A polishing pad surface designed for chemical mechanical polishing of substrates is described. The polishing pad includes a first area of the surface having formed thereon a first set of grooves and a second area of the surface having formed thereon a second set of grooves, wherein the first set of grooves have a larger cross-sectional area than the second set of grooves.

The present invention relates to polishing pads used for chemical-mechanical polishing of substrates. More particularly, the present invention relates to polishing pads having modified groove dimensions to produce a more uniformly polished substrate surface.
Chemical mechanical polishing (sometimes referred to as "CMP") typically involves mounting a substrate faced down on a holder and rotating the substrate face against a polishing pad mounted on a platen, which in turn is rotating or is in orbital state. A slurry containing a chemical component that chemically interacts with the facing substrate layer and an abrasive component that physically removes that layer is flowed between the substrate and the polishing pad or on the pad near the substrate. In semiconductor wafer fabrication, this technique is commonly applied to planarize various wafer layers such as dielectric layers, metallization layers, etc.
FIG. 1A shows a front view of a polishing pad 10, e.g., IC 1000 available from Rodel of Newark, Del., that is employed in modem CMP systems, such as the AvantGaard 676 available from Integrated Processing Equipment Corporation (IPEC) of Phoenix, Ariz. A surface of polishing pad 10 includes a plurality of macrogrooves 12, microgrooves 14 and slurry injection holes 16. Macrogrooves 12 are shown in an X-Y configuration, i.e. vertical and horizontal macrogrooves intersect at various points to form a "grid", microgrooves 14 are oriented substantially diagonally relative to macrogrooves 12 and slurry injection holes 16 are positioned at various intersections of the vertical and horizontal macrogrooves 12. FIG. 1C shows a cross-sectional view of a macrogroove 12 of FIG. 1A, which macrogroove is shaped like a square channel with sharp comers having a width (labeled "w") and a depth (labeled "d").
Those skilled in the art will recognize that microgrooves 14 are different from the grooves formed during conditioning of the polishing pad. Microgrooves 14 are formed by a polishing pad manufacturer during the fabrication of the polishing pad. Furthermore, microgrooves 14 of FIG. 1A are not limited to any particular configuration and may be obtained by a polishing pad manufacturer in other configurations. By way of example, FIG. 1B shows a surface of a polishing pad 20, which is also available from Rodel and typically employed in a conventional CMP system such as the Avanti 472 also available from Integrated Processing Equipment Corporation. Polishing pad 20 includes microgrooves 22 that are arranged in a spiral configuration and facilitate slurry flow.
The macrogroove dimensions of width and depth are typically larger than those of microgrooves. By way of example, macrogrooves 12 in the X-Y configuration shown in FIG. 1A typically have a width and depth of about 1 mm and microgrooves 14 typically have a width and depth that is about 250 .mu.m. As another example, microgrooves 22 in the spiral configuration as shown in FIG. 1B typically have a width that is between about 100 .mu.m and about 400 .mu.m and a depth that is about 250 .mu.m.
During a typical CMP process on the polishing pad surface of FIGS. 1A, slurry is introduced on the polishing pad surface via slurry injection holes that are in communication with a slurry reservoir. The "channel" shaped macrogooves facilitate slurry flow or distribution throughout the polishing pad surface. The rotating action of a substrate on the polishing pad picks-up some slurry from the macrogrooves and spills it on the microgrooves. As a result, a portion of slurry is dispersed between the polishing pad and substrate interface. A film on the substrate surface is removed by chemical and mechanical interaction with the slurry dispersed above microgroove.
After polishing on the same polishing pad over a period of time, however, the polishing pad suffers from "pad glazing." Pad glazing results when the particles eroded from the substrate surface along with the abrasives in the slurry tend to glaze or accumulate over the polishing pad. In order to remove this glaze, the polishing pad undergoes conditioning (hereinafter referred to as "pad conditioning") by a conditioning sub-assembly either every time after a substrate has been polished or simultaneously during substrate CMP.
A conditioning sub-assembly incorporated into the AvantGaard 676, for example, includes a conditioning arm having a conditioning surface with abrasive particles. During pad conditioning the conditioning arm forcibly sweeps back and forth across the polishing pad like a "windshield wiper blade" and a pneumatic cylinder applies a downward force on the conditioning arm such that the abrasive particles of the conditioning surface engage the polishing pad to remove the glaze and roughen up the polishing by introducing grooves or perforations on it.
Unfortunately, during the normal course of the polishing pad life, typically some areas of the polishing pad begin to erode (also known in the art as "pad erosion") or wear out due to the repeated abrasive action by the abrasive particles of the conditioning surface during conditioning and the repeated mechanical action of the substrate during CMP. In these worn out areas, the "channel" shape of the macrogrooves or microgrooves degrades sufficiently so that the macrogrooves are no longer effective in transporting slurry on the polishing pad surface. By way of example, in the AvantGaard 676, a center area of the polishing pad is relatively more worn out, e.g., the channel shape of the macrogrooves degrades to a greater extent in this area, than other areas of the polishing pad because the substrate contacts the center area of the polishing pad most of the time during CMP. As a result, there is nonuniform slurry flow on the polishing pad surface and the substrate surface suffers from a non-uniform film removal rate, which lowers the yield of the polished substrates.
What is therefore needed is an improved polishing pad design for effective slurry transport to produce a uniformly polished substrate surface.

Controlling groove dimensions for enhanced slurry flow


The screen-printing machine (10) comprises:                a print station (12);        at least one support surface (40A, 40B) for supporting the objects away from the print station (12); and                    at least one transfer device (18, 20) for transferring an object, which transfer device comprises a manipulator arm (54) equipped with an end clamp (56), the arm (54) being hinged relative to the support surface (40A, 40B) about a pivot axis (Z1-Z1) and the clamp (56) being hinged relative to the arm (54) about a tilt axis. The pivot axis (Z1-Z1) of the arm (54) defines with the normal to the support surface (40A, 40B) a non-zero angle of inclination that is less than 45°. Application to printing flasks.

As is known per se, circularly symmetrical objects are printed in a screen-printing machine by turning the object about its own longitudinal axis and by concomitantly moving a screen in a plane tangential to the object, with ink being transferred through the screen by a squeegee being pressed against said screen, the screen being squeezed between the object and the squeegee.
Flat objects such as compact disks can also be printed by screen-printing. They are then held stationary under the screen which is also stationary, and the squeegee is moved over the length of the-screen to transfer the ink progressively to the flat object.
Such machines are used for repetitively printing identical objects.
Solutions have been proposed in order to automate putting the objects in place in the print station and removing them therefrom. In such machines, the objects to be printed are brought into the vicinity of the print station by a feed conveyor, and they are then transferred from the conveyor to the print station by a transfer device. In addition, a symmetrical other transfer device transfers the printed objects from the print station to a removal conveyor.
On the conveyors, the objects to be printed are generally disposed with an orientation different from the orientation of the objects in the print station.
More precisely, when the objects to be printed are flasks, they are placed vertically on the surface of the conveyor with their longitudinal axes disposed perpendicularly to the surface of the conveyor. Whereas, in the print station, the objects must be disposed with their longitudinal axes disposed generally horizontally, i.e. perpendicularly to the initial orientation direction of the objects on the conveyor.
Therefore, the transfer device interposed between the feed conveyor and the print station is suitable for moving the object all the way between the outlet end of the conveyor and the print station while also simultaneously turning the object over.
The opposite movement must be provided by the other transfer device in order to transfer the printed object from the print station to the removal conveyor.
Such loading and/or unloading handling devices are described, for example, in Documents FR-2 775 472 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,907,504.
In those documents, the transfer device comprises a manipulator arm equipped with an end clamp. The arm is hinged relative to the frame of the print station to pivot about an axis extending exactly perpendicularly to or parallel to the support surface for supporting the objects on the feed conveyor. The clamp is hinged relative to the arm so that the arm and the clamp are moved concomitantly.
With such a device, it is observed that, for objects whose bases are relatively wide, the periphery of the base hits the surface of the conveyor during the initial stage in which the object is moved towards the print station. Tilting the object by turning the clamp starts while the object is still in contact with the conveyor. Thus, the periphery of the base of the object exerts a pressure on the conveyor, thereby generating large forces in the transfer device and in the conveyor, reducing their lives.
Likewise, it is observed that such forces exist while the objects are being put in place in the print station. In addition, excessive forces are also encountered by the transfer device for removing the printed objects and transferring them to the removal conveyor.

Screen-printing machine with a device for transferring objects to be printed


The invention concerns the production of filter materials for the purification and disinfection of water, water solutions and other liquids, as well as for sterilizing filtration of injections and other solutions, for concentration of biomolecules in physiological liquids, concentration and extraction of viruses, preparation of apyrogenic water, in biocatalytic diaphragm reactors. The invention solves the problems of a new filter material production, characterized by high sorption properties, high retention efficiency of submicron electronegative particles, microorganisms, submicron non-polar particles and chemical contaminations, and, at the same time, characterized by low hydrodynamic resistance. A base of filter material is the nonwoven organic synthetic polymeric fabric, modified by the aluminum hydroxide particles, fixed to the surface of base fibers for improvement of its sorption properties and for making it positively charged. A method of filter material production comprises: applying the modifying composition onto the fibrous base in the form of organic nonwoven synthetic polymeric fabric, wherein said modifying composition comprises the particles of the aluminum-based material, hydrolysis thereof results to formation and fixation of the aluminum hydroxide particles to the base fibers. A method of fluid filtration is carried out using the filter material as a non-woven organic synthetic polymeric fabric, to the fibers of which the aluminum hydroxide particles are fixed.

The invention relates to the production of filter materials with high absorbing and filtering properties, especially relating to the production of filter materials based on synthetic polymeric fibers for fine purification and disinfecting of water, water solutions and other liquids, and it also can be used in medicine and microbiology for sterilizing filtration of injections and other solutions, for the concentration of biomolecules in physiological liquids, for the concentration and extraction of viruses, for apyrogenic water preparation, and in biocatalytic membrane reactors.
There are nonwoven materials made of thin polymeric fibers, prepared by the electrospinning method, the so-called Petryanov fabrics (filters), designed for gas and liquid filtration, bacterial gas purification [High-performance gas cleaning from aerosols with Petryanov filters/P. I. Basmanov, V. I. Kirichenko, Y. N. Filatov, Y. L. Yurov; ex. ed. V. I. Kirichenko. —Moscow: Science, 2003. -271 p.]
The properties of these materials are based on the adhesion of admixture particles in liquid and gas on the filter fibers at their collision. However, they are inefficient in water purification from pathogenic flora due to the weak adhesion of microorganisms to filter fibers in aqueous medium.
There is a method of adsorbent production [RU 2075345 C1, 1997], where ultrafine aluminum powder with specific surface area ranging from 5 to 20 m2/g, produced by electrical explosion of aluminum wire in argon medium, is treated with water at a temperature from 50 to 60° C. followed by heating at a temperature from 300 to 500° C. during 1 or 3 hours.
The adsorbent based on ultrafine aluminum oxide provides high sorption capacity relative to water-soluble mineral oils, phenols and heavy metals.
There is a method of adsorbents production [RU 2168357 C2, 2001] based on oxide materials, where ultrafine aluminum powder with specific surface area ranging from 5 to 20 m2/g, produced by electrical explosion of aluminum wire in argon, is treated with water at a temperature from 50 to 60° C., heated at a temperature from 200 to 300° C. during 1 or 3 hours, refluxed in saturated sodium bicarbonate solution during 0.5 or 1.5 hours followed by reheating at a temperature from 200 to 300° C.
This method improves the powder absorbability relative to phenols, heavy metals and halogens without capacity loss relative to the water-soluble mineral oils.
There is a method of fine purification of highly-contaminated water [RU 94003073 A, 1995]. The invention is meant for water purification for domestic needs mainly in emergency situations. The aim of the invention is to increase the efficiency of purification process of the highly-contaminated water from mineral oils and mineral contaminations. The gist: highly-contaminated water is sequentially passing through the layer of cellulose, activated by 5% admixture of oxidized atactic polypropylene, through the layer of active aluminum oxide, prepared in the process of ultrafine aluminum powder oxidation in water; with aluminum powder i.e., the product of aluminum wire electrical explosion.
An inorganic adsorbent, i.e., aluminum oxyhydroxide AlOOH (boehmite) with a pore size from 60 to 90 nm subjected to the hydrothermal pretreatment is used for water purification from enteroviruses [SU 1066942 A, 1982] with a particle size from 20 to 30 nm. This method allows achieving 100% purification at concentration of viruses in water ranging from 1.5 to 6.28 lg PFU50/ml and at pH medium being within the limits from 7.0 to 7.5.
The disadvantage of this method is the required prolonged contact (from 2 to 6 hours) of viruliferous water with an adsorbent.
Application of water purification method, described in [RU 94003073 A, 1995] and adsorbents [RU 2075345 C1, 1997, RU 2168357 C2, 2001] in the form of filter filling requires high pressures applied due to the high hydrodynamic resistance of adsorbent layer. At the same time, there is a carryover of adsorbents by the fluid flow through the filter barriers. Besides, all the methods provide the heating phase of the adsorbent at a temperature from 200 to 300° C. that makes the product more expensive.
There is a method of electropositive sorbent production [U.S. Pat. No. 6,838,005 B1, 2005], which comprises the mixing of nonspherical aluminum oxide particles or aluminum source, which then reacts with water solution thus generating the nonspherical aluminum oxide particles with the second solid component, i.e., particles of fibrous material. The filter material is mould of this composite using the "paper" technology.
There is a sorbent, which consists of nonspherical aluminum oxide particles and particles of fibrous material and includes a component with a surface negative charge and modifying composition, chosen from the row of magnesium oxide or magnesium hydroxide, silicon or their mixture [RU 2242276 C1, 2004]. The method of sorbent production comprises the mixing of nonspherical aluminum oxide particles with the fibrous material particles. Before mixing, the component with a surface negative charge is added to the fibrous material. After these three components being mixed, the modifying composition is added to the mixture. Besides, in the process of mixing of the first three components, the mixture activation is conducted by electric current or ultrasound. Then the filter material is mould of this composite using the "paper" technology.
The main disadvantage of the above-mentioned sorbents is the using of micron glass fiber [U.S. Pat. No. 6,838,005 B1, 2005] and cellulose [RU 2242276 C1, 2004] as a fiber base. Glass fiber can be harmful if its particles penetrate into the filtered liquid, and cellulose is a nutrient medium for bacteria and unwanted in filters of long-term usage. Besides, the formation of filter materials using the "paper making" technology restricts the range of materials, which can be used as the second solid component (fibrous base), because all the mixture components for this formation are used as a suspension of single small particles. When the fibers made of polymeric materials with a diameter, less than 2 μm are used, it is difficult to get a mechanically strong material using the "paper making" technology. At the same time, just these materials have the qualities, preferable at production of filter materials.
A considerable disadvantage of this sorbent production method [RU 2242276 C1, 2004] is the necessity of mixture activation by electric current or ultrasound that makes the sorbent production technology more expensive and complicated.
There is a method of filter element modification [RU 2135262 C1, 1999], which involves the workpiece impregnation of the filter element, formed of carbonic nonwoven fabric, referring to the synthetic polymeric materials, by the modifying composition. The modifying composition represents water-organic solution of the nanostructured silver particles. A filter element, produced by this method, allows filtering out microbiological admixtures from water.
As it is defined in the description, after the carbon fiber material being treated by silver solution, there are, at least, one hundred viable bacterial cells less left in the filtrate as compared with the used untreated material. This is due to the silver antibacterial properties, but at the same time, there are toxins penetrating into the filtrate, generated as a result of microorganisms' death. The impoverishment of bacterial cells by one hundred is insufficient, when there is a high concentration of microorganisms in the original liquid, e.g., 104 CFU/ml.
Besides, carbon fiber is a very expensive material.

Non-woven polymeric fabric including agglomerates of aluminum hydroxide nano-fibers for filtering water


Methods and systems for preventing unacceptable communication requests from being transmitted to a network-accessible service are disclosed. A domain name server for a local network including a network-accessible service returns an address for a network security system remote from the local network in response to a request for the address of the network-accessible service. The network security system processes communication requests directed to the network-accessible service to determine whether the communication request is a network intrusion attempt. If so, the network security system performs a network intrusion prevention technique, such as discarding the communication request, generating an alert or message or storing at least a portion of the communication request. Otherwise, the network security system forwards the communication request to the network-accessible service. A firewall on the local network may discard requests destined for the network-accessible service unless the source address equals a public address of the network security system.

Computer networks provide connectivity between computing devices on local networks and/or remote networks. A connection between two remote networks typically occurs through a communications network such as the Internet. Communications over the Internet pass through a series of communication links and routers/switches, many of which are located within third-party networks that are also interconnected with the Internet. Thus, communications between two remote networks across the Internet are typically "open" because neither the sender nor the receiver controls the path that the communications traffic travels from source to destination. Rather, the path is controlled by the various providers and devices located on the Internet itself.
The connectivity between remote networks can be used to allow a client host to utilize a network-accessible service provided by a remote server host. Common network-accessible services include but are not limited to Finger, Echo, SMTP, Telnet, SSH, FTP, DNS, HTTP and HTTPS as well as those services utilizing IP Protocol 50, ICMP, TCP/IP and UDP.
Because private networks are connected to an open system such as the Internet, security is of great concern when communicating with other private networks via network-accessible services. Often, network administrators install firewall devices, intrusion detection devices, intrusion prevention devices and/or other buffers on a local area network ("LAN") in order to screen and/or filter incoming and/or outgoing content from the local network. Alternatively, system administrators can install firewall, intrusion detection, or intrusion prevention software on a local host within a LAN in order to screen and/or filter incoming and/or outgoing content from the local host. This can require the network administrator and/or the system administrator to install complex and costly equipment and/or software in order to ensure that the local network and/or local host is protected.
Exemplary network security systems are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,831 to Albaugh et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,882 to Froutan et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 6,321,336 to Applegate et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,903 to Klaus; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,752 to Smaha et al. However, each of these network security systems requires the installation of costly and/or complex equipment and/or software.
What are needed are improved methods and systems for inhibiting intrusion attempts directed at network-accessible services.


A system and technique for mounting a radar to a vehicle provides a mounting that does not interfere with the aesthetic appearance of a vehicle, that does not interfere with the aerodynamic performance of the vehicle, and offers optimal radar transmission efficiency. The vehicle can be an automobile or any other vehicle to which a radar system is applied.

This invention relates generally to a system for mounting a radar system and more particularly to a system for mounting a radar system to a vehicle in a location behind a bumper section or other vehicle body part, for example, a lamp housing, a body panel, a license plate, or a side mirror housing.
As is known in the art, radar systems have been developed for various applications in association with automobiles and other vehicles. For example, radar systems have been proposed and built that detect the presence of objects in proximity to an automobile on which the radar is mounted.
The radar system is typically optimized in shape and materials for the transmission and reception of radar energy and is not well suited to match the appearance of the body of the automobile. Thus, when mounted on the outer surface of the body of a vehicle, such as an automobile for example, a radar system is generally not aesthetically appealing.
Furthermore, automobile manufacturers, with a desire to optimize fuel efficiency, provide automobile shapes that are generally aerodynamically efficient. The radar system is not typically aerodynamically efficient when mounted to the body of an automobile since the shape of the radar system is typically optimized for effective transmission and reception of radar energy and not generally optimized for low drag.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for mounting a radar system on a vehicle that allows the vehicle on which the radar system is mounted to maintain its aesthetically pleasing shape. It would also be desirable to provide a system for mounting a radar system on a vehicle which results in the mounted radar system introducing little or no additional aerodynamic drag on the vehicle and which still allows the radar system to efficiently transmit and receive of radar energy.
It has, therefore, been recognized that it would be desirable to place the radar system behind a bumper section or other existing feature of the automobile.
In accordance with the present invention, a mounting system for mounting a radar system to a vehicle includes a spacer section between the radar system and a surface of the vehicle structure. The spacer section provides transmission thickness and an angular transmission thickness associated with the vehicle structure that increases the transmission efficiency of the radar energy from the radar system through the vehicle structure. The transmission thickness, or alternatively the angular transmission thickness, are made to be one half wavelength or a multiple thereof.
The mounting system for radar is adaptable to an automobile or to any vehicle upon which a radar system is mounted.
With this particular arrangement, a radar mounting system is provided that does not detract from the aesthetic appearance of the vehicle, and that does not detract from the drag characteristics of the vehicle. The radar mounting system for vehicles still provides efficient transmission and reception of radar energy.

System and technique for mounting a radar system on a vehicle


Techniques for resource access authorization are described. In one or more implementations, an application identifier is used to control access to user resources by an application. A determination is made whether to allow the application to access the user resources by comparing an application identifier received from an authorization service with a system application identifier for the application obtained from a computing device on which the application is executing.

Today's computer user has access to a wide variety of applications, such as media services, web applications, social media applications, and so on. Many of these applications use some type of identification technique to ascertain a user's identity and gain access to user information, such as an online authentication and/or authorization service. A primary challenge in utilizing such techniques is enabling an application to be authorized to access user resources while ensuring that the user's identity is protected.


An apparatus and method for speech compression includes dividing the speech spectrum into a plurality of frames, assigning frame classifications to the plurality of frames, and determining the speech modeling parameters based on the assigned frame classification. The voiced part of the speech spectrum and the unvoiced part of the speech spectrum are synthesized separately using an Analysis by Synthesis allowing a correct correspondence between voiced and unvoiced parts of the reconstructed signal. Particularly, a frequency response of a special simulated signal based on the previous and current frames is used as an approximating function. The simulated signal is synthesized at the encoder side in the way it will be generated at the decoder side. Also, a better of two encoding methods is selected to encode the spectral magnitudes. A wavelet encoder and an inter-frame predictive encoder illustrate the invention""s efficient, yet accurate reconstruction of synthesized digital speech.

The present inventions relate to a communication system and more particularly to a speech compression method for a communication system.
Many speech compression systems are known. Generally, these systems may be divided into three types: time domain, frequency domain and hybrid codecs. However, in case of the low bit-rate coding, multi-band excitation (MBE) compression technique provides the best quality of the decoded speech.
The MBE vocoders encode the obtained speech signal by first dividing the input speech into constrained frames. These frames are transformed from the time domain to the frequency domain. Thereafter, a frequency spectrum of the framed and windowed signal is calculated, and an analysis of the frequency spectrum is performed. Speech model parameters such as a pitch value, a set of voiced/unvoiced decisions for the frequency bands, a set of spectral magnitudes and corresponding phase values are necessary for the speech synthesis in MBE vocoders. Usually, the phase values are not transmitted for low bit-rate coding.
There are numerous ways of spectrum approximation, all of which are based on an approximation of the frequency bands by some excitation function. The most traditional kind of an excitation function is a frequency response of the Hamming window. However, the Hamming window only obtains a good approximation of the original spectrum for stationary speech signals. For non-stationary speech signals, a predetermined kind of excitations function does not match well enough to the real shape of the spectrum for an accurate approximation. For example, a pitch frequency change during the analysis period may cause a widening of the peaks in the spectral magnitude envelope. Thus, the width of the peaks of the predetermined excitation function would no longer correspond to the width of the real peaks. Moreover, if the analyzed speech frame is a blend of two different processes, the spectrum would have a very complex shape, which is rather difficult to accurately approximate by means of a predetermined simple excitation function.
There are also many techniques for encoding the MBE parameters. Typically, a simple scalar quantization is used for encoding a pitch value and a band grouping method is used for encoding the voiced/unvoiced decisions. The most difficult task is the encoding of the spectral magnitudes, for which a Vector Quantization (VQ), a Linear Prediction and the like are used. Numerous high efficiency compression methods have been proposed based on VQ, one of which is a method of hierarchical structured codebook used for encoding spectral magnitudes.
Although the VQ technique allows an accurate quantizing in some problem area, it is generally effective for data close to those which has been included in the xe2x80x9clearning sequencesxe2x80x9d. Other effective methods for encoding spectral magnitudes are intra-frame and inter-frame linear prediction. The intra-frame method allows for an adequate encoding of spectral magnitudes, but its effectiveness is substantially deteriorated at low bit-rate coding. The inter-frame prediction method is also fairly good, but its usage is reasonable only for stationary speech signals.
The speech synthesis in the related art is carried out according to an accepted speech model. Generally, the two components of the MBE vocoders, the voiced and unvoiced parts of speech, are synthesized separately and combined later to produce a complete speech signal.
The unvoiced component of the speech is generated for the frequency bands, which are determined to be unvoiced. For each speech frame, a block of random noise is windowed and transformed to the frequency domain, wherein the regions of the spectrum corresponding to the voiced harmonics are set to zero. The remaining spectral components corresponding to the unvoiced parts of speech are normalized to the unvoiced harmonic magnitudes.
A different technique is used for generating the voiced component of the speech in the MBE approach. Since the voiced speech is modeled by its individual harmonics in the frequency domain, it can be implemented at the decoder as a bank of tuned oscillators. An oscillator is defined by its amplitude, frequency and phase, and is assigned to each harmonic in the voiced regions of a frame.
However, the variations in the estimated parameters of the adjacent frames may cause discontinuities at the edges of the frames, resulting in a significant degradation of speech quality. Thus, during the synthesis, both the current and previous frames"" parameters are interpolated to ensure a smooth transition at the frame boundaries, resulting in a continuous voiced speech at the frame boundaries.
Different implementations of interpolation schemes (for amplitude, frequency and phase) are possible. However, the interpolation schemes are generally only satisfactory under steady pitch. In case of sharp changing pitch, implementing processing rules do not lead to satisfactory results due to the traditional lacing of harmonics relating to the same number of frequency bands of the neighboring speech frames. In case of a pitch frequency change, a difference of frequencies of the laced harmonics appears and under conventional correspondence of harmonic bands, this difference is more significant for higher band numbers and for higher degree of pitch change. As a result, annoying artifacts in the decoded speech appear.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to solve at least the problems and disadvantages of the related art.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method, which improves the quality of the speech spectrum approximation, for both voiced and unvoiced bands.
Another object of the present invention is to improve the encoding efficiency of the spectral magnitude set, regardless of the bit-rate for encoding.
A further object of the present invention is to improve the quality of speech synthesis.
Additional advantages, objects, and features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned from practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained as particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
To achieve the objects and in accordance with the purposes of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, the speech spectrum approximation is performed on the spectrum divided into plural bands according to the pitch frequency of the speech frame. The pitch frequency of the speech signal is determined, the frequency bands are built, and a voiced/unvoiced discrimination of the frequency bands is performed. Thereafter, an Analysis by Synthesis method of the speech spectrum approximation is used for calculating the magnitudes.
A more precise evaluation of the harmonic magnitudes at the encoder side results in an increase of quality for the voiced part of the signal reconstruction at the decoder side. Also, a more precise calculation of magnitudes for the unvoiced bands of spectrum results in a quality increase for the noise part of the reconstructed signal. The usage of the Analysis by Synthesis method both for the voiced and unvoiced bands provides a correct correspondence between the voiced and unvoiced parts of the reconstructed signal.
Also, the present invention improves the encoding efficiency of the spectral magnitudes set. In case of the low bit-rate encoding, the problem is to represent the spectral magnitudes data by a fixed number of bits. The present invention with respect to the spectral magnitudes encoding is divided into two main tasks: to reduce an original quantity of spectral magnitudes to the fixed number and to encode the reduced set. The present method solves the first task effectively by usage of Wavelet Transform (WT). Also, applying an inter-frame prediction effectively solves the second task, if the speech signal is stationary.
However, at time intervals containing non-stationary signals, no prediction is rather effective. Applying the Wavelet Transform technique effectively solves the encoding task in this case. The increase of encoding efficiency allows either an improved quality of reconstructed speech signal under the same bit-rate or a reduced bit-rate required for the same quality level.
Furthermore, the present invention improves the quality of speech synthesis. The speech synthesis is carried out sequentially for every frame. As a fundamental frequency is a base of the whole band division of the spectrum to be approximated, a difference of frequencies of the laced harmonics appears in case of the pitch change. The present invention uses a frequency correspondence between the laced bands of current and previous frames. This provides a correct and reliable speech synthesis process in conditions of the pitch frequency changes and the pitch frequency jumps. Even obvious troubles (errors) of pitch determination do not lead to dramatic consequences as in conventional schemes.

Apparatus and method of speech coding and decoding using multiple frames


A high-side MOSFET gate protection shunt circuit is provided for protecting an output driving transistor (10). The output driving transistor (10) is operable to drive a load (18) on an output node (12). A sense resistor (26) is disposed between the supply voltage terminal and the output node (12). The gate of transistor (10) is driven by a current limited driver (20). In order to prevent the voltage across the gate oxide of transistor (10) from exceeding a predetermined voltage above which would be destructive to the transistor, a bypass transistor (32) is disposed between the output of the MOSFET driver (14) and the supply terminal (11). The gate of this transistor (32) is connected to the output node (12), such that the voltage on the gate of transistor (10) is limited to one threshold voltage below the voltage on the output node (12).

MOSFETs are fabricated with a source, a gate, and a drain, with the source and drains typically defined within a semiconductor substrate as defined regions. The source/drain regions are separated by a channel, over which a gate electrode is disposed. The gate electrode is separated from the channel region by a thin layer of gate oxide. The thickness of the gate oxide will determine certain properties of the transistor, and it is typically fabricated as thin as possible. However, as the gate oxide is decreased in thickness, the voltage breakdown of the oxide will decrease. For example, in 3-volt transistors, a voltage in excess of 5 or 6 volts can cause stress on the gate oxide, which will be destructive to the transistor. Therefore, numerous devices have been provided for preventing the gate oxide breakdown voltage of any transistor from exceeding its gate-to-source or gate-to-drain breakdown voltage.
In one application of a MOSFET, a driving circuit is provided for driving an inductive load, such as a motor. When the device is turned off, there will be a resulting back emf that will drive the voltage on the output node to a high voltage. Since the gate of the driving transistor is typically pulled low, this will result in the voltage across the source and gate exceeding the gate-to-source breakdown voltage thereof. To solve this problem, back-to-back zener or diodes are disposed between the gate and source of the transistor. When the voltage rises above the breakdown voltage of the zener, current will be conducted and there will be a voltage limit across the gate and source. However, this current must flow through the zeners and the driving circuitry to ground, thus causing both dissipation in the zener diodes and dissipation in the driving circuitry, which can be excessive for high back emf voltages.

High-side MOSFET gate protection shunt circuit


The present invention provides compositions and methods for regulating expression of heterologous nucleotide sequences in a plant. Compositions include a novel nucleotide sequence for a promoter for the gene encoding Sorghum bicolor pLTP. A method for expressing a heterologous nucleotide sequence in a plant using the promoter sequences disclosed herein is provided. The method comprises transforming a plant or plant cell with a nucleotide sequence operably linked to one of the promoters of the present invention.

Expression of heterologous DNA sequences in a plant host is dependent upon the presence of an operably linked promoter that is functional within the plant host. Choice of the promoter sequence will determine when and where within the organism the heterologous DNA sequence is expressed. Where expression in specific tissues or organs is desired, tissue-preferred promoters may be used. Where gene expression in response to a stimulus is desired, inducible promoters are the regulatory element of choice. In contrast, where continuous expression is desired throughout the cells of a plant, constitutive promoters are utilized. Additional regulatory sequences upstream and/or downstream from the core promoter sequence may be included in the expression constructs of transformation vectors to bring about varying levels of expression of heterologous nucleotide sequences in a transgenic plant.
Frequently it is desirable to express a DNA sequence in particular tissues or organs of a plant. For example, increased resistance of a plant to infection by soil- and air-borne pathogens might be accomplished by genetic manipulation of the plant's genome to comprise a tissue-preferred promoter operably linked to a heterologous pathogen-resistance gene such that pathogen-resistance proteins are produced in the desired plant tissue.
Alternatively, it might be desirable to inhibit expression of a native DNA sequence within a plant's tissues to achieve a desired phenotype. In this case, such inhibition might be accomplished with transformation of the plant to comprise a tissue-preferred promoter operably linked to an antisense nucleotide sequence, such that expression of the antisense sequence produces an RNA transcript that interferes with translation of the mRNA of the native DNA sequence.
Thus far, the regulation of gene expression in plant roots has not been adequately studied despite the importance of the root to plant development. To some degree this is attributable to a lack of readily available, root-specific biochemical functions whose genes may be cloned, studied, and manipulated. Genetically altering plants through the use of genetic engineering techniques and thus producing a plant with useful traits requires the availability of a variety of promoters. An accumulation of promoters would enable the investigator to design recombinant DNA molecules that are capable of being expressed at desired levels and cellular locales. Therefore, a collection of tissue-preferred promoters would allow for a new trait to be expressed in the desired tissue.
Thus, isolation and characterization of tissue-preferred, particularly root-preferred, promoters that can serve as regulatory regions for expression of heterologous nucleotide sequences of interest in a tissue-preferred manner are needed for genetic manipulation of plants.

Root-preferred promoter and methods of use


A battery terminal connector for a generally cube-shaped automotive battery. The battery has a flat, horizontally disposed top. The battery terminal connector has a body portion with a top, a bottom, and an intermediate aperture for engaging a battery post. This intermediate aperture has a size that is variable to accommodate placement of the connector onto, and the removal of the connector from, the battery post. The battery terminal connector has a lever with two opposite ends, the first end being connected to the terminal connector, and the second end being positioned above the flat horizontally disposed top of the battery. The second end is easily accessible so as to permit a user to actuate that lever, and move that lever from a first position to a second position. Movement from the first to the second position facilitates the removal of overcaps.

Storage batteries of the type used in automobiles, trucks and the like generally have a terminal post made of a lead alloy material with a cylindrical or frusto-conical shape. The battery is connected to the vehicle electrical system by a battery cable assembly. The cable assembly has connectors which clamp to the battery posts, providing a secure electrical and mechanical connection.
A conventional connector for connecting cables to the battery is a molded, generally U-shaped device with a bolt passing through outwardly projecting yoke-like arms for securely clamping the connector to the battery post. The connector may also be a stamped metal battery terminal connector, fabricated from sheet metal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,733,152 ("the '152 patent") is directed to a typical battery terminal connector. The '152 patent is owned by the assignee of the present application, and relates to a battery terminal connector which permits improved mechanical and electrical connection to a battery terminal post. The connector of the '152 patent has enhanced resistance to rotation when connected to a battery terminal post. That connector is also economical to manufacture, and can be made by automated assembly and production. An additional advantage of this connector is that it is adaptable to different automobile models and batteries.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,879,202 ("the '202 patent") is also directed to another battery terminal connector. This connector is of the type that permits it to be tightened on the battery post using a threaded nut that is positioned above, rather than on the side of, the connector. As a result, especially in tight, confining areas found under the hoods of modern automobiles, the nut is more easily accessed during installation of the connector of the '202 patent, as compared to the ease of access to threaded nuts that are secured to the sides of many prior art connectors.
An additional battery terminal connector is that manufactured by the Chang Hwan Company of South Korea (http://www.cpt.co.kr). This connector includes two upturned flanges that together define the aperture for the battery post. Because of its multi-piece structure, this Chang Hwan connector requires an additional labor step when the wiring harness is attached to the automobile, during its manufacture. In addition, the junction between the two pieces is a site where corrosion or failure can occur. This junction thus raises the risk of a mechanical or electrical problem, resulting in inconvenience for the consumer, and increasing the potential for warranty costs or public relations problems for the manufacturer. Moreover, this Chang Hwan connector has a threaded rod and nut at its first lateral end, i.e., the end of the connector farthest from the ferrule portion. This structure increases the bulk at the frontal portion of the Chang Hwan connector. In addition, the approximate 5 millimeters distance between the two upturned flanges is roughly equal to the 5 millimeters height of each of those flanges. Accordingly, this connector has a generally high profile, and is thus somewhat less suitable for use in tight, under-hood areas.
Additional prior art references include U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,250,973, 5,941,738, 5,879,202, 5,800,219, 5,738,552, 5,711,688, 5,672,442, 5,599,210, 5,316,505, 4,354,726, 4,063,794, 4,054,355, and 3,568,138. None of these patents, however, alone or in combination, disclose the present invention.


In a method of monitoring the operation of a subscriber unit in a telecommunication system, in order to detect possible malfunctions as early as possible, a call reserved in signaling for some other purpose is transmitted to the subscriber unit, whereupon a call to which the subscriber unit automatically responds is selected as the call. A message about receiving the call is awaited from the subscriber unit, and, if not such message is received from the subscriber unit, the call is repeated until the subscriber unit has left a predetermined number of transmitted calls unanswered, whereupon an alarm is given.

The invention relates to a method of monitoring the operation of a subscriber unit of a telecommunication system. The invention also relates to a subscriber network element of a radio system providing a wireless local loop, the subscriber network element having a data transmission connection with a telephone exchange and comprising means for establishing, via base stations, a radio connection to the subscriber units located in the coverage area of the radio system, for transmitting telecommunication signals between the subscriber units and the exchange.
The invention relates in particular to monitoring the operation of a subscriber unit to be used in a WLL system, i.e. a radio system providing a wireless local loop. In a WLL system, an ordinary two-wire telephone set is connected via a radio connection by means of a special terminal equipment to the local exchange, which in turn is connected to the public telephone network via network cabling. In this connection, a subscriber unit refers to the equipment the subscriber has for transmitting and receiving telecommunication signals, i.e. in case of the WLL system, the subscriber unit comprises a WLL terminal equipment consisting of a radio part and a teleadapter (to which the user interface, e.g. a telephone, is connected), and a user interface, such as a telephone, a telefax terminal, a computer/modem combination or the like, connected to the terminal equipment.
To guarantee the interference-free transfer of telecommunication signals, for example phone calls, it is necessary to monitor subscriber units so that possible malfunctions will be detected as early as possible. It is especially important to monitor WLL subscriber units, since they are more prone to malfunctions than normal subscriber units operating via a cable.

Monitoring of the operation of a subscriber unit


Highly purified ammonia for use in semiconductor manufacturing is prepared on-site by drawing ammonia vapor from a liquid ammonia reservoir, passing the vapor through a filter capable of filtering out particles of less than 0.005 micron in size, and scrubbing the filtered vapor in a high-pH aqueous scrubber.

The present invention relates to systems and methods for supplying ultra-high-purity ammonia for semiconductor manufacture.
Contamination in IC Manufacturing
Contamination is generally an overwhelmingly important concern in integrated circuit manufacturing. A large fraction of the steps in modern integrated circuit manufacturing are cleanup steps of one kind or another; such cleanup steps may need to remove organic contaminants, metallic contaminants, photoresist (or inorganic residues thereof), byproducts of etching, native oxides, etc.
As of 1995 the cost of a new front end (integrated circuit wafer fabrication facility) is typically more than a billion dollars ($1,000,000,000), and a large fraction of this cost is directed to measures for particulate control, cleanup, and contamination control.
One important source of contamination is impurities in the process chemicals. Since the cleanups are so frequent and so critical, contamination due to cleanup chemistry is very undesirable.
Ammonia Purification
Ammonia (NH.sub.3) is an important process chemical in semiconductor manufacturing. It is very commonly used for deposition of silicon nitride, and may also be used for nitridation or for deposition of other nitrides. Ammonia (in the form of ammonium hydroxide) is also widely used in the basic cleanup portion of the standard RCA cleanup. (The RCA cleanup includes: 1) solvent wash to remove gross organics--in tetrachloroethylene or comparable solvent; 2) basic cleanup--NH.sub.4 OH+H.sub.2 O.sub.2 +H.sub.2 O in proportions of 1:1:5 or 1:2:7; and 3) acid cleanup--HCl+H.sub.2 O.sub.2 +H.sub.2 O in proportions of 1:1:6 or 1:2:8.) See W. Runyan and K. Bean, SEMICONDUCTOR INTEGRATED CIRCUIT PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY (1990), which is hereby incorporated by reference. For semiconductor manufacturing, such cleanup reagents are normally bought as packaged containers. However, this implies that some handling of the solutions in those containers will be necessary, both at the manufacturer's plant and at the use location. Such handling of ultra-high purity chemicals is always undesirable.
Ammonia presents particular difficulties, since liquid ammonia contains both solid and volatile impurities, many of which are damaging to electronic components if present during the manufacturing process. The impurities level and content may vary widely depending on the source as well as the handling method, and all such impurities must be removed before the ammonia can be used in electronic component production lines.
To meet this standard, production facilities have had to obtain high-quality ammonia at considerable cost from the limited sources which are able to supply ammonia at an acceptable grade. Only qualified suppliers can be used, and new suppliers must be qualified before their product can be accepted. This cost and the lack of flexibility add considerably to the cost of the components.
A further constraint is presented by Department of Transportation regulations, under which aqueous ammonia must be shipped at ammonia concentrations no higher than 30%.
Clearly there is a need for a reliable means of supplying ammonia at a purity level which will produce a high yield of acceptable product in ultra-high precision components, and which can meet the requirements of advancing electronics technology.
Ammonia Purification
It has now been discovered that ammonia can be supplied to a production line for high-precision electronic devices in ultra-high purity form by use of an on-site system which draws ammonia vapor from a liquid ammonia reservoir, passes the ammonia vapor through a microfiltration filter, and scrubs the filtered vapor with high-pH purified water. The uniqueness of this discovery is that it can convert commercial grade ammonia to ammonia of sufficiently high purity for high-precision manufacturing without the need for conventional column distillation. The drawing of the ammonia vapor from the supply reservoir serves by itself as a single-stage distillation, eliminating nonvolatile and high-boiling impurities, such as alkali and alkaline earth metal oxides, carbonates and hydrides, transition metal halides and hydrides, and high-boiling hydrocarbons and halocarbons. The reactive volatile impurities that could be found in commercial grade ammonia, such as certain transition metal halides, Group III metal hydrides and halides, certain Group IV hydrides and halides, and halogens, previously thought to require distillation for removal, are now discovered to be capable of removal by scrubbing to a degree which is adequate for high-precision operations. This is a highly unusual discovery, since scrubber technology is traditionally used for the removal of macro-scale, rather than micro-scale, impurities. In the present invention, the scrubber lowers the levels of impurities which are damaging to semiconductor wafer manufacture to less than 1 ppb per element or less than 30 ppb total. For operations where even greater purity is desired, distillation may also be performed subsequent to the scrubbing. An advantage of the invention, however, is that if distillation is included, the scrubber considerably lessens the burden on, and design requirements for, the distillation column, enhancing the product purity even further. The removal of impurities which are close-boiling relative to ammonia, such as reactive hydrides, fluorides, and chlorides, simplifies the distillation column design considerably.
On-Site Preparation of Ultrapure Mixed Cleanup Solutions
The present application discloses preparation of mixed cleanup solutions, such as the RCA acidic cleanup and the RCA basic cleanup, at the site of a wafer fabrication facility, from ingredients which themselves have been ultrapurified at the same site.
The RCA cleanup includes: 1) solvent wash to remove gross organics--in tetrachloroethylene or comparable solvent; 2) basic cleanup--NH.sub.4 OH+H.sub.2 O.sub.2 +H.sub.2 O; and 3) acid cleanup--HCl+H.sub.2 O.sub.2 +H.sub.2 O.) See W. Runyan and K. Bean, SEMICONDUCTOR INTEGRATED CIRCUIT PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY (1990), which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The RCA basic cleanup solution is typically NH.sub.4 OH+H.sub.2 O.sub.2 +H.sub.2 O in proportions of 1:1:5 or 1:2:7. According to one of the innovative teachings disclosed herein, RCA basic cleanup (or analogous cleanup solutions) is generated at the site of a wafer manufacturing plant, by combination of ultra-pure ammonia which has been purified on-site with ultra-pure hydrogen peroxide which has been purified on-site. Thus purity is increased, and the risk of undetected accidental contamination is reduced.

On-site ammonia purification for semiconductor manufacture


A metal lined pressure vessel has a filament wound shell with a curved polar end. The shell has polar opening, and a metal internal liner is substantially surrounded by the shell and has an opening aligned with the polar opening in the shell. A boss or fitting is disposed at the polar end and has a tubular neck projecting through the opening in the shell and an annular flange which extends radially from an inner end of the neck within the vessel. A shear stress relieving layer is bonded between the boss and the metal liner to relieve stresses induced when the vessel is pressurized, and the liner is affixed to the boss continuously about the opening in the liner for isolating the layer from fluid in the vessel.

1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to filament wound vessels and, more particularly, to metal lined high pressure vessels having an improved structural interface between a metal liner and a polar boss.
2. Background Art
It generally is known that resin impregnated filament wound vessels are capable of withstanding high internal pressures at weight to volume times pressure relationships considerably less than all metal pressure vessels. However, solely filament wound vessels have proven to be too porous to satisfy the criteria required by many military and commercial applications. One approach to solving the problem of unacceptable porosity in a filament wound pressure vessel is to use a metal internal liner. A satisfactory metal lined pressure vessel is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,010, issued Oct. 22, 1974, and owned by the assignee of this invention.
In a metal lined pressure vessel of the character described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,010, a plurality of layers of filaments form an outer shell and are wound about a fitting or boss disposed in an opening in the vessel. The liner is connected to the fitting internally of the shell to prevent leakage between the outer shell and the liner and to prevent leakage through the opening.
Filament wound vessels often are constructed in a spherical or cylindrical shape with generally spherical ends. Due to the rounded geometry of the ends of a pressure vessel in which a polar boss is disposed, cyclic pressurization and depressurization of the vessel causes relative movement between the liner and the boss. Because the liner is impermeably connected to the boss, that is, because the liner necessarily is connected to the boss in such a way that fluid is prevented from escaping from the vessel, the relative movement induces shear stress and fatigue in the liner and can prematurely destroy the vessel.
One approach to joining a metal liner to a polar boss is to bond a ply of resilient material (a shear layer) between the liner and the boss to provide a flexible seal which offers acceptable levels of strain deformation and fatigue cycle life. A bonded shear layer joint of this type is disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,010 discussed above, wherein a pliable interface layer transfers load from the metal liner to a boss. While such a "shear-slip" interface joint is satisfactory for containing many materials, however, exposure of resilient materials such as rubber to many reactive gases and liquids can degrade the integrity of the seal and render this type of design unsuitable for long term storage applications or where very low leakage rates are required.
As an alternative to connecting a metal liner to a polar boss with a resilient shear stress relieving layer, it has been proposed to integrate a metal liner directly with a polar boss, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,7773, issued Jun. 11, 1974, and also owned by the assignee hereof. Although integral liners effectively contain gases and corrosive liquids for extended periods of time, such vessels do not afford the high fatigue cycle life inherent in bonded shear layer joint. In addition, the cost of manufacturing unitary metal liners and polar bosses far exceeds the costs incurred in producing liners suitable for use in a bonded shear layer design.
The present invention is directed toward overcoming the above mentioned problems by providing a unique structural interface in a metal lined pressure vessel which exhibits the structural and cost advantages of a bonded shear layer design together with the permeation integrity of a pressure vessel which has an integral metal liner and polar boss.


A method for modifying a process cartridge includes providing the process cartridge comprising a waste bin having physical characteristics. The method further includes altering the physical characteristics of the waste bin to form an altered process cartridge.

In the printing industry, there has been a growing market for the remanufacture and refurbishing of various types of printing components and process cartridges such as toner cartridges, ink cartridges, magnetic rollers, seals etc. Process cartridges, such as toner cartridges, for example, once spent are unusable for their originally intended purpose. Without a refurbishing process, they would simply be discarded, even though the cartridge itself may still have potential life. As a result, there have been processes and procedures developed specifically to address this type of issue. These processes may entail the disassembly of the various structures of the cartridge, replacing toner, cleaning, adjusting or replacing any worn components and reassembling the cartridge.
The differences between printer cartridges for various types of printing devices may only be slight or subtle. In many instances it may only be an indentation in the body of the cartridge. In other cases it may be not only a physical attribute of the body of the cartridge, but also the addition of a wireless communications device. Certain style cartridges may be plentiful and relatively inexpensive simply because of certain factors such as the supply in the market or initial cost while other style cartridges may not be available in quantity or too expensive for cost effective use in remanufacturing. The easiest and most economic solution would be to simply convert the inexpensive style cartridges into the more costly style cartridge in order to meet this market demand. The present invention is directed at that conversion process. Additionally, the present invention may have a positive impact on the environment by cutting down on the amount of cartridges being thrown away by providing a new recycling alternative.
One conversion example is converting the Lexmark™ Optra S/Se/T style cartridge into a Lexmark™ T520/522. The Optra style cartridge has a smooth surface on its waste bin portion. The T520/522 style cartridge has an indented section on both the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the waste bin. This indentation allows the cartridge to physically fit into the printer, which has a protrusion to prevent the S/Se/T style cartridge from fitting. In addition, the T520/522 has a contact activated type of circuitry located on its side. In order to convert the Optra to a T520/T522 style cartridge, the waste bin has a section removed, a plug inserted, and the proper circuitry installed. The plug's shape is such that the new contour of the waste bin is similar enough to that of the T520/T522. The plug is either glued in or welded into place. The cartridge then undergoes the remaining refurbishing steps such as refilling of the toner hopper and resealing the cartridge.
Another example is converting a process cartridge, such as an HP4000™ toner cartridge, for example, to an HP4100™ toner cartridge. The 4100 cartridge is essentially the same as the HP4000 except for two minor characteristics. The first difference is the waste bin assembly on the HP4000 has a smooth contour while the HP4100 has an elongated grove. In addition, there are two guides that are present on the 4000 cartridge that are absent on the 4100 cartridge. The conversion process here entails the removal of the guides, the removal of a section of the waste bin and the installation of a plug that now once affixed into place gives the waste bin a new contour such that it will fit into the 4100 printer.
A further example of process cartridge conversion is the modification of the HP4000™ cartridge into one compatible with the Cannon FX6™ fax machine. This conversion only involves the removal of a section of the waste bin assembly of the toner cartridge and the attaching of a plug into that space removed.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method and apparatus for converting process cartridges to fit various types of printing machines


Illumination systems for microlithographic projection exposure apparatus, as well as related systems, components and methods are disclosed. In some embodiments, an illumination system includes one or more scattering structures and an optical integrator that produces a plurality of secondary light sources.

Microlithography (also called photolithography or simply lithography) is a technology for the fabrication of integrated circuits, liquid crystal displays and other microstructured devices. The process of microlithography, in conjunction with the process of etching, is used to pattern features in thin film stacks that have been formed on a substrate, for example a silicon wafer. At each layer of the fabrication, the wafer is first coated with a photoresist which is a material that is sensitive to radiation, such as deep ultraviolet (DUV) light. Next, the wafer with the photoresist on top is exposed to projection light through a mask in a projection exposure apparatus. The mask contains a circuit pattern to be projected onto the photoresist. After exposure the photoresist is developed to produce an image corresponding to the circuit pattern contained in the mask. Then an etch process transfers the circuit pattern into the thin film stacks on the wafer. Finally, the photoresist is removed. Repetition of this process with different masks results in a multilayered microstructured component.
A projection exposure apparatus typically includes an illumination system, a mask stage for a aligning the mask, a projection lens and a wafer alignment stage for aligning the wafer coated with the photoresist. The illumination system illuminates a field on the mask that often has the shape of an (elongated) rectangle or a ring segment.
In current projection exposure apparatus a distinction can be made between two different types of apparatus. In one type each target portion on the wafer is irradiated by exposing the entire mask pattern onto the target portion in one go; such an apparatus is commonly referred to as a wafer stepper. In the other type of apparatus, which is commonly referred to as a step-and-scan apparatus or scanner, each target portion is irradiated by progressively scanning the mask pattern under the projection light beam in a given reference direction while synchronously scanning the substrate parallel or anti-parallel to this direction. The ratio of the velocity of the wafer and the velocity of the mask is equal to the magnification of the projection lens, which is usually smaller than 1, for example 1:4.
It is to be understood that the term "mask" (or reticle) is to be interpreted broadly as a patterning device. Commonly used masks contain transmissive or reflective patterns and may be of the binary, alternating phase-shift, attenuated phase-shift or various hybrid mask type, for example. However, there are also active masks, e.g. masks realized as a programmable mirror array. An example of such a device is a matrix-addressable surface having a viscoelastic control layer and a reflective surface. More information on such mirror arrays can be gleaned, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 5,296,891 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,523,193. Also programmable LCD arrays may be used as active masks, as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,872. For the sake of simplicity, the rest of this text may specifically relate to apparatus including a mask and a mask stage; however, the general principles discussed in such apparatus should be seen in the broader context of the patterning devices as noted above.
The angular distribution of the projection light impinging on the mask is usually adapted to the kind of pattern to be projected onto the photoresist. For example, relatively large sized features may involve a different angular distribution than small sized features. Commonly used angular distributions of projection light are referred to as conventional, annular, dipole and quadrupole illumination settings. These terms refer to the irradiance distribution in a pupil plane of the illumination system. With an annular illumination setting, for example, only an annular region is illuminated in the pupil plane, and thus there is only a small range of angles present in the angular distribution of the projection light so that all light beams impinge obliquely with similar angles onto the mask.
In illumination systems designed for wavelengths below 200 nm, lasers are typically used as light sources. The projection light bundle emitted by a laser typically has a small cross section and a low divergence, and therefore also the geometrical optical flux is small. The geometrical optical flux, which is also referred to as the Lagrange invariant, is a quantity that is, at least for certain special configurations, proportional to the product of maximum light angle and size of the illuminated field.

Illumination system for a microlithographic projection exposure apparatus


Various technologies described herein pertain to performing collaborative rendering. A GPU of a mobile device can generate a mobile-rendered video stream based on a first instance of an application executed on the mobile device. A GPU of a server can generate one or more server-rendered video streams based on instance(s) of the application executed on the server. Based on the one or more server-rendered video streams, the server can generate a compressed server-manipulated video stream. The mobile device can further combine the mobile-rendered video stream and the compressed server-manipulated video stream to form a collaborative video stream, and a display screen of the mobile device can be caused to display the collaborative video stream. The mobile-rendered video stream can have a first level of a quality attribute and the collaborative video stream can have a second level of the quality attribute greater than the first level of the quality attribute.

With the advent of consumer mobile devices equipped with high-resolution touchscreens, powerful processors, and graphics processing units (GPUs), electronic gaming has become a popular activity on mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and the like. Many users employ mobile devices to play electronic games, with at least some of such users commonly spending substantial amounts of time playing the electronic games. As device screens become larger and screen resolutions increase for mobile devices, finer graphical detail and advanced graphical effects are becoming more common for mobile applications, such as the electronic games, etc.
To provide richer visual experiences, processing capabilities of GPUs of mobile devices have improved; however, the GPUs of mobile devices typically cannot duplicate sophisticated graphical detail provided by gaming consoles and high-end desktop GPUs. A reason for such difference in performance is power consumption. According to an example, a high-end desktop GPU may consume 500 W of power, whereas a high-end mobile GPU may consume less than 10 W of power. Moreover, mobile GPUs likely will continue to lag behind desktop GPUs since battery capacity of the mobile devices is limited, and high power consumption may lead to sophisticated and bulky thermal dissipation mechanisms, which may be incompatible with mobile form factors.
A conventional approach attempts to close the performance and energy gaps between mobile devices and server-side infrastructure through remote execution and code offload. Such approach typically utilizes general-purpose workloads running on central processing units (CPUs) of the mobile devices.
Another conventional approach to enable high-end gaming on resource-constrained mobile devices is based on a thin-client architecture, in which the execution of game logic and the rendering process is performed remotely on a server with a powerful CPU and GPU. For instance, the mobile devices can take advantage of server-side infrastructure equipped with high-end CPUs and GPUs by transmitting user input to remote servers, and receiving the resulting audio-visual output encoded as compressed video. However, transmitting game content that meets expectations of gamers with regards to screen resolution, video quality, and frame rate can result in high bandwidth utilization. For this reason, such a conventional thin-client approach may not work in bandwidth scarce environments, such as cafés or airports, or under limited cellular data plans. Moreover, the thin-client approach typically requires the mobile device to be connected to the rendering server when playing a game; thus, offline gaming would be unavailable when employing such an approach.
Another common approach is to adapt high-end games to constraints imposed by mobile device hardware specifications. However, adapting games to such constraints oftentimes results in a lack of graphical details, such as complex lighting, shadows, particles, fog, detailed textures, complex models, non-critical graphical objects such as blades of grass in the field, and the like. This approach is oftentimes employed in modern games to allow such games to run on underpowered hardware, such as low-end desktops and laptops. Thus, through custom graphics settings, different levels of visual detail and effects can be enabled or disabled (e.g., using a configuration screen, etc.) in order to obtain a sufficient level of detail while allowing the game to be rendered at a full frame rate.

Server GPU assistance for mobile GPU applications


A self checkout POS system including a security zone; an emitting tower including one or more infrared emitters; a detecting tower including one or more infrared detectors, the detecting tower located on a side of the security zone opposite the side on which the emitting tower is located, the infrared detectors of the detecting tower aligned for reception of infrared radiation emitted by the infrared emitters of the emitting tower; a security shield installed on one side of the detecting tower; and a security shield installed on one side of the emitting tower, the security shield installed on one side of the emitting tower including: a clear acrylic pane; and a polycarbonate film having a matte finish, the polycarbonate film laminated to the clear acrylic pane with an adhesive, the polycarbonate film capable of reducing incident infrared radiation transmitted through and reflected by the clear acrylic pane.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, security shields, self checkout point of sale ('POS') systems, and methods for manufacturing security shields for reducing incident infrared radiation received by one or more infrared detectors in a self checkout point of sale system.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
Advancements in computer systems have enabled many technologies including, for example, self checkout retail point of sale ('POS') systems. Self checkout POS systems enable a user to purchase retail items typically without the need of human intervention. Because human operation is normally unnecessary for self checkout POS systems, safeguards are typically put into place to reduce theft of retail items. One such safeguard includes a security zone, an area in which a retail customer is physically impeded from a retail item to be purchased and where measurements of the item are taken. The measurements are stored such that when the barcode of the item is scanned for purchase, the scanned item's measurements are compared to the actual measurements taken of the item in the security zone for verification. Such measurements are typically taken through a combination of infrared emitters and detectors. To physically impede customers from the retail item in the security zone, security shields are installed. Such security shields are typically transparent in order to provide visibility of the security zone including items to be purchased to both customers and employees. Due to reflection and transmission of ambient light, stray infrared radiation from infrared emitters, and stray infrared radiation from other sources, the security zone often provides faulty measurements by the combination of infrared emitters and detectors. What is needed, therefore, is a security shield for reducing incident infrared radiation received by the detectors of the security zone in a self checkout POS system.

Reducing incident infrared radiation received by one or more infrared detectors in a self checkout point of sale system

International Business Machines Corporation


A motor current controlling circuit having a voltage detection mechanism is provided. A first terminal of a first low-side transistor is connected to a second terminal of a first high-side transistor. A node between the first terminal of the first low-side transistor and the second terminal of the first high-side transistor is connected to a first terminal of a motor. A first terminal of a second low-side transistor is connected to a second terminal of a second high-side transistor. A zero current detector circuit detects a voltage of the node and determines whether or not a current flowing through the motor is equal to a zero value to output a zero current detected signal according to the detected voltage. A controller circuit controls a driver circuit to turn on or off the high-side transistors and the low-side transistors according to the zero current detected signal.

In various electronic products, circuit components produce heat during operation, so that heated air is circulated throughout an enclosed space, e.g., in an enclosed chassis of a server. As a result, other circuit components in the enclosed space are heated up by the heated air such that the other circuit components are damaged due to overheating. Therefore, fans must be configured in the electronic products and used to cool down the circuit components of the electronic products.
However, when a driver circuit turns on or off a plurality of transistors of a bridge circuit of the fan to drive the motor to rotate and blades of the fan rotate together with the motor, the transistors are heated up by the heated air circulated in the enclosed chassis. As a result, the transistors may be damaged due to overheating. Therefore, the driver circuit must accurately obtain a value of a current flowing through the motor and appropriately switch the transistors of the bridge circuit according to the value of the current, so as to prevent the transistor from being damaged by an excessive current.

Motor current controlling circuit having voltage detection mechanism


Systems and methods for managing a plurality of interred cremation remains are disclosed. The systems and methods relate to a parcel of land and a computer database. The parcel of land includes first and second geolocated plots, wherein the first geolocated plot includes the cremated remains of a first deceased subject, and the second geolocated plot includes the cremated remains of a second deceased subject. The computer database electronically stores the geographic positions and the occupancy status of the first and second plots.

The present disclosure relates generally to the interment of human or animal remains. In particular, systems and methods for interring cremated remains including a geolocated plot on a parcel of land and a database for storing location and status of the plot are described.
Today, cemeteries and mortuaries are typically complex enterprises that combine a variety of physical assets. Cemeteries require large tracts of land and specialized improvements that are prepared for occupancy in advance of need. They generally require investment in specific inventory which may take decades to market and absorb.
With traditional burial methods, a dead body is placed in a casket and the casket is buried in the ground of a cemetery. An entire industry revolves around traditional interment, including mortuaries where bodies are preserved and displayed for memorial services, where coffins are sold, and where cemetery plots are sold. A conventional cemetery is typically a unique piece of real estate where remains are interred, generally in perpetuity. A grave stone is usually purchased to place as a marker where the remains are buried. A fee is typically charged for the service and maintenance of the burial plot.
A cemetery, however, is not a typical real estate investment. The land is dedicated to the purpose of interment forever, laws regulate the cemetery business, trusts and endowments are used to pay for the maintenance of the cemetery. A land owner would be remiss to think that a cemetery would be a highest and best use of a plot of real estate in virtually any state in the United States. Some state laws even prohibit profiting on cemetery land.
Until fairly recently, most modern Western consumers have viewed the burial of a body in a cemetery, typically within a coffin, as the most proper means of interment. However, as consumer beliefs have changed, and cremation has become more and more acceptable. Cremation is the process of reducing human or animal remains to ashes. In this state, there is no prohibition against the possession and disposition of the cremated remains, or "cremains."
Cremains have often been held in a sealed "urn" which is kept by family members of the deceased, or by the owner of a pet that has been cremated. In other cases, ashes are scattered at sea, or taken by a family and scattered in a place desired by the deceased or the family. Some parks are considered "scattering ground" where it is acceptable to simply scatter all or part of cremains, which then become part of the soil and are neutrally integrated into the surroundings. In still other cases, cremains are put into a columbarium, or a permanent memorial device at a cemetery or other location. Columbaria are often walls where cremains are deposited and a small plaque placed on the wall of "drawers" or other storage units. The columbarium is more efficient in that it allows the remains of many more deceased to be placed in a smaller space, and can be built tall or even subterranean.
Once the cremated remains are possessed by the deceased's loved ones, the remains may be disposed of in virtually any way. Usually, a family is faced with only a few options: keep the cremains; permanently inter the cremains and incur the costs of perpetual interment; or dispose of the cremains. Many families do not desire to keep cremains, yet they do not wish to incur the cost of permanent interment. Others are uncomfortable with the ethereal nature of scattering at sea or in a forest.
It is desirable therefore to provide something less ephemeral than the scattering of ashes in the ocean or on the ground, and yet less permanent than the use of a grave or columbarium. Furthermore, it is desirable to provide a sophisticated yet simple and elegant solution that gives "place" to the interment of cremains, yet does so in a way that is free of the burden of cemetery laws, and perpetual maintenance.

Systems and methods for interment of cremation remains


A method for providing for standardization of variable names in an integrated development environment is provided. The method includes scanning a project source code for variable names, where the project source code is managed by a development team in an integrated development environment. The method includes determining that the project source code contains a non-standard variable name, where the distinction between a standard variable name and the non-standard variable name is defined by a set of standards and semantic rules. The method then includes identifying a location of the non-standard variable name in the project source code.

Within a software development team, standardization of the way code is written allows for easier reading and maintaining of the code because developers can become familiar with a new code component more quickly if it is written in a standardized style. Integrated Development Environments ("IDEs") often enforce certain standards, for example, a Java® IDE will warn a developer that object types should have a name that begins with a capital letter. Development teams often have standards for variable naming as well, however, IDEs do not currently enforce these standards.

Standardization of variable names in an integrated development environment


An image processing system for estimating acoustic properties emitted from a movable sound source on a point in the sound field thereof comprises photoelectric sensors 11 and 12 for measuring a velocity and a moving direction of the sound source; a microphone array 13 for detecting an acoustic energy from the sound source on a detection surface at plural points having an interval smaller than one half of the wave length of the acoustic property, the microphone array 13 moved in a direction perpendicular to the detection surface; a multiplexer 14 for multiplexing signals inputted from the photoelectric sensors 11 and 12 and the microphone array 13 through a single output line, wherein the signals represent a value of the acoustic energy, a velocity and a moving direction of the sound source, and a velocity and a moving direction of the microphone array 13, respectively; and a personal computer 15 for setting relative coordinate systems comprising a hologram coordinate system and a detective coordinate system, in which the hologram coordinate system is moved in the velocity and the direction same with those of the sound source, and the relative coordinate system is moved in the velocity and the direction same with those of the microphone array 13, and in which in order to estimate a value of the acoustic property on a point in the sound field, the personal computer 15 carries out Fourier transform of data relating to the microphone array 13 in the detective coordinate system by a time factor.

Holography that obtains an information concerning to a sound source from a hologram of sound pressure emitted from the sound source and measured on a reference surface in the sound field of the sound source. It has been broadly uesed in civilian and munition industries. Informations to be obtained from the hologram may comprise a farfield directivity information, a nearfield vector intensity information, a surface velocity information, a total sound power information and so forth.
More particularly, the holography may be applied in an apparatus for finding out the enemy's soldiers in the munition industry. In a civilian industry, for example, it is applied to detect a sound source and then to eliminate the sound source or to build a soundproofing wall. Nowadays, growing demand to life environmental protection results in increasing a need for appropriately coping with any bothersome noise.
Studies of holography which are remarkably related to this invention are as follows: "Nearfield acoustic holography (NAH)-1. Theory of generalized holography and the development of NAH by J. D. Maynard, E. G. Williams and Y. Lee, disclosed in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 74, No. 4, pp1395-1413; "Nearfield acoustic holography (NAH)-2". Holographic reconstruction algorithms and computer implementation" by W. A. Veronesi and J. D. Maynard, disclosed in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 81, No. 5, pp1307-1322; U.S. Pat. No. 4,415,996 entitled "Nonwavelength-limited holographic sound field reconstruction" by J. D. Maynard and E. G. Williams; "Method of Spatial Transformation of Sound Fields--a unique technique for scan-based near-field acoustic holography without restrictions on coherence" by J. Hald, disclosed in Technical Review No 1, 1989, B&K publication; and "Broadband acoustic holography reconstruction from acoustic intensity measurement" by Loyau, J. C. Pascal and P. Gaillard, disclosed in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 84, No. 5, pp1744-1750.
In holography, a hologram is obtained on a reference surface that is so called "a hologram surface" and then the hologram is analized to estimate an acoustic property on any point in the environmental space. The hologram surface may be a plane or a cylindrical surface. In shape of the hologram surface, it is discriminated into a planar acoustic holography, a cylindrical acoustic holography and spherical acoustic holography.
In the planar acoustic holography, it is needed theoretically to measure sound pressure on an infite number of points in order to obtain a hologram showing distribution of the sound pressure on an infinitely great plane. In practice, however, a hologram is obtained by measuring sound pressure on a limited number of points considering time and cost taken in measurement.
Accuracy of the hologram is affected by density of measuring points, i.e., distance between adjacent measuring points. Accuracy of the hologram is inversely proportionated to the distance. Low accuracy of the hologram results in deteriorating accuracy of an estimated sound pressure in the sound field. Therefore, it is needed to provide technics for obtaining a highly accurate hologram while decreasing time and cost taken in measurement.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,415,996 by W. A. Veronesi and J. D. Maynard, based on the thesis of "Nearfield acoustic holography (NAH)-2. Holographic reconstruction algorithms and computer implementation" disclosed in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 81, No. 5, pp1307-1322, "Nonwavelength-limited holographic sound field reconstruction" is described, in which a hologram is obtained by a microphone array comprising microphones on matrix positions of 16 rows by 16 lines. In this method, very highly cost has to be taken, because of the number of microphones up to 256.
In the thesises of "Method of Spatial Transformation of Sound Fields--a unique technique for scan-based near-field acoustic holography without restrictions on coherence" by J. Hald, disclosed in Technical Review No 1, 1989, B&K publication, and "Broadband acoustic holography reconstruction from acoustic intensity measurement" by Loyau, J. C. Pascal and P. Gaillard, disclosed in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 84, No. 5, pp1744-1750, there are described methods for measuring sound pressure in turn on plural points by a set of microphones fewer than the number of measurement positions. One of problems in these methods is that in order to measure sound pressure on each measurement position, a microphone has to be stayed on the position for a given time.
Aforementioned measuring methods have a basic limitation that accurate measurement of sound pressure is able to only the time when a microphone is stayed on a measurement position since there is no consideration about any relative motion between the microphone and the sound source. That is, it is not able to measure for a movable sound source. In measurement for a static sound source, scanning method in which sound pressure is measured during movement of the microphone.

Image processing system and method for estimating acoustic property of a movable sound source

Korea Advanced Institute Science and Technology


A valve arrangement comprises a piezo electric member arranged to control fuel flow through an orifice, the piezo electric member being operable to flex away from the orifice to allow an increased rate of fuel flow therethrough. The piezo electric member is also engageable with a valve member of a pressure relieving valve to control lifting of the valve member from a seating.

This invention relates to a valve arrangement, and in particular to a control valve arrangement suitable for use in controlling the fuel pressure within the high pressure common rail or accumulator of a fuel supply system for an internal combustion engine.
The fuel pressure within a common rail or accumulator is determined by the rate of fuel supply thereto from a fuel pump and the rate of fuel delivery from the common rail or accumulator to the injectors of the associated engine. The rate of fuel supply to the common rail or accumulator may be controlled by controlling the rate of fuel supply to the fuel pump using a suitable metering arrangement.


A new and distinct cultivar of Erysimum plant named ‘Lemon Zest’, characterized by its compact, upright and outwardly spreading plant habit; freely branching growth habit; early flowering habit; and numerous light yellow-colored flowers.

The present Invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Erysimum plant, botanically known as Erysimum hybrida, and hereinafter referred to by the name 'Lemon Zest'.
The new Erysimum is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Gensingen, Germany. The objective of the breeding program was to create new compact pot-type Erysimum cultivars with early and freely flowering habit.
The new Erysimum originated from a cross-pollination made by the Inventor in 1999 of the Erysimum hybrida cultivar Sprite, not patented, as the female, or seed, parent with an unnamed selection of Erysimum hybrida, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent. The new Erysimum was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a flowering plant within the resultant progeny of the stated cross-pollination in a controlled environment in Gensingen, Germany in 1999.
Asexual reproduction of the new Erysimum by terminal cuttings in Gensingen, Germany since 1999, has shown that the unique features of this new Erysimum are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations of asexual reproduction.