A ring binder mechanism adapted to be secured to a cover is disclosed as including a substantially rigid upper curved housing supporting a pair of plates to which three pairs of half-ring members are mounted, and a pair of rivets for engagement with the cover. The plates are pivotably movable between a first configuration in which the pairs of half-rings are closed, and a second configuration in which the pairs of half-rings are open. Each rivet includes an anchor plate to abut the cover and at least one claw penetrable into said cover in order to secure the ring binder mechanism to the cover, and the anchor plate includes a number of ridges or troughs.

Conventional ring binder mechanisms include a substantially rigid upper cover supporting a pair of plates. To each of these plates are fixedly attached a number of half-rings. The plates are pivotally movable relative to each other between a first configuration in which the angle between the upper surfaces of the plates are less than 180.degree., so that the half-rings of the respective are closed to retain loose-leaf paper, and a second configuration in which the angle between the upper surfaces of the plates are more than 180.degree., so that the half-rings of the respective are open to allow loose-leaf paper to be inserted into or taken out from the half-rings. Such a conventional ring binder mechanism is usually secured to the cover by a pair of rivets, each adjacent a longitudinal end of the ring binder mechanism. Each of such rivets generally includes a post having a head portion which is engaged with the upper cover of the ring binder mechanism, and a number of claws penetrable into the cover, and thereby to secure the ring binder mechanism to the cover.
Various methods and arrangements have been devised with a view to enhancing the engagement between the rivets and the cover. One such improvement involves the inclusion of an anchor plate in the rivet. The anchor plate includes an abutment surface which, when the rivet is secured to the cover, abuts the cover. By way of such an arrangement, the ring binder mechanism can withstand a larger sideward (i.e. the direction transverse to the longitudinal axis of the ring binder mechanism) pulling force.
In order to further enhance the engagement between the rivets (and thus the ring binder mechanism) and the cover, the dimensions of the rivets are so designed that, when the rivets are properly engaged with the upper cover, the lateral sides of the rivets extend beyond the lateral sides of the upper cover. While such an arrangement achieves the intended purpose of enhancing the engagement between the rivets and the cover, it is found in practice that, during assembly, too large a force may be accidentally imparted on to the lateral sides of the rivets, and to thereby deform or bend it.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a ring binder mechanism, and a rivet, in which the aforesaid shortcoming is mitigated, or at least to provide a useful alternative to the trade and public.

World Wide Stationery Manufacturing Co. Ltd.


A cutting tool chuck comprises a spindle provided with a tapered bore having the shape of a regular hexagonal prismoid for receiving a shank of a tool holder or a cutting tool, a retainer placed in the tapered bore of the spindle, and a plurality of rollers held in place by the retainer so as to be in rolling contact with the surfaces defining the tapered bore and the surfaces of the shank. The retainer has a plurality of retaining ribs extending along ridge sections of the tapered bore, an upper connecting ring to which the upper ends of the retaining ribs are joined, and a lower connecting ring to which the lower ends of the retaining ribs are joined. Each roller has a pair of projections at its opposite ends, and the rollers are supported for rotation at their projections on the retaining ribs.

Usually, a machine tool uses, when carrying out machining work for cutting a workpiece, such as boring work, with a cutting tool, such as a drill, a reamer or a center drill, a cutting tool chuck which fits a taper shank of a cutting tool or a tool holder in a tapered bore formed in a spindle of a machine tool serving as a component of the cutting tool chuck, and the spindle of the machine tool holding the cutting tool chuck is rotated to carry out desired cutting work for the workpiece.
In such a conventional cutting tool chuck, however, the clamping force which can be exerted on the shank of the tool holder or the cutting tool by the spindle is limited by a frictional force acting between the tapered bore of the spindle and the shank of the tool holder or the cutting tool, and accuracy in mounting the tool holder or the cutting tool is liable to be made unreliable by the fretting of the mating surfaces of the tapered bore of the spindle and the taper shank of the tool holder or the cutting tool. Therefore, It is difficult to achieve heavy cutting work, such as deep hole boring and face milling, accurately with a cutting tool held by the conventional cutting tool chuck.

Cutting tool chuck with non-circular cross-section and cutting tool chuck assembly


A drum of the present invention comprises: a shell having a plurality of shell members, wherein the upper rim of the shell is provided with a first magnetic component, and wherein the lower rim of the shell is provided with a second magnetic component; a first drumhead provided with a third magnetic component corresponding to the first magnetic component; and a second drumhead provided with a fourth magnetic component corresponding to the second magnetic component. The shell members use a first joining component and a second joining component to be joined with one another so as to form the shell. Furthermore, by magnetism between the first magnetic component and the third magnetic component and magnetism between the second magnetic component and the fourth magnetic component, the first drumhead, the second drumhead and the shell can be joined with one another. A drum of the present invention is advantageous in that it is easy to assemble and disassemble the drum, and accordingly, it is highly convenient whether to carry or to transport the drum.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a drum, and more particularly, to a drum that is easy to assemble and disassemble and that is easy to carry accordingly.
2. Description of the Related Art
As life in modern times gets complex, people are spending more and more time for leisure than for work. Modern people are demanding a satisfactory spiritual life as well as a satisfactory material life. For people pursuing a good spiritual life, listening to music is one of the most common interests or enjoyments since music may relieve stress and help to improve health.
Drums are very common among musical instruments in the world. It is common to see drums in concerts or religious rituals. As an important type of musical instrument, drums are often used in activities that prefer the performance of percussion music, such as religious activities. Drums suit well with other percussion instruments, delivering a passionate or cheerful, lively mood in the activities.
Drums need to be brought to places where activities are held; however, conventional drums are generally not convenient to transport. Bigger drums are heavy and consume a lot of space; smaller drums may be lighter, but they consume much space as well when many of them are transported at one time. Usually, a conventional drum is made one-piece with its drumhead connecting to its shell and may not be dismantled into parts before transportation. This causes inconveniences for users to carry or to transport drums. Therefore, it is needed to overcome this disadvantage for prior art drums.

Drum with sectional shell, sections joined by magnets


A lung-assist apparatus includes a tubular housing, a tubular nozzle therein, and a first valve disposed between the housing and nozzle. The housing is implanted across a bifurcation such that the nozzle extends from a first branch communicating with a healthy region of a lung towards a main passage, and terminates proximate a lateral opening in the housing that is disposed within a second branch communicating with a damaged region of the lung. During inhalation, the first valve opens to allow air flow into the first branch, and closes during exhalation to force air through the nozzle, thereby inducing a vacuum for drawing air from the damaged region. A second valve in the second branch opens during exhalation to draw air from the diseased region, and closes during inhalation to prevent air from being drawn into the damaged region.

Patients with chronic bronchitis or other chronic occlusive pulmonary disease ("COPD") may have reduced lung capacity and/or efficiency due to lung tissue breaking down. For example, in severe chronic pulmonary disease, e.g., emphysema, lung tissue may be damaged or destroyed, reducing the ability of the lung to effectively transfer oxygen. One of the problems with emphysema and like conditions is that the lungs become over-inflated, filling the chest cavity and preventing the patient from being able to inhale effectively.
In severe emphysema cases, lung volume reduction surgery ("LVRS") has been suggested to improve lung efficiency. LVRS is performed by opening the chest cavity, retracting the ribs, and stapling off and removing a diseased or partially diseased portion of a lung. This may allow the remaining healthier lung tissue to inflate more fully within the chest cavity, thereby increasing lung efficiency. LVRS, however, is an extremely invasive procedure, and exposes the patient to substantial post-operative complications.
Accordingly, apparatus and methods for assisting breathing in patients having COPD and like conditions, possibly avoiding the need for open surgery, would be considered useful.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Lung assist apparatus and methods for use


An image processing device comprises a part-point specifying unit configured to specify a part point of an object; a feature-quantity extracting unit configured to extract one or a plurality of feature quantities from a pixel of a sampling point or from a pixel group including the pixel of the sampling point, for each of a plurality of sampling points, and extract candidate feature quantities corresponding to the part point constituted by the extracted plurality of feature quantities corresponding to the respective sampling points, the plurality of sampling points comprising the part point specified by the part-point specifying unit and at least one point on the image other than the part point; and a feature-quantity generating unit configured to generate one or a plurality of comparison feature quantities corresponding to the part points based on a predetermined standard by using the candidate feature quantities extracted by the feature-quantity extracting unit.

The present invention relates to an image processing device, an image processing method, and a recording medium for executing authentication of an object, or estimating an attribute or a state of the object, by comparing comparison feature quantities of a part point of the object on an image between a registered image and an input image.
Conventionally, there are face authentication techniques for authenticating an individual person based on a registered facial image. According to a general face authentication technique, first, a subject to be authenticated is photographed, and a face is detected from the photographed image. Next, a part point (a contour point of an inner corner of an eye, an outer corner of an eye, or a mouth) of an organ (eyes, nose, mouth, or the like) of the detected face is specified. Then, an individual person is authenticated, by comparing between a feature quantity of the specified part point in the photographed image (the input image) and a feature quantity of the specified part point in the registered image.
However, since precision of the techniques of specifying a part point is not 100% in some cases, a part point cannot be specified at a correct position. Specifically, while part-point specifying techniques in general can precisely specify a part point of a front facial image and the like, a position of a part point is deviated in some cases, depending on the person, expression of the face, a direction of the face, illumination, or accessory (such as glasses). That is, a part point detected from a registered image and a part point detected from an input image specified are respectively deviated from correct positions in some cases. Accordingly, as shown in FIG. 6, although photographed images are of the same person, a feature quantity of the left corner of the eye in the registered image and a feature quantity of the left corner of the eye in the input image are greatly different in some cases. In this case, since a feature quantity extracted from the input image is different from a feature quantity in the registered image, an authentication device decides that this is not the same person. That is, there is a problem that the authentication is not correctly executed.
The present invention has been made in view of the above problem. An object of the invention is to realize an image processing device, an image processing method, and a recording medium for stably executing precise authentication, even when a part point specified is deviated from a correct position.

Image processing device and method for comparing feature quantities of an object in images


An image processing apparatus includes a storage control portion, a setting control portion, and a deletion control portion. The storage control portion stores logs of jobs executed by the image processing apparatus into a storage portion. The setting control portion sets an importance level of each of the logs based on a plurality of target items and weight conditions, wherein the plurality of target items are set in advance with regard to the image processing apparatus, the jobs, or the logs, and the weight conditions are set in advance respectively in correspondence with the target items. The deletion control portion determines an order of automatic deletion of the logs stored in the storage portion, based on the importance level set by the setting control portion.

The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus and a log management method for storing logs of jobs into a storage portion.
In image processing apparatuses such as printers, scanners, or the like, logs of various types of jobs, such as a print job, a scan job, or the like, are stored and accumulated in a storage portion. The logs may include image logs generated based on image data which is the processing target of the job. In this type of image processing apparatus, it is known that, when the storage capacity of the storage portion in which the logs are stored has become equal to or lower than a predetermined amount, logs are deleted in order from the oldest log.

Image processing apparatus, log management method


In a telephone exchange apparatus which accommodates digital communication liens and employs a slave synchronization system in which a clock is extracted from a signal received from the network, an exchange switch is operated in synchronism with the extracted clock so as to prevent data omission caused by a difference between operating frequencies of a network and an exchange apparatus. If there is a phase difference between a pre-switching clock and a post-switching clock when the extracted clocks are switched upon changing communication lines, the postswitching clock is delayed by the phase difference between the two clocks so as to cause the phase of the post-switching clock to coincide with the phase of the pre-switching clock.

1. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a telephone exchange apparatus having a means for generating a clock synchronous with a network.
2. PRIOR ART
As is well known, for example, a telephone exchange apparatus for accommodating a digital communication line normally employs a slave synchronization system so as to prevent data omission due to a difference in operating frequency between a network and the exchange apparatus. In this system, a clock is extracted from a signal received from the network, and an exchange switch is operated in synchronism with the extracted clock.
The conventional telephone exchange apparatus uses a phase controlled oscillator for generating an exchange switch operation clock synchronous with the clock extracted from a received signal. FIG. 8 shows a case wherein a DPLL is used as the conventional phase controlled oscillator.
In FIG. 8, reference numeral 30 denotes a phase comparator; 31, a counter; 32, an increment/decrement circuit; 33, a frequency-dividing counter; 34, a clock extracted from a network; 35, a phase comparison DPLL output clock; 36, a phase comparison result signal (for selecting an up- or down-counting operation of the counter 31); 37, a counter clock; 38, a counter carry-out signal; 39, a counter borrow signal; 40, a PLL reference clock; 41, an output after a clock operation of the PLL reference clock; and 42, a PLL output clock used in an operation of the exchange apparatus.
In the conventional phase controlled oscillator with the above arrangement, an operation executed when an 8-kHz frame synchronization timing clock is extracted from a network, and a clock of 32.768 MHz is used as a PLL reference clock will be described below.
As the PLL output clock 42, and the phase comparison PLL output clock 35, clocks obtained by 2.sup.n -frequency-dividing the PLL reference clock are output.
As the phase comparison PLL output clock 35, an 8-kHz clock which is the same as the clock 34 extracted from the network is output so as to compare phases with the 8-kHz clock extracted from the network. Phases are compared at each rising timing of the two clocks. As a result of comparison, if it is determined that the phase of the clock 34 extracted from the network advances from the clock 35, the value of the counter 31 is incremented by one. When the counter value has reached a preset value, one clock is inserted in the PLL reference clock 40 by the increment/decrement circuit 32. This operation is repeated until a phase difference is eliminated. Thus, the clock slaving to the operation clock of the network can be supplied to the telephone exchange apparatus.
On the other hand, as a result of comparison, if it is determined that the phase of the clock 34 extracted from the network is delayed from the clock 35, the value of the counter 31 is decremented by one. When the counter value has reached a preset value, one clock is removed from the PLL reference clock 40 by the increment/decrement circuit 32. This operation is repeated until a phase difference is eliminated. Thus, the clock slaving to the operation clock of the network can be supplied to the telephone exchange apparatus.
However, in an actual telephone exchange apparatus, it is unusual that the number of clocks extracted from the network input to the phase controlled oscillator is only one, as described above. More specifically, a plurality of digital communication lines are normally accommodated in the exchange apparatus, and when clocks can only be extracted from the accommodated digital communication lines during communications, which clock extracted from the lines is to be used as the clock extracted from the network input to the phase controlled oscillator must be controlled in accordance with the communication conditions.
FIG. 9 shows an arrangement of the conventional telephone exchange apparatus having the above-mentioned phase controlled oscillator. In FIG. 9, reference numeral 43 denotes communication lines connected to the network; 44, a line interface for interfacing with the network; 45, a network synchronization unit; 46, a central control unit; 47, an exchange switch; 48, a memory; 49, an extension interface unit; 50, telephone sets connected to the extension interface unit 49; 51, clocks extracted from the lines; 52, signals indicating line conditions; 53, an exchange switch operation clock; 54, a highway; and 55, an address bus/data bus.
FIG. 10 shows the first detailed arrangement of the conventional network synchronization unit 45.
In FIG. 10, reference numeral 56 denotes a selector; 57, a priority encoder; 58, a flip-flop; 59, a clock phase difference absorbing unit; 60, a phase controlled oscillator; 61, a switching timing generator; 65, an output frequency-divided clock; 66, a synchronization clock; and 67, an input clock to the phase controlled oscillator.
The operation of the conventional first network synchronization unit 45 will be described below with reference to FIGS. 9 and 10. In this case, a clock switching section will be mainly described.
The line interface unit 44 extracts a timing from a received signal from the network, and generates 8-kHz clocks CLK0 to CLKn by the PLL. The unit 44 outputs the clocks CLK0 to CLKn to the network synchronization unit 45. Suffixes 0 to n attached to the signal names correspond to lines from which the clocks are extracted, and in the following description, n=8. In communication state with the network, the 8-kHz clock to be output is synchronized with the timing of the network. However, in a non-communication state, a clock is generated by an independent quartz oscillator, or the like, and is not always synchronized with the timing of the network.
The line interface unit 44 outputs signals COM0 to COMn indicating line conditions to the network synchronization unit 45. The line interface unit 44 outputs, as the signals COM0 to COMn, signals at logic "0" in a communication state, and signals at logic "1" in a non-communication state. Note that suffixes 0 to n added to the signal names represent line numbers, and in the following description, n=8.
The line condition signals COM0 to COM8 are input to the priority encoder 57 (FIG. 10) of the network synchronization unit 45. The priority encoder 57 converts the smallest line number of those of the lines at logic "0" into 3-bit binary data, and outputs the binary data to the flip-flop 58.
For example, when the signals COM2, COMS, and COM8 are at logic "0", 3-bit data "010" is output
When all the line condition signals are at logic "1" i e when no communications are performed at all, 3-bit data "000" is output. In this case, the clock CLK0 is selected and output. The clock CLK0 is a clock of a predetermined line number "0" and the clock extracted from this line is selected.
The output from the priority encoder 57 is temporarily latched by the flip-flop 58, and is then input to the selector 56 having an 8-bit input. The selector 56 selects a clock to be output to the phase controlled oscillator 60 from the eight 8-kHz clocks 51 supplied from the line interface unit 44. For example, when the signals COM2, COM5, and COMB are at logic "0", since the output from the priority encoder is 3-bit data "010" the clock CLK2 is selected
When the second line 2 starts a communication, the signal COM2 goes to logic "1", and the output from the priority encoder 57 is changed to 3-bit data "101". The selector 56 selects the clock CLK5 according to the output from the encoder 57, and the clock CLK5 is input to the phase controlled oscillator 60.
When the conventional clock phase difference absorbing unit 59 outputs the clock signal 63 input from the selector 56 to the phase controlled oscillator 60, it merely outputs it in synchronism with the synchronization clock signal 66 from the phase controlled oscillator 60, and can merely absorb a phase difference from the internal clock of the phase controlled oscillator 60.
With the above-mentioned operations, a switching operation is performed, so that a clock extracted from the line in communication can be input to the phase controlled oscillator 60.
FIG. 11 shows the second detailed arrangement of the conventional network synchronization unit 45. Note that other arrangements are the same as those shown in FIG. 9.
In FIG. 11, reference numeral 70 denotes a clock phase difference absorbing unit, which has delay circuits corresponding to input clocks. Reference numeral 71 denotes a flip-flop; 72, a selector; 73, a phase controlled oscillator; and 74, a switching timing generator. Reference numeral 75 denotes a selector control signal; 76, a selected extracted clock; 77, a switching timing signal; 78, a switching timing generator output and 79, an output frequency-divided clock.
The operation of the conventional second network synchronization unit 45 will be described below with reference to FIGS. 9 and 11. In this case, a clock switching section will be mainly described.
The operation of the line interface unit 44 is the same as that described above. 8-kHz clocks output from the line interface unit 44 are input to the phase difference absorbing unit 70 shown in FIG. 11. The outputs from the phase difference absorbing unit 70 are input to the selector 72, and are switched by the selector 72 in accordance with the selector control signal (clock switching control signal 75) from the flip-flop 71 which latches the signals 52 (COM0 to COMn) output from the line interface unit 44 and indicating line conditions (communication conditions).
The clock phase difference absorbing unit 70 is a circuit for eliminating the influence of a phase difference among clocks extracted from the lines. The timings of the respective lines have phase differences due to delay time differences in respective line transmission paths. For this reason, the respective clocks are optimally delayed, so that phases of the clocks input to the phase controlled oscillator 73 are locked, thereby preventing a phase difference before and after a clock switching operation.
However, the first prior art suffers from the following drawbacks since the means such as the priority encoder 57, the selector 56, and the like are used as means for switching clock signals to be input to the phase controlled oscillator 60.
(1) In order to obtain a stable output from the phase controlled oscillator 60, it is preferable that a clock input to the phase controlled oscillator 60 is also stable. For this purpose, the switching frequency of clocks is preferably as small as possible.
In the conventional arrangement, however, even when a given line maintains a communication state for a long period of time, if a line having a smaller number than the given line starts or ends a communication, the clock is unconditionally switched, and a stable clock cannot be input.
(2) When all the lines are in a non-communication state, a clock from a predetermined line is selected. the lines must be accommodated in turn from a predetermined line position in a predetermined order. For this reason, it is troublesome to connect lines to the exchange apparatus, and a connection error may OCCUr.
In the second prior art, since all the clocks extracted from the lines are input to the phase difference absorbing unit 70, delay circuits corresponding in number to the lines are undesirably required.
In particular, this poses a serious problem in a telephone exchange apparatus which accommodates a large number of lines.

Telephone exchange apparatus with communication line clocking


A for providing control input adjustment for an aircraft, including one or more mode sensors disposed on an aircraft, a mode analysis system, the mode analysis system operable to receive mode sensor data from the one or more mode sensors, and operable to decompose the mode sensor data into decomposed mode data associated with fundamental modes of structural elements of the aircraft associated with the one or more mode sensors, and a flight control computer (FCC) disposed on the aircraft and connected to one or more actuators, the FCC operable to provide a control signal to the one or more actuators according to an association between the decomposed mode data and one or more rotorcraft parameters associated with the one or more actuators.

A rotorcraft may include one or more rotor systems including one or more main rotor systems. A main rotor system generates aerodynamic lift to support the weight of the rotorcraft in flight and thrust to move the rotorcraft in forward flight. Another example of a rotorcraft rotor system is a tail rotor system. A tail rotor system may generate thrust in the same direction as the main rotor system's rotation to counter the torque effect created by the main rotor system. For smooth and efficient flight in a rotorcraft, a pilot balances the engine power, main rotor collective thrust, main rotor cyclic thrust and the tail rotor thrust, and a control system may assist the pilot in stabilizing the rotorcraft and reducing pilot workload. The systems for engines, transmissions, drive system, rotors, and the like, are critical to the safe operation of the rotorcraft in flight. The elements of the systems operate at speeds where small deviations from expected performance can greatly affect flight characteristics, and should be closely monitored to ensure safe and optimized rotorcraft operation.

System and method for frequency domain rotor mode decomposition


In general, techniques are described for the creation and execution of accurate models for the manufacture of complex, multi-layered materials. The techniques may be used to calculate variations of a process parameter within the material during the manufacturing process. A method comprises receiving segment data that partitions a manufacturing process into a set of segments having at least one layer of a material. For example, the segment data may partition the manufacturing processes along a path traversed by the material within the manufacturing process. The method further comprises receiving curvature data for the layers, and calculating values for a process parameter through the layers of the segments as a function of the curvature data. The method may comprise invoking a one-dimensional model, such as a one-dimensional finite difference model, to calculate the values for the defined segments and layers.

In any industrial manufacturing environment, accurate control of the manufacturing process can be essential. Ineffective process control can lead to products that fail to meet desired yield and quality levels. Furthermore, poor process control can significantly increase costs due to increased raw material usage, labor costs and the like. Accordingly, in an effort to gain improved process control, many manufacturers seek to develop computational models or simulations for the manufacturing process. A modeling expert, for example, may develop computational models using a variety of tools and a variety of modeling techniques. The modeling techniques may include, for example, finite element analysis, finite difference analysis, neural networks, linear regression, partial least squares (PLS), principal component analysis, and the like.

One-dimensional modeling of the manufacture of multi-layered material


A wire-mesh gasket fashioned from heat-treatable materials such as beryllium copper alloy wire is knitted or braided into a tubular structure. Plural wires may be used. Various cross-sectional configurations such as circular, teardrop, double lobed, and finned with and without cores are available. Cores may be air, elastomeric, or wire mesh. The formed tubular structure is heat-treated after forming using appropriate time-temperature cycles to strengthen and/or stress relieve the material.

The present invention relates generally to EMI/RFI shielding devices. More specifically, the invention relates to a particular EMI/RFI shielding gasket and the method of making such a gasket.
Various types of EMI/RFI gaskets are known for reducing the transmission of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI). Among the known devices are gaskets having a resilient core surrounded by a deformable wire-mesh gasket material. Such gaskets are compressed around access openings and the like by the mating surfaces of a shielded housing.
Known wire-mesh gaskets are made from soft materials so that they do not break during manufacture. However, those known gaskets deflect in response to lateral pressure but do not have sufficient resiliency to restore their shape to its undeflected condition. Thus, a resilient core is relied upon to partially expand the gasket when lateral pressure is released so that the gasket can be reused. The resilient core may not fully relieve the compression set of the wire mesh because the core may also have compression set. This situation is particularly true in cyclic loading conditions. Such wire-mesh gasket materials may have a variety of cross-sectional shapes such round, rectangular, double cores, and round having a fin. Suitable known materials are tin-plated phosphor bronze, tin-coated copper-clad steel, silver-plated brass, monel, and aluminum. A variety of such wire-mesh gaskets are made by Tecknit EMI Shielding Products. Different core cross sections and materials are used for different applications.
Other types of gaskets are also known which are fashioned from heat-treated beryllium copper. Such gaskets typically include similarly shaped elements sequentially arranged, e.g., longitudinally along a strip. Heat-treated beryllium copper is used because of its resilience and due to its excellent electrical conductivity. Heat-treated or cold-worked beryllium copper has limited elongation and is subject to breakage when subjected to small radius bends associated with knitting and braiding processes. Accordingly, beryllium copper has not been suitable for use in knitted and braided applications like those used for wire-mesh gasket construction.

Heat-treated wire-mesh EMI/RFI shielding gasket


The invention is concerned with a cellulose sponge which may be produced by mixing a solution of cellulose in an aqueous tertiary amine-oxide with a pore forming agent and a sponging agent and subsequently exposing it to conditions which cause a decomposition of the sponging agent and a foaming of the cellulose solution, whereafter the foamed cellulose is contacted with water to precipitate the cellulose.

From EP-A-0 418 151 a cellulose sponge produced from viscose is known. According to this known process, wood pulp is converted into the xanthate, the xanthate is mixed with a porophore and fibres, whereafter particles of an absorbing polymer coated with a polymer layer are added. Afterwards, the xanthate is regenerated using an acid or a base, and the regenerate is washed and bleached.
A disadvantage of this process is that due to the by-products of the viscose process its environmental impact creates problems to be solved.
For some decades there has been searched for processes able to substitute the viscose process today widely employed. As an alternative which is interesting for its reduced environmental impact among other reasons, it has been found to dissolve cellulose without derivatisation in an organic solvent and extrude from this solution moulded bodies, e.g. fibres, films and other moulded bodies. Fibres thus extruded have received by BISFA (The International Bureau for the Standardization of man made fibers) the generic name Lyocell. As an organic solvent, BISFA understands a mixture of an organic chemical and water.
It has turned out that as an organic solvent, a mixture of a tertiary amine-oxide and water is particularly appropriate for the production of cellulose moulded bodies. As the amine-oxide, primarily N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) is used. Other amine-oxides are described e.g. in EP-A-0 553 070. A process for the production of mouldable cellulose solutions is known e.g. from EP-A-0 356 419. The production of cellulose bodies using tertiary amine-oxides generally is referred to as amine-oxide process.
In EP-A-0 356 419, a process for the production of cellulose solutions is described, wherein as a starting material among other substances a suspension of cellulose in liquid, aqueous N-methylmorpholine-N-oxide (NMMO) is used. This process consists in transforming the suspension in a thin-film treatment apparatus in one single step and continuously into a mouldable solution. Finally. the mouldable solution is spun into filaments by means of a forming tool such as a spinneret and the filaments are conducted through a precipitation bath.
The cellulose is precipitated from the solution in an aqueous spinning bath. During this process, amine-oxide accumulates in the spinning bath. The content of amine-oxide in the process waters produced amounts to up to 30% by weight. For the economy of the amine-oxide process it is of vital importance to recover and reuse the amine-oxide nearly completely.
In the literature, virtually nothing is known about the production of a cellulose sponge according to the amine-oxide process. Only in 1988 it was reported that a new process for the production of cellular cellulose, which is similar to sponges, from a solution of cellulose in an aqueous tertiary amine-oxide was searched. It is further reported that a number of parameters, whereof the water content is of foremost importance, influences the production, and that the products obtained are similar to those produced from viscose (Peguy: "New Materials from Cellulose or Lignocellulose Solutions in Amine Oxides"; Proceedings of the Nisshinbo International Conference in Cellulosics Utilization in Near Future, Tokyo 1988, pages 19-24, Elsevier Applied Science). However, a reproducible teaching for the production of sponges from the cellulose solutions cannot be deduced from this literature.
It is the object of the invention to provide a cellulose sponge which is to be produced according to the amine-oxide process.


The invention relates to data packet filtering and finding a rule matching a data packet in a rule base. A data packet comprises parameter fields for identifying the data packet, the rule base comprises a plurality of rules, each rule comprises one or more parameter fields, and the matching rule is a rule, whose parameter field values correspond to the parameter field values of said data packet. The matching rule is found by determining rule sets for the data packet, one rule set comprising the rules to which one parameter field value of the data packet can match, and by finding the rule with the smallest label that is present in all said rule sets of the data packet, said rule with the smallest label indicating the rule matching the data packet. Additionally, the invention relates to finding an element with the smallest label that is present in a plurality of finite subsets containing finite number of elements, said subsets being subsets of a set containing finite number of sequentially labelled elements.

The invention relates in general to data packet filtering. In particular the invention relates to such a method as specified in the preamble of the independent claims.
Public networks are presently being used more and more for sensitive and mission critical communications and the internal networks of various organisations and enterprises are nowadays connected to the public networks, Internet being one of them. Since the basic mechanisms of the public networks were originally not designed with secrecy and confidentiality in mind, public networks are untrusted networks. To protect an internal network, a special network element is usually used to connect the internal network to a public network. This special network element is often called a security gateway or a firewall, and the purpose of a such network element is to prevent unauthorised access to the internal network. Typically there is need to restrict access to an internal network from a public network and/or to restrict access from the internal network to the public network or further networks connected to the public network. On data packet level this means that data packets, which are entering and/or exiting the internal network, are screened or filtered in a network element in order to determine whether the data packets are allowed to traverse the network element or not.
Data packet filtering may be needed for other purposes, too. For example, in intrusion detection systems (IDS) the traffic (data packets) flowing in a network is monitored and analysed. On the basis of the type of the data packet different kind of analysis may be conducted. Therefore, data packets need to be filtered in order to determine what kind of analysis is required.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example network topology with a first internal network 12, a second internal network 14 and a public network 10. The public network may be, for example, the Internet. The internal networks 12, 14 are connected to the public network 10 via network elements 16 and 18, respectively, the network elements 16 and 18 being firewalls or security gateways. Additionally, there is a network element 20 connected to the internal network 14. The network element 20 is an IDS node, which monitors the data packets entering and exiting the internal network 14. A network element 16, 18, 20 may be implemented as one network node or as a cluster of network nodes.
The term network element is used in this description for referring to any network element or to a cluster of any network elements, in which data packet filtering is performed. A network element may be, for example, a firewall node, a firewall node provided with Virtual Private Network (VPN) functionality, a network monitoring node, an IDS node.
The data packet filtering is usually done by means of a rule base comprising a set of rules. Each rule comprises certain parameters of data packets (e.g. source address, destination address and protocol) and an action (i.e. information about how to handle the data packet corresponding to the parameters of the rule). In a firewall, the action is typically 'drop' or 'accept', which means the data packet is discarded or allowed to proceed, correspondingly. Such a set of rules is usually sequentially ordered and each received data packet is compared with the rules linearly, one by one, until a match is found. The first rule, whose parameters match the parameters of the received data packet, is applied to the data packet and the data packet is handled as indicated by the rule. Sometimes the action of the rule can be "continue", which means that further matching rules need to be inspected to find out how the packet shall be handled. The action may also be instructions to run some script, when a data packet matches the rule. A data packet, whose parameters do not match any rule, may be for example discarded. FIG. 2 illustrates as an example a rule base, having a first rule Rule1, a second rule Rule2, and so forth. Each rule has two parameter fields, field1 and field2, and an action field. In many practical applications, there are more than two parameter fields, though.
Considering the performance of the network element it is important that the matching of the data packets to the rule base is done as efficiently as possible. Especially, if the rule base is large, the performance of the network element depends on the matching speed. In many cases, appropriate functionality of the network element requires a large rule base. Additionally, it may be required to translate some user defined higher level rules to lower level rules before matching can take place (e.g. a collection of of 20 IP-addresses defined in one higher level rule may need to be translated to 20 separate lower level rules). Furthermore, a packet is often compared to large number of rules before the rule to which it matches is found. In the worst case, a packet is compared to all rules in the rule base and then discarded or the packet matches the very last rule. This results in inefficient use of processing resources in the network element, if linear matching is used.
In European patent application EP 1 006 701 A2, "Adaptive re-ordering of data packet filter rules", by Krishnan P, Raz D and Sugla B, a method for re-ordering filter rules is presented for improving the matching process. The rules are re-ordered so that a rule that most frequently matching rules are arranged to be as close to the beginning of the rule base as possible. The disadvantage in this solution is that in order to maintain the correct functionality of the rule base changing the order of the rules is limited. Additionally, if the data packets to be handled are not homogenous, the proposed solution does not improve the matching process, since the re-ordering is based on the history of processed data packets.
Thus, a more efficient method for data packet filtering is required, especially in connection with large rule bases.


A high dielectric composite material obtained by subjecting submicron particles of an inorganic filler containing a metal as its essential component to an insulating treatment such as a chemical treatment, further subjecting to a surface treatment for improving their compatibility with organic resins, and then dispersing in an organic resin, has a dielectric constant of 15 or above, with its dielectric loss tangent in the frequency region of from 100 MHz to 80 GHz being 0.1 or less, and can therefore be used effectively for multilayer wiring boards and module substrates.

The present invention relates to a high dielectric constant material used for multilayer wiring boards having a built-in passive element capacitor, and a multilayer wiring board and a module substrate using the said material.
In order to realize high-density surface packaging, many studies have been made for reducing the size of via holes, narrowing down wiring pitch, establishing the build-up system, etc., in the manufacture of the substrates. Efforts have also been made for miniaturization of IC packages, multiplication of pins, miniaturization and surface packaging of the passive parts such as condensers and resistors. On the other hand, with the progress of miniaturization of the passive elements, there arose a problem in that their handling became more difficult in the manufacture and packaging thereof, and the limitation of the conventional technology in this line has become apparent. As a solution to this problem, it has been proposed to form the passive elements directly on the surface or in the inside of a printed wiring board. This makes it unnecessary to mount the passive element chip parts on the printed wiring board, conducing to realize high-density packaging and an enhancement of reliability. The conventional coating and sintering techniques using a paste of a metal or an insulator, such as practiced with the ceramic substrates, can not be directly applied to the other types of substrates, especially organic substrates which are low in heat resistance.
As means for forming the passive elements such as mentioned above on an organic substrate, there have already been proposed the methods comprising coating the substrate with a mixture of an organic polymer and a high dielectric filler (P. Chanel et al, 46th Electric Components and Technology Conference, pp. 125–132, 1996; Y. Rao et al, 2000 Electric Components and Technology Conference, pp. 615–618, 2000), a technique for elevating the packing rate of an inorganic filler such as barium titanate (JP-A-6-172618), and a method using ECR-CVD (electronic cycloton resonance chemical vapor deposition) which is capable of film forming at low temperature (T. Matsui et al, Circuit Technology, Vol. 9, pp. 497–502, 1994).
It is necessary to raise the filler loading for elevating the dielectric constant of the filler applied as a composite with an organic resin. High loading of an inorganic filler in a resin, however, tends to cause formation of voids when the resin is cured, due to bad compatibility of inorganic fillers with resins. Further, because of low interfacial adhesion between inorganic filler and resin, there tends to take place separation at the interface. Therefore, use of a resin composite with high inorganic filler loading as an insulating material raises the concern that reliability be lowered in relation to dielectric strength or leakage current.
Also, the method using ECR-CVD has problems in that a specific apparatus must be used, that it is impossible to form the dielectric films at low cost by a batch process, and that it is difficult to form a dielectric film having a complicate configuration.
On the other hand, as means for increasing the dielectric constant, a method is suggested in which a metal power having an average particle size of not less than several ten μm, which is the standard size of metal powders, is filled in an organic resin. Although such a composite material shows a satisfactory dielectric constant of not less than several ten, it suffers a dielectric loss tangent of not smaller than 0.1 due to skin effect, and more seriously, such an organic resin/metal composite is very low in insulating performance. Further, miscibility of organic resin with metal is bad like inorganic materials.

High dielectric constant composite material and multilayer wiring board using the same


An apparatus and a method are provided for a perforated top panel disposed in a shrink-wrapped bottle pack for containing water bottles. The perforated top panel includes an easy-open panel and a semi-circular portion disposed at a terminal end of the easy-open panel. The easy-open panel is partially bordered by an alternating series of cuts and lands that are configured to allow the easy-open panel to tear away from the top panel upon being pulled by a practitioner. The easy-open panel includes a parallel portion that extends to one or more tapered portions that terminate at the semi-circular portion. The semi-circular portion is configured to be grasped and pulled to separate the tapered portion and the parallel portion from the top panel and thus expose the water bottles.

Collation shrink films are films that are wrapped around one or more objects to be packaged and shrunk to keep the objects together. The most common use of these films is in the packaging of multiple containers, such as bottles containing beverages, food, and the like. The wrapping process generally involves a shrink oven or a shrink tunnel wherein the film and the containers covered by the film are briefly heated to cause the shrink-wrapping to occur. The plastic film then collapses around the containers and holds the units in place.
Films that are used as collation shrink films generally possess properties that make them commercially feasible. For example, films much exhibit good shrinkage, as well as possess excellent strength after shrinkage, referred to as load retention resistance. Further, films must resist puncture and must not be sticky so as to inhibit the film sticking to the packaged containers. Further, in some instances, the collation shrink films are cut during the wrapping process so amenability to cutting is important.
Sealing properties are also important. In some cases, during the wrapping process, the two sides of the film are passed around the object being wrapped and are contacted, typically underneath the product being wrapped. These two film edges must be sealed, and the seal strength needs to be high. Since the whole packaged ensemble is often carried simply by grabbing hold of the packaging film, the seal strength must ideally be strong enough to hold the weight of the packaged containers.


It has been very difficult to accumulate strong laser in the conventional optical resonator, because firstly it has been very difficult to control a resonator length less than 1 Å in resonation position which is required for the laser amplification more than 1,000 times and secondly, the conventional method has utilized laser strength of amplified laser in the optical resonator as the resonance control signal.

Recently, R & D of a high-luminance of X-ray generator using laser Compton scattering has been watched. Here, laser Compton scattering is that radiation rays like X-ray are generated at collision of laser beam and electron beam. Laser Compton scattering requires very high pulse-strength of laser and high luminance of electron beam. However, the production of high pulse-strength of laser has been very difficult as described below.
An optical resonator has been known as a tool to accumulate laser. An optical resonator is, in principle, a tool to amplify laser through laser-interference on the resonator mirror surfaces, accordingly, the amplification depends on reflectance of the resonator mirror. As the optical resonator, the Fabry-Perot ring resonator, Michelson interferometer-typed resonator, Fox-Smith interferometer-typed resonator, Mach-Zehnder interferometer-typed resonator, and the like have been known.
Laser-amplification by optical resonators is only made under the condition that a resonator length is equal to an integral multiple of a half wavelength of laser. This is so-called a stationary wave is standing. Because the resonance width of a stationary wave is determined by reflectance of resonator mirrors, the more the reflectance of mirrors becomes high, the more the resonance width becomes narrow, when intend to obtain high gains. For example, if supposing a resonator for obtaining gains of 1,000 times using the mirrors with reflectance of 99.9%, the resonance width is to be 24 kHz or about 1 Å (10−10 m) in resonance position. Consequently, the resonance state will easily disappear by environmental disturbance of mechanical vibrations and thermal expansion. In order to maintain the resonance state, extremely precise feedback-regulation using piezoelectric driving of the resonator mirrors has been required. However, laser magnification achieved by the conventional optical resonators has been limited to about 1,000 times due to limitations of mechanical regulation.
For example, when laser is amplified and accumulated in the conventional optical resonator using a commercially available high-strength of mode-lock laser oscillator (50 W power, 10 psec/pulse pulse-length, 1064 nm wavelength, 150 MHz repetition), the pulse-strength of accumulated laser has been limited to about 100 μJ. The above conventional high-strength of mode-lock laser oscillator is very expensive. Also, there has been a problem that the conventional optical resonator loses most of the accumulation efficiency due to thermal deformation of the conventional resonator mirror because a heat loss of 100 ppm usually arises on the mirror even if laser oscillated by the conventional high-strength of mode-lock laser oscillator may be amplified and accumulated in the optical resonator.
Many techniques to maintain the resonance state of the optical resonator have been presented (Patent Literatures 1-6).
The Patent Literature 1 is the invention relating to the stabilization of a laser oscillator. The Patent Literature discloses the method to stabilize the oscillation frequency of the laser oscillator (1): wherein, the laser being oscillated by the laser oscillator (1) is frequency-modulated by the modulator (3), the frequency-modulated laser is put in the frequency discriminator (6), resonated with a prescribed frequency, taken out from the frequency discriminator (6), and used for the stabilization of the laser oscillator (1). In this method, an error signal is made from the frequency difference between the frequency of the frequency-modulated laser being taken out from the frequency discriminator which is reflecting the resonance state of the frequency discriminator (6) and that of the former frequency-modulated laser, and the frequency of the oscillator (1) is stabilized by using the error signal. That is, the method disclosed in the Patent Literature is well known as the conventional method to stabilize an optical resonator. However, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The Patent Literature 2 is the invention relating to the laser oscillator for optical communication. The Patent Literature discloses the method to stabilize of the optical ring fiber resonator (4): wherein, a single mode laser being oscillated by a single mode laser oscillator (11) is phase-modulated by an electric signal generator (12), the phase-modulated laser is put in an optical loop path of the optical ring fiber resonator (4) comprising plural optical doped ring fibers, an error signal is made from the phase difference between the laser being taken out from the optical loop path and the former single mode laser, the piezoelectric device (9) is driven by the error signal, and an optical loop length of the optical ring fiber resonator (4) is regulated by the piezoelectric device (9). However, there has been unresolved the problem that the pulse power of the optical ring fiber resonator (4) becomes instable because the thermal expansion of the optical doped ring fiber becomes larger with increasing the strength of the accumulated laser in the optical loop path. Although the Patent Literature 2 is an invention relating to the fiber laser oscillator for optical communication, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The Patent Literature 3 is the invention relating to a whispering-gallery mode resonator using the Mach-Zehnder interferometer-typed resonator. The Patent Literature discloses the method to stabilize the Mach-Zehnder interferometer-typed resonator (110), comprising: a beam splitter (113); plural reflection mirrors (114-116); a reference resonator (130) which are arranged in the inner optical path of the resonator; wherein, the laser beam being oscillated by the laser oscillator (101) is split into two beams, one split beam is put in the detection module (120) being arranged in the outside of the optical path via the reference resonator (130), another split beam is directly put in the detection module (120), an error signal is made by the detection module (120), and the reference resonator (130) and/or laser oscillator (101) are tuned by the error signal. Although the Patent Literature discloses the whispering-gallery mode resonator using the Mach-Zehnder interferometer-typed resonator, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The Patent Literature 4 is the invention relating to the Fourier domain mode locking (FDML) operation, a speed-up technique of a high speed wavelength scanning optical fiber oscillator for optical communication. The Patent Literature discloses the feedback control system using operational parameters such as filter tuning, laser gain, polarization, polarization chromaticity, elliptical polarization retardance, and/or dispersion, in order to improve the stability of the Fourier domain mode locking (FDML) operation. Although the Patent Literature discloses the method to stabilize the optical fiber oscillator for optical communication, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The Patent Literature 5 is the invention relating to a method controlling an optical path of an optical resonator. Although the Patent Literature discloses the method to adjust the movement of plural mirrors being arranged in the resonator by adjusting a laser incident angle when the laser is radiated to a lattice, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The Patent Literature 6 is the invention relating to a method to stabilize a wavelength converter to oscillate harmonics. The Patent Literature discloses the wavelength converter oscillating harmonics: wherein, the laser being oscillated by the laser oscillator (12) is radiated to the nonlinear optical material (14) being arranged in the optical resonator (16), the second harmonic is generated thereby, the generated second harmonic is detected by the wave detector (18) being arranged at the back of the mirror (24) of the optical resonator (16), the detected signal is put in the electronic servo circuit to generate an error signal in proportion to the difference in resonance frequency, and the error signal is transmitted to the piezoelectric device (30) being attached to the mirror (26) or the electrodes (32, 34) being attached to the nonlinear optical material (14) to control a resonator length of the optical resonator (16) and/or electric field strength being loaded to the nonlinear optical material (14). Although the Patent Literature discloses the wavelength converter to oscillate the second harmonic and its stabilization method, the Patent Literature does not disclose any of a feedback control system to utilize unamplified modulation wave or harmonic.
The optical resonator system and resonance control method which have been disclosed in the Patent Literatures 1-6 include several difficult problems. As described above, firstly, it has been very difficult to accumulate strong laser in the conventional optical resonator because it has been very difficult to control a resonator length less than 1 Å in resonation position which is required for the laser amplification more than 1,000 times. Secondly, it has been difficult to accumulate strong laser in the conventional resonator because the conventional method has utilized laser strength of amplified laser in the optical resonator as the resonance control signal. That is, the strength of accumulated laser becomes very large when laser is amplified by the conventional method, which induces the occurrence of thermal deformation and laser damage of the resonator mirror due to large heat load on the mirror, and finally generates large resonance fluctuation.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of the embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with accompanying drawings.

Abstract: The present invention provides an optical resonator system to accumulate strong laser. In the system, unamplified modulation wave or harmonic which are derived from oscillation laser are selectively used to tune a resonator length of the optical resonator.

INTER-UNIVERSITY RESEARCH INSTITUTE CORPORATION HIGH ENERGY ACCELERATOR RESEARCH ORGANIZATION


Disclosed are a data compression method, a computer-readable storage medium, and an electronic device. The method includes: converting each data in a to-be-compressed data set into binary data in a preset format; determining a to-be-compressed bit and a significant bit for the each data in the to-be-compressed data set based on a sequence of all bits of the binary data; determining a compression bit width corresponding to the to-be-compressed data set based on bit widths of the significant bits; compressing the each data in the to-be-compressed data set based on the compression bit width, to obtain a compressed data set; and generating attribute information of the compressed data set. According to the present disclosure, the significant bit can be determined based on the sequence of all bits without adjusting orders of the bits of the binary data, thereby simplifying a data compression process and improving efficiency of data compression.

With development of the computer technology, there are more and more scenarios for mass data processing, and thus demands for data storage space are increased. On this basis, data typically needs to be compressed while being stored. Data compression refers to a technical approach of reducing data volume without losing useful information to reduce storage space so as to improve data transmission efficiency, or reorganizing data according to a certain algorithm to reduce data redundancy and storage space.
For example, in a process of processing data for a prior neural network model, a large quantity of feature maps may be generated, where data volume of parameters such as a weight and an offset contained in the model is also very large. Therefore, there is a need of compressing the feature map and the parameter.

Data compression method and apparatus, computer-readable storage medium, and electronic device

Beijing Horizon Information Technology Co., Ltd.


A lawn mower includes a base, a motor that drives a cutting assembly, and a catcher removably coupled to the base. Grass is cut by the blades of the cutting assembly, with the grass being propelled along a channel extending angularly beneath the base of the lawn mower. An exit channel portion delivers the cut grass to a rear opening that communicates with the catcher. A pivotally mounted flap opens and closes the exit channel portion to switch the lawn mower between a catching operational mode and a mulching operational mode.

Lawn mowers, including push and self propelled lawn mowers, have a base upon which there is mounted a motor. The motor may be an internal combustion engine or an electric motor. The motor drives a cutting assembly that includes a plate (disc) to which there is attached a plurality of blades. The plate is rotatably driven about a generally upright axis, with the blade being pivotally attached to the plate for angular movement about axes generally parallel to the upright axis. The blades as they are rotated about the generally upright axis engage grass to cut the grass. The grass is propelled angularly beneath the base along a channel in the base. Mulching mowers cause circulation of the cut grass around the channel to cause the grass to engage the blades a number of times to mulch the cut grass. The cut grass is then urged down into the freshly mown lawn.
In contrast to the above, frequently mowers are merely equipped with a catcher that collects the cut grass, with the cut grass then disposed of.
More recently mowers have been equipped with means via which they are able to operate in a "catching" mode or a "mulching" mode. The lawn mowers being changed in respect of mode by insertion or the removal of a "plug" that closes off the passage leading to the catcher. The "plug" completes a portion of the base that provides a channel along which the cut grass is circulated to be mulched. This type of mower has the disadvantage that the mower cannot be operating at the time the "plug" is inserted or removed. Accordingly, the mower cannot be changed between the two modes of operation while the mower is operative.
Also known are mowers having the two mentioned modes of operation, in which there is a plate that is selectively movable to provide for the delivery of grass to the catcher. The plate is also positionable to cause the mower to operate in a "mulching" mode.
Examples of the above mowers are described in Australian Patent Specifications 2003203292 and 2003203338. In both these instances it is difficult to change the mode of operation of the mower while the mower is still operative.


A method for estimating an electrical measurement, such as a current or a voltage, comprises generating an analog electrical measurement signal using a sensor. An analog filter filters the analog electrical measurement signal. An A/D converter samples the analog signal and generates a digital electrical measurement signal. A matrix is formed based on the characteristics of the analog filter. An estimated actual current or voltage is calculated based on a relationship between the digital signal and the matrix.

Electric and hybrid vehicles include a propulsion system that typically includes an electric motor and/or an engine. Current for powering the electric motor is supplied by a battery subsystem. Key performance issues of the electric and hybrid vehicles include fuel efficiency, emissions, and drivability, which depend largely on the operation of the propulsion system.
The battery subsystem is a significant element of the propulsion system of these vehicles. An accurate state of charge (SOC) algorithm improves performance of the battery subsystem, and therefore the vehicle. The SOC algorithm requires an accurate current sensor for sensing current in the battery subsystem. The battery subsystem also requires an accurate analog-to-digital (A/D) converter that communicates with the current sensor. Other applications requiring accurate current sensing include fuel cell and supercapacitor systems.
Current sensor measurements are limited by current sensor accuracy and resolution, as well as A/D converter resolution. One conventional method for improving the accuracy of current sensor measurements uses multiple A/D converters and/or multiple current sensors. Using multiple converters and sensors increases the complexity and cost of the battery subsystem. Another conventional method uses an A/D converter having a higher resolution. However, there are limits to A/D converter resolution.

Increasing current and voltage sensor accuracy and resolution in electric and hybrid electric vehicles


A reading frame for an apparatus for reading smart cards, comprising a body supporting brush contact elements for electrically contacting the conductive pads of a chip on a card inserted in the frame. The frame comprises an electric circuit connected to at least some of the brush contact elements and connectable to the electronic circuit of the card reader. The electronic circuit on the connector comprises an arrangement for controlling the insertion of the card in the card reader and its withdrawal therefrom, and the reading frame comprises an additional brush contact or cut-off sensing which is offset in relation to the primary brush contacts in the direction in which the card is inserted, and electrically contacts one of the conductive pads of the smart card whether or not the card has a primary contact.

Various needs and trends are currently emerging, including,
the need to make the operation of card reading apparatus more secure. To achieve this, it is necessary:
1) to assure that the card is inserted correctly before the microcircuit is powered up and the dialog sequence with the latter is begun.
2) to assure rapid disconnection of the power supply from the card in the event of a misoperation "pulling out" of the card, to limit the risk of damage to the circuits and/or fraud attempts.
To this end, current reading systems include a device for detecting correct insertion of the card which uses an end-of-travel contact whose closure conditions, the start of electronic initialization read-write sequences controlled by the electronics of the reader and monitored by a microprocessor to conform to a particular chronology for which the reader:
powers up the microcircuit, PA1 activates the data input-output channels, PA1 activates the microcircuit clock channel, and PA1 performs a microcircuit initialization sequence. PA1 insertion of the card is assumed to be correct on activation of the end of travel contact; PA1 the initialization sequence begins by the application of voltage to the card power supply brushes; PA1 before powering up and during the initialization phase of the card the initialization (reset channel) brush is at logic 0 potential; PA1 during the initialization sequence the signal brushes are in a so-called "high impedance" state. PA1 setting the initialization channel of the microcircuit of the card to 0, PA1 setting the signal channels of the card to the high impedance state, PA1 cutting off the power supply from the card.
The microcircuit must then respond to the initialization sequence in a particular way in order to enable dialog between the microcircuit of the card and the microprocessor of the reader. At the end of this dialog the microprocessor performs a card deactivation sequence.
Microcontroller-based dedicated circuits are available which manage these sequences of initializing and ending dialog with the microcircuit and which additionally monitor overvoltages and short-circuits on the card.
Nevertheless, if the card is pulled out, the powering down and deactivation of the various channels entails:
1) opening of the card presence contact,
2) detection by microprocessor or the dedicated microcontroller of this opening before powering down of the card can be initialized by a sequence of logical operations.
The card can be pulled out at speeds up to 1 m per second. This requires a card presence contact having a travel of less than 0.1 mm to guarantee a reaction time less than 100 .mu.s compatible with execution of the card emergency deactivation sequence.
A first problem is that there is often a lack of precision as to the position of the end of travel contacts, especially if these are horizontal or mounted on a frame independent of the reading frame.
A second problem is that the reaction time of the microprocessor or the microcontroller depends on its internal program and on the clock frequency sequencing it.
The applicant has found that:

Reading frame for a microcircuit card reader apparatus


An integrated cell may include an nMOS transistor, and an pMOS transistor. The cell may be produced in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator technology, and it is possible for the substrates of the transistors of the cell to be biased with the same adjustable biasing voltage.

Relative to a bulk substrate, fully depleted silicon-on-insulator technology (i.e. FD-SOI technology) is based on the concept of depositing a very thin silicon layer on a buried layer of insulating oxide supported by an underlying substrate, for example, a well. This technology can be used to obtain properties of low power consumption and may operate at very low supply voltages.

Device with FD-SOI cell and insulated semiconductor contact region and related methods


A food warmer for sweet and salted products, comprising a base and a cover which are mutually articulated and contain heating and insulation devices for a first plate and a second plate. The peculiarity of the food warmer consists in that at least one of the plates has one or more seats provided with at least two regions having different depths; this allows to heat products being various in shape and thickness.

The present invention relates to a food warmer for sweet and salted products.
Nowadays it is known to heat salted products, such as sandwiches, by means of devices known as food warmers which are usually constituted by a base and a cover which are mutually articulated and inside which two flat plates are associated. The plates usually have an undulated outer surface and the sandwich is arranged between them and is thus pressed by the plates to warm it.
This known solution has at least two drawbacks: first of all, both the bread and the product contained in the sandwich are heated and the product is therefore cooked, altering some of its organoleptic characteristics, since it is for example ham and/or salad and/or tomato etcetera.
Secondly, cooking requires a variable time which can be as long as three minutes.
It is also known to warm sweet products, such as for example buns, which have a substantially circular shape and inside which a filling, such as jam, ice cream, whipped cream or other creams is added. Food warmers are thus known having a base and a cover which are mutually articulated, and having a half-plate each which are identical one another in shape and form, and defining, when placed in contact, a shell-like configuration which surrounds the product.
An electric resistor is coupled inside each one of the half-plates in order to heat it.
Such food warmers allow to warm the bun externally without heating its contents.
This solution, however, has drawbacks: the user must in fact use buns whose plan shape is complementary to the shape of the half-plates and therefore he can warm only one type of product.

Food warmer for sweet and salted products


The invention discloses a method for estimating the direction-of-arrival of a coprime array based on virtual domain statistics reconstruction of single-bit quantized signal. The realization steps are as follows: arranging a coprime array and a single-bit analog-to-digital converter at a receiving end; calculating equivalent virtual signal corresponding to a single-bit receipt signal of the coprime array; constructing a virtual domain augmented covariance matrix of an initialized single-bit quantized signal; designing, based on statistical correlation analysis between statistics of the single-bit quantized signal and the original unquantized signal, an optimization problem based on virtual domain statistics reconstruction of quantized signal; and performing direction-of-arrival estimation by utilizing the virtual domain augmented covariance matrix corresponding to the optimized single-bit quantized signal.

Direction-of-Arrival Estimation is one of the basic problems in the field of array signal processing, which is widely used in radar, sonar, voice, radio astronomy, seismology, wireless communication, medical imaging and other fields, by using array antenna to receive spatial signals and processing the receipt signals through statistical signal processing technology and various optimization methods to restore the direction-of-arrival information contained in the signal.
With the continuous increase of user demand and data scale, large-scale antenna deployment at the base station is one of the typical features in the new generation of wireless communication systems. At the same time, with the popularization and application of channel modeling theory in angle domain in millimeter wave Massive MIMO (Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) system, the traditional direction-of-arrival estimation is facing huge technical challenges. On the one hand, the traditional direction-of-arrival estimation is limited by Nyquist sampling rate, and its degree of freedom (that is, the number of incident signal sources that can be distinguished) is determined by the number of antenna elements, but the increase of the number of users will be much higher than the increase of the number of antennas at the base station. Therefore, when the number of incident signal sources in a certain airspace is greater than or equal to the number of antenna elements in the array, the existing uniform array method will not be able to perform effective direction-of-arrival estimation. On the other hand, with the increase of the number of antennas, large-scale antenna systems are under great pressure from deployment cost, operation power consumption and calculation data, which leads to great pressure and challenges in practical application.
In order to solve the above problems, sparse array makes it possible to perform effective direction-of-arrival estimation under the condition of undersampling. Besides, as a sparse array with systematic structure, coprime array can use the same number of antenna elements to obtain more degrees of freedom, so as to break through the performance bottleneck of degrees of freedom, and has received unprecedented attention in the field of direction-of-arrival estimation. However, the existing methods for estimating the direction-of-arrival of a coprime array are generally premised on the idealized signal sampling quantization process, which is obviously impossible in practical system application, and the quantization error caused by the finite precision quantization process will be inevitable. On the other hand, with the development of massive MIMO technology, with the deployment of low-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) at the antenna end of base station, the system cost, operating power consumption, data scale and computational complexity are reduced at the expense of some performance, and single-bit quantization is an example of the above methods with the lowest precision. However, existing single-bit massive MIMO systems generally adopt uniform arrays, which has the bottleneck problem of limited degree of freedom.
To sum up, the integration of sparse array and single-bit quantization technology is an effective method to solve the problems of limited degree of freedom, high deployment cost, large power consumption, large data volume and high computational complexity in existing massive MIMO systems. Although scholars throughout the world have begun to explore the core technology of integration of sparse array and single-bit quantization technology, the research of single-bit direction-of-arrival estimation for coprime array is still in its infancy, and the statistical and technical characteristics of signal processing in virtual domain of coprime array have not been fully explored and applied. Therefore, how to make full use of the advantages of the virtual domain signal processing of the coprime array, solve the performance loss and model mismatch problems caused by the discontinuity of the virtual array, realize the high-efficiency direction-of-arrival estimation of the single-bit quantized signal, minimize the performance loss compared with the original unquantized signal, and even use its sparse characteristics to achieve performance surpassing, is an important problem that needs to be solved urgently.

Method for estimating the direction-of-arrival of a coprime array based on virtual domain statistics reconstruction of single-bit quantized signal


A system, method and article of manufacture are provided for detecting message impressions from a document. The document includes one or more data collection areas adapted to receive input, and one or more message areas. Each message area includes a message. Memory representations of messages are stored in a memory. The document is received at a document processing engine which is adapted to access the memory to obtain the representations of messages. Message impressions are detected from the document by analyzing the document in the document processing engine. Message impressions are detected if it is determined that there is relevant input in the one or more data collection areas, and the document includes a representation of one or more of the messages.

Today, schools, universities, hospitals, nonprofits and other businesses are all faced with shrinking budgets and a need to collect data from documents (see FIGS. 1-6) submitted by potential customers, existing customers, employees and students. The cost of these documents and their processing systems need to be accounted for in every organization so they are constantly searching for new revenue streams to offset these costs. Some schools have turned to allowing advertising on their report cards. See, for example, the following articles:                1. Trevor Hughes, "Advertising in schools becoming more common." USA TODAY, Jun. 3, 2012.        2. Greg Toppo and Janet Kornblum, "Ads on tests add up for teacher." USA TODAY, Dec. 1, 2008.        3. Lori Obert and Nelson Garcia, "District to place ad on report cards." KUSA-TV, Nov. 13, 2011.
There are many methods to detect and extract a variety of information from documents such as optical mark recognition (OMR), optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR), also known as handprint recognition, and barcode recognition, but no way to provide adequate proof that messages on a document are being viewed by the target audience. An older proof of performance model for print ads is using a tear sheet supplied by the publisher, showing that your ad has run, but this did not prove who viewed your ad, just lets you know your ad was run in the publication. Another old method for providing proof of viewership of an ad is the use of a perforated card in a publication, where respondents check off some options and mail the card back to the advertiser or agency. This cumbersome process allows advertisers to see who is interested in their products, but not verification on how many people actually saw the ad. However, for online ads, there are several ways to obtain proof of performance such as counting clicks, page views, form submissions or other information available from the ad server or web analytics program.
What is needed are automated methods that can quickly detect whether or not one or more messages on a document have been seen; also known as a message impression. Additionally, such a method will verify that the correct representation of the message was included in the document. This detection and verification can provide a valid proof of performance to advertisers, thereby greatly enhancing the offering capabilities of the organizations that sell advertising on their documents. Providing a number of verified viewers of an advertisement on a document can validate this type of advertising expenditure to advertisers.

System, method, and article of manufacture for analyzing a document and detecting message impressions from the document


An LCD backlight inverter includes a soft starter for generating a soft-start reference voltage gradually increasing as the driving power begins to be supplied. The LCD backlight inverter also includes a first error detector for receiving a first feedback voltage indicating the magnitude of driving current of the lamp and for comparing a smaller value out of a predetermined first reference voltage and the soft-start reference voltage with the first feedback voltage to generate a first error signal corresponding to the difference between the smaller value and the soft-start reference voltage. The LCD backlight inverter further includes a pulse width modulation comparator for comparing the first error signal and a triangle wave oscillation signal to output the pulse width modulation control signal with a predetermined duty ratio. The LCD backlight inverter prevents application of over-current and over-voltage to the LCD backlight to prolong the lifetime of the backlight.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) backlight inverter and, more particularly, to an LCD backlight inverter capable of a soft start that allows stable supply of initial current and voltage during initial driving of an LCD backlight lamp, thereby preventing over-current or over-voltage from being applied which would otherwise damage the LCD backlight lamp.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, display devices for computer monitors, TVs and the like include those capable of generating light on their own such as Organic Light Emitting Displays (OLEDs), Vacuum Fluorescent Displays (VFDs), FieldEmission Displays (FEDs) and Plasma Display Panels (PDP), and those incapable of generating light on their own and requiring a separate light source such as Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs).
A general LCD includes two panels each with field-generating electrodes and an anisotropic liquid crystal layer disposed between the panels. To obtain a desired image, a voltage is applied to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the liquid crystal layer and the voltage is varied to adjust the magnitude of this electric field, thereby adjusting the transmission ratio of the light passing through the liquid crystal layer.
At this time, the LCD can use natural light, but typically uses an artificial light source (backlight) separately prepared.
The backlight of the LCD can be categorized into an edge type (side-emitting type) and a direct type. In the edge-type backlight, a bar-type light source is located at a side of the LCD panel to irradiate light via a light guide panel to the LCD panel. In the direct type, a surface light source having an almost the same area as the LCD panel is disposed underneath the LCD panel to irradiate light directly to the surface of the LCD panel.
The LCD backlight adopts a fluorescent lamp or a light emitting diode as alight source. The fluorescent lamp includes Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp (CCFL), External Electrode Fluorescent Lamp (EEFL) and the like depending on the driving method. Such a fluorescent lamp generates electric discharge in response to power application to emit light. In order to maintain the electric discharge, the fluorescent lamp requires an alternate current. An inverter receives and converts a direct current into an alternative current, supplying the alternative current to the fluorescent lamp.
FIG. 1 is a circuit diagram illustrating an LCD backlight inverter for generating a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) control signal according to the prior art.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional LCD backlight inverter includes an error detector 110 and a PWM comparator 120. The error detector 110 receives, by feedback, a feedback reference voltage indicating the size of current supplied to a lamp and compares the feedback voltage with a reference voltage to convert the difference into an error signal. A PWM comparator 120 compares the error signal with a triangle-wave oscillation signal to output a PWM signal with a predetermined duty ratio.
In the conventional LCD backlight inverter, the feedback reference voltage S11 and the reference voltage S12 are inputted to the error detector 110 and the difference between the two is amplified to generate the error signal S13. The error signal S13 is fed back to the error detector 110 via a capacitor 111.
Then, the error signal S13 is inputted to a PWM comparator 120, which compares the error signal S13 with a triangle-wave oscillation signal S14 separately inputted, thereby generating a PWM control signal S15.
The duty ratio of the PWM control signal S15 is determined by the error signal S13 of the error detector 110, and in accordance with the duty ratio, the current flowing to the fluorescent lamp (not shown) varies. The current of the fluorescent lamp is fed back to the error detector 110 as a feedback reference voltage S11 so as to regulate the current flowing to the lamp.
In the conventional LCD backlight inverter, however, the error signal S13 suddenly increases due to sudden increase of the PWM duty ratio during the initial driving. This results in application of over-voltage or over-current to the fluorescent lamp, damaging the fluorescent lamp.

Liquid crystal display backlight inverter


A memory cell of a semiconductor device and a method for forming the same, wherein the memory cell includes a substrate having active regions and field regions, a gate layer formed over the substrate, the gate layer including a plurality of access gates formed over the active regions of the substrate and a plurality of pass gates formed over the field regions of the substrate, first self-aligned contact regions formed between adjacent pass gates and access gates, and second self-aligned contact regions formed between adjacent access gates, wherein a width of each of the first self-aligned contact regions is larger than a width of each of the second self-aligned contact regions.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recess transistor (TR) gate in a semiconductor device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a recess transistor gate having increased space between adjacent recess gates and a method of forming the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to achieve higher density, conventional dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cells utilize a storage capacitor and an insulated gate field effect transistor (FET). DRAM cells have been successively scaled down in size to the sub-micron range. However, as a result of this reduction in size, there are many challenges in designing a planar gate. As the width of the planar gate narrows accompanied with shorter channels, problems such as junction leakage, source/drain breakdown voltage, and data retention time become issues of concern. Efforts to increase the density and the required gate channel length have led to the development of a recess gate being formed within a silicon substrate. Conventionally, a width of a planar gate on an active region, i.e., an access gate, is larger than a width of a planar gate on a field region, i.e., a pass gate. The narrow space between the gates gives rise to a self-aligned contact (SAC) open margin problem.
FIG. 1 illustrates a plan view of a conventional DRAM cell gate layout according to the prior art.
In FIG. 1, a substrate (not shown) includes an active region 10 and a field region 18. A gate layer 12 is formed over the substrate to intersect the active region 10. An access gate 12a is formed over each intersection of the gate layer 12 and the active region 10. Reference character W1 represents a width of an access gate 12a. A pass gate 12b is formed over each intersection of the gate layer 12 and the field region 18. Reference character W2 represents a width of a pass gate 12b.
A BC SAC region 14 is formed at a periphery of the active region 10. Reference character d1 represents a distance between an access gate and an adjacent pass gate, i.e., a size of the BC SAC region. A DC SAC region 16 is formed at a center of the active region 10. Reference character d2 represents a distance between adjacent access gates, i.e., a size of the DC SAC region. In this conventional arrangement, the width W1 of an access gate 12a is designed to be larger than the width W2 of a pass gate 12b.
Thus, as may be seen in this conventional planar gate structure, the width W1 of the access gate 12a is larger than the width W2 of a pass gate 12b. Conventionally, it is necessary that the width W1 of the access gate 12a be larger than the width W2 of the pass gate 12b in order to increase the refresh time in the planar type gate. This arrangement, however, leads to the self-aligned contact (SAC) open margin problem as described above.

Recess transistor (TR) gate to obtain large self-aligned contact (SAC) open margin


A processing system including at least one processor may obtain a first set of performance records of a database system, train a machine learning model in accordance with the first set of performance records, where the machine learning model that is trained in accordance with the first set of performance records is configured to predict a latency of a query transaction for a designated time period, present a user interface with a plurality of settings of the database system that are user-adjustable, where the plurality of settings is associated with at least a portion of the first set of performance records, calculate a first predicted latency of a query transaction at the designated time period via the machine learning model in accordance with a set of values of the plurality of settings, and present the first predicted latency via the user interface.

Achieving low transaction latency in a Database Management System (DBMS) is a challenging task. Many interacting factors may affect transaction response time, such as the existence of resource hard/soft bottlenecks, a wait on a mutual exclusion (mutex) lock, an insufficient number of threads, node storage sub-systems or network bandwidth issues, insufficient server resource capacity, and so forth. As databases grow in both size (databases may contain more data and more concurrent end-users and applications) and complexity (queries may require more complicated joins and utilize more indices; new data may be loaded into tables coincident with queries to existing table data), reducing latency in the DBMS may be an even greater challenge.

Reducing database system query transaction delay


A liner for incontinence includes a skin contact side sheet, a non-skin contact side sheet, and an absorbent body arranged between these sheets and including an absorbent material. The absorbent material includes 30 to 70 mass % of SAP. The liner includes a main body and wings in an intermediate region of the main body. An SAP basis weight in the intermediate region is larger than in front and rear regions of the main body. The main body includes a front compressed region which is positioned between the intermediate region and the front region immediately in front of a urinating position (UP) of a wearer when worn, side compressed regions which extend from the intermediate region to the front region and rear region, respectively, and a rear compressed region which extends in the rear region in substantially the width direction. At the compressed regions, the absorbent body is continuous.

Known in the art is a sanitary napkin provided with a liquid permeable skin contact side sheet, a liquid impermeable and moisture permeable non-skin contact side sheet, and an absorbent body which is arranged between these skin contact side sheet and non-skin contact side sheet. The sanitary napkin is provided with a main body which includes the absorbent body, which main body includes a front region, a rear region, and an intermediate region between these front region and rear region, and with a pair of wings for fastening the napkin to clothing, the wings being provided adjoining the intermediate region of the main body and being bent and superposed over the intermediate region when worn (see PLT 1). In this napkin, the napkin is reliably fastened to the clothing by the wings. Further, by using the moisture-permeable non-skin contact side sheet, dampness is suppressed.