A fabric-based item may be vacuum-formed into a three-dimensional shape. The fabric-based item may include one or more layers of fabric and one more polymer layers that can be molded when heated. To vacuum-form the fabric-based item into a three-dimensional shape, the fabric based item may be heated until the polymer layer reaches a forming temperature and becomes soft and pliable. When heated, a vacuum tool is used to pull the fabric-based item onto a mold so that the fabric-based item conforms to the shape of the mold. As the fabric-based item cools on the mold, the polymer material hardens into the shape imparted by the mold. The polymer material is able to hold the fabric layers in this shape after the layers are removed from the mold.

This relates generally to fabric-based items and, more particularly, to fabric-based items having three-dimensional shapes.
It may be desirable to form bags, furniture, clothing, and other items from materials such as fabric. To form a three-dimensional object, fabric is typically cut and joined at the edges to form the desired shape. Forming objects by joining separate pieces of fabric together in this way results in seams along the edges of the object. Seams can be visually unappealing and can create weak points in the structure of the object.
To reduce the number of seams in an object, some fabrics are compression molded into the desired three-dimensional shape. Compression molding involves applying heat and pressure to a laminated fabric to form the desired shape. While this method reduces the number of seams, the compression molding process can impart undesirable characteristics onto the fabric. For example, compression of the fabric can cause the texture of the mold to be transferred onto the fabric or it can lead to surface deformations that compromise the original look and feel of the fabric.

Fabric-based items with three-dimensional shapes


An appliance for discharging gaseous, liquid or pasty product is described which comprises an inner pouch of deformable non-extensible material for holding the product, an outer enveloping element of caoutchouc-type macromolecular material about the inner pouch, a product outlet associated with the pouch, a valve device for controlling the discharge of product from the pouch through the outlet and being located intermediate the latter and the pouch, and a rigid core associated with the pouch; the cross-sectional area of said core is at least 40% larger than the cross-sectional area, taken in the same plane, of the interior of the outer enveloping element in unexpanded condition, and the maximum fillable volume available in the pouch when the latter is completely unfolded without expansion of its walls constitutes the maximum limit of expansion of the outer enveloping element, the said maximum limit being within the range of linear stretching of the caoutchouc-type macromolecular material.. A process for manufacturing such appliances is also described.

This invention relates to an appliance for discharging gaseous, liquid or pasty product, which appliance comprises an inner pouch of deformable non-extensible material for holding the product, an outer enveloping element of caoutchouc-type macromolecular material about the inner pouch, a product outlet associated with the pouch, a valve device for controlling the discharge of product from the pouch through the outlet and being located intermediate the latter and the pouch, and a rigid core associated with the pouch.
In a rapidly increasing number of fields, use is made of sprays for applying products in gaseous, liquid or paste form, for the purpose of body-care, in industry, or even in the kitchen. However, everyone is becoming increasingly more pollution-conscious and, in particular, conscious of the danger of deterioration of the ozone belt which results from the use of means for spraying gases, particularly freon.
On the other hand, the known aerosols present some risk of exploding so that each of them carries a note of precautions that should be taken, for example, that of not placing the aerosol near a source of heat.
Finally, to ensure that the propellant gas cannot pass through them, aerosol sprays have to be made of metal, glass etc., which materials are costly and of a greater weight than plastics material, for example, and require the expenditure of more energy for their production.
In addition, there exist numerous products which cannot be diffused in the form of a spray since they are destroyed by oxidation; these include, for example, food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical products and certain industrial products.
With a view to avoiding all of these problems, a large number of spray appliances that do not use a propellant gas have been proposed. However, none of these known solutions has become firmly established commercially, since they all suffer from more or less serious disadvantages.
Also, the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 566,282, granted on Aug. 18th 1896 to John J. Balley Jr. and mentioning for the first time the use of rubber as an energy-storing means in an atomizer, suffers from the major disadvantage that the product that is present in the container and that has to be expelled is in contact with the rubber, and this greatly limits its use since rubber is chemically unstable when in contact with numerous products. Furthermore, it is not tight to air, spores and bacteria. Apart from this, this atomizer does not enable the product contained therein to be totally expelled since a final proportion thereof that cannot be ejected always remains in the rubber receptacle. Another disadvantage of this system is that neither the expansion nor the compression of the rubber receptacle is controllable, and the vessel is able to assume all shapes, some favorable and some unfavorable to the complete expulsion of the product that it contains.
U.S. Pat. No. 821,875, granted to George M. Kneuper on May 29th 1906, describes means for emptying containers and also makes use of an expansible pouch, which however is stretched along a core which extends into the container and is designed to keep said pouch continuously stretched by holding it in position along the axis of the container. In this way Kneuper partly solved the problem of completely expelling the product without however finding a complete solution. Also, all the problems associated with the use of a rubber container remain unsolved by this spray appliance.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,738,227 of Mar. 13th 1956, granted to G. W. Havens, takes up the ideas disclosed in the two above-mentioned patents and describes an appliance for ejecting a liquid in the form of spray. For this purpose, Havens proposes a core perforated at a large number of points to afford passage to the liquid expelled by the contractive force of a rubber receptacle. It is obvious that this system also suffers from the disadvantage of resulting in a loss of product by non-expulsion, which loss increases with the diameter of the core. Furthermore, if the receptacle is made of natural rubber, its use, as described above, is limited to dealing with a few products, and if the diameter of the core does not make allowance for it, a second loss of product is found to occur, this resulting from final overstretching of the rubber and adding to the lost product remaining in the core.
Numerous other patents, in particular U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,823,953 granted to J. R. George on Feb. 18th 1958, 3,240,399 granted to N. W. Frandeen on Mar. 15th 1966, 3,361,303 granted to C. Jacuzzi on Jan. 2nd 1968, 3,672,543 granted to Plant Industries Inc. on June 27th 1972, and 3,796,356 granted to Plant Industries Inc. on Mar. 12th 1974, describe, with a number of variants, spray appliances utilizing receptacles of elastic materials with or without a core and contained in envelopes and fitted with valves. However, none of these patents describes a spray appliance that is tight to air, spores and bacteria and is unaffected by the product that it is to contain. Furthermore, none of the systems proposed in these patents enables the entire contents of the appliance to be expelled at least approximately linearly during the entire period in which it is used. Apart from this, none of the above-quoted publications describes a spray appliance having a dispensing valve that enables the product to be expelled under pressure in the form of a mist consisting of very tiny droplets.
The same is true as regards the system described in German Patent Application No. 24 42 328 published on Mar. 6th 1975 in the name of Alza Corp., and which describes a container made of synthetic rubber, the inner surface of which may be provided with a covering of likewise elastic rubber which however offers protection against products that would attack the material of the receptacle. In the case of other products, the use of an interior flexible receptacle of synthetic material, for example Mylar, is proposed.
A receptacle made of synthetic rubber of the butyl or nitrile or silicone rubber type results in a very considerable loss of product by non-expulsion because of the fact that synthetic rubbers have a very low permanent elasticity and, after only a few hours under tension, they become overstretched in such a way that a loss of more than 50% of product is incurred. Furthermore, the use of a Mylar film as mentioned above does not result in an air-tight system, and a pouch only be obtained by welding polyethylene to polyethylene, and this means that the layer of aluminium must be on the outside of said receptacle so that it is brought into direct contact with the elastic material. However, unless the coating of aluminium is also plasticized on the exterior, in which case Mylar cannot be used, it breaks down under the high friction effects occurring between the aluminium layer and the elastic material layer both during filling and expulsion of the product, so that the required impermeability of the pouch is adversely affected, since polyethylene alone is not impermeable.
The use of a pouch in plastics material containing a product under pressure is not new. The present inventor has obtained patents in some twenty countries (including Germany, USA and Japan) which are based on the subject-matter of Swiss Pat. No. 484 678, filed on June 27th 1966 and published on Aug. 24th 1968 and describing such a pouch. Furthermore, appliances using a plastics pouch compressed by springs was described and illustrated in a photograph in 1969 in "Lehrbuch und Atlas der Angiologie", Prof. A. Kappert, Editions Hans Huber, Bern. These appliances, which can be used for certain purposes, suffer from the disadvantage of being permeable by aromas and certain germs, so that their applications are limited.
In contrast with the above-mentioned Patents describing a receptacle or pouch of elastic material as a means for storing the energy necessary for expulsion, German Patent Application No. 26 49 722, published on May 5th 1977 in the name of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., describes an elastic fabric obtained by weaving, knotting, crocheting or otherwise uniting elastomeric fibres or filaments with filaments of natural rubber.
This tissue may take various forms including that of a flat envelope. However, if this envelope form is used, it requires means for closing the free end of the envelope so as to prevent it from rising along the inner pouch, or for preventing said inner pouch, if made of rubber, from expanding axially and moving out of the envelope. This can be prevented by means of a core which serves in particular to prevent axial displacement of the envelope towards the valve, and this requires the envelope be closed at its free end so that it can lie firmly against the core.
In this case, the core can be used only in conjunction with an inner elastomeric receptacle having a strong base for the purpose of preventing perforation of the receptacle under the thrust of the envelope; as experience has often shown, a receptacle made of plastics material would not be strong enough and would be pierced.
The various patents mentioned above and numerous other publications illustrate the difficulties in using an elastic material as an element for storing the force required for expelling a product from a container either in the form of spray or any other ejected form. It is known that numerous solutions to the problems enumerated above have been proposed, but they have all had to be rejected for various reasons such as excessively high production costs, over-complicated production methods that are difficult to automatize, the use of materials not suitable for the required application, non-linear delivery, and insufficient comminution of the product which is released in excessively large droplets.
Apart from the spray appliances of the above-described type that do not use a propulsive gas but are fitted with a rubber or plastics element as a source of energy necessary for expelling the product in the container, atomizers are known. This type of spray device cannot be used for all products since, because of the presence of the pumping element, surrounding air and therefore oxygen is pumped into the container, and this is only acceptable in the case of products that are insensitive to oxidation. Furthermore, this atomizer type of spray appliance calls for a certain shape of outer enclosure and requires a change in handling habits on the part of the user of conventional sprays. These appliances are therefore not considered in the following.
The foregoing demonstrates the difficulties encountered in the search for a viable substitute for the conventional aerosol dispenser. These technical difficulties, resulting partially from poor choice of materials and design, are further aggravated by the fact that, to be able to obtain a useful and satisfactory spray appliance which operates without propulsive gas, it is also necessary to take into account the criteria enumerated below.
The prior art shows that the use of a rubber receptacle for accommodating a product and, at the same time, for storing in the wall of the receptacle the force necessary for expelling the product, cannot be achieved, since the only rubber capable of providing an expulsive force that is as linear as possible is natural rubber of the greatest possible degree of purity. However, as stated above this material is not stable, that is to say it does not offer resistance to all products. There is therefore no question of using it as a receptacle for containing the products.

Appliance for discharging gaseous, liquid or pasty product, and process of its manufacture


A communications apparatus having: a communication cable receptacle having signal terminals and power supply terminals for connection to a communication cable having signal lines and power supply lines; a communication interface for transferring a signal to and from an external via the signal terminals of the communication cable receptacle; and one or a plurality of light emitting elements capable of emitting light, the light emitting element being disposed near the communication cable receptacle, being selectively connected to the power supply terminals of the communication cable receptacle, and being capable of displaying at least one of a communication state, a state of the apparatus, an alarm state, and a connection state of the apparatus while receiving a power from the communication cable via the power supply terminals.

This application is based on Japanese patent application No. 10-291041 filed on Oct. 13, 1998, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communications apparatus and more particularly to a communications apparatus with light emitting elements.
b) Description of the Related Art
There are technical trends for latest personal computers to mount digital serial communication interfaces such as IEEE 1394 specifications and universal serial buses (USB).
FIG. 6 shows an example of the structure of a communications network of IEEE 1394 specifications. Four nodes ND1 to ND4 are communications apparatuses having a communication interface and connected. by communication cables CBL.
A general communication cable has signal (data) lines. A communication cable of IEEE 1394 and USB is characterized in that it has power supply lines as well as signal lines. Since the communication cable has power supply lines, communications are possible even if the power switches of not all the nodes ND1 to ND4 are turned off. The nodes ND1 to ND4 can communicate with each other while receiving a power from the power supply lines of the communication cables.
For example, even if the power switches of the nodes ND1, ND3 and ND4 are turned on and the power switch of the node ND2 is turned off, communications between the nodes ND1 and ND4 are possible. In this case, the node ND2 operates as a repeater while receiving a power from the power supply lines 17 of the communication cables CBL. Namely, the node ND2 can relay a signal between the nodes ND1 and ND3.
A communications modem has light emitting diodes (LED) for displaying a communication state. A hard disk drive and a floppy disk drive have a light emitting diode for displaying an access state to a storage medium. If a communications apparatus is provided with a light emitting diode for displaying a communication state, a user can conveniently recognize the communication state.
If the power switch of a communications modem, a hard disk drive or the like is turned off, the light emitting diode cannot emit light. In this case, since a communications modem, a hard disk drive or the like does not perform communications while the power switch is turned off, it poses any practical problem even if the communication state is not displayed.
In IEEE 1394 or the like, even if the power switch of, for example, the node ND2 is turned off, the node ND2 operates as a repeater. Therefore, the communication state of the node ND2 is sometimes desired to be confirmed. However, in this case, it is difficult to drive light emitting diodes of the node ND2 when the power switch of the node ND2 is turned off. It is desired to know the communication state of the node ND2 even if the power switch of the node ND2 is turned off.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a communications apparatus capable of displaying a communication state even if the power of the apparatus is turned off.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a communications apparatus comprising: a communication cable receptacle having signal terminals and power supply terminals for connection to a communication cable having signal lines and power supply lines; a communication interface for transferring a signal to and from an external via the signal terminals of the communication cable receptacle; and one or a plurality of light emitting elements capable of emitting light, the light emitting element being selectively connected to the power supply terminals of the communication cable receptacle and receiving a power from the communication cable via the power supply terminals.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a communications apparatus comprising: a communication cable receptacle having signal terminals and power supply terminals for connection to a communication cable having signal lines and power supply lines; a communication interface for transferring a signal to and from an external via the signal terminals of the communication cable receptacle; and one or a plurality of light emitting elements capable of emitting light, the light emitting element being disposed near the communication cable receptacle, being selectively connected to the power supply terminals of the communication cable receptacle, and being capable of displaying at least one of a communication state, a state of the apparatus, an alarm state, and a connection state of the apparatus while receiving a power from the communication cable via the power supply terminals.
Since the light emitting element can receive a power from an external via the power supply terminals of the communication cable receptacle, it can emit light even if the power cannot be supplied from the communications apparatus.
Even if the power cannot be supplied from the communications apparatus, the state such as the communication state can be displayed so that a user can always and conveniently confirm the communication state.

Communications apparatus with light emitting elements


An electric machine capable of easily and efficiently assembling a rotor core to a rotating shaft is provided. A rotor core is formed by laminating a first steel plate consisting of one or more electromagnetic steel plates having a first protrusion portion to be accommodated in a groove portion of a rotating shaft and a second steel plate consisting of one or more electromagnetic steel plates having a second protrusion portion to be accommodated in the groove portion of the rotating shaft. The first protrusion portion of the first steel plate has a first engaging portion deformed by a side surface of the groove portion of the rotating shaft. At least a part of the first engaging portion of the first steel plate is disposed in a space formed between a second protrusion portion of the second steel plate and the side surface of a groove portion of the rotating shaft.

A rotary electric machine mounted on a vehicle or the like and used as an electric motor or a generator includes a stator, a rotor, a pair of end plates, and a casing. As an electric motor, there is a motor using a rotor in which a permanent magnet is embedded. Each of a pair of the end plates is disposed at a front end portion and a rear end portion in an axial direction of a rotor formed by laminating electromagnetic steel plates and having a permanent magnet embedded therein, and supports the permanent magnet. Leakage of an adhesive that bonds the permanent magnet and the electromagnetic steel plate may be prevented by the end plates. Since electric motors used in electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles are required to have high power, in general, permanent magnet electric motors using rare earth sintered magnets that retain strong energy are used. An embedded magnet type electric motor can satisfy the requirements of low speed, large torque, and wide range of rotational speed range.
Generally, a rotating shaft and a rotor core are assembled to a rotor by press-fitting or shrink-fitting. In the press-fitting method, by performing knurling on an outer peripheral surface of a rotating shaft, press-fitting load can be reduced. However, in the method by press-fitting or shrink-fitting, fitting is performed at a predetermined interference such that compressive stress is applied to a rotor core, and there is a problem that electrical characteristics may be deteriorated. To solve this problem, a gap is provided between a rotor core and a rotating shaft subjected to knurling, and when an end plate is formed by casting, a part of a molten metal at the time of casting is filled in the gap. Thereby the rotating shaft and the rotor core are fixed (refer to, for example, PTL 1).


A search engine utilizes a bottom-up approach to index the content of a network with agent programs running on each host computer instead of relying on a top-down approach as used by conventional search engines. A central catalog of object references is compiled on the central site or sites from the meta data reported from each web site. One or more brochure files may also be created and stored on each web site to provide conceptual or non-key-word data about the site, such as target demographics and categorization information. This conceptual information is then utilized in constructing the central catalog so that more accurate search results may be generated for search queries applied to the catalog.

In the last several years, the Internet has experienced exponential growth in the number of web sites and corresponding web pages contained on the Internet. Countless individuals and corporations have established web sites to market products, promote their firms, provide information on a specific topic, or merely provide access to the family's latest photographs for friends and relatives. This increase in web sites and the corresponding information has placed vast amounts of information at the fingertips of millions of people throughout the world.
As a result of the rapid growth in web sites on the Internet, it has become increasingly difficult to locate pertinent information in the sea of information available on the Internet. A search engine, such as Inktomi, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, or FAST, is typically utilized to locate information on the Internet. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional search engine 10 including a router 12 that transmits and receives message packets between the Internet and a web crawler server 14, an index server 16, and a web server 18. A web crawler or spider is a program that roams the Internet, accessing known web pages, following the links in those pages, and parsing each web page that is visited to thereby generate index information about each page. The index information from the spider is periodically transferred to the index server 16 to update the catalog or central index stored on the index server. The spider returns to each site on a regular basis, such as every several months, and once again visits web pages at the site and follows links to other pages within the site to find new web pages for indexing.
The central index contains information about every web page the spider has found. Each time the spider visits a web page, the central index is updated so that the central index contains the latest information about each web page.
The web server 18 includes search software that processes search requests applied to the search engine 10. The search software searches the millions of records contained in the central index in response to a search query transferred from a user's browser over the Internet and through the router 12 to the web server 18. The search software finds matches to the search query and may rank them in terms of relevance according to predefined ranking algorithms, as will be understood by those skilled in the art.
As the number of web sites increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for the conventional search engine 10 to maintain an up-to-date central index. This is because it takes time for the spider to access each web page, so as the number of web pages increases it accordingly takes the spider more time to index the Internet. In other words, as more web pages are added, the spider must visits these new web pages and add them to the central index. While the spider is busy indexing these new web pages, it cannot revisit old web pages and update portions of the central index corresponding to these pages. Thus, portions of the central index become dated, and this problem is exacerbated by the rapid addition of web sites on the Internet.
The method of indexing utilized in the conventional search engine 10 has inherent shortcomings in addition to the inability to keep the central index current as the Internet grows. For example, the spider only indexes known web sites. Typically, the spider starts with a historical list of sites, such as a server list, and follows the list of the most popular sites to find more pages to add to the central index. Thus, unless your web site is contained in the historical list or is linked to a site in the historical list, your site will not be indexed. While most search engines accept submissions of sites for indexing, even upon such a submission, it may be months before the spider gets to the site for indexing.
Another inherent shortcoming of the method of indexing utilized in the conventional search engine 10 is that only Standard General Markup Language (SGML) information (including specific variations such as HGML and XML) is utilized in generating the central index. In other words, the spider accesses or renders a respective web page and parses only the SGML information in that web page in generating the corresponding portion of the central index. Due to limitations in the format of an SGML web page, certain types of information may not be placed in the SGML document. For example, conceptual information such as the intended audience's demographics or geographic location may not be placed in an assigned tag in the SGML document. Such information would be extremely helpful in generating a more accurate index. For example, a person might want to search in a specific geographical area, or within a certain industry. By way of example, assume a person is searching for a red barn manufacturer in a specific geographic area. Because SGML pages have no standard tags for identifying industry type or geographical area, the spider on the server 14 in the conventional search engine 10 does not have such information to utilize in generating the central index. As a result, the conventional search engine 10 would typically list not only manufacturers but would also list the location of picturesque red barns in New England that are of no interest to the searcher.
There are four methods for updating centrally stored data or a central database from remotely stored data on a network: 1) all of the remotely stored data is periodically copied over the network to the central location, 2) only those files or objects that have changed are copied to the central location, 3) a transaction log is kept at the remote location, transmitted to the central location, and used by a program on the central computer to determine how to update the central location's copy of the data, and 4) a differential is created by comparing the remotely stored historic copy and the current remotely stored copy and sent to the central location for incorporation into the centrally stored historic copy of the data. All of these methods rely on duplicating the remote data. Conventional search engines employ the first method, periodically copying each web page to the central site where they are parsed to generate index data. The index data is stored with a reference or link to the remote data, and the copy of the page is discarded.
At least one Internet search engine company, Infoseek, has proposed a distributed search engine approach to assist the spidering programs in finding and indexing new web pages. Infoseek has proposed that each web site on the Internet create a local file named "robots1.txt" containing a list of all files on the web site that have been modified within the last twenty-four hours. A spidering program would then download this file and, from the file, determine which pages on the web site should be accessed and reindexed. Files that have not been modified will not be copied to the central site for indexing, saving bandwidth on the Internet otherwise consumed by the spidering program copying unmodified pages, thus increasing the efficiency of the spidering program. Additional local files could also be created, indicating files that had changed in the last seven days or thirty days or containing a list of all files on the site that may be indexed. Under this approach, only files in html format, portable data format, and other file formats that may be accessed over the Internet are placed in the list since the spidering program must be able to access the files over the Internet. This use of local files on a web site to provide a list of modified files has not been widely adopted, if adopted by any search engine companies at all.
In addition to their search engine sites maintained on the Internet, several search engine companies, such as AltaVista® and Excite, have developed local or web server search engine programs that locally index a user's computer and integrate local and Internet searching. At present, a typical user will use the "Find" utility within Windows to search for information on his personal computer or desktop, and a browser to search the Internet. As local storage for personal computers increases, the Find utility takes too long to retrieve the desired information, and then a separate browser must be used to perform Internet searches. The AltaVista® program is named AltaVista® Discovery, and generates a local index of files on a user's personal computer much like the central index. The program then provides integrated searching of the local index along with conventional Internet searches using the central index of the AltaVista® search engine.
The AltaVista® Discovery program includes an indexer component that periodically indexes the local set of data defined by the user and stores pertinent information in its index database to provide data retrieval capability for the system. The program generates a full indexing at the time of installation, and thereafter incremental indexing is performed to lower the overhead on the computer. In building the local index, the indexer records relevant information, indexes the relevant data set, and saves each instance of all the words of that data, as well as the location of the data set and other relevant information. The indexer handles different data types including Office'97 documents, various types of e-mail messages such as Eudora, Netscape, text and PDF files, and various mail and document formats. The indexer also can retrieve the contents of an html page to extract relevant document information and index the document so that subsequent search queries may be applied on indexed documents.
A program offered by Excite, known as Excite for Web Servers ("EWS"), gives a web server the same advanced search capabilities used by the Excite search engine on the Internet. This program generates a local search index of pages on the web server, allows visitors to the web server to apply search queries, and returns a list of documents ranked by confidence in response to the search queries. Since the program resides on the web server, even complex searches are performed relatively quickly because the local search index is small relative to the index of the world-wide-web created by conventional search engines on the Internet.
The local search engine utilities just described are programs that execute on a web server or other computer to assemble information or "meta data" about files or other objects on that computer. The assembled meta data is retained and used at the computer where the meta data is assembled. There is a need for a method for indexing or cataloging remotely stored data that eliminates the need to copy the remote data to a central location and for indexing the world wide web that eliminates the need for spiders to be utilized in updating the index. There is a need to allow conceptual information to be utilized in generating the index to make search results more meaningful.
A few simple programs are known that execute on a computer, assemble information about files or other objects on the computer, and then send the information across a network where it is aggregated. These programs generally operate without the consent of the computer owner and are designed to collect and transmit information obtained from files on the owner's computer.
One such program is loaded without the user's knowledge and reports information about the user or programs installed on the computer or the user's usage habits to another computer across the Internet for data collection purposes. There have been several well-publicized cases of major software companies including code in application programs which perform this sort of function when a computer is attached to the Internet. Usually (though not always), the software companies in question have published information which informs users of means by which this activity may be halted.
Another program of this type is a virus that affects only Internet servers, usually UNIX based, which have lax security administration. This type of virus is known as a "mail relay virus", and is designed to use system resources for forwarding bulk unsolicited email. The virus program is loaded by a person who manages to pierce the root account security and copy a series of programs to a hidden directory on the system. These programs contain a list of machines which are known to have the same program installed and their TCP/IP addresses. The program then discovers (via system configuration files) what the upstream email server is for the local system, and begins accepting and forwarding bulk email through the system. Typically, most Internet service providers do not allow incoming mail from someone outside of the subnetwork that the mail server is on, hence the need to infect a machine on that subnetwork. Once the programs are loaded, the TCP/IP address of the infected machine is sent back to the developer of the virus and is incorporated in future versions.
Another program of this type is known as the W97M/Marker.C virus. This Word 97 macro virus affects documents and templates and grows in size by tracking infections along the way and appending the victim's name as comments to the virus code. Files are written to the hard drive on infected systems: one file prefixed by C:\HSF and then followed by random generated eight characters and the .SYS extension, and another file named "c:\netIdx.vxd". Both files serve as ASCII temporary files. The .SYS file contains the virus code and the .VXD file is a script file to be used with FTP.EXE in command line mode. This ftp script file above is then executed in a shell command sending the virus code which now contains information about the infected computer to the virus author's web site called "CodeBreakers."

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method for using agents to create a computer index corresponding to the contents of networked computers


A jet of liquid metal 42 is directed onto a fast-moving receiving surface 4 and reciprocal relative motion is caused between the receiving surface 4 and the jet 42 perpendicularly to the moving direction.

The present invention relates to a process for manufacture of amorphous metal ribbons in which at least one liquid metal stream is projected onto a receiving surface moving at high speed.
The work carried out since 1958 by Pol Duwez at the California Institute of Technology has led to knowledge of amorphous metal alloys, which are produced by very rapid cooling of a liquid phase, thereby making it possible to preserve the random, or amorphous, structure thereof. Indeed, in this way the temperature of the material is immediately reduced below a certain threshold, called the vitrification temperature, itself located at a temperature much lower than the solidification point at which crystallization begins.
One technique for manufacture of amorphous metal alloys consists of pouring a stream of molten metal onto a surface moving past at high speed, whose temperature is kept below or equal to ambient temperature. In this way, the liquid spreads over the surface in a film having a thickness of only several microns. Because this film is extremely thin and in intimate contact with a heat sink having a much larger volume, and since the metals possess high level of thermal conductivity, the metal cools and solidifies very rapidly, i.e., at a rate of approximately 10.sup.6 .degree.C./second. The surface passing beneath the metal stream may be part of a disk, an endless belt, or a wheel. This surface may incorporate notches perpendicular to its direction of travel, in order to divide the films or ribbons into small segments.
The films or ribbons thus produced possess remarkable mechanical and magnetic properties. Accordingly, the alloys exhibit very high tensile strength, and their ductility is marked by excellent folding strength, thereby making it possible to achieve curvatures around a radius equal to approximately the thickness of the ribbon. They also possess weak magnetism; that is, they are magnetized and demagnetized with a very weak field. Patents Nos. EP-A-59 864, 84 335, and 84 785 are examples from the literature describing processes of this kind.
Industrial-scale production of amorphous metal ribbons poses special problems, since a consistent geometry and quality of the ribbons must be guaranteed over long periods of time.

Process and machine for manufacture of amorphous metal ribbons


A vehicle control system to operate a vehicle autonomously with improved energy efficiency and ride quality is provided. A controller is configured to set a limit value of an operating point of an engine to reduce noises and vibrations. The operating point of the engine is restricted by the limit value within an acceptable region where an engine speed is higher than the limit value but an engine torque is lower than the limit value. The limit value is set to a first limit value when the vehicle is operated autonomously while carrying the passenger, and to a second limit value to expand the acceptable region when the vehicle is operated autonomously without carrying the passenger.

Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present application relate to the art of a vehicle control system configured to operate a vehicle autonomously.
Discussion of the Related Art
JP-A-2014-106854 describes an automatic driving vehicle control apparatus includes: detection means for acquiring at least any of vehicle traveling state, vehicle surrounding state, and driver state; automatic driving means for automatically driving a vehicle; and determination means for determining whether a condition for automatic driving is satisfied or not. According to the teachings of JP-A-2014-106854, the determination means determines that the automatic driving condition is not satisfied when detection accuracy of the detection means does not satisfy a predetermined criterion. When the determination means determines that the automatic driving condition is satisfied, the vehicle is started the automatic driving. By contrast, when the determination means determines that the automatic driving condition is not satisfied during automatic driving, a warning is given to a driver to cancel the automatic driving. The automatic driving vehicle control apparatus taught by JP-A-2014-106854 is further configured to periodically calculate a stop spot where the vehicle can be safely stopped based on the vehicle surrounding state and the vehicle traveling stat, and to guide the vehicle to the stop spot when the driver does not cancel the automatic driving against the warning to cancel the automatic driving.
The vehicle to which the control apparatus taught by JP-A-2014-106854 is applied may be operated not only manually by a driver but also autonomously, with or without the driver or a passenger.
In a vehicle having a gasoline engine or a diesel engine, noises and vibrations are caused inevitably during operation of the engine and this may reduce ride comfort in comparison with the electric mode. According to the prior art, therefore, a limit value of an engine torque or power is set to reduce the noises and vibrations of the engine. For example, an operating region of the engine is restricted in such a manner that an engine speed is restricted lower than the limit value but an engine torque is restricted higher than the limit value. Such restriction of an operating point of the engine is executed not only in the vehicles propelled by the engine but also in hybrid vehicles propelled by the engine and a motor.
When the vehicles operated autonomously e.g., by the control apparatus of JP-A-2014406854 while carrying a passenger, ride comfort may be improved by restricting the operating point of the engine to reduce the noises and vibrations of the engine. However, the engine may not be operated in an optimally fuel efficient manner if the operating point is restricted. That is, if the operating point of the engine is restricted in a steady pattern, an energy efficiency of the engine may be reduced especially when propelling the vehicle autonomously without carrying the passenger.


A lung lobe contour extraction method aiming at DR radiography, which includes the steps: Obtain the representative lung lobe contour template through offline training; initialize the extraction system of contour lobe area in the chest DR radiography; According to dimension of DICOM image, conduct three-layer pyramid decomposition on the images; Use Gabor filter bank to rebuild pending images; Convert residual error of the rebuilt image by the Gabor filter into black and white image; Use Zhan-Suen refinement algorithm to refine the black and white image; Call every template of the offline training and use them as the convolution kernel operator, conduct convolution on the contour imagep; Filter the local optimum convolution value with optimum possibility from the convolution results and combine the evaluations; Generate the lung lobe contour shape in accordance with the upper and lower templates of optimum matching and its position.

DR is short for Digital Radiography. The chest DR radiography image is the replacement of the traditional chest perspective imaging, whose imaging sharpness is high and the radiation is low. X-ray imaging is the major measures of the medical screening for the pulmonary diseases, which include the pulmonary inflammation, lump, tuberculosis, lung cancer and so on. The chest DR radiography utilizes the image difference for the density difference of the human tissue under X-ray to observe the lesion of the parts with slight difference between the thickness and density. However, the structure of human tissue is complicated. The thoracic cavity and enterocoelia include the key organs of the human body, which include all kinds of visceral organs with high density and low density. Therefore, the images of all organs and tissues overlap with each other, which have quite a large influence on the observation and judgment. So the reading and judgment of the DR radiography have very high requirement on the experience of the doctors and the large scale DR radiography examinations are very hard to be launched in the primary hospitals and medical examination points
In the resident medical examination, normally the aim of shooting DR radiography is to conduct the tuberculosis screening. The tuberculosis is caused by the mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is easily spread through spray in the air and even the aerosol. The majority of tuberculosis patients is young adults, which will result in the labor loss for the families and the society. The world health organization indicates that the tuberculosis is the important public health problem all over the world. Every year the tuberculosis kills 140,000 people all over the world. In our country, there are approximate 5,000,000 active pulmonary tuberculosis patients at present and there are approximate 50000 people die of tuberculosis every year. In accordance with the estimation of the world health organization, there are approximate 1,000,000 new patients in our country, for which the annual progressive decrease range is 3%. In 22 countries with high burden of the tuberculosis all over the world, our country ranks only second to India. The tuberculosis is one of the major infectious diseases which are importantly prevented and controlled by our country. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that our country is one of 22 countries with high burden of the tuberculosis all over the world and one of 27 countries with high burden of the multi-drug resistant tuberculosis all over the world, whose number of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis patients is the highest one of the whole world; The number of ordinary tuberculosis patients ranks only second to India all over the world.
Although the tuberculosis epidemic in our country presents a serious situation with a large number of infected people, large incident number and large number of current patients, the tuberculosis can be prevented and cured with the modern medical help. In consideration of the fact that the damage of the tuberculosis is serious and the difficulty of the prevention and control work is enormous while the scale of local tuberculosis prevention and control teams at different levels is still small, whose power and expenditure cannot adapt the prevention and control demand, the technology and capital input shall be strengthened and the medical prevention combination mechanism shall be established to form the practical and effective prevention and treatment system. At present, two weak and difficult links of early-stage notice and treatment management exist in the implementation of the prevention and treatment for the tuberculosis. Under such circumstance, the screening program for the tuberculosis patients among the focus groups is gradually launched inside the country by using the essential public health service and free antituberculosis therapy is given for all diagnosed patients.
Being compared with the tuberculosis, the severity degree of damage to the lung cancer on the health of the patients is higher than that of the former. It is commonly acknowledged that the death rate of lung cancer is considerably higher than that of other cancers and it increases by years in recent years. The imageological examination is one of the important technical measures in the aspects of diagnosis, test, prevention and treatment on the cancer. The generally major research object of chest imaging is the lung cancer, which normally observes the corresponding lung images through establishing the lung window. Lung cancer is a neoplastic disease which is related to the smoking, tmospheric pollution and low immunologic function. For example, the repeated inflammatory stimulation of factors like the haze in recent years will bring the chronic damage, affect the normal epithelial function of the bronchial epithelium and the immune antiviral state of the body and have facilitation affect on the occurrence of lung cancer, which may result in the high occurrence of lung cancer in the future. In addition, the carcinogenic incubation period of lung cancer is very long, which normally takes 10 to 30 years. Therefore, some people who ever had tuberculosis when they were young will have the calcification left in their lung after cure and they may mistakenly regard the shadow found in their lung as the calcification due to the tuberculosis in the future medical examination. Consequently, they may miss the chance of early detection of lung cancer.
Being compared with the pulmonary tuberculosis complicating lung cancer, the lung cancer complicating tuberculosis may need more attention. The statistics show that there are about 10%˜15% of the lung cancer patients will have tuberculosis incidence and the autopsy cases reach as much as about 30%, which is resulted from the reason that partial lung cancer and tuberculosis are difficult to be distinguished in the imaging and misdiagnose, therapeutic error or delay treatment are extremely easy to happen on clinic. Some patients on clinic only have tuberculosis but they are diagnosed as having lung cancer in several primary hospitals with a imaging examination only. What's the worse, the chemoradiotherapy is conducted for them blindly, which result in serious damage on the body of the patients. On the contrary, some patients do have the lung cancer with complicating tuberculosis but they are diagnosed as the tuberculosis and receive the treatment as that of the pure tuberculosis only. Such phenomenon is mainly resulted from the reason that the clinical manifestations of the tuberculosis and that of the lung cancer are similar, which are cough, hemoptysis and etc. Also, both of them can be shown as the shadow on the chest X-ray radiography through imaging examination.
One large difficult point of the intelligent treatment for the lung DR radiography is the method of confirming the area of the lung lobe. If the scope of lung lobe can be accurately confirmed and the interference outside the lung can be weakened or eliminated, it will be more beneficial for the notice of the slight lesion. In addition, the shape of the lung lobe contour itself also is a important factor for judging relevant physiological index of the people receiving physical examination; Reliable lung lobe contour extraction algorithm can reduce the time of rechecking for the people receiving physical examination and reduce the number of chest images, letting them obtain the definite diagnosis on their nidus from the doctors at the cost of lower radiation dosage.

Kind of lung lobe contour extraction method aiming at DR radiography


In an abnormality diagnosis system of the invention where multiple devices and a server S are interconnected via a network, a communication failure may occur between the server S and one device (diagnosis object printer P1) among the multiple devices. On the occurrence of the communication failure, the server S instructs another device (diagnosis execution printer P2) among the multiple devices other than the diagnosis object printer P1 to make a diagnosis of abnormality in the diagnosis object printer P1. In response to the instruction, the diagnosis execution printer P2 obtains communication setting information from the diagnosis object printer P1, and compares the obtained communication setting information with own communication setting information stored in the self printer or the diagnosis execution printer P2. The diagnosis execution printer P2 refers to a result of the comparison, makes diagnosis of the communication failure due to an error of the communication setting information set in the diagnosis object printer P1, and informs the server S of a result of the diagnosis. This arrangement of the invention enables easy diagnosis of abnormality in the diagnosis object printer P1 in the event of a communication failure between the diagnosis object printer P1 and the server S.

1. Filed of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of making a diagnosis of abnormality in a device in the event of a communication failure between the device and a server.
2. Description of the Related Art
Monitor systems have been proposed recently to use a server to monitor multiple printers located in an intranet via the Internet.
In the proposed monitor system, the intranet is connected via a proxy server to the Internet. A firewall is set in the proxy server to block unauthorized accesses from the Internet and interfere with a direct access from the server to the intranet. Each of the multiple printers located in the intranet thus voluntarily makes an access to the server via the Internet and informs the server of a result of the self monitoring.
A known technique related to the monitor system enables a client to monitor copying machines via a communication device as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 2002-288066.
In the prior art monitor system, when a printer included in the intranet has some abnormality and fails to access to the server (in the event of a communication failure between the server and the printer), the server can not make a diagnosis of abnormality in the printer because of the interference with the direct access from the server to the intranet.
The monitor system may be adopted to monitor diversity of other devices as well as the printers, and similar problems may occur in any of such monitor systems.


A method for receiving and responding to user input is provided. The user input may be input via a user interface. The method may include receiving input from a user via the user interface. The method may also include transmitting the input to a response determination module. The response determination module may determine a system response to the input. The method may include displaying the system response to the user via the user interface. The method may include receiving an indication from the user that the system response is less than a predetermined threshold level of responsiveness. The method may include dividing the input into component terms and displaying the component terms on the user interface. The method may include enabling the user to eliminate component terms from the input in order to improve responsiveness of the system response, and receiving a selection of eliminated component terms.

Conventionally, a voice or text response system receives textual or verbal queries via a user interface. The voice or text response system may process each query and respond to the query.
Under certain circumstances, the response generated by the voice or text response system may lack responsiveness, and, therefore, not provide the user with adequate assistance. There may be numerous reasons for the lack of responsiveness. One reason may be that one or more words within the query were misspelled. Another reason may be that the system misinterpreted a word in the query. Yet another reason may be an incorrect system-selected meaning of a homonym.
A user may become frustrated when presented with a response that lacks responsiveness. At times, a user viewing the response may understand the misspelling or misinterpretation of the system. Therefore, a user may be in a position to fix the query and/or correct the misunderstanding in order for the system to generate more accurate responses in the future. Therefore, a need exists for a touch-based and audio-responsive user interface. The touch-based and audio-responsive user interface may be used to eliminate one or more misunderstood or misinterpreted component terms of the query.

Touch-based and audio-responsive user interface for elimination of a query's component terms


A mixed-domain oscilloscope (MDO) includes a signal generator configured to generate a test signal having a span ranging from a user-configurable start frequency to a user configurable stop frequency, an output channel coupled to the signal generator and configured to transmit the test signal, an RF input channel configured to receive a return signal based on the test signal, an acquisition section configured to acquire and digitize the return signal as an acquisition record, and a ramp busy signal generator configured to substantially time-align the acquisition record with the test signal. The test signal includes a chirp signal that is a linearly swept sine wave that spans between the user-configurable start frequency and the user-configurable stop frequency. Methods include calibrating the chirp signal, connecting the MDO in various test configurations relative to external return loss bridge and DUT equipment, and performing measurements such as S21 (db), S11 (db), and distance-to-fault type measurements.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to mixed-domain oscilloscopes, and more particularly, to instruments, systems and methods for making measurements on a mixed-domain oscilloscope using an internal chirp generator, an output channel, an RF input channel, and time alignment logic.
Unlike traditional swept or stepped spectrum analyzers, a mixed-domain oscilloscope (MDO) uses fixed local oscillators (LOs) to block convert wide swaths of bandwidth as opposed to sweeping or stepping an LO through an equivalent wide bandwidth. Traditional spectrum analyzers provide a tracking generator, which uses the swept or stepped LO to produce a signal that tracks with the sweep of the analyzer. The swept signal is fed to a network or device under test and the resulting signal is analyzed using the spectrum analyzer. This is known in the industry as a "poor man's network analyzer" because while this technique provides a useful method for determining scalar measurements, it is incapable of providing vector measurements as provided by conventional network analyzers.
There is a trend in the test and measurement field to provide multiple functions that were traditionally provided in separate instruments, within a single test and measurement instrument in a time-correlated fashion. One such instrument is the MDO, which includes digital channels, analog channels, and an RF input channel all within a single instrument. Presently, MDOs do not offer a "poor man's network analyzer" capability because the typical approach uses the swept or stepped LO approach, which differs from the traditional way in which data is acquired and processed on an MDO.
It would be desirable to provide an MDO with an internal chirp generator and the capability of transmitting a chirp signal. Moreover, it would be desirable to provide time alignment logic for time aligning the chirp signal with an acquisition so that a user can obtain and analyze measurements such as scalar s parameters. Embodiments of the invention address these and other limitations in the prior art.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the inventive concepts will become more readily apparent from the following detailed description of the example embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Internal chirp generator with time aligned acquisition in a mixed-domain oscilloscope


A hammock and a frame wherein the frame has a keel like shaped flexible beam formed by telescopically joined elements and sticklike supporting beam legs. The joint of the beam legs to the beam is accomplished by a bag attached to the frame having a pocket into which the end of a beam leg is inserted. The keel like shape of the frame operates so that overtensioning the flexible beam causes it to deform and function as a safety device. With such deformation of the frame, the user is lowered toward the ground.

The present invention includes a frame and a hammock, wherein the frame for supporting the hammock is a keel like shaped flexible beam which can be dismounted into several elements and joined back together. The deformation of the flexible beam functions as an overtension safety device. The frame also has bearings to join a sun protection umbrella or a tent. Dismantled into single elements, the frame and the hammock can be stored in a bag containing enclosed pockets.
In order to be independent of surface conditions, frames for supporting a hammock, for example in Swiss Pat. No. 473553, have two folding tubes. This arrangement has the disadvantage that the tubes cannot be locked in the using position. With this disadvantage, the frame can overbalance with side swinging because the tubes are moving sidewards. A check lever to lock the folding tubes is shown in German Pat. No. OS 25 40 693. German Pat. No. OS 27 02 593 shows cross supported tubes enabling fixed tube positions.
The devices of these patents have evoked little commercial interest. The design out of the "Heine" catalogue "Garden furniture 1987" shows a U-shaped frame and two supporting tubes in a 90.degree. angle parallel to the ground. The hammock is attached to the ends of the frame, the hammock extending from one end of the frame to the other. The frame is so designed, that with normal force, enough security against breaking is provided. For this reason, the frame's concept is of a stationary, massive design, which can be used in a garden, or on a balcony in warm weather. With this "heavy" design, many of the hammock's portability qualities--first designed by the American Indians--are lost.
Hammocks are usually very light and for that reason can be used extremely well as non-stationary soft furniture. The problems in putting up a hammock has depended up until now in using natural existing factors, for example requiring two trees, or by using wall fittings, etc. The assembled hammock frame design, using today's technology, allows the putting up of a hammock without needing natural or stationary factors. The frame can be placed on any relatively flat surface and the hammock mounted on the frame.
The design of a light weight hammock frame without the need of natural existing or stationary support factors at today's level of technology can be seen as a desired objective. The main points to be improved upon are weight saving, handling and volume of transport. Also, existing frames are dependent upon the use of a flat ground surface. The goal of the present invention is the design of a hammock frame without these disadvantages, in order that the hammock frame can be used as a camping article or for picnics, or at the beach, etc. and for the limitless use during leisure hours in the "fresh air".
The packed up hammock frame of the present invention can be transported by car, by bicycle or carried as a back pack. The user of the hammock frame is protected against the elements by means of adjustable awnings. These characteristics allow the hammock frame to be used as a bed or as a tent on expeditions or as an emergency kit during rescue operations.


A normalization factor for a current frame of a signal may be determined. The normalization factor may depend on an amplitude of the current frame of the signal. The normalization factor may also depend on values of states after one or more operations were performed on a previous frame of a normalized signal. The current frame of the signal may be normalized based on the normalization factor that is determined. The states' normalization factor may be adjusted based on the normalization factor that is determined.

The term signal processing may refer to the processing and interpretation of signals. Signals of interest may include sound, images, and many others. Processing of such signals may include storage and reconstruction, separation of information from noise, compression, and feature extraction. The term digital signal processing may refer to the study of signals in a digital representation and the processing methods of these signals. Digital signal processing is an element of many communications technologies such as mobile phones and the Internet. The algorithms that are utilized for digital signal processing may be performed using specialized computers, which may make use of specialized microprocessors called digital signal processors (sometimes abbreviated as DSPs).

Systems and methods for dynamic normalization to reduce loss in precision for low-level signals


A biaxially stretched microporous film includes band-like polyethylene material having a film width of not less than 300 mm wherein distribution of physical properties in the film width direction and the thickness variation is less than 1.00 μm and air permeability variation is not greater than 50 seconds/100 mL. The polyethylene microporous film has excellent planarity and uniformity of physical properties required when used in a large-area configuration as a separator film of a lithium ion battery for automobiles or consumer electronics.

Polyethylene thin films as disclosed in WO 2007/015416, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2011-516624A, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-240690A, especially polyethylene microporous films, deform microscopically at room temperature because the glass transition temperature of the resin itself is below room temperature. For this reason, it is difficult to uniformly obtain the physical properties required when used as the separator of a lithium ion battery or the like. In particular, when the film is large in the width or longitudinal directions, it is extremely difficult to assure uniformity of various physical properties across the entire face.
Thus, in the past, only the portions of a film where the various physical properties were uniform were selected to be used in various applications.
In the development of lithium ion batteries for modern automobiles and consumer electronics, as battery size has increased and as produced quantities have increased, it has become necessary to enlarge the area in both the width and longitudinal directions of the polyethylene microporous film used as the separator. Thus, it has become greatly desired to examine the causes of non-uniformity of films and to develop a polyethylene microporous film having excellent uniformity of various characteristics and planarity in a film that is large in the width and longitudinal directions.
Thus, it could be helpful to provide a polyethylene microporous film having excellent planarity and uniformity of the various characteristics required in the separator of a battery, even in large-area films.


A method of fixing a taper implant to a receiving member includes providing a taper implant having a frusto-conical outer surface, a projecting portion connected to a larger diameter end and a smaller diameter end. A receiving member is provided which has a wall portion with a passing-through hole therein with at least a portion of the passing-through hole being tapered to form a frusto-conical shape whereby the taper portion has a larger diameter end and a smaller diameter end and the passing through hole has a cylindrical counterbored portion adjacent to the larger diameter end in which the projecting portion of the taper implant is received. A taper rate of the taper portion of the passing through hole is the same as a taper rate of the taper portion of the taper implant. The larger diameter end of the taper portion of the passing through hole has a diameter which is smaller than a diameter of the larger end of the taper portion of the taper implant whereby there is a tight-fit allowance when the taper implant is inserted into the passing through hole. The taper implant is fixed in the passing through hole of the receiving member by the outer surface of the taper portion of the taper implant being in contact with a surface of the taper portion of the passing through hole by applying a force to the taper implant whereby a friction force is generated between the taper portion of the taper implant and the wall portion.

The present invention relates to a taper implant, a screw-fastening structure using a taper implant with female threads, a forming drill for drilling an insertion hole for the taper implant, and a hammer for driving the taper implant.
Generally, often inserted or press-fitted into a soft base member, such as an aluminum plate, are those other members which are harder than the base member and have an axis perpendicular to the surface of the base member. For example, when female threads are tapped in an aluminum plate and this aluminum plate is fastened to another plate by using a male stainless screw, chips are generated and fallen from the aluminum female threads upon the male screw being tightened into a hole with the female threads in the aluminum plate. If a falling of chips is not desired as, e.g., in the assembly step of electronic devices and units, a reinforcing member is often inserted into the hole with the female threads in the aluminum plate. Such a reinforcing member is in the form of a coil spring made of stainless steel having strength comparable to the male screw and being rhombic in cross-section. The reinforcing member is inserted into a threaded hole tapped beforehand to be fit with an outer periphery of the reinforcing member, and a male screw is inserted into the threaded hole along an inner periphery of the reinforcing member. The use of the reinforcing member prevents generation of chips because the male screw contacts the stainless reinforcing member.
As another example, a stainless positioning pin is sometimes press-fitted into a hole drilled in an aluminum plate.
However, when a reinforcing member is inserted into a hole of an aluminum plate, insertion of the reinforcing member requires a skill. More specifically, in the case of inserting the reinforcing member with a tool, while rotating it, into a threaded hole tapped to be fit with an outer periphery of the reinforcing member, the inserted reinforcing member may skip some threads of the threaded hole, or it may deform into a conical shape (as the reinforcing member is inserted, the inner diameter of its lower portion is gradually reduced), unless the worker is skilled. This has raised the problem that the process of inserting the reinforcing member is poor in working efficiency.
Also, when a stainless positioning pin is inserted into a hole of an aluminum plate, the positioning pin may be inserted obliquely with respect to the aluminum plate due to deformation of the aluminum plate, for example, unless the worker is skilled. This has raised the problem that the process of inserting the positioning pin is poor in working efficiency.
An object of the present invention is to provide a taper implant, a screw-fastening structure using a taper implant with female threads, a forming drill for drilling an insertion hole for the taper implant, and a hammer for driving the taper implant, each of which ensures good working efficiency.
To achieve the above object, a taper implant according to the present invention comprises a taper portion having an outer surface being frustconical in shape, and a projecting portion formed at an outermost end of the taper portion on the larger-diameter side to project outward with respect to the taper portion, and having a flat surface lying perpendicularly to the axial direction of the taper portion. In a preferable form, the projecting portion is a disk-shaped flange portion which is uniformly projected outward from the outer surface of the taper portion. The taper implant further comprises a fit portion extending in the axial direction of the taper portion. With such a construction, just by dropping the taper implant into a hole bored in one of members to be fastened and having a hole taper portion, and then driving the taper implant into the hole by hitting the side of the flange portion, the taper portion and the flange portion are press-fitted to an inner wall surface of the hole bored in the fastened member, enabling the taper implant to be easily fixed to the fastened member, while the taper implant is prevented from overly thrusting into the hole. As a result, the working efficiency is improved.
Also, to achieve the above object, in screw-fastening structure using a taper implant with female threads according to the present invention, a hole having a hole taper portion gradually spreading toward a larger-diameter opening is drilled in a first member, a taper implant having a taper portion including female threads tapped therein beforehand is fitted to the hole taper portion, and a male screw is inserted and tightened into the female threads from the side of a second member, whereby the first and second members are fastened to each other. With that structure, the work of fastening two members to each other can be performed with high efficiency.
Further, to achieve the above object, in a forming drill for drilling an insertion hole for a taper implant according to the present invention, the drill integrally includes a taper portion drilling bit for boring a hole into which a taper portion of the taper implant is to be inserted, and a step portion drilling bit for boring a hole into which a projecting portion of the taper implant is to be inserted, and a hole taper portion and a hole step portion of the hole are drilled in a member at the same time by the integral bits of the drill. With such a construction, control of tight-fit accuracy of the taper implant can be facilitated.
In addition, to achieve the above object, a hammer for driving a taper implant according to the present invention comprises a piston pushed forth by a compression spring, and opening/closing means for selectively opening and closing an exhaust port communicating an air chamber with the outside, the exhaust port having a sectional area set larger than a sectional area of an air supply port through which compressed air is introduced to the air chamber, the piston being pushed back against biasing force of the compression spring by the compressed air introduced to the air chamber. With such a construction, the taper implant can be driven under driving force so reduced as to prevent damage of the fastened member, and the piston can be automatically pushed back to its start position. As a result, the work of driving the taper implant can be easily performed.

Method for fixing a taper implant to a receiving member


A system for heating and coating a weld joint in a pipe comprising; a heating and coating ring for placement on the pipe over the center of the weld joint; the ring having an open position to permit the same to be placed over the pipe and a closed position wherein the ring surrounds the pipe; the ring having a powder dispenser mounted thereon for dispensing a powdered coating material therefrom onto the surface of the pipe; the ring also having a pair of induction heaters mounted thereon, each induction heater including an induction coil comprising a length of hollow copper tubing wound in an elliptical pattern a multiplicity of times, each coil being bowed correspondingly to the curvature of the pipe; the induction coils being disposed in a cylindrical surface adjacent to, and parallel with, the surface of the pipe when the ring is in the closed position; a motor for rotating the closed ring around the pipe; a source of electrical energy for applying an alternating electric potential to the induction coils to heat the pipe to an application temperature for the coating material; the closed ring being rotated alternately in opposite rotary directions while heating the pipe until the application temperature is reached; the supply of electrical potential to the induction coils being interrupted thereafter; and the coating material being applied thereafter through the dispenser to the thus-heated pipe while the assembly is rotated.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for coating weld joints in a pipeline. More particularly, the present invention relates to an assembly and process for heating a weld joint and thereafter applying a coating to the heated weld joint.
2. Prior Art
Various methods and systems are used to cover the weld joints of a pipeline which has been made up from pipe sections welded together in end-to-end relation. These pipe sections have been previously coated at the mill, except for the ends, which as indicated above, are welded together in the field. The pipe joints are then protected from corrosion by coating them in the field with an epoxy material, or with a polyethylene material, or by covering these weld joints with asphalt sleeves or heat-shrinkable polyethylene sleeves.
In Hart U.S. Pat. No. 4,308,819, issued on Jan. 5, 1982 and entitled "System for Spraying Fludized Powder Circumferentially Around a Pipe Joint" there is disclosed a powder applicator ring which is comprised of three arcuate frame members which connect together by a latching means to circumferentially engage a pipe around a weld joint. The ring is capable of moving circumferentially around the pipe by means of belts which engage the surface of the pipe. Powder dispersers are mounted on the ring and are adapted to spray powder onto the weld joint which has been previously heated by a separate apparatus.
In Betteridge et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,595,607, issued on Jun. 17, 1986 and entitled "Combined Induction Heating and Coating System for Pipe Weld Joints" there is disclosed a ring which is divided into three arcuate sections that encircle the pipe and which are adapted to move circumferentially around the weld joint by means of a plurality of belts or wheels which engage the surface of the pipe. In the Betteridge et al. patent, the powder dispensers are also mounted on the ring as in the case of the Hart patent referred to above. However, the Betteridge et al. patent has a plurality of induction heaters mounted in the ring for heating the weld joint prior to the application of the powdered material.
In Hart et al. patent application Ser. No. 07/415,581 filed Oct. 2, 1989, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,961,789, assigned to the owner of the present invention, and entitled "Sleeve Applicator Assembly for Pipe Joints", there is shown a stationary frame which is attached to a pipe adjacent a weld joint. A ring composed of two arcuate elements which can be connected together to form a closure is positioned adjacent the frame for rotation around the weld joint. Drive means mounted on the stationary frame engages the ring to rotate the latter around the weld joint. The aforementioned ring of the Hart et al. application is designed to apply a sheet of shrinkable material to the weld joint. The ring also includes a pair of spaced induction heating means which are similar to the heating means to be disclosed in the present invention.


In a media editing device for reorganizing media content and editing the reorganized media content, a plurality of tracks is obtained, where each track comprises at least one component, each component comprising at least one segment, each segment comprising one of: image content, video content, audio content, and audio/video content. A first user input selecting a plurality of the tracks is received. A second user input selecting at least one reorganization technique to be applied to the selected tracks is also received. The selected reorganization technique is applied to the selected tracks, and the reorganized tracks are displayed. Editing operations are received for at least one of the reorganized tracks.

As smartphones and other mobile devices have become ubiquitous, people have the ability to take pictures virtually any time. Furthermore, with an ever-growing amount of content available to consumers through the Internet and other sources, consumers have access to a vast amount of digital content. With existing media editing tools, users can manually edit digital images to achieve a desired effect or style. However, while many media editing tools are readily available, the editing process can at times be complex and time-consuming for the casual user when processing a large volume of content.

Systems and methods for media track management in a media editing tool


A continuously variable transmission in which a circular driver, positioned between and frictionally engaged with op posing surfaces of two oppositely rotatable disks, which are urged towards each other with a biasing mechanism, is mounted to, and is movable axially along, a drive shaft which extends radially from an input shaft which rotates the drive shaft about a longitudinal axis of the input shaft, and wherein output drive is taken from the disks via a speed balancing system.

This invention relates to a continuously variable transmission which can be used in an automotive or other application.
A traction fluid allows a friction drive to be transferred between two steel interfaces e.g. in a pulley and belt transmission or in a toroidal transmission. However torque transmission capability and mechanical efficiency are adversely affected by the following:    (1) in a pulley and belt transmission, power is transmitted from a first pulley via a friction drive to a belt and then from the belt through another friction drive to a second pulley. In a toroidal transmission, power is transmitted from a first toroid to a roller and then from the roller to a second toroid. Thus, in each case, there are two friction interfaces in series, a configuration which compounds mechanical losses. For example if the efficiency of each interface is 90% then the efficiency of two interfaces in series is 81%;    (2) an input friction radius, and an output friction radius, of a friction interface vary as a drive ratio varies. For a given input torque, as the drive ratio changes, this variation requires a variable clamping force which is typically effected by means of a hydraulic control system which includes a hydraulic pump the use of which decreases mechanical efficiency;    (3) the variation in the input radius, and in the output radius, limit the torque output, particularly when the input friction radius is at a minimum. This means that the transmission cannot handle a maximum value of input torque through its ratio range, and use must be made of a torque-limiting mechanism which, typically, is electronically controlled to limit engine power and torque in the relevant ratios; and    (4) when an output speed is slightly above zero more torque may be called for than what the friction drive can supply. If the friction drive forms a part of a transmission which is installed in a vehicle it may not be possible for the vehicle to move from a rest position over a kerb or a similar small obstacle.
GB (1913) 14696 describes a frictional transmission which includes a driver wheel peripherally engaged with planar surfaces of opposed disks. The arrangement is one in which substantial forces are generated, due to an asymmetrical distribution.
GB(1912) 29132 describes a frictional drive arrangement in which a drive mechanism engages peripherally with two wheels and imparts counter-rotating drive to two disks. An adjustable output drive is provided by wheels which are axially movable along shafts which are rotated by the disks. The construction is not compact for a substantial volume exists between the disks. Also, the drive mechanism is loaded by the disks in one direction and requires components of a substantial strength to cater for these unidirectional loads.
An object of the present invention is to provide a continuously variable transmission (CVT) with a radial drive, of compact form, which has a balanced construction which helps to resist loading effects.

Continuously variable transmission with radial drive


An impact wrench having an improved air regulator comprises a cylindrical pipe provided on a handle, an air supply valve movably inserted in a back section of the cylindrical pipe, and a changeover valve movably inserted in a front section of the cylindrical pipe. The cylindrical pipe has a first air supply inlet and a second air supply inlet. The air supply valve has several air supply regulating slots of different diameters. The changeover valve has an an air supply reversing slot. The desired one of the air supply regulating slots is adapted to communicate with the first air supply inlet, so that the air flow to the air motor is regulated in the cylindrical pipe, thus obtaing a desired torque. The air supply reversing slot is adapted to communicate with the second air supply inlet only when the air motor is rotated counterclockwise. A compressed air is introduced into the air motor via the second air supply inlet, as well as the first air supply inlet communicating with the desired one of the air supply regulating slots. A more compressed air is supplied to the air motor when the air motor is rotated counterclockwise to produce an unfastening torque than when the air motor is rotated clockwise to produce a fasteing torgue.

This invention relates to an air regulator for an impact wrench for use in fastening or unfastening bolts or nuts. More specifically, this invention relates to the impact wrench having an improved air regulator for regulating air flow to an air motor.
A known air regulator of this type included in an impact wrench is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open specification No. 1-321174. This air regulator comprises an adapter valve secured to an air supply slot of a handle, a cylindrical regulator valve movably fitted on a periphery of the cylindrical regulator, said adaptor valve having air slots, said regulator valve having air supply slots of different diameters with a regular interval. When the regulator valve is operated, the air supply slot of a desired diameter is adapted to communicate selectively with the desired air slot, so that the air flow to an air motor can be regulated. However, according to the air regulator of this type, an air supply reversing means is needed to be provided in the air supply pass to make the air motor rotate reversely, which results in a complicated construction of the air regulator. Conventionally, there are some types of impact wrenches for fastening or unfastening bolts or nuts. One type of the impact wrenches is an all-purpose impact wrench, which is used for both fastening and unfastening bolts or nuts.
Normally, an unfastening operation requires a more increased toque than a fastening operation, for example, because there is some rust on bolts or nuts. For this reason, taking into account a torque necessary for unfastening bolts or nuts, a torque of the all-purpose impact wrench is determined. Accordingly, a fastening torque of the all-purpose impact wrench exceeds a specified fastening torgue. Therefore, an excessive torque is applied to fasten bolts or nuts. Thus, when unfastening bolts or nuts again, a more excessive torque is needed. In this way, a fastening torque to be applied to bolts or nuts becomes gradually more increased, which may cause deformation and breakdown of a structure. Also, a fastening torque exceeding a tolerance of a fastening bolt may cause failure of the fastening bolt.
To solve such problems, two kinds of an unfastening impact wrench and a fastening impact wrench can be used to unfasten and fasten bolts or nuts. However, the use of the two kinds of impact wrenches causes a higher cost and a longer fastening/unfastening operation, which leads to a troublesome operation.
Another type of the conventional impact wrench is a torque-adjusting impact wrench. In one type of the torque-adjusting impact wrench a control valve is adjusted to change a rotational speed of a pneumatic motor. In this type of the impact wrench the adjusting operation is complicated and an adjusted torque varies widely. In another type of the torque-adjusting impact wrench a twisted shaft is provided between an anvil shank and a driving shaft to adjust a torque. However, in this type of the impact wrench a structure of a hammer mechanism becomes complicated and expensive. In another type of the torque-adjusting impact wrench a pneumatic control circuit, a hydraulic control circuit, or an electric control circuit is provided to control a fastening torque automatically within a maximum torgue. However, in this type of the impact wrench the control circuit becomes complicated.

Impact wrench having an improved air regulator


Provided is a cup comprising a frusto-conical shaped wall that is narrower on top of the cup, the top of the cup having an opening for passage of liquid, the cup having a circular bottom made from a material that is different than material of the wall of the cup, the wall of the cup having at least two fold lines; wherein the cup has a stowed configuration where the cup is collapsed along the fold lines and the cup has a deployed configuration so that the cup can hold a liquid.

For athletes participating in distance running events, hydration during the event is mostly carried out while the athlete is still running. A water station is often established to present a plurality of filled cups so that the athletes may grab a cup of water or sports/electrolyte drink as they run past the station.
With conventional drinking cups, runners at hydration stations cannot easily drink out of traditional paper cups without spilling the liquid contents carried therein due to the large diameter of the top opening. To compensate, runners will often crush the sides of the cup together to collapse the opening in an effort to avoid spilling when the liquid contents are transferred from cup to mouth. When doing this, the runner may lose their grip on the cup and drop it. In competitive events, the runner will not want to stop or return to the hydration station. This may result in a de-hydration for the runner during the race until they reach the next hydration station.
As can be understood, there is a need for an improved drinking cup for hydration during athletic events, especially in longer events such as marathons, ultra-marathons and triathlons.


An odor adsorbing contoured laminate for footwear comprising an upper-most layer of perforated thermoplastic foam (20), a second layer of air permeable, water repellent textile fabric (22), a third layer of odor adsorbent material (24), a fourth partial layer of contoured solid thermoplastic (30), and a fifth bottom layer of odor adsorbent material (26).

This invention describes an inner sole or inner sock for footwear which is contoured on its upper surface and is comprised of thermoplastic foam, breathable water repellent fabric, odor adsorbent material, and solid thermoplastic material. It has odor adsorbing capability, resists saturation from perspiration fluid, and provides some structural support to the foot.

Odor adsorbing contoured support inner sole


In the bonding apparatus disclosed herein, possible misalignment of a semiconductor chip at the work station is sensed by first optically scanning the workpiece using a video scanning head mounted on a common X-Y carriage with the bonding head. A zone signal is generated which defines, within the scanned area, a limited zone of consideration. The video signal is evaluated as a function of the zone signal to measure the extent of coincidence between the zone and a target area on the workpiece. The placement and dimensions of the zone are progressively adjusted responsive to the evaluation and in accordance with a search algorithm to locate at least two target areas on the workpiece and the bonding head is then traversed to adjusted target coordinates derived from the optically located target areas.

This invention relates to an automatic bonding machine and more particularly to such a machine in which a video scanning head, traversable with the bonding head, scans a workpiece to be bonded, such as a semiconductor chip, prior to bonding thereby to obtain a basis for adjusting bonding position coordinates.
In bonding systems developed heretofore, various schemes have been proposed for optically scanning the workpiece prior to performing the bonding operations and for correcting any misalignments which may be so determined. Typically the image of the semiconductor chip is, in effect, compared with a mask which represents the chip or selected features thereon. The chip is then moved in response to the signal so generated in a manner so as to reduce the misalignment to an acceptable level. Examples of such systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,679,820; 3,814,845; 3,899,634; and 3,903,363. The mechanical implementation of such systems, however, is relatively complex and is a source of maintenance problems as well as of high initial cost. Likewise, the control circuits for such systems have typically involved a large number of special purpose, hard-wired signal logic circuits and analog computational circuits for processing the measured information and effecting the desired motions in reponse thereto.
Among the several objects of the present invention may be noted the provision of an automatic bonding machine of improved throughput and accuracy; the provision of such a machine which is of simplified and highly reliable mechanical construction; the provision of such a machine which, to a high degree utilizes standard and general purpose control logic elements; the provision of such a machine which is easily set up; and the provision of such a machine which is reliable and which is of relatively simple and inexpensive construction. Other objects and features will be in part apparent and in part pointed out hereinafer.

Apparatus for bonding leads to semiconductor chips


A relay apparatus includes a memory and a processor coupled with the memory. The processor is configured to determine whether a frame received from a first device is to be discarded. The frame includes first information set at a first communication layer and second information set at a second communication layer different from the first communication layer. The processor is configured to transmit the frame to a second device upon determining that the frame is not to be discarded. The second device is set as a destination in the first information. The processor is configured to extract third information from the second information upon determining that the frame is to be discarded. The processor is configured to output the third information.

A first technique is known in which, in a network device (for example, a network switch) that performs communication (relaying frames) at the data link layer (layer 2) of the open systems interconnection (OSI) basic reference model over a communication network, the discard reason is displayed for the discarded frame and the discarded frame is output on a different port.
A second technique is also known in which a flag is provided to a processing result of a specific frame that is to be traced, only the processing result to which the flag is appended is stored in memory, and, when the specific frame is normally transferred or discarded, the processing result is output on a different port.
Related techniques are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-13990 and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-136081.
In a communication network including a transmission path that couples network switches, when data transmitted from a terminal or the like does not arrive at another terminal or the like which serves as the destination, it is important to know which portion of the network the target data has arrived at, for the purpose of cause analysis and recovery at the time of failure occurrence.
In this regard, with the first technique, although occurrence of discarded frames and reasons for discarding the frames may be identified, in order to determine the association of the discarded frames with the target data, the whole packets contained in all of the discarded frames have to be saved (packet capture) and be analyzed later. Particularly in the case where a communication network includes a large number of network switches, performing a packet capture in each individual network switch results in an enormous storage capacity being used for capturing and also results in imposing a significant analyzing load. This technique is therefore not practical.
With the second technique, the number of discarded frames to be analyzed may be narrowed down based on the count or the like of specific statistical information and error information. However, there is no difference in that, in order to determine whether or not the discarded frames are related to the data in question, packet capture and analysis have to be performed. The problems described above are not solved.