A reference chuck which is used with a leveling device for holding microelectronic substrates and other electronic component substrates for laser ablation and other exposure processes, the chuck comprising a frame body for supporting the substrate to be processed, clamping means at the periphery of the frame body for holding the substrate to the frame body and elastomeric means for urging the substrate mounted in the reference chuck against the clamping means. The undersides of the clamping means which contacts the upper surface of the substrate forms in its tightened position a clamping plane which clamping plane is parallel with an established plane of the lower surface of the chuck. The reference chuck provides a very low profile envelope for use with conventional leveling devices and the top surface of the substrate and the lower surface of the reference chuck are in parallel planes when the chuck is placed on the working surface of the leveling device.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a chuck for holding microelectronic substrates and other electronic component substrates during the substrate manufacturing process, and, in particular, to a reference chuck for use with leveling devices, e.g., optical types, to enhance the effectiveness of the leveling device in the lithography or ablation steps of the manufacturing process.
2. Problem to be Solved
The manufacture of microelectronic substrates or other electronic component substrates require a number of steps to fabricate the desired circuit on the substrate. In the lithography steps of the manufacturing process lithography or ablation tools are used to ablate vias in the top surface metallurgy (TSM) e.g., polyimide coating, of in-process microelectronic substrate packages. Most lithography or ablation tools have a very limited travel with which to level a microelectronic substrate or other electronic component. This limited travel is normally due to the need to have a very rigid focus/leveling system. The terms microelectronic substrates and substrates will be used interchangeably herein and it should be kept in mind that the term "substrate" may apply to many types of microelectronic and electronic substrates.
As the metal loading in substrate packages increases and becomes more non-symmetric, it has become very difficult to make substrates where the top side metallurgy(TSM) and bottom side metallurgy (BSM) surfaces are parallel. This non-parallelism in combination with the limited travel of leveling systems is the main cause of leveling problems since the systems are not able to travel far enough to level BSM referenced substrates. When a substrate is processed in a laser ablation or other lithography tool, it generally has to be brought into the focus range and leveled or distortions in the exposed substrate result with the circuit being either nonfunctional or, at best, having less than optimum performance.
In general, leveling devices comprise a workstation consisting of parallel base plates which carry a substrate X-Y stage, a mask X-Y stage and supports a bridge assembly. The projection optics consist of a 1:1 telecentric lens. The tool is typically enclosed in an environmental chamber to maintain a Class 10 environment.
An ablation leveling system typically processes a single substrate at a time and the substrate is loaded onto the substrate chuck located on top of the substrate X-Y table. The X-Y table then positions the substrate under an optical auto focus assembly. Next, a Z axis slide and two leveling drives located in the substrate stage are used to focus and level the substrate. The tool also automatically loads a mask using an AHSM (Automatic Handling System Mask) onto the mask chuck located on top of the mask X-Y table. A pattern recognition system then locates the pre-align targets which are located at each corner of the substrate or mask. The targets are mapped and the locations recorded. The tool calculates a global X-Y translation and global rotation, which are used as a basis for finding the center of the substrate or mask. After substrate and mask prealignment, the mask is aligned to the substrate using the on axis alignment system. When the substrate and mask are aligned, data from a stored program are used to ablate the part. Multiple masks may be used. After ablation the part is unloaded.
Both the substrate and mask systems have a stage that positions the mask or substrate relative to the X-Y table and a chuck that holds the substrate or mask.
An auto focus and leveling system is designed to measure the distance between the auto focus sensor and the top surface of the substrate. This distance is controlled by drive actuators in the substrate stage. The Z-axis drive moves the substrate up and down to focus differing substrate thicknesses. The top leveling drives are used to compensate for any wedge in the substrate.
Automatic focus and automatic leveling are generally achieved by projecting a line of light on the substrate top surface and reading the reflected light with a dual photo detector. The light is typically emitted from a fiber optic light guide connected to a Hg arc lamp light source and filtered for 365 nm.
A common problem in the leveling step of the substrate manufacturing process is the large percentage of leveling errors due to distortion of the substrate. The substrate must be essentially flat or planar to achieve a high resolution pattern in the lithography process. This distortion is typically more than the amount of adjustment that the leveling cams of the leveling tool can perform. The cams are used to automatically raise or lower the substrate into the focus and level position. Some substrates pass the focus/level after several re-trys while others have to be completely removed from the tool, repositioned in the holding fixture, and then tried again. Each re-try where the substrate has to be removed and repositions takes time and this is of great impact to the through-put and delivery schedule of the substrate products.
One substrate fixturing method is to place the substrate onto a chuck which uses the bottom surface of the substrate at three points to establish a reference plane and then to bank the substrate into a fixed chuck corner relative to a set corner of the product. Some substrate products however are not very parallel between the top and bottom surfaces due to the density of the circuitry and, therefore, distortion of the exposed substrate at the focus/level alignment of the tool and/or multiple leveling procedures results.
Bearing in mind the problems and deficiencies of the prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a reference chuck used with leveling devices to hold substrates in lithographic or ablation processes to increase the effectiveness of both the leveling process and the lithography or ablation process.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for making electronic components, e.g., microelectronic substrates, which are made by lithographic or ablation methods and in particular lithographic or ablation processes which use leveling devices.
A further object of the invention is to provide electronic components, e.g., microelectronic substrates, made using the method and apparatus of the invention.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.

Laser ablation top surface reference chuck

International Business Machines Corporation


The present invention provides a sport clothing product with cups excellent in a shaping (bust uplifting) function, in which the stability of bust does not deteriorate even upon vigorous arm movements. A cup suspending cord (5R) of a right cup portion (2R) extends in the upper left direction, and a cup suspending cord (5L) of a left cup portion (2L) extends in the upper right direction, so that they are attached to a neck hole hem part (16), whereas respective extensions of the cup suspending cords (5L, 5R) intersect each other above the neck hole hem part (16). Movements of cup portions caused by vigorous arm movements accompanying exercises are greatly alleviated, whereby actions of cup suspending members at the time of raising arms function so as to lift up the cup portions in so-called “centering” directions.

Sport clothing products such as women's swimsuits include those known as sport clothing with cups in which a pair of right and left cup portions are disposed in the body portion thereof. The right (left) cup portion is attached to the body portion by a right (left) side cloth and a right (left) cup suspending cord. One of end parts of the right (left) cup suspending cord is sewn to an upper edge part of the right (left) cup portion. The other end part of the right (left) cup suspending cord is sewn to the hem part of a right (left) armhole (a hole for passing an arm therethrough) in the body portion (type 1) or sewn to the hem part of a neck hole (a hole for passing a head therethrough) in the body portion (type 2). Type 1 is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. HEI 2-264002, for example. Type 2 is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. SHO 60-67313, Japanese Utility Model Application Laid-Open No. HEI 1-177213, and Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 3042769, for example. Known as a modification of type 2 is a swimsuit in which the other end part of the right (left) cup suspending cord is connected to the neck hole hem part by a hook. In this type, the other end part of the right (left) cup suspending cord can be attached to and removed from the hem part of the neck hole.


The bitmap image data is analyzed by connected component extraction to identify components or connected components that represent either individual characters or letters, or regions of a nontext image. The connected components are classified as text or nontext based on geometric attributes such as the number of holes, arcs and line ends comprising each component. A nearest-neighbor analysis then identifies which text components represent lines or strings of text and each line or string is further analyzed to determine its vertical or horizontal orientation. Thereafter, separate vertical and horizontal font height filters are used to identify those text strings that are the most likely candidates. For the most likely title candidates a bounding box is defined which can be associated with or overlaid upon the original bitmap data to select the title region for further processing or display. Captions and photographs can also be located.

The present invention relates generally to computerized information access. More particularly, the invention relates to a computerized system for extracting title text or photographs (including captions) or other text or nontext regions from bitmap images, such as from scanned documents. The extracted title text or caption text may be used in a number of ways, including keyword searching or indexing of bitmap image databases, while the extracted photographs may be used for graphical browsing.
The world is rapidly becoming an information society. Digital technology has enabled the creation of vast databases containing a wealth of information. The recent explosion in popularity of image-based systems is expected to lead to the creation of enormous databases that will present enormous database access challenges. In this regard, the explosion in popularity of the World Wide Web is but one example of how information technology is rapidly evolving towards an image-based paradigm.
Image-based systems present a major challenge to information retrieval. Whereas information retrieval technology is fairly well advanced in coded character-based systems, these retrieval techniques do not work in image-based systems. That is because image-based systems store information as bitmap data that correspond to the appearance of the printed page and not the information content of that page. Traditional techniques require the conversion of bitmap data into text data, through optical character recognition (OCR) software, before information retrieval systems can go to work.
Unfortunately, optical character recognition software is computationally expensive, and the recognition process is rather slow. Also, typically photographs without text cannot be meaningfully processed with OCR technology. When dealing with large quantities of image-based data, it is not practical to perform optical character recognition on the entire database. Furthermore, even where time and computational resources permit the wholesale OCR conversion of image data into text data, the result is still a large, unstructured database, without a short list of useful keyword that might allow a document of interest to be retrieved and reviewed. Searching through the entire database for selected keywords may not be the optimal answer, as often full text keyword searches generate far too many hits to be useful.
The present invention takes a fresh approach to the problem. The invention recognizes that there will be vast amounts of data that are in bitmap or image format, and that users will want to search this information, just as they now search text-based systems. Instead of converting the entire document from image format to text format, the present invention analyzes the bitmap data in its native format, to extract regions within the image data that correspond to the most likely candidates for document titles, captions or other identifiers, or to extract regions that correspond to photographs. The system extracts these document titles, captions or other identifiers and photographs from the bitmap image data, allowing the extracted regions to be further manipulated in a variety of ways. The extracted titles, captions or photographs can be displayed serially in a list that the user can access to select a document of interest. If desired, the extracted titles or captions can be converted through optical character recognition into text data that then can be further accessed or manipulated using coded character-based information retrieval systems.
Alternatively, even if the entire page is converted using optical character recognition, it may still be useful to locate various titles and other text or nontext regions using the scanned image. The invention will perform this function as well.
The invention is multilingual. Thus it can extract titles or captions from bitmap data, such as from scanned documents and from documents written in a variety of different languages. The title extraction technology of the invention is also writing-system-independent. It is capable of extracting titles from document images without regard to what character set or alphabet or even font style has been used.
Moreover, the system does not require any prior knowledge about the orientation of the text. It is able to cope with document layouts that have mixed orientations, including both vertical orientation and horizontal orientation. The invention is based on certain reasonable "rules" that hold for many, if not all languages. These rules account for the observation that title text or caption text is usually printed in a way to distinguish it from other text (e.g., bigger font, bold face, centered at the top of a column). These rules also account for the observation that intercharacter spacing on a text line is generally closer than interline spacing and that text lines are typically either horizontal or vertical.
The invention extracts titles, captions and photographs from document images using document analysis and computational geometry techniques. The image is stored in a bitmap buffer that is then analyzed using connected-component analysis to extract certain geometric data related to the connected components or blobs of ink that appear on the image page. This geometric data or connected component data is stored in a data structure that is then analyzed by a classification process that labels or sorts the data based on whether each connected component has the geometric properties of a character, or the geometric properties of a portion of an image, such as a bitmap rendition of a photograph.
Following classification, for text components the system then invokes a nearest-neighbor analysis of the connected component data to generate nearest-neighbor graphs. These are stored in a nearest-neighbor graphs data structure that represents a list of linked lists corresponding to the nearest neighbors of each connected component. The nearest-neighbor graphs define bounding boxes around those connected components of data that correspond to, for example, a line of text in a caption. The nearest-neighbor graphs are then classified as horizontal or vertical, depending on whether the links joining the bounding box centers of nearest neighbors are predominately horizontal or vertical.
Next a filter module analyzes the data to determine the average font height of all horizontal data, and a separate average font height for all vertical data. Then, each string of horizontal data is compared with the average; and each string of vertical data is compared with the average, to select those strings that are above the average height or those strings whose height exceeds a predetermined threshold. These are selected as title candidates to be extracted. If desired, further refinement of the analysis can be performed using other geometric features, such as whether the fonts are bold-face, or by identifying which data represent strings that are centered on the page.
After having selected the title candidates, the candidates are referenced back to the original bitmap data. Essentially, the bounding boxes of the connected components are merged into a single bounding box associated with the extracted title and that single bounding box is then referenced back to the bitmap data, so that any bitmap data appearing in the bounding box can be selected as an extracted title. If desired, the extracted title can be further processed using optical character recognition software, to convert the title image into title text.
Similarly, after having selected the photo candidates, the candidates are again referenced back to the original bitmap data. The bounding boxes of photo candidates which overlap with each other are merged into a single bounding box so that bitmaps appearing within the bounding box can be selected and extracted as part of the photo. If desired, caption text associated with a photo region can be identified and processed using optical character recognition software. The caption text can then be used as a tag to help identify the content of the photo, or for later searching .

Title, caption and photo extraction from scanned document images

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A family of gamma titanium aluminide alloys is provided which is based on the intermetallic compound TiAl and includes alloying additions which enable the alloys to exhibit both sufficient mechanical properties and environmental capabilities for use in high temperature applications associated with gas turbine and automotive engines. The preferred alloys have a nominal aluminum content of about 46 atomic percent and further include niobium at about three to about five atomic percent and tungsten at about one atomic percent nominally, so as to selectively enhance the oxidation resistance of the alloy. As species of the preferred alloy, alloying additions of vanadium, chromium and manganese can be included at levels of up to about two atomic percent to enhance the toughness and ductility of the preferred alloy at lower temperatures, such as those encountered during fabrication and during low temperature operations.

Because weight and high temperature strength are primary considerations in gas turbine engine design, there is a continuing effort to create relatively light weight alloys which have high strength at elevated temperatures. Titanium-based alloy systems are well known in the prior art as having mechanical properties which are suitable for relatively high temperature applications, with a practical upper limit being generally about 1100.degree. F. However, as a result, these titanium-based alloys are typically not practical for many high temperature gas turbine engine applications which require usage at temperatures much higher than 1100.degree. F. Thus, for many of these high temperature gas turbine applications, the use of heavier superalloys that are roughly twice as heavy as titanium-based alloys is necessitated.
The high temperature capability of titanium-based alloys has been gradually increased by the use of titanium intermetallic systems based on the titanium aluminides Ti.sub.3 Al (alpha-2 alloys) and TiAl (gamma alloys). Generally, Ti.sub.3 Al-based alloys typically contain aluminum in amounts between about 23 and about 25 atomic percent, and TiAl-based alloys typically contain aluminum in amounts between about 46 and about 52 atomic percent. These titanium aluminide alloys are generally characterized as being relatively light weight, yet exhibit high strength, creep strength and fatigue resistance at elevated temperatures of up to about 1830.degree. F., according to the ASM Handbook, vol. 2, p. 926 (1990).
However, these binary titanium aluminide alloys have a significant shortcoming in terms of their low ductility and corresponding brittleness and low fracture toughness at room temperature, which makes them difficult to process. In addition, these alloys do not exhibit desired high oxidation resistance due to their tendency to form titanium dioxide (TiO.sub.2 ) rather than aluminum oxide (Al.sub.2 O.sub.3) at high temperatures. For example, the oxidation limit for the gamma TiAl alloys is significantly less than its creep limit of 1830.degree. F. Accordingly, a common objective with the use of titanium aluminide alloys is to achieve a good balance between mechanical properties at both room temperature and elevated temperatures, and environmental characteristics, such as oxidation resistance.
Gamma TiAl alloys, such as Ti-48Al-1V (atomic percent), generally possess temperature capabilities and densities which are superior to that of the Ti.sub.3 Al alpha-2 alloys. As a result, gamma TiAl alloys generally have greater potential as an alloy suitable for the high temperature applications of gas turbine engines. However, the Ti-48Al-1V alloy has been found to be susceptible to a relatively rapid rate of oxidation at temperatures between about 1400.degree. F. and about 1600.degree. F. To solve this shortcoming, it is known to add niobium and/or tantalum to improve the oxidation resistance of the alloy. This oxidation resistance is largely the result of an improvement in the physical and chemical properties of an oxidized layer which forms on the alloy as a protective coating. When the alloy is exposed to an oxidizing environment, the protective coating forms which is essentially a mixture of titanium dioxide and alpha alumina.
In addition, niobium and tantalum are known to improve the strength of the TiAl alloys. However, niobium and tantalum are generally considered to reduce ductility, an adverse condition which already exists in conventional TiAl alloys.
It is also known to add tungsten to improve the oxidation resistance of titanium aluminide alloys. In addition, tungsten additions are also known to significantly improve the creep strength behavior of titanium aluminide alloys. However, as with niobium and tantalum, tungsten is also generally considered to reduce the ductility of an alloy, which would be expected to further exacerbate the low ductility seen in conventional TiAl alloys.
For improving ductility, alloying additions of vanadium, chromium and manganese have been reported to be effective. However, these alloying elements are also known to decrease oxidation resistance of the alloy. Accordingly, the need to achieve a balance between the mechanical properties and the environmental capabilities of gamma titanium aluminides is characterized by offsetting factors, so that this balance has not been realized in the prior art. This balance is further complicated by the desire for an alloy to be extrudable, forgable, rollable and castable, so as to enable the fabrication of various types of components, such as those for gas turbine and automotive engines. Yet it is also desirable for the alloy to be responsive to heat treatments, so as to permit tailored microstructures and mechanical properties for specific applications.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a titanium aluminide alloy which exhibits both sufficiently high strength, creep resistance and oxidation resistance at elevated temperatures, while also being sufficiently ductile and fracture tough at room temperature so as to enable the alloy to be more readily processed, and thereby more readily permit the fabrication of relatively light weight components which can be tailored for use in high temperature environments, such as found within gas turbine as well as automotive engines.


Disclosed herein is a plug via stacked structure including: a through hole plating layer plated on a through hole inner wall and around top and bottom of a through hole at thickness t; a via plug filled in an inner space of the through hole plating layer; a circuit pattern formed over the top and bottom of the through hole plating layer and the via plug and making a thickness t′ formed on the through hole plating layer thicker than a thickness t; and a stacked conductive via filled in a via hole formed on the top of the through hole and formed at thickness α from a top of the circuit pattern, wherein T≦t″+α is satisfied, T represents a sum of the thicknesses t and t′ and t″ is a thickness of a portion of the circuit pattern formed on the via plug.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a plug via stacked structure, a stacked substrate having a via stacked structure, and a manufacturing method thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a plug via stacked structure using a conductive via stacked on a top of a plug via of a substrate so as to secure a thickness of a circuit pattern on the top of the plug via of the substrate, a stacked substrate having a via stacked structure, and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to the plug via according to the related art, when a thickness of a conductive metal, for example, Cu of a circuit pattern plated on a top of a plug via for power transmission is not secured, there is a problem of power transmission of a substrate. Therefore, the plug via having Cu plated thereinto at a sufficient thickness has been used.
According to the related art, when using the plug via, a method for permitting an increase in a plating thickness of a circuit has been easily applied so as to secure a plating thickness using a low end substrate rather than using a fine pattern substrate. That is, according to the related art, the plating thickness of 20 μm or more has been easily applied since patterns are not tight and therefore, the plating thickness can be controlled.
However, with the miniaturization of electronic devices, a demand for a fine pattern substrate has been increased. In the case of the plug via, the sufficient Cu for power transmission needs to be plated thereinto but in the case of the fine pattern substrate, a size and a plating thickness of a via hole are limited.
In other words, when fine patterns are applied to a substrate process, it is very important to secure the plating thickness used for power transmission at the time of using the plug via. In this case, the plating thickness on the top of the plug via is generally smaller than that therearound and thus, any problem may occur at the corresponding portion at the time of power transmission.
That is, when the thickness of the circuit pattern on the top of the via plug filled between plating layers in a substrate through hole in the plug via is not secured to some degree, a bottle neck phenomenon may occur at the time of current transmission.

Plug via stacked structure, stacked substrate having via stacked structure and manufacturing method thereof


A method for determining a localization parameter of an object includes generating a plurality of estimates of a first frequency-domain amplitude of a baseband signal from the object, each estimate corresponding one of a plurality of temporal segments of the baseband signal. The method also includes determining the first frequency-domain amplitude as most common value of the plurality of estimates, and determining the localization parameter therefrom. A localization system includes a memory and a microprocessor. The memory stores instructions and is configured to store a baseband signal having a temporal frequency component and a corresponding first frequency-domain amplitude. The microprocessor is adapted to execute the instructions to: (i) generate a plurality of estimates of the first frequency-domain amplitude each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of temporal segments of the baseband signal, and (ii) determine the first frequency-domain amplitude as the most common value of the estimates.

A localization system tracks location and movement of one or more objects within a localization domain that are in the field of view of the localization system. An angle-based localization system determines locations, in part, by computing relative angles between tracked objects and a location on a plane. Angle-based localization systems are often preferable to image-based localization systems, for example, when high localization precision is required and/or when the size of the localization domain far exceeds that of an image sensor of an image-based localization system.

Localization system and associated method


A thin film transistor (TFT) array panel with signal lines that have low resistivity is presented. The TFT array panel includes an insulating substrate, a gate line formed on the insulating substrate, a gate insulating layer formed on the gate line, a drain electrode and a data line having a source electrode formed on the gate insulating layer, the drain electrode facing the source electrode with a gap, and a pixel electrode connected to the drain electrode. In one embodiment, at least one of the gate line, the data line, and the drain electrode includes a first conductive layer made of a Mo-containing conductor, a second conductive layer made of a Cu-containing conductor, and a third conductive layer made of a MoN-containing conductor.

(a) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a signal line and a thin film transistor (TFT) array panel for a display device that includes the signal line.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are one of the most widely used types of flat panel displays. Typically, an LCD includes a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed between two panels provided with field-generating electrodes. The LCD displays images by applying voltages to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the LC layer. The electric field determines the orientations of the LC molecules in the LC layer to vary light transmittance according to the polarization of incident light.
An LCD including two panels respectively provided with field-generating electrodes, wherein one panel has a plurality of pixel electrodes in a matrix and the other has a common electrode covering the entire surface of the panel, dominates the LCD market.
The LCD displays images by applying a different voltage to each pixel electrode. For this purpose, thin film transistors (TFTs) having three terminals to switch voltages applied to the pixel electrodes, are connected to the pixel electrodes. The TFTs are formed on a thin film transistor array panel. In addition, gate lines to transmit signals for controlling the thin film transistors and data lines to transmit voltages applied to the pixel electrodes are formed on a thin film transistor array panel.
A TFT is a switching element for transmitting the image signals from the data line to the pixel electrode in response to the scanning signals from the gate line.
The TFT is applied to an active matrix organic light emitting display as a switching element for controlling respective light emitting elements.
Currently, chromium (Cr) is conventionally the dominating material for the gate lines and the data lines of a TFT array panel. However, Cr is not an ideal material considering the increasing size trend of LCDs. Since the lengths of the gate and data lines increase along with the LCD size, a material that has a lower resistivity than Cr is desired. Due to its high resistivity, there are limitations to applying Cr to a large LCD.
Copper (Cu) is well known as a low-resistivity substitute for Cr. However, since Cu is sensitive to chemicals, when Cu is applied to signal lines, the signal lines may easily be oxidized and corroded. Furthermore, since organic material tend to condense on a Cu surface, signal lines made with Cu may be easily polluted with organic particles. The oxidation, corrosion, and the pollution may induce a rapid increase of the signal line resistance and degrade process reliability.
A low-resistivity material that can be used to build signal lines in a display device without suffering the above disadvantages of Cu is desired.

Signal line for display device and thin film transistor array panel including the signal line


A method of categorizing objects in which there can be multiple categories of objects and each object can belong to more than one category is described. The method defines a set of categories in which at least one category is dependent on another category and then organizes the categories in a hierarchy that embodies any dependencies among them. Each object is assigned to one or more categories in the set. A set of labels corresponding to all combinations of any number of the categories is defined, wherein if an object is relevant to several categories, the object must be assigned the label corresponding to the subset of all relevant categories. Once the new labels are defined, the multi-category, multi-label problem has been reduced to a multi-category, single-label problem, and the categorization task is reduced down to choosing the single best label set for an object.

In an electronic repository, imprecisely classified documents are lost documents, a drain on productivity. There are no universally accepted standards for classifying or categorizing documents. A class or category is a group, set, or kind sharing common attributes or a division within a system of classification. Categories vary from one industry to the next and from one organization to another. There are two types of categorization: flat, in which categories are independent of each other, and hierarchical, where relations between categories themselves are exploited by the system (e.g., "molecular biology" is a sub-category or sub-class or "biology", but is also related to the category "chemistry".)
Classification and categorization schemes typically involve assigning labels to an object (where an object may be a document, or arbitrary co-occurrence data in a document or a vector in an arbitrary vector space and where a label is a descriptive or identifying word or phrase). We address the problem of assigning multiple labels to an object, where each label is taken among multiple (i.e., more than two) classes or categories. Although it may seem at first glance that this problem is similar to multi-class, single-label classification, it is both much less studied and quite different in nature. The problem of assigning multiple labels to a single object may be described in terms of document categorization, although it applies naturally to arbitrary objects (e.g., images, sensor signals, etc.).
Single-label classification also goes by the name of discrimination, and may be seen as a way to find the class that is best suited to a document. In a way, the essence (and limitation) of single-label classification is well represented by the semantics of the word "discriminate," that is "to recognize a distinction between things". On the other hand, multi-label classification is more concerned with identifying likeness between the document and (potentially) several classes. In the context of newswire stories, for example, labels are often overlapping, or may have a hierarchical structure. A story on Apple's iPod, for example, may be relevant to "computer hardware", its sub-category "audio peripheral" as well as the "MP3 player" category. Accordingly, multi-label classification is more relevant to identifying likeness than distinction.
Current classification technology focuses on discrimination methods, for example: linear discriminants such as linear least squares, Fisher linear discriminant or Support Vector Machines (SVM); decision trees; K-nearest neighbors (KNN); neural networks, including multi-layer perceptrons (MLP) and radial basis function (RBF) networks; and probabilistic generative models based e.g., on mixtures (typically Gaussian mixtures). In addition, some techniques have been proposed to address more specifically document categorization, such as Rocchio's, Naïve Bayes, or related probabilistic methods, as described e.g., by Gaussier et al., "A hierarchical model for clustering and categorising documents", in F. Crestani, M. Girolami and C. J. van Rijsbergen (eds), Advances in Information Retrieval—Proceedings of the 24th BCS-IRSG European Colloquium on IR Research, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2291, Springer, pp. 229–247, 2002.
None of these classification techniques address the problem of assigning multiple labels to a single document or object, but virtually all of them can be altered to do it, for example, by using one of the following two alternative techniques. The first technique consists of first building a binary classifier (e.g., using SVM) for each class and then using these independently to provide any number of labels. The second one applies to probabilistic methods that typically produce a posterior class probability P(c|d). Rather than assign document d to the class c that has maximum probability, the alternative is to choose a threshold and assign the document to all classes exceeding it.
The inventors' co-pending application D/A0A25 addresses the problem of clustering documents using probabilistic models. Clustering and categorization can be seen as two sides of the same coin, and differ by the fact that categorization is a supervised task, i.e., labels identifying categories are provided for a set of documents (the training set), whereas, in the case of clustering the aim is to automatically organize unlabelled documents into clusters, in an unsupervised way. The D/A0A25 model lies in its capacity to deal with hierarchies of clusters, based on soft assignments while maintaining a distinction between document and word structures.
What is needed is a method that allows the assignment of objects to multiple categories or classes such that the number of categories may be larger than two (multi-class) and such that each object may be assigned to more than one category (multi-label).

Method for multi-class, multi-label categorization using probabilistic hierarchical modeling


A control device is configured to select one of a CD (Charge Depleting) mode in which an SOC of a power storage device is consumed and a CS (Charge Sustaining) mode in which the SOC is maintained within a predetermined range. The CS mode includes a first CS mode selected based on an intention of a driver, and a second CS mode selected when the SOC decreases to a predetermined amount. The predetermined range in the first CS mode is narrower than the predetermined range in the second CS mode. As a result, a distance for which a vehicle can travel using only the drive force of a rotating electric machine after mode switching from the CS mode to the CD mode based on the intention of the driver can be ensured.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hybrid vehicle and a control method for the hybrid vehicle, and in particular to a hybrid vehicle equipped with an internal combustion engine and a rotating electric machine as motive power sources and a control method for the hybrid vehicle.
Description of the Background Art
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2011-57116 discloses a hybrid vehicle including an internal combustion engine and a rotating electric machine. The hybrid vehicle travels while switching modes including a CD (Charge Depleting) mode in which the SOC (State Of Charge) of a power storage device is consumed and a CS (Charge Sustaining) mode in which the SOC is maintained within a predetermined range. When the SOC decreases to a predetermined amount, the mode is automatically switched from the CD mode to the CS mode.
It is contemplated that a hybrid vehicle as described above has a configuration in which, even when the SOC is more than the predetermined amount, the mode can be switched to the CS mode based on the intention of a driver (for example, by the driver operating a switch), and the mode can be switched back to the CD mode at desired timing. With this configuration, traveling in the CD mode can be implemented at timing intended by the driver, by preserving the SOC.
However, in a case where the mode is switched from the CD mode to the CS mode based on the intention of the driver and thereafter the mode is switched back from the CS mode to the CD mode, if the SOC is close to a lower limit within the predetermined range, a distance for which the vehicle can travel using only the drive force of the rotating electric machine is shortened.

Hybrid vehicle and control method for hybrid vehicle


In some embodiments, an electronic apparatus comprises a communication interface, an input/output interface, a processor, and logic to collect, in the electronic apparatus, a first identifier associated with a first communication device and second identifier associated with a second communication device, logic to establish a communication connection between the electronic apparatus and the first communication device, and logic to initiate, in the electronic apparatus, a connection request for a communication connection between the first communication device and the second communication device. Other embodiments may be described.

The subject matter described herein relates generally to the field of electronic communication and more particularly to code-based communication connection management.
Electronic devices may establish communication connections with other electronic devices to facilitate information exchange between the devices. Presently, electronic devices such as, e.g., digital watches, heart rate monitors, and the like are being designed with wireless communication interfaces to enable wireless communication with other electronic devices. The wireless communication interface may operate pursuant to one or more communication protocols such as, e.g., Bluetooth or one of the protocols in the 802.11 family of communication protocols.
Many electronic devices have extremely limited user interfaces. For example, many digital watches are controlled by an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that uses three to six buttons as the user interface. The limited user interface creates difficulties in performing complex operations such as, e.g., establishing communication connections, using the device.
Communication connections between electronic devices may be secure. For example, encryption techniques may be implemented to secure resource(s) provided by an electronic device such as, e.g., a web server. A user seeking to access the resource(s) may need to authenticate itself to the server.

Code-based communication connection management


A common toothbrush usable electronic toothbrush is provided. The common toothbrush usable electronic toothbrush includes: a toothbrush receiving part having a housing for receiving a toothbrush and a fixing member for fixing the toothbrush; and a driving part tightly attached to the toothbrush receiving part, for vibrating the whole toothbrush by transmitting a vibration generated from a driving of a motor to the toothbrush receiving part. Since the electronic toothbrush can receive common toothbrushes of various kinds instead of a dedicated electric toothbrush, it is possible to permanently use the electronic toothbrush by replacing common toothbrushes, thus increasing a user's satisfaction by allowing a usage of toothbrushes as the user wishes.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic toothbrush, and more particularly, to a common toothbrush usable electronic toothbrush.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, many electronic toothbrushes on the market have a set of a holder part and a toothbrush part. The holder part includes a driving unit to generate vibration. The toothbrush part is combined with the holder part. These conventional toothbrushes have to use a dedicated toothbrush that can be fitted into the holder part. Thus, when a disposable toothbrush is worn out and needs to be replaced, it is difficult to purchase the dedicated toothbrush only and is mandatory to buy a new set. As a result, purchasing a toothbrush becomes expensive.
Additionally, since only the dedicated toothbrush manufactured and sold as a set can be used, it is very hard to find an appropriate toothbrush for a replacement after awhile from the purchase of the toothbrush.
In an operation method of the conventional electronic toothbrush, a bristle of a toothbrush rotates in a circle or a head of a toothbrush rotates in a left and right direction. However, since a user's teeth can be brushed only according to an operation of the electronic toothbrush and the user cannot actively control the toothbrush, the user may not feel satisfied that a complete brushing has been performed after brushing his teeth. Additionally, since a neck of a dedicated toothbrush made for an electronic toothbrush is very thin, it is very hard to strongly grab the toothbrush for brushing teeth.

Common toothbrush usable electronic toothbrush


Described is a technology by which a computer display may quickly resume outputting video data following its awakening from a deep sleep state. Displayed settings are maintained in a memory, such as a memory of the display, while the display is in a sleep state. The settings are associated with a token maintained by a host computer system and display. Upon a need to awaken the display to output video data, the host computer system and the display communicate the token, whereby the display may confirm whether maintained settings are still valid for actual use with the host's video signals. If still valid, the display restores the maintained display settings as actual display settings. The restoring of previously maintained display settings is ordinarily significantly faster than conventional mechanisms that are presently used to configure a display upon wakeup, resulting in the user perceiving a near-instantaneous wakeup of a display.

Although most computer components have become significantly faster as technology has advanced, personal computer displays still take a long time to "light up" for usage. This is true even though LCD-based monitors, which have become highly popular, are usually considerably faster to light up than CRT displays. For example, when returning from a reduced-power (e.g., deep sleep) mode, LCD displays typically take from two-and-a-half to six seconds from the time that they receive a valid video signal to when they turn on the backlight. One undesirable result of this lag is that the user has to wait for the display, and often winds up staring at a blank screen, even though the rest of the computer system is ready to be used.
Although there are various design concepts that display vendors may implement to reduce current "light-up" times, none of them are likely to substantially eliminate the user's waiting time. For example, with displays having many inputs that support a wide variety of video signals, vendors will likely be unable to get the light-up time to below two seconds, which is still a rather undesirable wait time. Leaving the host controller and display controller chipsets running might help speed up the restoration time, (e.g., leaving the host graphic chipset powered up ensures that the display is receiving active synchronization pulses so that the display is aware of its current mode), but is not a viable solution, as this consumes too much power to meet desired energy consumption requirements. In general, this is because leaving the host graphic chipset enabled prevents the majority of the display controller being powered down to save energy, and power savings typically comes from being able to power down significant portions of the host controller and the display controller.

Fast display initialization and light up


An outer surface of an object 23 is irradiated with visible light from a light source 21, and the reflected light is acquired by a TV camera 24. A two-dimensional image with gradation is Fourier transformed by an image analyzer 20. The brightness and darkness of the image are bipolarized using an emphasis coefficient in a predetermined wavelength range in the process of Fourier transform. The bright regions and dark regions forming closed regions are calculated separately as regions representing gloss irregularity or printing unevenness, thereby outputting a statistical parameter of the areas as a measured result.

Recently, besides the gloss intensity of surfaces of products, the unevenness of gloss and that of printed coated paper or films have been regarded important as the quality of the products The qualities are, for example, "surface feeling" of coated paper, "flowmarks" of the surface of formed plastics, and "clear reflective property" of automobile applications
About the surface feeling of coated paper, it is considered that the more uniform the gloss value of the product appearance, the better the surface feeling. The evaluation has been conventionally made by inspectors who conducts visual observation mainly of the sub-millimeter gloss irregularity on the coated paper. Alternatively, the following test methods have been proposed, in which images of product appearance are picked up with an image pickup device like a TV camera, and the luminance level distribution (the reflected light power) of the product appearance is calculated on the basis of the acquired images.
One of the methods remodeled a chromato-scanner to scan the surface of coated paper with a light flux of 0.4 mm.phi. at angles of incidence and reflection of 75 degrees, and has disclosed that the standard deviation of reflected light power has a relation to the rank order of visual inspection (H. Fujiwara et al., 1990, TAPPI Coat. Conf. Proc., 209 (1990)).
Another method is to obtain the correlation between the average of visually observed rank order and the result of the analysis of a two-dimensional image formed by surface reflection from printed paper, which was acquired by a CCD camera. This method has disclosed that the rank order exhibits good correlation with the reflected light power, that is, with the variation coefficient of gradation. However, it has been reported that there were many cases which exhibited no correlation about the gloss irregularity of white paper (M. A. MacGregor et al., 1991, TAPPI Coat. Conf. Proc., 495 (1991)).
Next, the printing unevenness of printed coated-paper will be explained. The printing unevenness is considered to increase with the ink density variation in neighborhoods in an area to be printed uniformly. The degree of unevenness is considered to correspond to the magnitude of difference among them. Since the printing unevenness is likely to appear in halftone regions of uniform ink density, the visual evaluation is carried out by an inspector on the halftone areas of the printed matter. Several measuring methods and devices have also been proposed to detect the printing unevenness.
One of the methods is to calculate areal ratios of individual dots in the halftone areas, and derive the coefficients of variation (Takao Arai, Magazine of the Paper and Pulp Engineering Institute, 43 575 (1989)),
Another method is to conduct the line scanning of the series of dotted regions in a halftone portion by an image analyzer to digitize the regularity of density profile, thereby obtaining parameters of the printing unevenness (T. Koskinen et al., Paperi JaPuu 74 45 (1992)).
The visual inspections of the gloss irregularity and printing unevenness, however, lack quantitative accuracy because they depend on personal subjectivity, and hence it requires many professional inspectors to carry out objective judge on the quality of printing.
On the other hand, the above mentioned optical test methods of gloss irregularity have the following drawbacks.
Although the quantification of optical measurement of the gloss irregularity is tried using reflected light power distribution, it has a problem that the results do not necessarily coincide with those of the visual inspection. In particular, there are large errors in the optical method in the case where white paper surface feeling (the surface feeling before printing) is tested by measuring the power distribution of reflected light. This is because the intense diffused reflected light weakens the gloss irregularity associated with the true reflected light.
Moreover, in the optical test of the printing unevenness, there are some cases which do not coincide with the results of the visual inspection because the optical method measures ink density only.
Taking account of these facts, an object of the present invention is to provide an optical measuring method and apparatus of the gloss irregularity which can quantitatively express the measured results of the gloss irregularity with accuracy in terms of magnitude and distribution of the gloss irregularity rather than the power distribution of light, and to offer a measuring method and apparatus of the printing unevenness which can improve the accuracy by measuring the areas and distribution of uneven portions of ink density rather than by measuring the ink density itself.
Other objects and features of the present invention will be apparent from the following description, some of which will become clear by the description, or be understood by implementing the present invention. The objects and advantages of the present invention are implemented by the means recited in the claims and the combinations thereof.

Measuring method and apparatus of gloss irregularity and printing unevenness


A generalized rebinning method transforms SPECT projection data acquired with a first type of collimator into projection data as if it were acquired with a second type of collimator, for subsequent reconstruction using a 3-D algorithm devised for the second type of collimator. The method includes use of a non-stationary point-spread function in the conversion to account for image blurring.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to nuclear medical imaging devices and more particularly relates to a method for converting SPECT projection data for different collimators.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a nuclear medicine imaging device, such as a gamma camera for obtaining either planar images or Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) images, a collimator is mounted to the face of the imaging device. The collimator collimates radiation (e.g., a gamma photon) which is emitted from a source within a patient before the radiation strikes a detector crystal. In FIG. 3, a block diagram is shown of an exemplary SPECT device. A radiation source 302 within an object to be imaged 304 (e.g., human body part) emits gamma photons that emanate from the object 304 and are captured by a detector 306, which converts the detected radiation into spatial projection data. A collimator 308 collimates the radiation and prevents non-orthogonal radiation from being detected. Such collimators typically include some sort of shielding, such as lead, with holes that allow radiation (e.g., photons) to pass through to the detector. In SPECT, the detector is moved about the object being imaged and acquires projection data from each of a number of different view angles. A processor 310 then constructs a 3-D SPECT image from the detected projection data using some sort of reconstruction process or algorithm. Standard reconstruction processes exist for parallel hole type collimators.
Collimators used in nuclear medicine can be parallel hole, converging (e.g., cone-beam) or diverging (e.g., fan-beam), or arbitrary hole. The geometries of different collimators give their outputs different characteristics. As a result, methods of constructing a SPECT image are typically customized for the type of collimator used during detection/collection of the image data. If data is collected with one type of collimator, but the reconstruction tool for constructing the image is for a different, second collimator, the data must be "rebinned" from spatial coordinates corresponding to the first collimator to spatial coordinates corresponding to the second collimator.
Rebinning methods exist. However, current rebinning methods do not account accurately for the effective 3D-beam angle of collimator holes and the effect of the Point Spread Function (PSF), which provides a measure of the amount of blurring of a single point due to non-ideal optics, as a function of the position of the hole on the collimator, i.e., PSF is not stationary for converging or diverging collimators. Effective angle resolution can be modeled as a Gaussian with the full-width half-maximum (FWHM) as:FWHM αHD/T (R+T);wherein HD is the hole diameter for the holes of the collimator, T is the thickness of the collimator, and R is the distance from the collimator face to the rotation center of the imaging device.
The PSF in collimator coordinates (x,y) for a point source at distance R for a parallel hole collimator is thus, stationary. That is, PSF=constant  (x,y) when R=constant. In the case of a converging or diverging collimator (e.g., fan-beam, cone-beam, etc.) the hole length L≠T, unlike the case as the parallel hole collimator. See FIG. 1. The hole (102) length L of a fan beam collimator can be calculated by: L=T/(sin α). Thus, the FWHM becomes a function of the angle α of the fan beams (i.e., angle of the holes in relation to the surface of the collimator). As a result, the point spread function, PSFfanbeam(x) α Gaussian (FWHMF (x)). And,
                    FWHM        F                          (        x        )                  α              HD                        T          /          sin                                                                    α                                (            x            )                                          (              R        +                              T            /            sin                                                                                α                                      (              x              )                                          )        ,which significantly impacts the resolution. Similarly, with some collimators, the hole diameter is not constant for all holes and the point spread function would change accordingly.
Depending on the collimator design, resolution and sensitivity may or may not be stationary. That is, in general, PSF ({right arrow over (r)}), where {right arrow over (r)} is the location of the detection (e.g., conebeam or other 3-D-conversion collimator). Thus, a simple rebinning and subsequent use of 3D-modelling with iterative method (e.g., OSEM-3D) will not be accurate.
Therefore, there is a need for new and improved systems and methods for the rebinning of projection data using different collimators.

Re-binning method for nuclear medicine imaging devices


Vehicle navigation control systems in autonomous driving rely on accurate predictions of objects within the vicinity of the vehicle to appropriately control the vehicle safely through its surrounding environment. Accordingly this disclosure provides methods and devices which implement mechanisms for obtaining contextual variables of the vehicle's environment for use in determining the accuracy of predictions of objects within the vehicle's environment.

Autonomous driving utilizes reliable driving control and safety systems that process data acquired at a vehicle to implement a driving policy. Data may be acquired at the vehicle using one or more types of data acquisition devices and/or data may be received from an external source. Data may include data about the vehicle and/or the vehicle's environment among other things. The vehicle may be configured to implement a specific driving policy based on the data such as altering its movements and/or modifying its positioning with respect to other external elements. Additionally, the autonomous vehicles may be configured to communicate with other devices, such as other vehicles, network infrastructure elements, other wireless devices, etc., to assist in the vehicle's movement, provide faster information processing, and, generally speaking, communicate information with external elements.

Devices and methods for accurately identifying objects in a vehicle's environment


A method for integrated representation of the parameters of an adaptive cruise control device includes the steps of: (a) alphanumerically representing a set, desired speed on a pictorial horizon of the display device; (b) pictographically representing a motor vehicle if a distance sensor group has detected a motor vehicle driving ahead; (c) alphanumerically representing a detected speed of the motor vehicle within the pictographic representation and in accordance with the representing step (b) if the detected speed is less than the set, desired speed; and (d) symbolically representing a traffic lane, a dynamic bar being displayed in the traffic lane, a length of the dynamic bar symbolizing the position relative to the motor vehicle.

The present invention relates to a method for integrated display of the parameters of an adaptive cruise control device.
Adaptive cruise control devices generally include a distance sensor group, an evaluation unit, an input and output unit, and a control device. In such devices, a desired speed can be set via the input unit, the desired speed being set and retained by the control device, if the traffic so permits. Therefore, a constant traveling speed can be set very easily by use of such a cruise control system. However, the traffic density does not always allow the set, desired speed to be maintained. If there is traffic driving ahead, an adaptive cruise control device helps to automatically maintain a certain safe distance. This legally stipulated safety or trailing distance is a function of the speed, so that a speed-dependent trailing time is also frequently used. To that end, the distance of a motor vehicle driving ahead is determined from the propagation delay of emitted signals, by use of the distance sensor group. Then, the speed can be determined by either a differential measurement or directly from the Doppler shift. Since not every motor vehicle driver wants to drive with the same trailing distance, newer adaptive cruise control devices allow a trailing distance to be set inside a certain range. For the information of the motor vehicle driver, all of these set parameters and detected parameters must now be represented on an output unit designed as a display.
For example, such a display for representing various parameters is described, for example, in German Published Patent Application No. 195 39 799, where a detected motor vehicle is represented in the form of a pictograph. The size of the pictograph becomes larger with decreasing distance in order to visually emphasize the approach. The set, desired speed, the actual speed, and the speed of the detected motor vehicle are represented in an integrated bar chart by a graphical display. A disadvantage of this type of display of parameters is that a certain degree of abstraction is required, which makes it more difficult for the driver to obtain a quick overview of the current control situation.
Therefore, the present invention is based on the engineering problem of providing a method for the integrated display of the parameters of an adaptive cruise control device, by which the parameters can be displayed so that the parameters may be determined quickly and easily by the motor vehicle driver, based on the stress resulting from normal driving.
According to the present invention, the set, desired speed is initially represented alphanumerically on the pictorial horizon of the display. In addition, a detected motor vehicle driving ahead is represented in the form of a pictograph. The speed of the motor vehicle is alphanumerically displayed in its pictographic representation, in case this is less than the set, desired speed. The traffic lane, in which the vehicle in question and the vehicle driving ahead are located, is also represented symbolically. A dynamic bar, the length of which symbolizes the position relative to the control target, is disposed inside this lane. This results in an integrated display of all parameters, which graphically symbolizes the control correlations from the perspective of the driver. Furthermore, the dynamic bar disposed inside the traffic lane allows a quick tendency estimation, from which the control interrelationships can be determined quickly and easily, so that critical situations can be recognized sooner and so that one can appropriately react early.

Method for integrated representation of the parameters of a distance control device


An alternator for a vehicle includes a fan for supplying cooling air along an inner circumference of coil-end groups disposed opposite ends of a stator in an axial direction. Each of the coil-end groups is composed of a plurality inner coil-end portions disposed at an inner circumference of the coil-end groups to extend from an end of the stator core and outer coil-end portions disposed at an outer circumference of the coil-end groups to extend from an end of the stator core. The inner coil-end portion extends in a direction between the axial direction and rotating direction of the rotor.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an alternator driven by an engine which is mounted in a vehicle, a truck or a boat.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disclosed in JP-A-56-98358, a rotor having a mixed flow fan on one end thereof for sending cooling air in the axial direction to cool the inner periphery of a stator and the rotor.
WO92/06527 discloses a stator winding of an alternator for a vehicle. The stator winding is composed of a plurality of conductor segments, each of which can be disposed more regular than a stator winding composed of a continuously wound wire.
Although the mixed flow fan of the structure disclosed in JP-A-56-98358 provides axially flowing air, the stator winding composed of the continuously wound wire has irregularly wavy surfaces which obstructs the air flow. Therefore, effective cooling can not be attained.
According to WO92/06527, although coil ends are arranged to be regular, the coil ends are not arranged to be suitable for axial flow of the cooling air. Therefore, the air flow along surfaces thereof is obstructed.

Stator winding arrangement of alternator for vehicle


A light axis adjusting apparatus for a vehicle headlamp has an inclination sensor which receives at least two ultrasonic signals transmitted toward a road surface in a vehicle width direction, and detects the inclined state of a vehicle relative to the road surface based on a receiving time difference between the respective ultrasonic signals. Processings are performed such that the inclination angle Δα of the vehicle is detected based on the results of detection of the inclination sensor; an actuator is driven based on the inclination angle Δα to correct the inclination angle of the headlamp; and the abnormality of the inclination sensor is detected based on the state of reception of the ultrasonic signals. Thus, the inclined state of the vehicle is detected constantly with high accuracy, and the light axis of the headlamp can be adjusted appropriately.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a light axis adjusting apparatus for adjusting the light axis of a headlamp according to the inclined state of a vehicle. This invention is preferred, particularly when applied to a truck having a cab and a cargo bed provided on a frame.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, high intensity lamps have been adopted from the viewpoint of safety. High intensity lamps contribute greatly to safety, but are highly likely to be dazzling to other vehicles. Thus, studies have been conducted on various technologies for adjusting the light axis of a headlamp according to the inclined status of a vehicle so as not to dazzle the driver of an oncoming vehicle.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1998-166933, hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1, proposes such a light axis adjusting apparatus for adjusting the light axis of a headlamp according to the inclined status of a vehicle.
"A vehicle headlamp light axis direction automatic adjusting apparatus" described in Patent Document 1 calculates a pitch angle in a longitudinal direction of a vehicle based on signals from height sensors disposed on front and rear wheels of the vehicle; and performs filtering of the pitch angle in a driving state control mode set based on a vehicle speed and acceleration to change the response of adjustment of the light axis direction of headlamps so as not to dazzle an oncoming vehicle.
In the above apparatus of Patent Document 1, a pair of height sensors (front and rear ones) for measuring the amounts of change in the front and rear vehicle heights are used to detect the inclination of the vehicle. When this conventional apparatus is applied to a truck or the like having a cab and a cargo bed provided on a frame, the amounts of displacement between the front or rear axle and the frame are detected, and the inclined status of the cab is determined by the difference between the front and rear displacement amounts. Based on this determination, the light axis of the headlamp is adjusted.
In the truck having the cargo bed provided on the frame, however, the frame is deflected under a load of a cargo, thus making it difficult to determine the inclined status accurately. That is, depending on the position of the cargo, the vertical strokes between the front and rear axles and the frame may be nearly the same, although the frame is deflected and a front end portion of the frame (a portion on the cab side) is inclined upwards. In this case, the light axis of the headlamp needs to be adjusted so as to be directed downward. However, it may be determined that there is no inclined state, and this may make it impossible to adjust the light axis of the headlamp.
Various light axis adjusting apparatuses have also been proposed in which ultrasonic sensors are mounted at the front and rear of the vehicle instead of the height sensors, and the inclination of the vehicle is determined based on the difference in output between these front and rear ultrasonic sensors. However, the ultrasonic sensor is mounted, while exposed to the outside, at a lower portion of the vehicle. Thus, a stain such as dust or mud is liable to deposit on a signal transmitting portion or a signal receiving portion of the ultrasonic sensor. This stain may make high accuracy detection of the vehicle height impossible.

Light axis adjusting apparatus for vehicle headlamp

Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation


An artificial micro-insemination device for animals is disclosed. The device has an elastic insemination sheath amassed in compressed state between the nozzle passage and the forward portion of center orifice of catheter tube, where the rear end of the elastic insemination sheath is secured to the front part of nozzle, characterized in which the catheter tube and nozzle are inserted into the uterus of animal with the nozzle positioned posterior to the first cervical ring, and by the pressure of semen dispenser squeezing in semen from the rear end of catheter tube, the extension member of the soft elastic insemination sheath instantaneously extend outward from the front part of nozzle and extends freely along the cervical tract to reach uterus, where coupled with uterine contraction, semen fluid squeezed into the extension member of insemination sheath is expelled into the uterus or the two ducts to uterine horns via the prearranged slits on the front part of extension member. Such design not only reduces the backflow of semen, it also offers the economic benefit of using minimal semen and improves the efficiency of artificial insemination.

1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an artificial insemination device for animals, more particularly, a simple device that is easy and convenient to use and allows animal semen to reach the two ducts to uterine horns or the uterus swiftly and smoothly, thereby improving the success rate of artificial insemination and effectively saving the amount of semen needed. The invention herein requires minimal amounts of insemination semen and offers economic benefit. It also renders artificial insemination safer, more hygienic, and more humane.
2) Description of the Prior Art
The assembly and operation of conventional artificial insemination device for animals as shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, typically comprises a plastic catheter tube 10 of certain hardness and a nozzle 20 made of softer material installed protrusively on the front end of catheter tube 10. When artificial insemination is carried out, the catheter tube 10 and nozzle 20 are inserted along the vagina 11 of female animal body 1 until the nozzle 20 at the front penetrates into cervical tract 12. Subsequently, the insertion tube 31 of the semen dispenser (bag or syringe) 30 containing the animal semen is inserted into the rear end of catheter tube 10, and as the operator continuously squeezes the semen dispenser (bag or syringe) 30, the semen contained therein is ejected into the cervical tract 12 through the nozzle 20 of catheter tube 10, where the uterus 13 contracts to draw in semen from cervical tract 12. Although the configuration and operation of such artificial insemination device achieve the purpose of artificial insemination in animals effectively, there are some drawbacks:
1. After the catheter tube 10 penetrates the vagina 11 of female animal body 1, the nozzle 20 at the front is pushed approximately to the position of first cervical ring 121 of cervical tract 12, but there remains considerable distance between the first cervical ring 121 and the uterus. Although the contraction of uterus 13 could draw in the semen from cervical tract 12, a large amount of semen ejected from the nozzle 20 initially accumulates at the position of first cervical ring 121 and cannot instantly flow into the uterus 13. What happens most frequently is that the semen accumulated at the first cervical ring 121 often backflows outside the vaginal orifice 111. As such, not only semen is wasted, the amount of semen that flows into the uterus 13 is proportionately lessened, hence decreasing the probability of successful insemination.
2. In response to the problem of semen backflow, operators commonly dilute the semen fluid many folds (typically 5 cc is diluted into 50-120 cc) and enlarge the inner diameter of catheter tube to accommodate and provide more semen fluid for insemination. But the massive dilution of semen fluid apparently reduces the rate of fertilization and the number of fetus, while using more semen leads to waste directly.
3. As described above, the semen in catheter tube 10 is directly released from the nozzle 20, and when nozzle 20 penetrates the cervical tract 12 from outside the female animal body 1, the accidental admittance of contaminants from outside the body or the vagina 11 is difficult to avoid as the semen flows into the uterus 13. As such, the risk of bacteria infection and inflammation of the vagina, cervical tract, and even the uterus of the animal during artificial insemination is high and, at the same time, the safety of fetus carried in the uterus 13 is jeopardized.
4. To improve the success rate and safety of artificial insemination, the operation of artificial insemination requires professional personnel (such as veterinarians or specialized technical personnel) and, as such, to big animal farms (such as pig farmers), it incurs heavy economic burden and demands considerable professional manpower.
5. After the operator utilizes the catheter tube 10 and nozzle 20 to penetrate the vagina 11 and cervical tract 12 of female animal body 1, he has to use one hand to hold the rear end of catheter tube 10 and the other hand to grip and squeeze the semen dispenser 30, which is apparently more troublesome, inconvenient, cumbersome, and time consuming in operation.
To render animal artificial insemination process more efficient and humane, some operators would use accessory devices. As shown in FIG. 3, such devices include an AI Buddy 40, an elastic saddle-like apparatus resembling the two front legs of an animal, wherein a connector 50 with open posterior is installed at the rear end of catheter tube 10, with a positioning strap 41 disposed between the AI Buddy 40 and the connector 50; as such, during the artificial insemination procedure, the operator straddles the AI Buddy 40 over the back of the female animal 1 such that the female animal feels that a male animal has mounted with its two front legs, a guide bush 60 is then placed at the vaginal orifice 111 of female animal body 1 and after the catheter tube 10 and nozzle 20 penetrate the vagina 11 and reaches the cervical tract 12 through the guide bush 60, the rear end of catheter tube 10 is flexed upward and directly secured by the positioning strap 41 connected to the AI Buddy 40; following the ingress of a semen dispenser 30 insertion tube 31 into the connector 50, the operator only has to squeeze the semen dispenser 30. In such approaches, the operator needs to use both hands at the same time, one for grasping the catheter tube 10 and one for squeezing the semen dispenser 30, a procedure that is troublesome and time consuming, but nevertheless an effective improvement. However, existent shortcomings that have not been improved include semen backflow that wastes semen, which is uneconomical and lowers insemination success rate; the easy inflow of contaminants from the outside of the female animal body into the vagina, cervical tract, and uterus that endanger the health of the female animal and fetus carried in the uterus; and the requiring of specialized personnel for operation, which is uneconomical and involves additional manpower.
To increase the success rate of artificial insemination, an improved artificial insemination device for animals as shown in FIG. 4 and FIG. 5 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,848) has been disclosed, which features a balloon 16 attached to nozzle 20 of catheter tube 10. The balloon 16 is folded or tucked completely within the forward end of passage of nozzle 20 with a plurality of perforations 29 formed within the periphery of balloon. When semen dispenser is inserted into nozzle 20 of catheter tube 10, the balloon 16 is inflated by the semen forced therein, and the semen is subsequently expelled through the perforations 29 due to the uterine contractions acting upon the balloon 16 at cervical tract. Undeniably, the device just mentioned is an improvement over conventional artificial insemination devices that have the drawbacks of massive backflow of semen and easily bringing contaminants from outside of female animal body into the vagina, cervical tract and even uterus, hence endangering the health of animal and fetus. But given that after nozzle 20 of catheter tube 10 is extended inward to the position of first cervical ring of cervical tract, the balloon 16 in inflated shape that is exposed under the force of semen merely reaches the forward portion of passage of nozzle 20, still around the first cervical ring. Under the circumstance that there remains considerable distance between the inflated balloon 16 that carries semen fluid and the uterus, the semen expelled under the action of uterine contraction is unable to reach uterus swiftly and efficiently and some would backflow, resulting in waste. To make sure more semen enters uterus, the inner diameter of catheter tube 10 has to be made larger to accommodate more semen, which does not improve the uneconomical use of semen seen in conventional artificial insemination devices.
Referring to FIG. 6 and FIG. 7, another artificial insemination apparatus for animals is disclosed (U.S. Pat. No. 6,526,917), wherein the front end opening 421 of catheter tube 420 is inserted into a sheath-like membrane 410 and the leading edge 412 of membrane 410 is snapped into a positioning ring 422 of catheter tube 420. Subsequently, nozzle 440 is inserted into the front end of catheter tube 420 to immobilize membrane 410. After nozzle 440 is inserted into the front end of catheter tube 420, the various components including the member 410 sandwiched between nozzle 440 and the catheter tube 420 can be further secured to each other by being sonically welded or heat staked. The object of such artificial insemination assembly is to cause the tip 411 of sheath-like membrane 410 to begin unfolding in an inside-out manner not unlike removing one's sock by pulling from the open end when semen is squeezed into the rear end of catheter tube 420 and enters the uterus along the cervical tract where semen is ejected from the opening of tip 411 to enhance the efficiency of insemination, prevent the entry of contaminants into the uterus, and prevent the backflow of semen. Such artificial insemination apparatus is more effective in comparison with prior art. But it still has some drawbacks in actual implementation:
1. Given that membrane 410 is inserted from the opening of catheter tube 420 and secured to nozzle 440 via a leading edge 412, the tip 411 of membrane, when squeezed inside-out under the pressure of semen, must pass through the pathway B (FIG. 6) of nozzle 440 before entering the cervical tract of animal. Thus in order for membrane 410 to enter the uterus of animal, it must have certain length. As we know, the longer the membrane, greater squeeze force to expose it outside the nozzle is required, rendering the whole operation more troublesome. In particular when the semen dispenser is in bag shape, the force generated from squeeze is not as much as that of bottle or syringe, which construes a limitation in implementation.
2. Given that the leading edge 412 of membrane 410 is snapped into the positioning ring 422 of catheter tube 420, membrane 410 is tightly attached to the periphery of tube 420 under certain tension, and subsequently nozzle 440 is tightly conjoined to the periphery of membrane 410. What happens most frequently is that when the membrane 410 under tension is pushed by the exertion of nozzle 440, perforation tends to occur around the edge of front end of catheter tube 420 (shown as C in FIG. 6). In such event, when semen is squeezed into catheter tube 420, the perforation would cause air leakage, which keeps membrane 410 from being squeezed out quickly and smoothly, thereby resulting in poor execution or even the failure of artificial insemination.
3. As perforation C on membrane 410 is totally covered by nozzle 440, the quality of the apparatus becomes uncertain since quality control inspection is difficult to carry out. Similarly the performance of the apparatus also becomes questionable.
4. Given that membrane 410 is inserted into catheter tube 420 from its opening 421, the inner diameter of catheter tube 420 (i.e. the hollow space 424) must be bigger. But bigger tube directly increases the consumption of semen, the same as in prior art. Such apparatus apparently does not offer the economic benefit of saving the usage of semen.
5. To prevent trauma to the animal during artificial insemination, the nozzle is usually made of elastomeric material. If the force used is improper or the animal does not stay still during artificial insemination, the front part of nozzle is prone to deformation or bend which might block the semen pathway. Under the circumstances, it is likely that the membrane 410 disposed inside catheter tube 420 will not extend under pressure to achieve artificial insemination.

Artificial insemination device in animals


An end-to-end nestable shopping cart having a frame supported on casters with a basket having an open top end supported elevated by the frame. The basket has a bottom wall, opposed side walls tapering inwardly from a rear end to a front end, a front wall, and a rear gate hinged along a top edge thereof and having leg holes therein. A handlebar is disposed rearwardly of the rear gate to displace the shopping cart on the casters. A babyseat compartment is defined in the basket between the rear gate and a hinged backrest disposed in the basket and spaced from the rear gate. The backrest has a hinged connection at the basket bottom wall for hinged displacement of the backrest forwardly over the bottom wall. Arresting means is provided to maintain the backrest upright above the bottom wall. The rear gate has engagement means to displace the backrest when in the upright position to a forward collapsed position over the bottom wall when another cart is nested through the rear gate.

Currently, over-the-counter discharge shopping carts have been constructed with a portion of the shopping basket being hingeable vertically on its support frame so as to store the shopping carts nested closer to one another as they could not be nested end to end. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,423,882 and 3,815,932 are examples of such shopping cart design. A disadvantage of such hinged baskets is that in most instances the person using the shopping cart does not take the time to hinge the baskets vertically when returning the cart to the nesting bay. When the basket is not hinged upwardly, the carts take a lot of space in the storage bay. Consequently, the carts are strewn in various areas of department stores, grocery stores, etc. There are many disadvantages arising from this problem. Also, many users do not know how to store the carts, and the fact that the basket is hinged upwardly can be hazardous, particularly to children who have a tendency to play with shopping carts. The fact that the basket is hinged to the frame also necessitates the construction of a separate babyseat compartment in the back portion of the hinged basket. This is more expensive to fabricate. Still further, the fact that the basket is secured to hinges makes it susceptible to more frequent damage thereby necessitating more repair.
In an attempt to resolve the above disadvantages of hinged basket, a nestable shopping cart for over-the-counter discharge was designed as exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,645,554 issued Feb. 29, 1972. However, because of the problem of maintaining the handlebar at a convenient level, due to the proposed design, it was necessary to have the handle assembly pivot to lift up during nesting of carts. Further, in order to provide a babyseat compartment, a complex design evolved wherein the rear gate is hingedly connected to a seating frame which itself is also hingedly connected to a backrest. When a cart is nested through the rear gate, the seating frame and backrest folded on one another and onto the rear gate and upwardly on top of the nesting cart. At the same time the handlebar pivoted upwardly to permit entry of the nesting cart through the rear gate. The complexity of this arrangement provides for various malfunctions and break-down making the carts inoperative, and the construction and repair of such is expensive.

End-to-end nestable over-the-counter discharge shopping cart


A reactor for contacting a fluid with a granular solid, the reactor including: a reactor housing including a reaction zone in which the fluid and the granular solid are contacted together; a granular solids inlet adapted to deliver a bed of granular solids into the reaction zone wherein the height and/or width dimension of the bed of the granular solids is substantially less than the length of the bed; a plurality of fluid inlets for delivering the fluid into the reaction zone, whereby the delivery of the fluid into the reaction zone at least partially fluidises the bed of granular solids; a granular solids outlet for receiving the bed of granular solids after having passed through the reaction zone; and, a fluid outlet for receiving the fluid, and any entrained particles, after the fluid has passed through the reaction zone.

The term "fluidised bed" is used to describe reactors with reaction zones where a fluid is passed through a bed of granular particles such that the granular particles move to some degree. The degree of solids movement leads to various categories of fluidised bed reactors including:                incipient (solids rolling but with little vertical or lateral movement)        bubbling or partial fluidised or slugging fluidised        fully fluidised
Fluidised beds are typically used to transfer heat or mass between a fluid process stream and a solid process stream. For such applications, fluidised beds are very effective, however they are typically an expensive option due to the large cost of the equipment involved such as the requirement of large fans, complicated ducting underneath the bed, and complexity in design.
Fluidised beds are used for various applications including gas scrubbing, drying of solids, pyrolysis, gasification, calcining, catalytic reactions, catalysis cleaning and/or combustion of solids. Processes in which solids are contacted with a hot gas, such as drying, often result in decrepitation of the solids where they crack and break into smaller particles. Such decrepitation of the solids results in an excessive amount of fine particles being produced which are unable to be used and form a waste product.
Accordingly, the present invention seeks to provide a reactor for contacting a fluid with a solid that is relatively inexpensive compared to typical fluidised bed reactors whilst maintaining rates of heat and/or mass transfer. The present invention also seeks to provide a reactor for contacting a fluid with a solid that reduces any decrepitation of the solid being contacted with the fluid.


An apparatus, method and computer-readable storage medium are provided for calculating an estimated throughput requirement of a network, such as to facilitate selecting the minimum bandwidth, maximum bandwidth or some other appropriate bandwidth for providing network services to a customer accessing that network. In this regard, a method of calculating a throughput requirement of a network includes receiving a bandwidth requirement. The method also includes calculating a data link-layer frame rate requirement based on the bandwidth requirement and a frame size, where the calculated frame rate requirement is limited by a line rate for transmission of data packets across a core network. In addition, the method includes calculating a data link-layer throughput requirement based on the calculated frame rate requirement and the frame size.

A commercial telecommunications network operated by a service provider supports voice and data communications between customer locations and includes an access network and a core network. Generally, customer devices communicatively couple to the access network, which in turn connects to the core network. The access network includes what many people refer to as "the last mile," that is, the connectivity from a customer location, such as an office building, to a point where a service provider has significant facilities, such as a metro hub or a "service edge" at the periphery of the core network. In contrast to the access network, the core network usually provides transport of large aggregate flows over long distances and handles the selective routing of each customer's voice and data traffic to other locations served by the network. The access network generally comprises a series of switches, aggregators, multiplexers, demultiplexers, routers, hubs, and the like which collectively serve to provide connectivity between customers' equipment and the core network.
Customer sites in the vicinity of a service provider's edge, or an intermediate hub that provides connection to the service edge, must be connected to the service edge via some form of access circuit. Traditionally, it has been more practical for a core network service provider to operate a few strategically placed facilities to serve a large number of customers in a metropolitan area rather than to extend the service provider's core network to every physical location where customers may reside. Providing access services between a customer's location and a metro hub or a service edge may involve installing electrical or optical cables between the service provider and the customer site. In some cases, the service provider installs and owns this access link connected directly to the customer location. More often, however, the existing facilities of a local telephone carrier are leased to provide this connectivity. The well-established local telephone facilities provide at least twisted-pair subscriber loop connectivity to virtually every potential customer location in a metropolitan area. In the case of larger business locations and multi-tenant commercial sites, local telephone facilities typically comprise a large quantity of telephone wires or broadband access to the sites.
The services required by customers, residential or business, vary greatly in the type of access services, bandwidth, quality of service (QoS), type of legacy equipment, and the like. Types of services typically include frame relay services, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) services, broadband services, point-to-point private line services, voice services, and the like. Accordingly, the access service provider must be prepared to provide many types of services to customers of various sizes and needs.
Furthermore, the access service provider must be capable of meeting the customers' current and future needs in terms of bandwidth, throughput, QoS, and the like. For example, a given customer may start with relatively small bandwidth needs yet expand to needing high-bandwidth connections such as a SONET OC-3 or OC-12 connection. Additionally, customers may require ATM services and frame relay services to support legacy systems while implementing newer applications and communications that are based on Ethernet.
Typically, the access service provider provisions and handles each of these services separately and does not attempt to aggregate the traffic from various types of services. Treating the traffic separately in this manner, however, can be expensive. Typically, the access network provides transport, aggregation, grooming, and switching for each of these types of services independently, which in turn requires the access service provider to provision each of these services separately. Generally, each type of service utilizes different interface and framing standards, and in particular, each type of service typically utilizes a different set of protocols. As a result, current access network elements must be equipped to interface with and operate upon flows for each type of service the elements are expected to handle. Each network element in an access network presently must deal with the particular format, addressing and protocol aspects of each type of access communication service it supports. This makes for costly and complex network elements and interferes with having flexibility to accommodate rapid shifts in resources allocated to different flows or different service types and to accommodate adoption of new service types.
Although techniques have been developed for providing services to customers in a cost effective manner that allows the service provider to provide various types of services to one or more customers, it is generally desirable to improve upon existing techniques.

Apparatus, method and computer-readable storage medium for calculating throughput requirements of a network


A hydrothermal synthesis method of making a delaminated titanate is disclosed. The delaminated titanate has a unique structure or morphology. The delaminated titanate is first formed by forming at a low temperature a layered sodium nonatitanate (SNT), which may be referred to as layered sodium titanate. The layered SNT has a unique morphology. The layered SNT is then synthesized into a delaminated titanate having a unique morphology.

Layered titanates have numerous applications including photocatalysis, coatings, paint additives, sorbents and ion-exchangers. Solid state production methods for forming layered titanates have been disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent No. 2656778. According to these production methods, a layered titanate can be synthesized by calcinating a mixture containing carbonates, nitrates or oxides of the desired metal with titanium dioxide.
Another method of forming a layered titanic acid is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,455,826, granted Nov. 25, 2008. According to this disclosure, a solid state synthesis method is used to form a layered titanate. The process discloses 86% acidification, and has been found to require four to five twenty-four hour acidification steps to obtain 100% acidification.
The above disclosed processes require expensive starting materials and numerous processing steps.
What is needed is a method for forming a delaminated titanate that is less expensive, more effective, and requires fewer processing steps. What is further needed is a produced delaminated titanate that has higher surface area and therefore higher reactivity that would benefit many applications including, but not limited to photocatalysis and ion-exchange.

Delaminated sodium nonatitanate and a method for producing delaminated sodium nonatitanate