6 V). If the external sensor is sending no data, however, it is impossible to state unequivocally whether this is caused by a conductor interruption or because of an internal defect in the sensor. With the method hitherto usual, i.e. measurement of the voltage on the connecting conductor to the external sensors, it is possible to detect certain fault patterns. If the peripheral sensor is no longer sending data, a diagnosis is made according to the following formula: Measure the voltage on the connecting conductor. If it is distinctly lower than the nominal supply level to the sensors, this suggest a short circuit to ground. If it is above the threshold, however, the power supply to the sensor is switched off and another measurement is performed. The connecting conductor should now be at zero potential. If a voltage is nonetheless measured, this suggests a short circuit to the battery. If no voltage is measured, however, a conductor interruption or a sensor defect is deduced as the cause of the sensor fault.
This type of diagnosis thus makes it possible to classify essentially three fault patterns: short circuit to ground, short circuit to battery, conductor interruption or sensor with internal defect. While the first two fault types are unequivocally attributable to the vehicle's wiring harness, this is not immediately possible in the case of the third fault category. If this fault is recorded in the fault memory, testing must be performed in the shop to discover whether the fault is to looked for in the vehicle's wiring harness or in the sensor itself. This, however, is time-consuming and expensive.


A plate for passing a member from a first side of the plate through to a second side of the plate. The plate includes a retainer having a first surface on the first side of the plate, and a second surface on the second side of the plate. The retainer has one or more ports formed therethrough, at least a first one of the ports having an inner diametric extent configured to receive the outer periphery of the first member therethrough. A layer of an elastomeric material is provided on the first surface of the retainer across at least the first one of the ports. The layer is formed as having a first imperforate portion closing the first one of the ports, which first imperforate portion is openable for receiving the outer periphery of the first member through the inner diametric extent of the first one of the ports.

The present invention relates broadly to manifold and other "pass-through" plates, and more particularly to a such a plate having one or more ports allowing one or more of hoses, tubing, wiring, control lines, cables, fiber optics, and the like to be pass from a first side of the plate through to a second side of the plate, on one or both sides of the plate may be a contained environment.
When lines such hose, tubing, wire, cable, or fiber optics must extend from one environment to another, contained environment, or access otherwise must be provided between the two environments, means must be provide to seal the contained environment. For example, in transportation or other mobile applications such as for construction or agricultural equipment, hoses, tubing, wiring, and the like may have to pass through the firewall or other wall of the vehicle from the exterior or a space such as the passenger compartment, and into another space such as the engine compartment. Heretofore, a plastic or metal plate was used to seal the opening between the spaces. The plate was formed having a number of ports, into each of which was fitted a rubber grommet for sealing around the tubing, hose, or wiring pushed through the port. Each of the grommets typically had to be manually fitted into a corresponding one of the ports in the plate, thereby making for a labor intensive assembly. Alternatively, a pair of plates were provided, one on each side of the opening, with the grommets being sandwiched in between the plates.
It is believed that improvements in the construction of manifolds and other passthrough plates for hoses, tubing, wiring, control lines, cables, fiber optics, and the like would find utility in a variety of mobile applications, and in other applications such as in industrial or commercial hydraulic, pneumatic, or other fluid power transport or control, or in chemical processing, power generation, food processing, and other operations. A preferred construction would be economical to manufacture, but also would afford reliable sealing and would be adaptable to seal a variety of different pass-through arrangements.


The invention concerns a method and apparatus for performing packet loss or Frame Erasure Concealment (FEC) for a speech coder that does not have a built-in or standard FEC process. A receiver with a decoder receives encoded frames of compressed speech information transmitted from an encoder. A lost frame detector at the receiver determines if an encoded frame has been lost or corrupted in transmission, or erased. If the encoded frame is not erased, the encoded frame is decoded by a decoder and a temporary memory is updated with the decoder's output. A predetermined delay period is applied and the audio frame is then output. If the lost frame detector determines that the encoded frame is erased, a FEC module applies a frame concealment process to the signal. The FEC processing produces natural sounding synthetic speech for the erased frames.

1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to performing packet loss or Frame Erasure Concealment (FEC), and in particular, for performing FEC using speech coder that do not have a built-in or standard FEC, such as the G.711 speech coder.
2. Description of Related Art
Packet loss or Frame Erasure Concealment (FEC) techniques hide transmission losses in an audio system where the input signal is encoded and packetized at a transmitter, sent over a network, and received at a receiver that decodes the frame and plays out the output. While many of the standard Code-Excited Linear Prediction (CELP)-based speech coders, such as ITU-T's G.723.1, G.728, and G.729 have FEC algorithms built-in or proposed in their standards, there is currently no such standard for G.711, for example.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method and apparatus for performing packet loss or frame erasure concealment


A test and control apparatus, system and method for a wind farm, are provided. The test and control apparatus includes a first communication interface, a second communication interface, and a processor card. The processor card receives, via the first communication interface, a frequency regulation instruction issued by the grid scheduling server, receives operation information of the wind power generation unit via the second communication interface, and calculates, based on the operation information of the wind power generation unit, a first frequency regulation capability of the wind power generation unit performing a frequency regulation without using the first energy storage battery. The processor card sends the frequency regulation instruction to the wind power generation unit without using the first energy storage battery, in a case that the first frequency regulation capability of the wind power generation unit satisfies a requirement of the frequency regulation instruction.

With the development of society and economy, electricity resources have become a necessity in people's lives. Besides traditional methods such as the thermal power generation and the hydroelectric power generation, there are emerging power generation methods for providing power resources such as the wind power generation and the nuclear power generation. Due to its advantages of being clean, renewable and not destroying the geographical environment, the wind power has drawn much attention from people.
The conventional wind power test and control methods mainly use the traditional thermal power generation control methods. Due to the unstable nature of the wind, the voltage output from the wind power generation unit in the wind farm is not stable. In addition, since the wind power generation units are distributed in the wind farm, the power generated by the wind power generation units is not synchronized. In order to improve the grid's ability to accept the distributed wind power, people try to use the virtual synchronous generator to synchronize the distributed wind power. As the virtual synchronous generator requires a strict sustained and stable voltage, the effect of the virtual synchronous generator is not satisfactory.
The conventional wind power generation unit and the virtual synchronous generator used in the wind farm cannot provide continuous and stable voltage and cannot effectively accomplish the task of frequency regulation and work.

Test and control apparatus, system and method for wind farm

Beijing Goldwind Sciene & Creation Windpower Equipment Co., Ltd.


A fluid-handling machine, such as a dishwasher or clothes washer, incorporates a device for measuring liquid load that includes a sensor for detecting liquid pressure surges. The machine may further include a frame for containing articles, a system for circulating or distributing a liquid in the frame, and a controller, responsive to the device, for controlling the amount of liquid provided to the frame so that enough liquid is provided to ensure that there is a sufficient amount for a wash cycle.

Reducing the amount of energy consumption by a fluid-handling machine for cleansing articles in a liquid, such as a clothes washer, is a significant problem, in part because of increasing worldwide energy demand. In such a machine, the amount of energy consumed is primarily determined by the amount of energy needed to heat the liquid, such as water, used to cleanse the articles. Thus, decreased liquid consumption for such machines can result in a significant improvement in energy efficiency.
Appliances, such clothes washers, typically receive liquid for a predetermined duration through a conduit connected to the machine. A wash cycle for such a machine may comprise providing substantially particle-free liquid to the machine, circulating or distributing the liquid during the wash cycle, and draining or flushing the liquid from the machine after being used to wash the articles. Typically, a machine user has limited control over the amount of liquid provided for a wash cycle, such as by selection from a few predetermined options. Such a machine does not use liquid efficiently because variations in liquid pressure or degradation in machine components generally require providing liquid for an excessive duration to ensure more than a sufficient amount for a wash cycle. Closed loop feedback control is one method to improve water conservation in clothes washers. Several devices are available to monitor or measure the amount or volume of liquid provided for a wash cycle.
Devices for measuring the amount of liquid, such as water, include flowmeters that measure the water flow rate to the clothes washer and water level sensors that detect the static air pressure in an air cavity in the sensor. However, such devices may be difficult or non-economic to implement, may be unreliable, may degrade over time, and may not provide robust measurements relative to the machines incorporating them. Furthermore, the accuracy of such devices is not entirely satisfactory due to variations in the amount of liquid needed to satisfactorily cleanse varying amounts of soiled articles.
A need thus exists for a machine for cleansing articles incorporating a closed loop feedback system for monitoring and controlling the amount of liquid provided for a wash cycle.

Fluid-handling machine incorporating a closed loop system for controlling liquid load


A multipair cable includes an inner layer part including two differential signal transmission cables for an inner layer that are twisted together, a press winding tape wound around a periphery of the inner layer part, and an outer layer part including a plurality of differential signal transmission cables for an outer layer that are wound around an outer periphery of the press winding tape. The inner layer part further includes a buffer tape disposed between the two differential signal transmission cables.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a multipair cable.
2. Description of the Related Art
A multipair cable is known which has multiple differential signal transmission cables.
In the multipair cable with the multiple differential signal transmission cables, it is desired that the differential signal transmission cables are twisted together so as to be easily bent. If the number of the differential signal transmission cables becomes larger, a multilayer structure is generally formed in which the multiple differential signal transmission cables are twisted together so as to form an inner layer part and then multiple differential signal transmission cables are further wound around the outer periphery of the inner layer part so as to an outer layer part.
For example, generally in a multipair cable for four-channels, which has in total eight differential signal transmission cables i.e., four cables for transmission and four cables for receiving, two differential signal transmission cables are twisted together so as to form the inner layer part and then six differential signal transmission cables are spirally wound around the outer periphery of the inner layer part so as to the outer layer part.
The related arts to the invention may include JP-A-2011-142070.


An endoscope includes an insertion unit, an operation unit, an operation-unit engagement part, an insertion-unit engagement part, a water-tight sealing member, and a torque control member. The torque control member is provided between the operation-unit engagement part and the insertion-unit engagement part in radial directions of the insertion unit, so as to make tight contact with the operation-unit engagement part and the insertion-unit engagement part, and controls resistive torque of the insertion unit during rotation of the insertion unit by applying frictional resistance of a direction about the axis to the insertion unit when the insertion unit rotates in relation to the operation unit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope in which an insertion unit rotates in relation to an operation unit.
2. Description of the Related Art
An endoscope comprises an elongated insertion unit which is inserted into a body cavity of a patient, and an operation unit connected to a proximal end part of the insertion unit by which the endoscope including the insertion unit is operated. A different type of endoscope from that described above comprises an elongated insertion unit inserted into a body cavity of a patient, and an operation unit by which the endoscope including the insertion unit is operated, wherein the operation unit is connected to a proximal end part of the insertion unit with the insertion unit maintained rotatable axially about a lengthwise direction of the insertion unit.
For example, Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2004-305413 discloses an endoscope as described above.
In the Publication No. 2004-305413, a mouthpiece of an insertion unit is provided at a proximal end part of the insertion unit, and a mouthpiece of an operation unit provided at a distal end part of the operation unit. In order to connect the insertion unit and the operation unit to each other, the mouthpiece of the insertion unit is engaged in the mouthpiece of the operation unit. Therefore, the mouthpiece of the insertion unit and the mouthpiece of the operation unit function as a connection unit which connects the insertion unit and the operation unit together.
This endoscope comprises a first O-ring that ensures water-tightness of the operation unit, and a second O-ring which seals the insertion unit and the operation unit to be water-tight with respect to each other. The first O-ring is provided between the distal end part of the operation unit and the mouthpiece of the operation unit. The second O-ring is provided at a connection unit, more specifically between the mouthpiece of the insertion unit and the mouthpiece of the operation unit. When the insertion unit rotates in relation to the operation unit, the second O-ring applies frictional resistance to the insertion unit and thereby controls resistive torque during the rotation. Thus, the second O-ring serves as a sealing member by which the insertion unit and operation unit are sealed water-tight, and also as a frictional resistance member which applies frictional resistance.


Bioluminescent biosensors useful for monitoring and/or quantifying, in vitro or in vivo, activity of the Hippo signaling pathway. The biosensors monitor LATS kinase activity or YAP-TEAD interaction. The biosensors may be used in methods for monitoring and/or quantifying in real-time, in vitro or in vivo, activity of the Hippo signaling pathway, wherein the activity may be LATS kinase activity and/or YAP-TEAD interaction. The biosensors may be provided in kits for monitoring and/or quantifying in real-time, in vitro or in vivo, activity of the Hippo signaling pathway, wherein the activity may be LATS kinase activity and/or YAP-TEAD interaction.

Detailed understanding of biochemical pathways will elucidate signaling mechanisms in physiological and pathological processes, yielding insight into approaches for controlling, treating, and preventing many diseases. The ability to gain such insight is severely limited by the complexity of such pathways and the difficulty in monitoring the activity of key components once identified.
The Hippo pathway is a signaling cascade that plays important roles in development (e.g., organ size control, 3D body shape, and early embryo development), cancer (tumorigenesis, metastasis, drug resistance, and immune evasion), regeneration medicine (stem cell renewal and differentiation and tissue homeostasis/regeneration), heart development and disease (cardiomyocyte proliferation and heart infarction/cardiac injury) and in the neuronal system (neural fate and dendrite tiling)1-9. Dysregulation of the Hippo pathway is frequently observed in human cancers. When Hippo signaling is activated by upstream regulators, MST1/2 serine/threonine (S/T) kinases (mammalian homologs of Drosophila Hippo) phosphorylate/activate LATS1/2 kinases which subsequently phosphorylate/inactivate their downstream effectors, transcriptional co-activator Yes-associated protein (YAP) and its paralog transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ). S127-phosphorylated YAP (YAP-pS127) or S89-phosphorylated TAZ (TAZ-pS89) bind to cytoplasmic protein 14-3-3 and are prevented from binding to transcription factor TEAD to trans-activate downstream gene targets in the nucleus (e.g., CTGF, CYR61, FGF1, etc.)10-14. Although a few regulatory factors of the Hippo pathway have been uncovered (actin dynamics, cell matrix stiffness, cell-cell contact, and lysophosphatidic acid (LPA)3, 6, comprehensive regulator screens have been technically limited. An absence of available tools precludes measuring the dynamics and activity of the Hippo pathway core components in a quantitative, high-throughput and non-invasive manner.


A vertical generator assembly includes an engine having an engine housing and a vertical drive shaft extending downwardly from the engine housing. A support frame is attached to the bottom of the engine housing, and a stator is attached to the bottom of the support frame. A rotor is mounted within the stator and is attached to the drive shaft. A generator housing is attached to the support frame and encloses the stator and rotor.

This invention relates to electric generators, and, more particularly, to an electric generator which is driven by an internal combustion engine having a vertical drive shaft.
Although some electrical generators have used vertical shaft engines, most electrical generators have used horizontal shaft engines. A vertical shaft engine, similar to engines used on lawn mowers, provides an opportunity to use a lower cost engine because of higher volume production of vertical shaft engines.
Commercial prior art generators which have used vertical shaft engines generally include a special mounting flange for adapting the generator head to the engine. The engine adapter not only adds cost but increases the height of the generator assembly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,546,901 describes a vertical engine which is said to be connectable to a standard generator. I am not aware of a commercial generator which is made in accordance with that patent.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,677,940 describes a vertical generator having a shroud and a cooling system for cooling the generator and the engine.