Pigment dispersed liquid contains, at least: a colorant; a dispersant; and a polymerizable compound, the pigment dispersed liquid contain a substantial amount of a polymerization inhibitor.

1. Technical Field
The invention relates to a pigment dispersed liquid, a production method for the pigment dispersed liquid, and a light curable ink composition using the pigment dispersed liquid; and more particularly to a pigment dispersed liquid in which a monomer does not perform a polymerization during a dispersion treatment even if a polymerization inhibitor or an polymerization-inhibiting organic solvent is not used; a production method for that pigment dispersed liquid and the light curable ink composition containing that pigment dispersed liquid.
2. Related Art
When an inkjet pigment ink composition is prepared, dispersion treatment is generally performed on the pigment by using a disperser so that the pigment is stably dispersed in the ink composition. In a light curable pigment ink composition, a polymerizable compound is used as an ink solvent, but it is very difficult to perform dispersion treatment on both the pigment and the monomer together. The reason for that is that the monomer initiates polymerization in response to heat generated during the dispersion treatment or mechanochemically generated radicals, and that results in undesired phenomena such as increase in viscosity or gelatinization.
There is a method for removing that inconvenience by adding a polymerization inhibitor to control the polymerization of the monomer. For example, JP-A-2003-127518 discloses that ink storage stability, bleed resistance, stability (rubbing resistance etc.) after printing, and smoothness are improved in an ink composition containing 100-10,000 ppm polymerization inhibitor, deformation of a recording medium is controlled, and so a good image can be obtained and a stable and highly detailed image can be printed, irrespective of the type of recording medium (particularly media having no ink absorbability). As another example, JP-A-2003-306622 discloses that an active ray-curable ink containing (a) a pigment dispersed liquid containing 20-95 mass % pigment, (b) a polymerizable compound, (c) a polymerization initiator, and a polymerization inhibitor, the ink having 6-500 mPa·s viscosity at 25° C. and 0.01-2.5 mass % moisture content measured using Karl Fischer method has low viscosity and excellent sensitivity, outgoing stability, heat cycle resistance, and ink storage stability.
However, in the above techniques, the light curable pigment ink composition invariably contains a polymerization inhibitor, which inhibits the curing reaction of the light curable pigment ink composition. Therefore, when the light curable pigment ink composition is prepared, dispersion treatment is generally performed by using an polymerization-inhibiting organic solvent, and a monomer and photopolymerization initiator are added afterward.
Meanwhile, in that method, a drying process before the curing reaction is necessary for removing organic solvent existing in the ink that is not necessary for the curing reaction. Moreover, vaporizing an organic solvent into the air is not favorable in terms of the effect on the work environment, the cost of equipment such as a local exhauster and exhaust gas combustion apparatus, and the surroundings. A method of replacing organic solvent with monomer, e.g. a method in which organic solvent is removed by an evaporator or with a distillation operation, utilizing boiling point difference is also conceivable, but the number of production steps increases, along with the cost, and complete removal of the organic solvent is difficult.

Pigment dispersed liquid, production method for the same, and light curable ink composition using the pigment dispersed liquid


A liquid sensor has comb-shaped electrodes, applied to a piezoelectric substrate, as interdigital transducers for generating an electroacoustic wave from a transmitting transducer to a receiving transducer. The number of finger pairs of the interdigital transducers and the material out of which the electrodes are made are so chosen that a surface shear wave generated by the transmitting transducer and a bulk shear wave generated by the transmitting transducer have different frequencies.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid sensor and in particular to a liquid sensor which is composed of a surface-wave component.
2. Description of Prior Art
Surface-wave components have been used for decades in electronics, e.g. as bandpass filters for the high-frequency region, and manufactured in large quantities. Depending on the choice of material used for the substrate, different wave-forms are excited. For example, for gas sensor applications, Rayleigh-wave components with a deflection perpendicular to the surface are normally used. Such components, provided with a selective layer, are employed as bio/chemosensors.
If surface-wave components are to be used as sensors for the measurement of physical liquid properties, e.g. the density, the viscosity, the shear rigidity, the conductivity, the dielectric constant, etc., Rayleigh-wave modes lead to the generation of compression waves and thus to a high energy loss. For liquid sensors, components which generate purely shear waves are used. This type of wave can be excited in various piezoelectric materials, among others in all y-rotated quartz crystal cuts.
In the y-rotated quartz crystal cuts, surface shear waves (SSWs) and bulk shear waves, in particular the so-called `surface skimming bulk waves` (SSBWs), can, however, also be excited. Surface-wave components for which these wave types can be excited are commercially available, e.g. as bandpass filters in the high-frequency region, sometimes above 1 GHZ.
When surface-shear-wave components of this type are used as sensors for the measurement of liquid properties, problems arise that play no part or only a minor part when they are used as filters. The gravest of these problems arises from the simultaneous excitation of surface shear waves (SSWs) and bulk shear waves (SSBWs) and the interference of these waves. Another problem, that can lead to considerable disturbances in the measurement effect, is the so-called `triple transit echo`. These effects, which will be explained in more detail in the subsequent description of the present patent application, give rise to problems which render these known components unsuitable for liquid sensor applications.
Surface-wave sensors of the above type are described in H. Drobe, A. Leidl, M. Rost, I. Ruge, "Acoustic sensors based on surface-localized HPSWs for measurements in liquids", in: Sensors and Actuators A, 37-38 (1993), pp. 141-148. Piezoelectric resonators on the basis of surface waves are also known from E. Benes, M. Groschl, "Piezoelektrische Resonatoren als Sensorelemente", in: e & i, 112. Jahrgang 1995, Heft 9, S. 471 bis 483.

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Zur Forderung der Angewandten Forschung, E.V.


A reflector includes a substrate, a plurality of convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions. When light is incident upon the reflector from a certain direction, an intensity of reflected light in a viewing angle range of about xe2x88x9245xc2x0 to +45xc2x0 with respect to a regular reflection direction of the incident light 10 is about 60% or more of an intensity of light which is incident upon a standard white plate from a direction inclined by about 30xc2x0 from a direction normal to the plate and is reflected to the direction normal to the plate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reflector incorporated in a reflective liquid crystal display device with no backlight, a method for fabricating the same, and a reflective liquid crystal display device incorporating the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, liquid crystal display devices have been increasingly used in personal computers, TVs, word processors, video cameras, etc. There has been demands for further improvements of these appliances such as miniaturization, power-saving, cost reduction, etc. In an attempt to meet these demands, reflective liquid crystal display devices having no backlight which display images by reflecting ambient light incident thereupon have been developed.
In order to achieve bright display with a reflective liquid crystal display device having no backlight, it is important to efficiently utilize ambient light. Accordingly, a reflector incorporated in such a reflective liquid crystal display device plays a very important roll. It is thus necessary to design a reflector having the most suitable reflection characteristic and which efficiently utilizes ambient light incident upon the device from every direction, and to develop a technique for fabricating such a reflector with high accuracy and high reproducibility.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No 6-75238 discloses a reflective liquid crystal display device. The reflector incorporated in the liquid crystal display device includes convex/concave portions formed of a photosensitive resin and a film thinner than the convex/concave portions deposited over the convex/concave portions, thereby smoothing the surface of the reflector including the convex/concave portions. The reflector is used in the liquid crystal display device in combination with a guest-host mode (referred to as simply a xe2x80x9cGHxe2x80x9d mode hereinafter).
FIGS. 20G to 20L are top views each illustrating one of the fabrication steps for a conventional reflector 106, whereas FIGS. 20A to 20F are each cross-sectional views taken along the line A to Axe2x80x2 in FIGS. 20G to 20L, respectively. In FIG. 20L, dashed lines represent contour lines of the reflector 106.
First, as shown in FIGS. 20A and 20G, a photosensitive resin is deposited on a glass substrate 101 so as to form a photosensitive resin layer 102a. Then, a photomask 103 including circular regions is placed over the glass substrate 101 as shown in FIGS. 20B and 20H. Then, the substrate is exposed to light and developed, thus forming cylindrical protrusions 102b on the substrate 101 as shown in FIGS. 20C and 20I. Then, the entire substrate is subjected to a heat treatment so that the protrusions 102 b are adequately melted and form smooth convex portions 102c as shown in FIGS. 20D and 20J. Then, a photosensitive resin is again deposited over the entire surface of the substrate 101 including the smooth convex portions 102c so as to form a photosensitive resin layer 104 thinner than the layer 102a, thereby obtaining a surface including smooth convex/concave portions as shown in FIGS. 20E and 20K. Finally, a thin metal film is deposited on the layer 104 so as to form a reflection film 105 as shown in FIGS. 20F and 20L. A conventional reflector 106 is thus fabricated.
As shown in FIG. 20L, the reflector 106 fabricated by the conventional fabrication process includes a lot of flat regions. The optical characteristic of the reflector 106 is such that, although no interference occurs, a large portion of light incident upon the reflector 106 is reflected to a direction of regular reflection. For example, when light is incident upon the conventional reflector 106 from a direction perpendicular thereto, a large portion of the light is reflected to the direction perpendicular to the reflector 106 which corresponds to the direction of the regular reflection. Accordingly, there is only a very limited range of directions in which high-intensity reflected light is obtained. In other words, with such a conventional reflector 106, it is not possible to obtain high-intensity reflected light in -a wide range of directions. Therefore, when such a reflector is used in a reflective liquid crystal display device performing multi-color display, the brightness of display would not be sufficient for practical use.
Conventional liquid crystal display devices are produced without sufficient consideration for compatibility among the liquid crystal display mode, the color filter, and the reflector. Therefore, there are undesirable situations such as where the display is bright but with low contrast; the contrast is high but with low brightness; or the brightness and the contrast are both high but with a slow response rate, a high threshold voltage, or non-uniformity in display due to inferior orientation of the liquid crystal molecules.
In order to ensure the display quality required for practical use, the application of such a conventional reflective liquid crystal display device is limited to a black-and-white display or, at the best, a 4-color display. Thus, the growing demand for multi-color displays with the growing variety of information has not been satisfied.
In order to realize a multi-color display which can be practically used, the compatibility among the reflector, the liquid crystal display mode, the color filter, and other factors need to be considered while improving the reflection characteristic of the reflector. Unlike a transmission type liquid crystal display device provided with a backlight, the reflective liquid crystal. display device greatly depends upon ambient light. Thus, it is necessary to suitably design the optical characteristic and the convex/concave structure of the reflector, appropriately select a display mode from a number of display modes to best match the optical characteristic of the reflector, optimize various parameters of the display mode, and appropriately design a color filter. However, it has not been possible to realize a multi-color display even with these factors being optimized since the reflection characteristics of the reflector are not sufficient.
According to one aspect of this invention, a reflector includes a substrate, a plurality of convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions. When light is incident upon the reflector at a first incident angle with respect to a normal direction thereof, an intensity of reflected light in a viewing angle range of about xe2x88x9245xc2x0 to +45xc2x0 with respect to a regular reflection direction of the incident light is about 60% or more of a reference intensity, where the reference intensity is an intensity of light which is incident upon a standard white plate at a second incident angle with respect to a normal direction thereof and is reflected to the normal direction.
In one embodiment of the invention, each of the convex/concave portions at least partially includes a continuous curved surface. A total area of the portions of the substrate whose inclination at a surface of the reflector is less than 2xc2x0 accounts for about 40% or less with respect to a total area of the substrate.
In another embodiment of the invention, the convex/concave portions are formed of a photosensitive resin.
In still another embodiment of the invention, the convex/concave portions are formed of an inorganic oxide and a photosensitive resin.
In still another embodiment of the invention, the convex/concave portions are formed of minute particles and a photosensitive resin.
In still another embodiment of the invention, the convex/concave portions are formed by forming a plurality of cylindrical depressions in a photosensitive resin layer formed on the substrate and heating the plurality of cylindrical depressions.
According to another aspect of this invention, a method for fabricating a reflector including a substrate, a plurality of convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions, includes the steps of: performing a photolithography process and a heat-treatment process to form the convex/concave portions for a plurality of rounds; and forming the thin reflective film over the convex/concave portions.
In one embodiment of the invention, a shape of the convex/concave portions formed through a single round of the photolithography process is constant.
In another embodiment of the invention, a shape of the convex/concave portions formed in one round of the photolithography process is different from a shape of the convex/concave portions formed in another round of the photolithography process.
In still another embodiment of the invention, as a photosensitive resin used in the plurality of rounds of photolithography processes, a negative photosensitive resin is first used and a positive photosensitive resin is subsequently used.
According to still another aspect of this invention, a method for fabricating a reflector including a substrate, convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions, includes the steps of: performing a photolithography process and a heat treatment to form the convex/concave portions; and forming the thin reflective film over the convex/concave portions. The method further includes the steps of: forming an oxide on the substrate; and etching the oxide.
According to still another aspect of this invention, a method for fabricating a reflector including a substrate, convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions, includes the steps of: performing a photolithography process and a heat treatment so as to form the convex/concave portions; and forming the thin reflective-film over the convex/concave portions, wherein the method further comprises the step of applying an organic insulating resin mixed with minute particles onto the substrate.
According to still another aspect of the invention, a method for fabricating a reflector including a substrate, a plurality of convex/concave portions formed on the substrate, and a thin reflective film formed over the convex/concave portions, includes the steps of: forming a photosensitive resin layer on the substrate; performing a photolithography process to form a plurality of cylindrical depressions in the photosensitive resin layer; heating the plurality of cylindrical depressions to form the convex/concave portions on the substrate; and forming the thin reflective film over the convex/concave portions.
According to still another aspect of this invention, a reflective liquid crystal display device includes a reflector mentioned above.
In one embodiment of the invention, the reflective liquid crystal display device further includes a substrate and a liquid crystal layer interposed between the substrate and the reflector. The liquid crystal layer includes a guest-host type liquid crystal material.
In another embodiment of the invention: a birefringence (xcex94n) of the liquid crystal material is about 0.15 or less; a dielectric constant anisotropy (xcex94∈) of the liquid crystal material satisfies an expression: 4 less than xcex94∈ less than 12; a twist angle of the liquid crystal material is set to be within a range of about 180xc2x0 to 360xc2x0; and a thickness of a cell constituted by the substrate, the reflector and the liquid crystal layer is within a range of about 3 to 10 xcexcm.
In still another embodiment of the invention, the reflective liquid crystal display device further includes a color filter including colored portions of three different colors, wherein a difference in thickness between adjacent colored portions is about 0.3 xcexcm or less.
Thus, the invention described herein makes possible the advantages of (1) providing a reflector having a reflection characteristic most suitable for a reflective liquid crystal display device or the like incorporating the reflector, thereby efficiently utilizing ambient light without interference; (2) providing a method for fabricating the same; and (3) providing a reliable reflective liquid crystal display device having excellent display quality which allows for a multi-color display by optimizing the compatibility among the reflector, the liquid crystal layer, and the color filter.
These and other advantages of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description with reference to the accompanying figures.

Reflector, method for fabricating the same and reflective liquid crystal display device incorporating the same


A locking arrangement for the gearshift stick of vehicles, having a housing provided with two openings formed by two shoulders, two locking plates and two ear plates for two legs of a shackle of a padlock to extend therein to lock the shackle immovable when the shackle is to be stored in the unlocked separated condition.

A U.S. patent Ser. No. 4,693,699 titled "Locking Arrangement For The Gearshift Stick Of Vehicles" has a shackle 24 of a padlock, which is kept on protrusions 48 on a cover 44 for storing the shackle in the unlocked and separated orientation. But there is no locking means to keep securely the shackle thereon, so it may fall off because of vibration during running of the vehicle.

Locking arrangement for the gearshift stick of vehicles


There is provided a seat belt anchor attaching structure, comprising a seat adjuster for adjusting a seat position by moving an upper rail attached with a seat cushion relatively to a lower rail, and a seating sensor arranged between the seat adjuster and the floor panel and for detecting a presence or absence of a sitting occupant by a downward force applied to the lower rail. An anchor plate of the seat belt for binding the occupant is fixed on the lower rail thereby eliminating the application of an unnecessary load to the seat sensor.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a seat for vehicle, such as for an automobile, and more specifically to a mounting structure for a seat belt anchor.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In the vehicle or the like mounted with an air bag (particularly for the assistant driver's seat), there is provided a seat sensor for detecting an occupant sitting on the seat in order to aim at inflating the air bag only in the event of collision when the occupant is sitting thereon (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 11-108748).
Such a seat sensor is generally arranged between the seat (cushion) and the floor panel). Meanwhile, it is generally a conventional practice to use, as a structure attaching a seat belt anchor to the vehicle, an attaching structure to the floor panel. In the case of arranging a child seat on such a vehicle, generally a seat belt is completely withdrawn out of the retractor and retained by a separate hook or the like to apply a tension to the seat belt at all times.
In such a case, because a tension is always applied to the seat belt, a downward load takes place due to the anchor and buckle of the seat belt. Therefore, there is a fear that a sitting state is incorrectly detected even in the absence of an occupant.
In order to improve this, it is to be considered to attach the anchor of seat belt to the upper rail of seat adjuster such that the seat cushion and seat sensor is free from the application of a downward force by the seat belt at between the anchor and the buckle.
However, where the seat belt anchor is fixed on the upper rail of the seat adjuster, when moving the seat adjuster frontward and inclining the seat back toward the front in order to get in/out the rear seat, the anchor of the seat belt is moved toward the front in unison with the seat adjuster. Consequently, there is a disadvantage that the seat belt obstructs the space for getting in/out and hence hinders against getting in/out.

Mitsubishi Jidosha Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha


In a case where a non-volatile memory comes close to the end of a life time and has become ReadOnly, it is impossible to erase data stored in the non-volatile memory, which may lead to a decreased robustness of maintaining confidentiality. A data processing apparatus determines whether the life time of a non-volatile memory is about to expire. In a case where the determination result indicates that the life time of the non-volatile memory is about to expire, the data stored in the non-volatile memory is erased.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus and a data processing method for processing data in a memory.
Description of the Related Art
There is known a technique with regard to memory control, which prevents destruction of data stored in a non-volatile memory by controlling so as to inhibit write operation to the non-volatile memory, in a case where the life time of the non-volatile memory is about to expire (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-167809).
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-167809 discloses a technique which focuses on protecting data stored in a non-volatile memory from destruction. However, in a case where highly confidential data is stored in the non-volatile memory, there may be a situation in which it is desirable to erase, rather than protect, the data in terms of security assurance. With the life time of the non-volatile memory being about to expire, there may be a case where writing of data is impossible and only reading of data is possible. In a case where only reading of data is possible, erasing the data stored in the non-volatile memory becomes impossible.

Data processing apparatus and data processing method for processing data in memory


A modular tester architecture allows end-users to mix-and-match scan chain modules and clock driver modules. Modules are interconnected via a synchronization bus allowing the test modules to synchronize with each other so that each can perform its portion of the overall test at the proper time in relation to the testing performed by other modules. The modules can include a BIST driver module, a data acquisition module, networking interface modules, a controller module, a current measurement module, and a DC parametrics module, among others.

The ever increasing number of transistors that can be crammed onto a single integrated circuit device has given rise to the system on a chip (known as "SOC"). Unfortunately, as useful as SOCs are, as they continue to increase in complexity, the expense, delay and difficulty in testing them has also increased. This situation has created an ever increasing burden on the chip manufacturer and others to test SOCs and other integrated circuits (known as "ICs") without letting the associated cost of testing become prohibitive.
Wafer sort is a phrase that refers to testing of ICs at the wafer stage. "Wafer" refers to a thin disk of semiconducting material such as silicon, silicon germanium, gallium arsenide, indium phosphide onto which integrated circuits have been created, typically through etching and deposition processes. Currently, wafers are typically between 6 inches and 12 inches in diameter.
Each wafer includes a number of discrete ICs often in square or rectangular shapes and packed onto the surface of the wafer. These ICs are called "die" at this point before they are physically cut into individual ICs and packaged. The IC manufacturer tests integrated circuits while they are still physically part of the wafer.
To test the die, a machine called a wafer prober positions a finished wafer very accurately below a probe card. The probe card contains many probes, typically one for each pad on each die. The probes may be needle-like or may use a different approach, such as a membrane technology. The probes must be physically arranged in precise correspondence to the pads on the particular die to be tested in order to make electrical contact with all the pads of interest. The die contain pads for physically and electrically connecting the IC to its pins in its package or perhaps to other devices. More complicated ICs, like the microprocessor-based SOCs, often contain dozens or even hundreds of pads corresponding to the number of pins such devices require. The probe card itself is typically an annular printed circuit board between 6″ and 12″ in diameter Under control of the wafer prober, the wafer is pressed against the probe card so that electrical contact is made between the pads of the die and the probes. A series of electrical signals, including power, is fed through the probes into some of the pads for testing the die. Resulting electrical signals are fed back through other pads into their corresponding probes and back into the probe card for analysis. When the testing of that die is complete, the wafer prober positions the wafer such that electrical contact is made between the probe card and the next die to be tested.
Typically, one die is tested at a time, although in some cases, the probe card may connect with more than one die, allowing more than one die to be tested at the same time. This approach is limited by the number of probes that can economically be attached to one card as well as the size of the probe card and the size and weight of associated electronics used to control the probe card.
In current IC wafer sort testers, the probe card is connected through special connectors on a fixture board to pin electronics in a test head. The fixture board is physically and electrically attached to the probe card and test head. In one embodiment, there are special connectors on or interfaced to the fixture board called pogo pins through which the fixture board is connected to the probes on the probe card. In this way, the test electronics in the tester are connected through the probes on the probe card to the pads of the die, providing the electrical connection that is needed to test the die.
For mechanical stability, the test head attaches to the mechanical frame of the wafer prober. Because the typical test head is very large and heavy, they typically are mounted on large positioner machines that use counter-balancing weights to make it easier to manipulate the test head.
Traditional IC wafer sort testers, also known as automatic test equipment ("ATE") have a large test head. The size of the test head ranges from the size of the typical clothes dryer to something that can be several times that large. In the past few years, there have been some integrated circuit testers introduced that have the entire tester in the test head. However even in those cases, the test head is very large, consuming large amounts of floor space in costly clean rooms in IC factories.
In addition to being very large, the test heads of traditional testers are very heavy, requiring expensive, specialized positioning equipment that utilizes counter-balancing weights to allow the test head to be moved and positioned as needed.
The traditional approach to wafer sort using ATEs described above has several disadvantages:
1. Current ATEs takes up a lot of expensive floor space (often 25 square feet or more)
2. The typical ATE test head is very bulky and massive, and is difficult to manipulate.
3. The process of disconnecting and reconnecting the test head to switch probe cards and from the wafer prober can take several minutes which reduces test-floor productivity and throughput.
4. When the traditional test head is attached to the ATE, the operator does not have direct access to the probe card. He cannot easily examine and correct problems.
5. The traditional test head (and ATE system) is very expensive, impacting the cost associated with producing the ICs being tested.
6. Interfacing the large test head to the probes on the probe card requires signal lengths from the tester pins to the device pads of several inches. The length of this path results in a significant loading effect on both the tester and the device's output pins, resulting in degradation of signal quality. This loading also results in a need for testers to have high-current drivers that can overcome the loading effect of the long signal paths. That, in turn, increases power consumption and the need for heat dissipation.
7. Pogo pin connections are prone to failure due to effects such as oxidation and breakage of the pogo pin springs.
To some extent, each of these problems have been exacerbated in recent years with the increasing complexity of ICs in general and SOCs in particular. The combination of current testing methodology with the increasing complexity of SOCs in particular have meant that testing an increasing amount of pads, signals and circuitry, requires an increasing amount of time, space, power and ultimately money. This combination of traditional IC testing paradigms with chips of ever-increasing complexity has made thorough IC testing ever more difficult and expensive. It would be advantageous to address these difficulties.

Tester architecture for testing semiconductor integrated circuits


An image synthesizing apparatus for synthesizing first and second images with each other which includes a first display memory for storing a first image data constituting a first image, and a display memory control device for comparing a second image data for constituting a second image with a predetermined image data to thereby judge whether the second image data is to be written into the first display memory or not.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to synthesis of digitized images and, more particularly, relates to an image synthesizing apparatus suitable for recording an arbitrary-form foreground image superposed on another background image.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, an image processing system designed to receive, edit and record digitized natural images has been used in work stations and the like. For example, a system of this type is introduced in the reading, "Report on CD-ROM, CD-I Development Field", Nikkei New Media.Technical Forefront Report 1, Nikkei McGraw-Hill Inc., pages 36 to 45, May 1987. The system introduced in the afore-mentioned reading is constituted by a 16-bit micro-processor as a main component, a frame buffer (display memory) of 24-bit depth (8-bit depth in each of R, G and B), a video camera for fetching natural images, an A/D converter, a monitor for confirming the contents of the frame buffer, a tablet or terminal for inputting coordinates and characters, a work memory, and an external storage. The natural images thus fetched can be subject to editing/processing operations, such as removal of noise, change of color tone (saturation and lightness), change of contrast, drawing of outlines, enlargement or reduction of scale, mask synthesis and the like. The term "mask synthesis" used herein means image synthesis which is performed by superposing part of an image on another background image. In this regard, in the aforementioned prior art example, a mask memory is arranged in parallel to the frame buffer (display memory) so that the background image can be combined with the image extracted by masking, with reference to the contents of the mask memory. In general, the reference to the mask memory is carried out by software.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 59-45567 discloses a method in which image synthesis is sped up by circuit control on the basis of the judgment from the contents of the mask memory whether data are to be transferred to the corresponding frame buffer or not.
According to the aforementioned prior art, the mask memory must be arranged in parallel to the frame buffer, so that there arises a problem in that the circuit is enlarged in scale. Further, in the case where the reference to the mask memory is carried out by software, a large amount of time is required for image synthesis. On the other hand, in the case where high-speed synthesis is made by circuit control, the mask memory must have a sufficiently short access time compared with the frame buffer. Accordingly, the circuit is apt to be expensive while the circuit scale is apt to be enlarged. Further, in the case where an image to be superposed is fetched on the background preliminarily formed as a fixed uniform color on the assumption of mask synthesis as called "chromakey", an additional procedure comprising the steps of preparing a mask pattern by reference to the aforementioned image and recording it in the mask memory is required. There arises therefore a problem in that a long time is required for image synthesis.

Image synthesizing apparatus for superposing a second image on a first image


The invention relates to compositions and methods for treating diseases. In particular aspects, the invention relates to administering a combination of a disintegrin with a microtubule stabilizing agent useful for treatment of cancer.

The first step of metastasis involves the attachment of cancer cells to tissues around the primary site, i.e., to the extracellular matrix (ECM) via cell surface integrins and other adhesion receptors. Integrin targets of the ECM include fibronectin, fibrinogen, vitronectin, collagen and laminin. Integrins mediate cell-cell and cell-substratum interactions and are involved in bidirectional signaling that links the ECM with cytoskeletal proteins. In the second step, cancer cells secrete digestive enzymes that degrade the surrounding tissues allowing the tumor cells to invade these tissues. Eventually, the tumor cells enter the blood or lymphatic system where they repeat the adhesion and invasion steps at a distant (metastatic) site. At this remote site, tumor cells induce the formation of new blood vessels (a process called neovascularization), in and around the growing tumor. These new blood vessels supply nutrients to the metastatic tumor and allow it to grow. Treatments that block any of these steps should act to inhibit metastasis.
Integrins are heterodimers composed of alpha and beta submits that are non-covalently associated. Interactions between integrins and ECM proteins have been shown to be mediated via an Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) sequence present in the matrix proteins. Both the alpha and beta subunits of the integrin are required for fibrinogen binding.
A well known inhibitor of the integrin-ECM interaction is a disintegrin which represents a family of proteins that include those from venom of snakes of the Crotalidae and Viperidae families have been found to inhibit glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa mediated platelet aggregation. See, e.g., Huang, T. F. et al., J. Biol. Chem. 262:16157 (1987); Gan, Z. R. et al., J. Biol. Chem. 263:19827 (1988); Yasuda, T. et al., J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 16:714 (1990); Trikha, M. et al., Fibtinolysis 4 (Suppl. 1):105 (1990); Trikha, M. et al., Blood 76 (Suppl. 1):479a (1990); Holahan, M. A. et al., Pharmacology 42:340 (1991); Shebuski, R. J. et al., Circulation 82:169 (1990); Yasuda, T. et al., Circulation 83:1038 (1991). Disintegrins are disulfide rich and, with the exception of barbourin, contain an RGD (Arg-Gly-Asp) sequence that has been implicated in the inhibition of integrin-mediated interactions (Scarborough et al., J. Biol. Chem. 266(20):9359-62 (1991)). Most disintegrins can disrupt different integrin-ECM interactions (e.g., inhibition of β1 integrins (McLane et al. 1998) and β3 integrins such as barbourin are relatively specific and disrupt only αIIbβ3 integrin function (Scarborough et al. (1991)).
The RGD sequence of disintegrins is located at the tip of a flexible loop, the integrin-binding loop, stabilized by disulfide bonds and protruding from the main body of the polypeptide chain. See, e.g., amino acid residues 457 to 469 of SEQ ID NO: 1. This exposed RGD sequence enables disintegrins to bind to integrins with high affinity. Portions of a disintegrin other than the RGD site may have biological effects on integrins. See, e.g., Connolly, T. M. et al., Circulation 82 (Suppl. III):660 (1990)).
Disintegrins that are known to disrupt integrin interactions include bitistatin, an 83 amino acid disintegrin isolated from the venom of Bitis arietans; echistatin, a 49 amino acid disintegrin isolated from the venom of Echis cannatus; kistrin, a 68 amino acid disintegrin isolated from the venom of Calloselasma rhodostoma; trigamin, a 72 amino acid disintegrin isolated from the venom of Trimeresurus gramineus, (see U.S. Pat. No. 5,066,592 by Huang et al.); applaggin, isolated from the venom of Agkistrodon piscivorus piscivorus (see e.g., Chao, B. H. et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 86:8050 (1989); Savage, B. et al., J. Biol. Chem. 265:11766 (1990)); and contortrostatin (CN), isolated from the venom of Agkistrodon contortix contortix (the southern copperhead snake).
Unlike other monomeric disintegrins, CN is a homodimer with molecular mass (Mr) of 13,505 for the intact molecule and 6,750 for the reduced chains as shown by mass spectrometry (Trikha, Rote, et al., Thrombosis Research 73:39-52 (1994)). CN can be purified from snake venom, as described in Trikha, Rote, et al., Thrombosis Research 73:39-52 (1994).
CN full-length DNA precursor has been cloned and sequenced (Zhou, Hu et al. (2000)). CN is produced in the snake venom gland as a multidomain precursor of 2027 bp having a 1449 bp open reading frame encoding a precursor that includes a pro-protein domain (amino acid residues 1 to 190 of SEQ ID NO: 1), a metalloproteinase domain (residues 191 to 410 of SEQ ID NO: 1) and a disintegrin domain (residues 419 to 483 of SEQ ID NO: 1). The CN precursor is proteolytically processed, possibly autocatalytically, to generate mature CN. The CN disintegrin domain encodes 65 amino acids with a molecular weight equal to that of the mature CN subunit. CN displays the classical RGD motif in its integrin-binding loop.
The CN full-length precursor mRNA sequence can be accessed in the GenBank database using accession number: AF212305. The nucleotide sequence encoding the 65 amino acid disintegrin domain of CN represents the segment from 1339 to 1533 in the mRNA. Plasmids encoding the CN full-length gene have been described (Zhou, Hu et al. (2000)) and are available from the laboratory of Francis S. Markland at University of Southern California (Los Angeles, Calif.). Various recombinant forms of CN are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,710,030 by Markland.
CN is cysteine-rich (10 cysteines per monomer), displays no secondary structure and, like other disintegrins, has a complex folding pattern that relies on multiple disulfide bonds (four intrachain and two interchain disulfide bonds) to stabilize its tertiary structure (Zhou, Hu et al. (2000)). The compact structure of CN, achieved by its multiple disulfide bonds, renders it more resistant to proteolytic inactivation as compared to other disintegrins.
Receptors of CN that have been identified include: integrins αIIbβ3, αvβ3, αvβ5, and α5β1 (Trikha, De Clerck et al., Cancer Res. 54(18): 4993-98 (1994); Trikha, Rote et al., Thrombosis Res. 73(1): 39-52 (1994); Zhou, Nakada et al., Angiogenesis 3(3): 259-69 (1999); Zhou, Nakada et al., Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 267(1): 350-55 (2000). Interactions between CN and integrins are RGD-dependent. As an anti-cancer agent, CN has effective anti-angiogenic and anti-metastatic properties (Trikha, De Clerck et al. 1994; Trikha, Rote et al. (1994); Schmitmeier et al., Anticancer Res. 20(6B): 4227-33 (2000); Zhou, Hu et al., Biochem. Biophys. 375(2): 278-88 (2000); Markland et al., Haemostasis 31(3-6): 183-91 (2001); Swenson et al., Mol. Cancer Ther. 3(4): 499-511 (2004)). CN also has the ability to directly engage tumor cells and suppress their growth in a cytostatic manner (Trikha, De Clerck et al. (1994); Trikha, Rote et al. (1994); Schmitmeier et al. (2000)). The antitumoral activity of CN is based on its high affinity interaction with integrins α5β1, αvβ3 and αvβ5 on both cancer cells and newly growing vascular endothelial cells (Trikha, De Clerck et al. (1994); Zhou, Nakada et al. (1999); Zhou, Nakada et al. (2000); Zhou, Sherwin et al., Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 61(3): 249-60 (2000)). This diverse mechanism of action provides CN with a distinct advantage over many antiangiogenic agents that only block a single angiogenic pathway and/or do not directly target tumor cells.
The taxanes represent a class of small molecule diterpenoids compounds (i.e., taxoids) that are useful for cancer therapy. Paclitaxel (Taxol®) and docetaxel (Taxotere®), are well known taxanes which are efficacious against a range of solid tumors, particularly carcinomas, melanomas, and sarcomas. (See e.g., references cited in Pamela et al., Clin Cancer Res Vol. 8, 846-855 (2002)). Paclitaxel and docetaxel bind to β tubulin and disrupt microtubule assembly/disassembly. Id. Stabilization of microtubules by taxanes causes mitotic arrest and cell death (e.g., apoptosis) reportedly independent of the p53 tumor suppressor. Id. Taxanes induce genes encoding inflammatory mediators such as tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukins, and enzymes such as NO synthase and COX-2. Id.
Taxanes have a common "taxoid" core structure shown below.

Taxol® was first isolated from the bark of the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia Nutt.) but is presently derived mainly by semisynthesis from the advanced taxoid 10-deacetylbaccatin III, which can be obtained from bark or needles of the European yew, Taxus baccata. (See e.g., references 15-20 in Jennewein, et al., PNAS, 98(24):13595-13560 (2001); see also Holton, et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 116:1597-1601 (1994)).
A number of modified taxanes or taxoid analogs have been prepared which have a taxane ring bearing modified side chains. These modified taxanes or taxoid analogs inhibit cancer growth while having greater water solubility and stability than naturally occurring Taxol®. Analogs also include fatty acid conjugates. Exemplary derivatives of Taxol® are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,638,742; 5,278,324; 5,272,171; 5,254,580; 5,250,683; 5,248,796; and 5,227,400; and U.S. Pub. App. No. 2005/0148657; and the references cited therein, as well as those compounds disclosed in Villalva-Servín, et al., Can. J. Chem., 82: 227-39 (2004); Shen, et al., Chem. Pharm. Bull., 53(7): 808-10 (2005); Ono, et al., Biol. Pharm. Bull., 27(3): 345-51 (2004); Sampath, et al., Mol. Cancer Ther., 2(9): 873-74 (2003); and Wolff, et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 9(10): 3589-97 (2003).
The co-administration of taxanes or taxane derivatives with at least one active agent has been reported. Taxotere® in combination with prednisone has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of metastatic androgen-independent prostate cancer. Rose et al. reported the administration of the oral taxane BMS-275183 in combination with cetuximab (an anti-epidermal growth factor receptor monoclonal antibody) (Rose, et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 10(21): 7413-17 (2004)). Levy, et al. reported the administration of antimetabolite-taxane combinations (specifically, the administration of gemcitabine and docetaxel) in women with anthracycline pretreated metastatic breast cancer (Levy, et al., Cancer Treat. Rev., 31: S17-22 (2005)).

Combination therapy for treatment of cancer


A partition wall for separating a developing chamber from a toner agitating chamber in an electrostatic developing device includes a high wall portion confronting a toner discharge opening of a toner cartridge, and low wall portions formed on either side of the high wall portion. Toner is discharged from the toner discharge opening of the toner cartridge into the agitating chamber. Toner is then sent over the partition wall and into the developing chamber by rotation of an agitator in the agitating chamber. Toner in the central portion of the agitating chamber goes over the high wall portion, and toner in the side portions of the agitating chamber goes over the low wall portions. Accordingly, a uniform amount of toner is supplied to all points along the length of a developing sleeve in the developing chamber, and hence to all points along the length of a photosensitive drum confronting the developing sleeve.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrostatic image forming apparatus such as a printer, a copying machine, a facsimile system, and the like. More particularly, the invention relates to a structure for transporting a toner supplied from a toner supply cartridge into a developing chamber.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional image forming apparatus employs a dry developing method, in which development is achieved by supplying toner to a developing region on the surface of a photosensitive drum. In such an apparatus, the surface of the photosensitive drum is uniformly charged by a charger, then light beams corresponding to image data are projected onto the surface of the photosensitive drum. The light beams form an electrostatic latent image on the surface of the photosensitive drum. Next, a toner, in the form of fine particles magnetized by a developing device, are developed onto the electrostatic latent image to form a toner image which is transferred onto a recording sheet.
For example, in an image forming apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 64-52182, a developing device (developing tank) adjacent a photosensitive drum includes a developing sleeve incorporating a magnetic roller in its inner portion. The developing sleeve carries toner and a carrier on its circumferential surface. A toner supply roller supplies toner to the developing sleeve. In a toner supply chamber (make-up chamber), which is separated from the developing chamber by a partition wall, a rotating agitating member supplies the toner into the developing chamber. The toner supply chamber stores new, unused toner, which is supplied from a toner source. The toner in the toner supply chamber is sent over the partition wall and into the developing chamber by rotation of the agitating member.
As the recording operation is repeatedly performed, as described above, toner is consumed and it becomes necessary to supply additional toner to the toner supply chamber. To add additional toner, the entire process unit or the whole casing of the developing device may be replaced, or a lid on the toner supply chamber may be opened and toner from a toner make-up box may be emptied into the toner supply chamber to replenish the toner supply.
Replacing the entire process unit or the entire developing device, however, can be very expensive. In order to prolong the interval between replacement of the developing device to reduce the need for replacement, it is necessary to enlarge the toner supply chamber so that a larger amount of toner can be stored. The larger toner supply chamber, however, causes the apparatus as a whole to become larger, which can be undesirable.
On the other hand, when toner from a toner make-up box is added to the toner supply chamber, toner can be easily scattered around and may frequently soil hands and clothes.
In order to solve such problems it is known to provide a member at the side of a toner supply chamber, which allows a toner cartridge containing toner to be detachably attached to the toner supply chamber. Using this system, a replacement operation may be performed wherein a new toner cartridge is attached to the developing device, and an aperture between the cartridge and the toner supply chamber is opened so that the cartridge communicates with the toner supply chamber. Toner from the toner cartridge may thereby be supplied to the toner supply chamber as the recording operation is carried on, and the chance of scattering toner is greatly reduced.
In the above-described toner cartridge system, in order to prevent toner from spilling out of the cartridge while the cartridge is handled, it is necessary to seal the aperture on the cartridge with a shutter. Since it is very difficult to ensure a good seal of the shutter when the aperture is large, the aperture is formed to have the minimum required size in a central portion of the cartridge in its longitudinal direction.
In the above toner cartridge system, toner is discharged into the toner supply chamber from the aperture in the central portion of the toner cartridge. The toner in the toner supply chamber is sent over a partition wall and into the developing chamber by an agitating member. Under such conditions, the pushing force on the toner from the toner cartridge is easily transmitted to the central region of the toner in the toner supply chamber, and the toner in the central region of the toner supply chamber advances straight from the aperture on the toner cartridge into the developing chamber. However, the pushing force on the toner from the toner cartridge is not easily transmitted to the toner present at side portions of the toner supply chamber, and therefore the toner at the side portions cannot easily go over the partition wall. Accordingly, toner is not well supplied to the end portions of the developing sleeve, and hence to the photosensitive drum. As a result, the recording density on a recording sheet may be too light at the side portions. If this condition persists, clogging of the toner may begin at the side portions, and the flow of the toner may gradually become worse, even in the central portion. As a result, the recording density may become insufficient across all of the recording sheet.
If the height of the partition wall is decreased, toner at the side portions is able to easily go over the partition wall, and stagnation of the toner can be prevented. However, toner in the central portion receives less resistance, and too much toner is sent from the central portion of the toner supply chamber into the developing chamber. As a result, an imbalance of the density of the resulting image may occur.

Developing device with partition member of varying length


A peer-to-peer (P2P) networking system is disclosed that provides a large, persistent object repository with the ability to easily scale to significant size. Data security is provided using a distributed object data access mechanism to grant access to data objects to authorized users. Data objects stored within the object repository are provided a plurality of security options including plain text data, objects, encrypted data objects, and secure, secret sharing data objects. A data object query processing component permits users to locate requested information within the P2P networking system.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology presents an alternative to traditional centralized information systems because of their potential to scale to realistic sizes and their inherent fault-tolerance. In P2P systems, computers communicate directly with each other, rather than through servers that can become performance bottlenecks and single points of failure. Self-organizing P2P networks have proven highly adaptable to changes in network connectivity and resilient to node or network failures. While current P2P technology may provide scalable and robust distributed data object storage, current P2P solutions are not widely used due, at least in part, to security concerns. For example, P2P networks are generally used for freely sharing data, such as information or music. However, P2P networks generally do not provide needed security and access control with query functionality that is required for more sophisticated information systems.

Secure peer-to-peer object storage system


A vapor compression air-conditioning system equipped with an energy efficiency booster (6) in a working fluid circulation loop of the system. The energy efficiency booster (6) comprises a variable volume container (61) and an actuator mechanism (62) for changing the volume of the container. The energy efficiency booster (6) is capable of utilizing the variable volume container (61) to receive a working fluid in the loop of the system and to change the average density of the working fluid, thus allowing the system to be at the optimal energy efficiency ratio, and improving the operational performance of the air-conditioning system.

The vapor compression air-conditioning system includes an air-conditioning/heat pump system, a refrigeration system, a heat pump system, and a heat pump water heater system. In essence, a working process of the vapor compression air-conditioning system is as follows: The refrigerant of the vapor compression air-conditioning system absorbs heat from a low-temperature medium (for example, indoor or outdoor air), and after the temperature is increased by a compressor through compression, heat is released to a high-temperature medium (for example, outdoor or indoor air). To achieve a most economical and efficient operational effect, a condensing temperature of the refrigerant of the vapor compression air-conditioning system should be higher than the temperature of the high-temperature medium by a minimum reasonable temperature difference .DELTA.Tk, while an evaporating temperature of the refrigerant should be lower than the temperature of the low-temperature medium by a minimum reasonable temperature difference .DELTA.Te.
In a design condition, the foregoing requirements may be basically fulfilled, and in this case, the system reaches an optimal energy efficiency ratio and a maximum working capability. However, in an actual operation process, the foregoing ideal requirements always cannot be met.
In the conventional air-conditioning/heat pump system, to respond to condition changes, there are mainly the following two performance adjustment means:
(1) Variable-frequency adjustment: Variable-frequency adjustment is mainly to achieve an objective of changing the flux of the refrigerant and power consumption of the compressor by changing a rotational speed of the compressor. Thereby, in a situation in which an air temperature is not high, an objective of energy saving may be achieved by property decreasing the rotational speed of the compressor.
(2) Adjustment of expansion valves, including a thermal expansion valve, an electronic expansion valve, and the like. An adjustment principle thereof is to achieve an objective of changing the flux of the refrigerant and an expansion ratio by changing the throttling area of the expansion valve.
Neither of the foregoing two adjustment means can change an average density of the refrigerant in the system, or in other words, a refrigerant charge. It is proved by both theory and experiment that in each condition, there is an optimal refrigerant charge. With this optimal charge, the system works in an optimal state, and has an optimal energy efficiency ratio. When the system deviates from the design condition, the average density of the refrigerant cannot be changed by using the foregoing two adjustment means, and therefore, the system can hardly work in a state of an optimal energy efficiency ratio (EER or COP).
When a unit switches between the refrigeration condition and the heat pump condition, the foregoing problem is especially severe. For example, in the refrigeration condition in summer, an ambient temperature range of the system is 27.degree. C. (indoors) to 35.degree. C. (outdoors); in the heat pump condition in winter, an ambient temperature range of the system is 20.degree. C. (indoors) to 2.degree. C. (outdoors). In the foregoing temperature conditions, during refrigerating in summer, the condensing temperature of the refrigerant should be set to 50.degree. C. properly, and the evaporating temperature of the refrigerant should be set to 12.degree. C.; during heating in winter, the condensing temperature of the refrigerant should be decreased to 35.degree. C., and the evaporating temperature of the refrigerant should be decreased to −13.degree. C. Apparently, in the two conditions, there is a difference of 20.degree. C. between working temperatures of the refrigerant. Because a gaseous refrigerant has different densities in different temperatures, a difference of 20.degree. C. causes a density difference of the gaseous refrigerant to be greater than 50%. That is, in the refrigeration condition and the heat pump condition, there is a great difference between optimal refrigerant charges in the system. Apparently, the conventional air-conditioning system can hardly adapt to this situation. If the refrigeration condition is considered in the charging refrigerant of the conventional air-conditioning system, then the refrigerant in the heat pump condition will be too excessive. To reduce this difference, in design of the conventional air-conditioning system, the heat exchanging area of the indoor heat exchanger is decreased intentionally, and a temperature difference of the indoor heat exchanger is increased. Thereby, during refrigerating in summer, the evaporating temperature of the refrigerant is decreased from 12.degree. C. to 5.degree. C., while during heating in winter, the condensing temperature is increased from 35.degree. C. to 43.degree. C. In this case, the difference between working temperatures of the refrigerant in the two conditions in winter and summer is reduced to approximately 3.degree. C., and the difference between optimal refrigerant charges is decreased, at a cost of a decrease of the design energy efficiency ratio, which is decreased from 4 to approximately 3.
Even during the operation in the refrigeration-only condition or the heat pump condition, the conventional air-conditioning system deviates from the design condition in most of time. The indoor temperature is decreased slowly just after the air-conditioning system is started; however, after the indoor temperature becomes stable, the outdoor temperature may change with time, and the refrigerant charge of the conventional air-conditioning system cannot be precisely adjusted accordingly. This indicates that the refrigerant charge of the conventional air-conditioning system is not optimal in most of time.

Vapor compression air-conditioning system equipped with energy efficiency booster


A method of operating a clothes dryer having a treating chamber for receiving a laundry load, an air system for supplying and exhausting air from the treating chamber, a heating element for heating the air supplied to the treating chamber, and a controller implementing a cycle of operation, wherein the controller estimates a cycle time of a drying cycle of operation.

Contemporary laundry treating appliances, such as clothes dryers, may be provided with a treating chamber for receiving a laundry load for treatment, such as drying, and a heating element for heating the air to treat the laundry load. The laundry load may be treated in the treating chamber for a predetermined cycle time according to a cycle of operation. For some clothes dryers, the cycle time may be manually input by a user through a user interface. For other clothes dryers, one or more sensors may detect a load characteristic and set a cycle time based on the load characteristic.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Laundry treating appliance with controlled cycle time


A system for defining a bounding box include one or more image projectors; one or more optical beam generators; a display surface; a computing element; and a digital image sensor. The digital image sensor is configured to sense a location of image orientation indicators generated by the optical beam generators. The computing element is configured to communicate with the digital image sensor to determine a bounding box defined by the locations of the image orientation indicators and to control the one or more image projectors to project an image in, and corresponding to, the bounding box on the display surface.

Various devices for displaying images exist. One example is digital image projectors. Digital image projectors are widely used to project color images generated from digital signals onto a display surface. In some cases, the display surface may be the front of a reflective display screen, for example, in a theater or conference-room. In other cases, the display surface may be the rear of a semi-transparent diffusive screen of a rear-projection display monitor or projection television.
Portable digital image projectors are common. Such digital image projectors, while connected to a personal computer or other image/video signal source, typically sit on a supporting surface and are directed at a display surface on which images or video is to be shown. Many of these projectors use transmissive or reflective liquid crystal displays. Other such projectors use different imaging devices, such as digital micro-mirrors. These projectors can display images one at a time or as a sequence of images, as in the case of video.
Digital projectors are typically designed so that undistorted rectangular images are projected on the display surface when the projector is placed horizontally on a level support surface with the projector's optical axis lined up perpendicular to the display surface. However, if this alignment or orientation is not made, the resulting image on the display surface may be distorted. In many cases, the distorted image will appear as a trapezoid or an arbitrarily shaped quadrilateral. The non-rectangular shape of the resulting projected image is referred to as keystoning.
Throughout the drawings, identical reference numbers designate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements.

Defining a bounding box for projected images

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


The invention is an improved apparatus for the removal of sodium carbonate from cyanide plating baths. The method involves the precipitation of sodium carbonate by the effect of cooling the cyanide plating bath liquid. A container is submerged in the solution with the container opening extending above the plating bath solution level. The container is filled with dry ice and water which produces a temperature of approximately zero degrees centigrade inside of the container. The solution adjacent to the exterior of the container is cooled so that excess sodium carbonate is precipitated as a crystalline deposit. After a desired interval, the container is removed with the encrustation of sodium carbonate for disposal.

The invention relates to metal plating systems, and in particular to plating systems using a cyanide solution as a plating bath. Specifically, the invention relates to a method and apparatus for the removal of sodium carbonate from a cyanide-zinc plating bath solution.
It is sometimes necesssary to remove carbonates that build up in alkaline-cyanide plating baths as a result of absorption of carbon dioxide (CO.sub.2) from the surrounding air and from cyanide decomposition at the anode of the plating system.
When excessive carbonates build up in the plating baths, rough or dull deposits on the plated surface may result.
There is an on-going emphasis on reducing the amount of chemical agents entering the waste effluent. As a result, there is a corresponding emphasis on reducing the dragout losses in plating operations, and also an emphasis on recycling dragout chemicals back into the plating bath solutions. This action results in a tendency for the carbonate content of plating baths to become higher than is generally normal. Under the circumstances, it is necessary to effect the removal of the carbonate compound more often. This invention provides a method and apparatus to accomplish that removal conveniently and efficiently.
The conventional method of removing carbonate compounds in each year, during the winter, is to transfer the plating bath solution to another tank outside and at or near freezing temperatures. The sodium carbonate then precipitates from the plating bath solution and settles to the bottom of the tank. The supernatant liquid is then pumped back to the plating tank.
There are disadvantages to the conventional method. There is poor control of the temperature and much loss of desirable bath constituents may result from too low a temperature. Bath solution may be trapped along with the carbonate crystals. Another disadvantage is that not all plating facilities have the necessary equipment and extra tanks to utilize this method. In some areas there may not be a cold weather climate to precipitate the carbonate compounds in this manner.
Another method used for removing carbonate compounds is to add barium or calcium salts which precipitate the carbonate compounds. This method also requires an extra tank and is troublesome. This method also can change the plating bath composition if the barium or calcium salts are not added with proper anion or in the proper quantities.
It is to be understood that only the sodium-based plating bath solutions can be sodium carbonate precipitated by both the cooling method and the chemical precipitation method. The potassium plating bath solutions produce such soluable carbonate solutions that only the chemical precipitation method can be used.
The method and apparatus of this invention for the removal of carbonate from a cyanide-zinc plating bath solution involves the use of a container, open at one end, dry ice, and water. The container is submerged in the plating bath solution with the open end extending above the level of the plating bath solution. The container is filled with dry ice and water which produces a temperature of approximately zero degrees centigrade inside the container.
The plating bath solution adjacent to the exterior of the container is cooled so that excess sodium carbonate is precipitated as a crystalline deposit on the exterior of the container. After a desired interval, the container is removed from the plating bath solution with the encrustation of sodium carbonate for disposal.
It is to be understood that to fill the container with the dry ice and water before submerging the container into the plating bath solution is within the scope and intent of the invention.
Experimentation with a cylindrical container four inches in diameter and 30 inches long proved the feasibility of the method and apparatus. Cup-like appendages affixed to the exterior of the cylinder were used to catch any precipitated crystals that might fall off, however there was little evidence of this. The cup-like appendages also served to prevent the deposit of precipitated crystals from sliding off of the cylindrical container before removing it from the plating bath solution.
In order to further lower the temperature of the liquid in the container, a water-miscible solvent may be added to the liquid in the container, such as a low molecular weight alcohol or acetone.
The greater the exterior surface of the container the greater the amount of carbonate that can be removed. For example, a thin rectangular container approximately only one and one-half inches wide, but of long length and height, would accept cakes or slabs of dry ice (which are usually about one inch thick and approximately ten inches wide by ten inches long). Another means of increasing the exterior surface is to corrugate the exterior "skin" of the container. Still another means is to extend fins from the container exterior surface that would conduct the cold temperature from the main container for some distance from the container, and thus provide more surface on which to precipitate the carbonate crystals.
It is to be understood that the aforementioned variations in configuration and other geometrical and mechanical variations to increase the exterior surface area are within the scope and intent of the method and apparatus of this invention.
A variation in the shape of the exterior surface, such as by a series of corrugations, will aid in preventing the encrusted crystals from sliding off of the container. Such configuration elimiates the necessity of the aforementioned cup-like appendages.
An analysis of a sample of the dry encrustation removed from a container indicates that there was a ratio of 58 parts of sodium carbonate to 0.03 part of sodium cyanide and 0.002 part of zinc. Thus, there was little loss of cyanide or zinc.
It is, therefore an object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions with very little loss of the main constituents of the plating bath solution.
It is also an object of the invention to provide an apparatus to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions that is simple in structure.
It is still another object of the invention to provide a method to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions that is simple in operation.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions that does not require extra equipment and extra tanks to transfer the plating bath solution for the operation.
It is also still another object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus to remove carbonate compounds from plating bath solutions that can be used in any area regardless of weather conditions.
Further objects and advantages of the invention will become more apparent in the light of the following description of the preferred embodiments.

Method for removal of sodium carbonate from cyanide plating baths

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army


To improve the performance in terms of selectivity, responsiveness, and mean queueing delay for a connetion in ATM networks, a fuzzy leaky bucket method and apparatus is introduced that monitors and controls the sustainable cell rate of the connection utilizing a fuzzy increment controller (FIC) to dynamically adjust the value of the increment for the content of the leaky bucket incorporated for policing the connection. The adjustment of the increment by the fuzzy logic is accomplished through a set of linguistic rules based upon a domain knowledge. Two system parameters of the long-term mean cell rate and the short-term mean cell rate of the connection are fed into the fuzzy increment controller to adaptively calculate an appropriate increment value with an aim to achieve a better performance.

The present invention discloses, in general, a method and apparatus for traffic monitoring and controlling of a connection in packet communication networks. More specifically, the present invention provides a fuzzy leaky bucket mechanism for improving the performance in terms of selectivity, responsiveness, and mean queueing delay in ATM networks.
The emergence of multimedia services has diversified the bandwidth requirement for data communications. The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is considered as a suitable technique to meet the diverse bandwidth requirement since its design objectives are to support different types of traffic and multiple quality of services (QoS). To achieve the design objectives, several traffic control mechanisms are recommended for ATM networks [1]. Two of them are the call admission control (CAC) and the usage parameter control (UPC).
CAC is performed at the call setup phase of a new call to decide whether the new call can be accepted or not. It accepts the new call if the network can afford the required bandwidth and QoS of the new connection while the QoS of the already established connections can still be maintained. Then a traffic contract is made between the new connection and the network. The traffic contract contains traffic descriptors such as the peak cell rate (PCR), the sustainable cell rate (SCR) and the maximum burst size (MBS). For CAC to perform correctly, all the established connections must not violate their respective traffic contracts, which are of vital importance to the decision making of CAC. To make sure that the established connections conform to their respective traffic contracts, CAC is coupled with another traffic control mechanism, namely, UPC.
UPC is performed at the user-network interface (UNI) during the data transfer phase. It is defined as the set of actions taken by the network to monitor and control the offered traffic of a connection so that the corresponding traffic contract is respected. Its main purpose is to protect network resources from malicious as well as unintentional misbehavior, which can affect the QoS of other already, established connections. The wide variety of services with different traffic characteristics and QoS requirements makes UPC a difficult task. The difficulty lies in finding a simple, universal and effective UPC scheme, which is able to police any types of traffic ranging from video to data traffic. Several UPC schemes such as the jumping window, triggered jumping window, moving window, exponentially weighted moving average, and leaky bucket mechanisms were studied and compared [2-5]. The most popular and well-known policing scheme is the leaky bucket algorithm because of its simplicity and effectiveness.
Monitoring and controlling the peak cell rate of a connection is not difficult because we only have to determine if the peak emission interval is smaller than the reciprocal of the negotiated peak cell rate xcex9PCR. But monitoring and controlling the sustainable cell rate of a connection is much more complicated because the connection is eligible to transfer cells with a short-term mean rate higher than the negotiated sustainable cell rate xcex9SCR as long as the long-term mean rate of the connection conforms to xcex9SCR.
Usually, a traffic shaper (TS) is equipped within the customer premise equipment to regulate the cell stream of the traffic source so as to conform the negotiated SCR. The regulation is to alter the traffic characteristics of the cell stream to achieve a desired modification. The consequence of the modification is an increase in the mean cell transfer delay. The conjunction of TS and UPC, named as TS-UPC pair, should employ an identical scheme with same parameters settings so that any possible non-conforming cell that might have been detected as non-conforming by UPC will be detected ahead of time and saved in the queue by TS. In this way, the TS-UPC pair can guarantee zero cell loss ratio at UPC for a non-violating connection. Nevertheless, if a user intentionally or unintentionally changes the parameter settings in TS to enjoy a higher throughput there, UPC will detect the violation and take actions against it.
Three performance requirements have to be fulfilled by the TS-UPC pair:
(1.) High selectivity: UPC should detect the non-conforming cells of a violating connection as much as possible, while being transparent when the connection conforms to its traffic contract.
(2.) High responsiveness: the time for UPC to detect a violating connection should be rather short.
(3.) Low mean queueing delay: TS should not queue too many cells of a non-violating connection. However, the queueing delay introduced by TS on a violating connection is beyond the guarantee.
The primitive connection model with conventional TS-UPC pair is shown in FIG. 1. In a customer premise equipment 10, the component attached to the traffic source 12 is the TS 14, which contains a queue 16 and a shaper 18. The shaper 18 employs the conventional leaky bucket algorithm to determine the conformance of cells. It bypasses the conforming cells but stores the non-conforming cells in the queue for further legal transmission. The component at the entrance of the network 20 is the UPC 22 where a policer 24 is incorporated. The UPC 22 is connected to the customer premise equipment 10 through a UNI 30. The policer 24 also employs the conventional leaky bucket algorithm as the shaper 18 does. It bypasses the conforming cells but drops or tags the non-conforming cells. Despite the fact that the conventional leaky bucket algorithm is simple and effective, the conventional TS-UPC pair has performance defects such as long response time, low selectivity, and large mean queueing delay. One reason for the defects is its lack of system information such as the long-term mean cell rate of the connection, and another is its crisp structure with two fixed parameters of the threshold and the increment, which will be described later.
As specified in the ITU-T Recommendation I.371 document [1], dated May 1996, the Generic Cell Rate Algorithm (GCRA) is recommended as a conformance test for the cell stream of a connection. GCRA has two equivalent versions, the virtual scheduling algorithm and the leaky bucket algorithm. The latter seems to be better comprehended since it can be pictured as a virtual leaky bucket whose content determines the conformance of a cell. As shown in FIG. 2, the leaky bucket is viewed as a finite capacity bucket whose real-valued content drains out at one unit rate but is increased by T units for each conforming cell. If a cell arrives at the time ta when the bucket content Xxe2x80x2 is above the threshold value xcfx84, then the cell is non-conforming; otherwise, the cell is conforming and the bucket content is added by an increment T.
When the shaper 18 and the policer 24 in the TS-UPC pair shown in FIG. 1 employ the leaky bucket algorithm shown in FIG. 2 as their schemes to monitor the sustainable cell rate of a connection, the threshold value xcfx84 is taken to be xcfx84IBT+xcfx84xe2x80x2SCR and the increment T is taken to be the reciprocal of the negotiated sustainable cell rate xcex9SCR of the connection, where xcfx84IBT is the intrinsic burst tolerance (IBT) used to limit the burst size to the negotiated maximum burst size (MBS) and xcfx84xe2x80x2SCR is an additional tolerance added to account for the cell delay variation (CDV) introduced by multiplexing schemes. Details of the two parameters xcfx84IBT and xcfx84xe2x80x2SCR can be found in the ITU-T Recommendation I.371 [1]. The sustainable cell rate is used to enforce the mean cell rate of a connection, so it is straight forward to set xcex9SCR=xcex9mean for the TS-UPC pair, where xcex9mean is the mean cell rate claimed by the connection.
If xcex9SCR is set to be xcex9mean for the TS-UPC pair, then the possible rate fluctuations of the connection around the claimed mean cell rate will cause the leaky bucket within TS to detect some non-conforming cells. These detected non-conforming cells are stored in the queue, resulting in a long queueing delay. The undesirable long queueing delay can be avoided by making the bucket threshold xcfx84 in TS and UPC deviate from xcfx84IBT+xcfx84xe2x80x2SCR to a large value. Unfortunately, a higher xcfx84 would cause the slower response time for UPC. Another solution without changing the bucket threshold is to make xcex9SCR be xcex9mean multiplied by a magnifying factor C, C greater than 1. By doing this, we can eliminate the retardation provoked by a higher xcfx84. However, it has a risk of letting a connection with small rate fluctuations, e.g. a CBR connection, enjoy bandwidth higher than that negotiated. There are an infinite number of admissible couples of values for xcex9SCR and xcfx84. The detailed analysis for the selection of xcex9SCR and xcfx84 and the consequent system performance can be found in [6].
References [1-6] are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
In the present invention we consider a packet communication service discipline of the type with the TS-UPC pair as described in FIG. 1 and provide a mechanism incorporated a fuzzy leaky bucket scheme by which the sustainable cell rate of a connection is monitored and controlled optimally during the connection is sustained. The proposed mechanism can make a connection being policed in ATM networks achieve a better performance in terms of selectivity, responsiveness, and mean queueing delay.
The present invention describes a novel method and apparatus for implementation of a leaky bucket allowing adjustable increment for the leaky bucket content of a connection in ATM networks. In the present invention, we propose using fuzzy logic to improve the performance of the conventional leaky bucket mechanism. In one preferred embodiment, a fuzzy increment controller (FIC) is incorporated in the leaky bucket algorithm to dynamically adjust the increment for the leaky bucket content of the connection being policed. Preferably, two system parameters of the long-term mean cell rate and the short-term mean cell rate of the connection being policed are fed into the fuzzy increment controller to adaptively calculate an appropriate increment value with an aim to achieve a better performance.
The adjustment of the increment by the fuzzy logic is accomplished through a set of linguistic rules based upon a domain knowledge being as follows. When the cell stream of a connection appears to be violating the negotiated sustainable cell rate, the increment should be adjusted to be big so that the leaky bucket can quickly detect the non-conforming cells; while in contrast, when the cell stream of a connection appears to be conforming or conservative to the sustainable cell rate, the increment should be adjusted to be reasonably small so that no cell of the connection will be detected as non-conforming cells by the leaky bucket.
The leaky bucket algorithm with the fuzzy increment controller is herein called fuzzy leaky bucket algorithm, and a TS-UPC pair that employs the fuzzy leaky bucket algorithm is named as fuzzy TS-UPC pair. The fuzzy leaky bucket algorithm has the ability to quickly express the control structure of a system using a priori knowledge. Besides, it is less dependent on the availability of a precise model of the controlled process, and is more capable of handling nonlinearities. The present invention also provides simulation results to show that a fuzzy TS-UPC pair has a faster responsiveness and a higher selectivity than the conventional TS-UPC pair. In addition, the fuzzy TS-UPC pair introduces a much smaller mean queueing delay. It is also robust with respect to different traffic source models.

Fuzzy leaky bucket method and apparatus for usage parameter control in ATM networks


A method for preparing polymers of vinyl chloride in which polymerization of the corresponding monomer or monomers is carried out in microsuspension in the presence of a seeding product in the form of a dispersion of particles of a vinyl polymer previously prepared by polymerization in microsuspension, the particles of which contain at least one organic soluble initiator, without any complementary addition of initiator and in the presence of one or more other seeding products in the form of dispersion of vinyl polymer, the sizes of which differ from one another and from the particles of the first seeding product.

The invention relates to a method of preparing polyvinyl chloride and copolymers of vinyl chloride by polymerization is seeded microsuspension. It also relates to the resultant polyvinyl chloride and copolymers.
Polymerization in microsuspension, or fine suspension, is understood as being polymerization, in the presence of initiators soluble in organic material, or at least one monomer dispersed by powerful mechanical means in an aqueous medium containing an emulsifier as stabilizer, in order to obtain a dispersion of particles of an average diameter less than 5 microns.
It is known, from French Pat. No. 1,485,547, to prepare polymers of vinyl chloride in microsuspension, in the presence of a seeding product containing all the initiator necessary for polymerization. However, when polymerization is carried out so as to obtain a latex with a polymer concentration of over 45%, the high viscosity of the medium necessitates slower agitation, owing to the mechanical instability of the latex formed. This slow agitation leads to a decrease in the coefficients of exchange, which means that the polymerizing time has to become longer.
Moreover when the polymers obtained are used to prepare plastisols, the plastisols are difficult to use because of their dilatance, i.e. the increase of their viscosity with the speed gradient, and because the minimum proportion of plasticizer that can be used is 50 parts per 100 of polymer.
It is also known that, in the case of polymers of vinyl chloride prepared by polymerization in emulsion, the use of a plastisol is improved if the polymer comprises elementary particles forming at least two populations which have particles of different sizes. This plurality of populations can be obtained by mixing several latices comprising particles of different sizes, but the mixture cannot be made at a high concentration. Another solution consists of simultaneously preparing the various populations of particles by polymerization in emulsion of at least one monomer in the presence of several seeding products prepared by polymerization in emulsion. However, this operation is very tricky, for the quantity of emulsifier used has to be stipulated and limited and its introduction requires special care, that is to say, a specific introduction all the time, in order to avoid nucleation of new particles which would limit the polymer concentration of the latex obtained. Moreover it is difficult to make seeding products with particles of very small sizes which are measured and homogeneous, since the slightest variation in particle size results in variation in the ratios of the dimensions and in the proportions of the various populations obtained after polymerization.
The method of the invention avoids these drawbacks and enables latices to be prepared by polymerization in microsuspension, without any limitations, precautions or difficulties; the latices having a polymer concentration well over 45% by weight, a low viscosity and a reproducible particle size. Furthermore, the polymers thus obtained are easy to convert and more particularly adapted to give plastisols which may contain very little plasticizer but which are nevertheless easy to use.

Method of polymerizing vinyl chloride in seeded microsuspension


The invention relates to a transition piece assembly for a gas turbine. A transition piece having one end adapted for connection to a gas combustor and an opposite end adapted for connection to a first turbine stage. The transition piece having at least one external liner and at least one internal liner. The internal liner forms the hot gas flow channel. A first section of the transition piece assembly upstream of a first turbine stage has a plurality of cooling apertures. Cooling medium through the cooling apertures enters the plenum, which is created between external and internal liners and a cooling medium flows along at least the first section of the transition piece assembly. At least one second section upstream of the first section with respect to the hot gas flow has at least one additional air inlet system.

It is known practice for selected gas turbine engine components, especially in the combustor turbine interface, to be internally air cooled by a supply of air bleed from a compressor off-take. Such cooling is necessary to maintain combustor component temperatures within the working range of the materials from which they are constructed.
With reference to EP 2 230 456 A2, especially to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 of that document, a typical gas turbine includes a transition piece by which the hot combustion gases from an upstream combustor as represented by the combustor liner are passed to the first stage of a turbine represented at item 14 in EP 2 230 456 A1. Flow from the gas turbine compressor exits an axial diffuser and enters into a compressor discharge case. About 50% of the compressor discharge air passes through apertures formed along and about a transition piece impingement sleeve for flow in an annular region or annulus (or, second flow annulus) between the transition piece and the radially outer transition piece impingement sleeve. The remaining approximately 50% of the compressor discharge flow passes into flow sleeve holes of an upstream combustion liner cooling sleeve (not shown) and into an annulus between the cooling sleeve and the liner and eventually mixes with the air in annulus. This combined air eventually mixes with the gas turbine fuel in a combustion chamber.
With reference to EP 1 426 558 A2 a transition piece assembly includes a transition piece and a surrounding impingement flow sleeve attached to the turbine end of the liner.
The impingement flow sleeve that is formed with a plurality of impingement cooling apertures by which compression cooling air enters the plenum created between the impingement flow sleeve and the outer surface of the transition piece to interact with the dimples on the cold side surface thereof. Thus, the flow sleeve assures that the convection cooling air is directed as desired along the transition piece from the turbine end to the combustor liner end, over the dimpled surface, increasing the heat transfer coefficients and reducing the temperature of the transition piece.
Generally, prior art sequential liner cooling concepts feature a backside cooled wall incorporating impingement cooling. Other cooling schemes utilize a certain length where the sequential liner is cooled with convective cooling techniques, for example smooth, rough or turbulated walls. Usually, the first impingement rows without any cross-flow in the cooling channel are located towards the turbine interface.
The mass flow of the single impingements jets are defined by the local driving pressure drop. The cooling mass flow is fed from the compressor exit. The impingement cooled section is then followed by convective cooling techniques. As a result the pressure drop of such a system is always an addition of the single pressure drop contributors.
Generally, higher engine gas temperature have led to increased cooling bleed requirements resulting in reduced cycle efficiency and increased emission levels. To date, it has been possible to improve the design of cooling systems to minimize cooling flow at relative low cost. In future engine temperatures will increase to levels at which it is necessary to have complex cooling features to maintain low cooling flows.
Additionally, referring to known solutions to lower the sequential liner pressure drop is to use essentially effusion cooling techniques, in the way that the cooling system is parallel to the combustion system. Drawback is the increased leakage into the combustion system, which is associated with higher emissions.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,841 A discloses a transition piece having one end adapted for connection to a gas combustor and an opposite end adapted for connection to a first turbine stage. Said transition piece having at least one external liner and at least one internal liner and the internal liner forms the hot gas flow channel. The first section of the transition piece assembly upstream of a first turbine stage having a plurality of cooling apertures. Cooling medium through the cooling apertures enters the plenum which is created between external and internal liners and a cooling medium flows along at least the first section of the transition piece assembly. At least one second section upstream of the first section with respect to the hot gas flow having at least one additional air inlet system. The additional air inlet system of the second section (FC) is designed in the manner that the cooling medium is discharged into at least one air plenum created between external and internal liners in different direction with respect to the hot gas flow in two different directions, namely an upstream and downstream one.
More pertinent material is evident from the following documents:
EP 2 378 200 A2; EP 2 148 139 A2; EP 0 239 020 A2; US 2006/283189 A1; JP H09 41991 A; US 2014/109577 A1.