Decoupled plasma etching process used to make a protruding structure having vertical or near vertical sidewalls. The decoupled plasma etching process comprises the following steps:. forming a mask on top of a semiconductor substrate defining the lateral size of the protruding structures to be formed in said substrate, PA1 feeding HCl, Cl.sub.2 and N.sub.2 into a plasma chamber to provide an ion plasma when applying source power, PA1 causing said ions to diffuse towards the substrate by applying a bias power such that the portions of said substrate not being covered by said mask are etched away, wherein the dosage of HCl, Cl.sub.2 and N.sub.2 is chosen such that newly formed portions of the sidewall surfaces are passivated by by-product of Si, Cl, and N.sub.2 and thus become protected from further being etched. The bias power is less than 70 Watts to ensure that the etching process is predominantly chemical.

In order to be able to make memory circuits, logic devices and other semiconductor structures of higher integration density than currently feasible, one has to find ways to further scale down certain components thereof and to improve the accuracy at which such components can be made.
For various reasons, vertical channel transistors are more and more used in highly integrated semiconductor structures, such as DRAMs for example. As shown in FIG. 1, a vertical channel transistor 10 typically has a silicon pillar 11 being perpendicular with respect to the substrate 12 on which it is formed. At the bottom of the pillar 11, which serves as channel, a source 13 is situated. The drain 14 is placed at the opposite end of the pillar 11. The gate electrode 15 is separated from the pillar 11 by a thin gate oxide layer 16. Doped polysilicon 17 is deposited adjacent to the gate electrode 15. As indicated in FIG. 1, the gate polysilicon 17 may be connected to the word line of a memory device, and the drain 14 may be connected to a storage device and the bit line (please note that the storage device is not shown in FIG. 1). The etching of the pillar is of utmost importance.
A conventional plasma etch process is described by Purdes in U.S. Pat. No. 4,521,275. Purdes claims to have achieved vertical etching of silicon using a Cl-containing compound such as BCl.sub.3. The bromine-bearing species used by Purdes cover the newly etched surfaces not subjected to ion bombardment. Since the bromine is relatively heavy, it attacks and errodes the mask. It is another disadvantage of bromine that it is toxic. Purdes applies high pressure and high power to the etch chamber. The process described is predominantly physical and thus mainly suited for the etching of polysilicon. The selectivity of Purdes' process with respect to the mask is rather low. It is further to be noted that in 1983 decoupled plasma etch system were neither known nor available. Experiments have shown that the disclosed process is not suited for etching silicon sidewalls of high aspect ratio (>1). The uniformity which can be achieved using a process as the one proposed by Purdes is in the range of about 6%.
Other authors and inventors propose NF.sub.3 as reactive etchant. This etchant, however, is too aggressive. It attacks almost everything and is non selective. NF.sub.3 is thus not suited for etching vertical sidewalls of high aspect ratio.
In the following, various known etch processes are addressed briefly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,799 concerns the vertical etching of an oxide/metal silicide/polysilicon sandwich structure utilizing two bias levels.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,242,536 relates to an etch process which starts off with a so-called initial breakthrough etch using He/Cl.sub.2 only. Then HBr is added to etch polysilicon anisotropically.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,078,833 concerns an Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) etching device and SiCl.sub.4 /N.sub.2 gas mixed with ClF.sub.3. The end result achieved with this device and choice of reactant species is a trench with a sidewall protecting layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,450,042 concerns a plasma etch chemistry comprising chlorine and bromine which allows to etch almost vertical silicon sidewalls. A wide variety of etchant gas species is disclosed as being suitable.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,002 relates to the etching of vertical trench profiles by means of multiple Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 layers and multiple etch steps along with some sidewall passivation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,423,941 concerns a plasma etch chemistry at least comprising Br.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,409,563 relates to a glow discharge system operated at elevated temperatures and being suited for the dry etching of high aspect ratio features in silicon.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,118,383 addresses a method for producing trench structures having smooth sidewalls and straight, flat trench floors by etching in a triode single wafer plate reactor using a gas atmosphere exclusively of chlorine.
In the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 27, No. 1B, a lift-off process is described which can be used to form a mask with vertical sidewalls. This mask then may be used to etch narrow trenches using reactive ion etching.
In the article "A Scalable Low Power Vertical Memory", H. I. Hanafi et al., IEDM, Dec. 10-13, 1995, pp. 657-660, floating gate vertical transistors are addressed. The pillars are made using an HCl/Cl.sub.2 /N.sub.2 plasma etch process.
Protruding structures, like pillars, are not only used to form transistors, as shown in FIG. 1, but are also used in connection with various other kinds of devices, such as capacitors, resistors and so forth. For all these applications, it is important that the sidewalls are vertical or nearly vertical and that the sidewall surfaces are even and smooth.
When making vertical FETs, the quality of the sidewall is of particular importance, because an uneven and rough sidewall may cause leakage through the gate oxide and/or the device.
Currently, when etching a silicon substrate to form a protruding structure with vertical or near vertical sidewalls, there are three problems, besides the problem that the sidewall surfaces may not be of sufficient smoothness. Firstly, it is impossible to obtain vertical or near vertical sidewalls of high aspect ratio (heights of vertical sidewall versus width of structure) when using conventional approaches. The sidewalls 20 always are sloped with the angle of slope increasing from about 90.degree. to 80.degree. and less (from top 21 to bottom 22), as schematically illustrated in FIG. 2. Secondly, a foot 23 forms at the bottom of the sidewall 20 and thirdly, a trench 24 appears next to the foot 23, as illustrated in FIG. 2. These effects--known as footing and trenching, respectively--are a function of the chemistry used for etching the protruding structure, the etch time, as well as the micro and macro loading factors. These effects are discussed in the following exemplary articles: "Microtrenching during polysilicon plasma etch", by S. W. Swan et al., Proc. SPIE, Vol. 1803, p. 2-12, 04/1993, and "Profile Control of poly-Si Etching in Electron Cyclotron Resonance Plasma", by N. Rujiwara et al., Jap. J. Appl. Phys, Vol. 34, pp. 2095-2100, Part 1, No. 4B, April 1995.
Trenching, footing and sloped sidewalls are a particular problem in cases where there is no etch-stop layer or a similar means which helps to ensure that the etch step is stopped if the desired etch depth has been reached. Trenching is mainly caused by the focusing of ions along the etched features.
In processes that rely predominantly on the physical mechanisms of sputtering (including RIE), the strongly directional nature of the incident energetic ions allows substrate material to be removed in a highly anisotropic manner, i.e. essentially vertical etch profiles are produced. Unfortunately, such material removal mechanisms are also quite non-selective (also referred to as low selectivity) against both masking material and material underlying the layer being etched. Since in case of the formation of protruding silicon structures on a silicon substrate there is no underlying layer which would serve as etch stop layer, the physical etch process would etch into the substrate thus causing trenching. As a result of these and other drawbacks known to those skilled in the art, etch process based predominantly on the physical removal mechanisms are not suited for the formation of vertical or near vertical sidewalls.
Conventional dry etching processes relying strictly on chemical mechanisms can exhibit very high selectivities against mask materials used. If there is no etch stop layer or the like, as mentioned above, a purely chemical etch step would also etch into the substrate causing trenching and footing. Dry etch processes based on chemical mechanisms typically etch in an isotropic fashion, which is not desired when trying to form vertical or near vertical sidewalls.
When choosing an etch tool and the reactive species for etching a substrate, many factors and parameters have to be taken into consideration:
the etching process should be highly selective against etching the mask; PA1 the etching process should allow to form protruding structures of high aspect ratio; PA1 the etch rate should be rapid, or the throughput of a machine performing the etch should be suitably high; PA1 the etching should be uniform across the entire wafer, from wafer to wafer, and from run to run; PA1 the etch process should cause minimal damage to the substrate or other elements formed in previous steps; PA1 the etch process should be clean (i.e. low incidence of particulate and contamination); PA1 the etch process should be conducive to full automation and batch fabrication; PA1 the etch process should be insensitive to the loading factor, or it should be less sensitive than known processes. PA1 forming a mask on top of a semiconductor substrate defining the lateral size of the protruding structures to be formed in said substrate, PA1 feeding HCl, Cl.sub.2 and N.sub.2 into a plasma chamber to provide an ion plasma when applying source power, and PA1 causing said ions to diffuse towards the substrate by applying a bias power such that the portions of said substrate not being covered by said mask are etched away.
There is no etch process known which meets all the above criteria. There is currently no feasible means to precisely control the etching of protruding silicon structures and to fabricate them such that they have vertical or near vertical sidewalls of high aspect ratio.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method which allows to make protruding silicon semiconductor structures having a vertical or near vertical sidewall.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method which allows to make protruding silicon structures without causing footing and/or trenching, or with reduced footing and/or trenching.

International Business Machines Corporation


A method of producing a non-dairy cheese includes fermenting non-dairy milk with lactic acid bacteria and mixing the fermented non-dairy milk with dry ingredients. The dry ingredients include one or more gums and one or more starches. The method further includes heating the fermented non-dairy milk and dry ingredients to 180 degrees and mixing oil into the fermented non-dairy milk in an in-line high shear mixer creating an oil/non-dairy milk mixture. The method further includes circulating the oil/non-dairy milk mixture through the inline high shear mixer until the droplet size of the oil in the non-dairy milk is 15 micrometers or less, removing air from the oil/non-dairy milk mixture, and packaging the oil/non-dairy milk mixture to yield a non-dairy cheese product.

Cheeses are popular food products for their nutritional value and taste. Some consumers avoid consuming dairy products, including dairy cheeses, yogurts, and sauces. Typical non-dairy alternative to cheese products often, however, fail to adequately simulate the taste, texture, consistency, and appearance of dairy cheese products. In many cases, consumers forego any type cheese or cheese-imitation products because the non-dairy alternatives do not provide an adequate substitute.

System and method for producing a non-dairy cheese product


The method of grinding the tapered bore of a rotary spindle, to true the bore while the spindle rotates about a spindle axis, the steps that include providing structure including a master plate having a surface facing the bore, the surface having a predetermined boundary to define a center; providing an angled slide on the structure, the slide being movable endwise relative to the structure and at a predetermined angle to the spindle axis, the angle corresponding to the spindle bore taper; providing a rotary grinder on the angled slide to be movable endwise therewith while the grinder rotates; adjusting the structure to bring the master plate surface into perpendicularity to the axis and to bring the center into coincidence with the axis, and; operating the grinder to grind the tapered bore as the spindle is rotated and as the angled slide is moved endwise.

This invention relates generally to truing the bores of rotary spindles, and more particularly concerns method and apparatus for effecting said truing by grinding the spindle bore while the spindle itself is rotating.
There are many advantages to grinding a spindle in place, one being the low down time. If the spindle were to be removed, more than likely the bearings and seals would, or at least should, be replaced. This becomes a procurement problem. Some seals and bearings can be long lead time procurement items. The spindle then needs to be sent out for grinding. This is also time consuming. All of this processing requires highly trained personnel, because in reassembly bearing preload and alignment is important.
There is another advantage to grinding in place, having to do with negating the run-out inherent in the bearings. By grinding in place, all items are taken into consideration and trued up.
Accordingly, there is need for improved method and apparatus to enable grinding of a machine tool spindle in place, i.e., without removing it from the machine.


To provide a semiconductor storage device which can adapt to assembly processes involving different treatment temperatures, can become unrewritable when rewriting of data by the user is prohibited, negates the necessity for developing different semiconductor storage devices, and lowers development cost.

1. Filed of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor storage device including nonvolatile memory, and more particularly, to a semiconductor storage device including nonvolatile memory for storing address information about a faulty area, memory operation setting information, and operation setting information about a semiconductor storage device, or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, nonvolatile memory having the function of latching data even at power-off includes flash memory, electrically-rewritable nonvolatile semiconductor memory (EEPROM or the like), and ferroelectric memory (FeRAM).
Such nonvolatile memory can be optimized by storing operation modes of the semiconductor storage device in which the memory is contained. When a deficiency is found in a memory cell, the address of the faulty area is stored, and the information is utilized, thereby replacing the memory cell in the faulty area.
Optimization of the operation mode, replacement of the memory cell in the faulty area, and initialization of memory data or the operation mode are performed by means of storing operation modes and addresses of faulty areas in the nonvolatile memory beforehand, and reading the information from a specific address area after power-on to thus perform desired setting (see JP-A-2002-117692 (pg. 14 and FIG. 1)).
In relation to a related-art semiconductor storage device, when the temperature of heat treatment performed during an assembly processes falls outside a guaranteed temperature at which a memory cell can latch data, replacement of a memory cell in a faulty area becomes impossible. Therefore, for instance, a redundant memory cell is replaced with a physical fuse.
However, in the case of a semiconductor storage device manufactured during a low-temperature assembly process (within the guaranteed temperature at which a memory cell can latch data), it is desirable to store the address of a faulty area in electrically-rewritable nonvolatile memory (EEPROM or the like) and to replace a memory cell in the faulty area even after assembly, to thus make an attempt to greatly enhance yield.
Moreover, there may be a case where storing operation modes or a faulty address in memory (mask ROM or the like) which cannot be rewritten by the user is desired. Such mask ROM or the like is not affected by the temperature of heat treatment during the assembly process, but the data acquired after assembly are unrewritable.
The related-art semiconductor storage device cannot satisfy the foregoing competing requirements simultaneously. Different semiconductor devices must be developed in response to the respective desires, raising a problem of an increase in development cost.

Abstract: A semiconductor storage device is provided with, as areas for storing faulty address information indicating a faulty area and operation mode setting information about the semiconductor storage device, a first setting function storage area 103 formed from electrically-rewritable nonvolatile memory and a second setting function storage area 102 formed from once-rewritable nonvolatile memory. Transfer of faulty address information to a faulty address register 111 and transfer of operation mode setting information to an operation mode register 110 are selectively performed.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A thermocouple rake. The thermocouple rake may include a number of support rods extending through a number of support disks, a number of thermocouple tubes extending through the support disks, and with the thermocouple tubes and the support disks having a thermal compression bond when heated.

Thermocouple rake assemblies provide temperature measurement in high temperature and/or high airflow environments such as in gas turbine engines. The thermocouple rake assemblies generally have a number of thermocouples arranged therein at varying distances. Generally described, each thermocouple may include two dissimilar metals that are joined at one end. The metals generally produce a small given voltage at a given temperature. The voltage can be used by a thermocouple thermometer to provide temperature information on the turbine airflow path.
Although the thermocouple rake assemblies can withstand the high temperature environments of a gas turbine, the gas turbine also may generate high levels of vibrations. The vibration levels in the gas turbine, however, may be highly variable. The thermocouple rake assembly therefore must be able to withstand vibration in all directions and at all frequencies. The combination of excess heat and/or vibration thus may cause thermocouple rake failure.
There is a desire therefore for an improved thermocouple rake assembly that can withstand increased temperatures and vibrations without failure. Specifically, the rake assembly should be able to withstand vibrations from any direction and at any frequency.


A musical tone generation apparatus creates musical-tone-waveform samples based on waveform samples stored in a waveform memory by each sampling period. Herein, a high-speed bus such as a PCI bus is provided for data transfer with regard to the waveform memory. A waveform buffer is provided to temporarily and selectively store the waveform samples which are read from the waveform memory. A sound source operates in accordance with time-division-channel timings which are provided by dividing a sampling period by a number of channels. The sound source performs interpolation calculations on the waveform samples of the waveform buffer to create a musical-tone-waveform sample in accordance with each time-division-channel timing with respect to each channel. The apparatus generates a read address whose value is changed in response to a pitch of a musical tone. When the waveform buffer does not store the waveform samples which are necessary to create the musical-tone-waveform sample, the apparatus accesses the waveform memory in accordance with the read address to read out the waveform samples, which are then transferred to the waveform buffer via the high-speed bus. Herein, burst reading operations are performed on the waveform memory, regardless of the time-division-channel timing. Thus, it is possible to reduce an occupancy time of the high-speed bus by the sound source as well as a number of times to access the waveform memory.

This invention relates to musical tone generation apparatuses which generate musical tones using waveform memories. Particularly, this invention uses the high-speed bus such as the PCI bus to perform reading and writing operations on the waveform memory.
The PCI bus (or PCI local bus, where `PCI` is an abbreviation for `Peripheral Component Interconnect`) is a local bus architecture designed to put peripheral on an electrical pathway closer to the central processing unit in order to improve the performance of the computer system.
The sound source device of the waveform memory type is developed to enable the simultaneous generation of multiple musical tones corresponding to multiple channels in a time division system. Herein, 1 sampling period is divided into multiple time slots, each having a same time length, which correspond to channels respectively. Each time slot is used to perform a musical tone generating operation with respect to each channel. The waveform memory stores waveform samples (or sampled waveforms) with respect to the time slots respectively. So, the device accesses the waveform memory a certain number of times. Interpolation calculations are performed on a number of waveform samples which are read from the waveform memory with respect to a number of consecutive points of the sampling. Thus, the device generates musical tone waveform data with respect to 1 sampling point.
Meanwhile, the electronic musical instrument of the waveform memory type uses the central processing unit (i.e., CPU) to control overall operations thereof. Herein, the memory stores control programs as well as waveform samples. So, the memory is shared by the CPU and sound source section.
In the sound source systems of the electronic musical instruments, the access of the memory is the bottleneck element. In the general, many of the systems are designed such that the bus coupled to the waveform memory is connected to the sound source section only. In order to change the stored contents of the waveform memory, some of the systems are designed to enable the time-division usage of the bus between the CPU and sound source section. So, the CPU and sound source section alternatively access the waveform memory in accordance with clock pulses of the time division system. Herein, a certain number of access slots (i.e., time slots for the access) are exclusively used for the CPU. In other words, the access slots for the CPU are continuously secured even if the CPU does not access the waveform memory to perform reading and/or writing operations. Thus, the access is performed on the waveform memory with a low efficiency. In some cases, the sound source section requires a large number of times to access the waveform memory to perform the generation of musical tones, wherein `a number of times to access` will be referred to as `access times`. However, due to the reason described above, the access times should be limited. This may cause a limitation in generation of musical tones. That is, the system may suffer from a demand that a number of musical tones should be limited due to the limited access times. Further, in the duration that the sound source section accesses the waveform memory, the other circuits such as the CPU and SCSI interface (where `SCSI` is an interface standard for small computer system interface) cannot use the bus. Those are disadvantages and problems which this invention should solve.
Moreover, to perform the interpolation calculations with respect to each channel, the system should perform the memory access 2 times in each sampling period. By the way, the common bus such as the PCI bus has the so-called "bus arbiter" (or "bus arbitration" which represents a procedure that resolves priorities among units contending for control of the common bus and that passes control to the selected unit). That is, the above common bus responds to priorities to perform assignment of the bus, so the usage right of the bus is assigned to the selected unit. In the case of the common bus having the bus arbiter, however, if the system changes over the usage rights of the bus many times, the usage efficiency of the bus as a whole should be lowered. This is another problem which this invention should solve.

Musical tone generation apparatus using high-speed bus for data transfer in waveform memory


A display device comprises a touch panel including a plurality of electrode columns that each includes a plurality of electrodes positioned in the electrode column. The display device further comprises a plurality of lines, each of which is connected to a corresponding electrode included in a corresponding one of the plurality of electrode columns. The lengths of the lines within a first electrode column increase as the lines are positioned further from one end of the first electrode column that is not adjacent to the second electrode column in a direction substantially perpendicular to a longitudinal direction of the lines of the first electrode column and the lengths of the lines within a second electrode column decrease as the lines are positioned further from the one end of the first electrode column in the direction substantially perpendicular to a longitudinal direction of the lines of the second electrode column.

1. Technical Field
The following description relates to a display device, and more particularly, to a display device including an integrated touch panel.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A touch panel is a kind of input device that is installed in an image display device, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), a field emission display (FED), a plasma display panel (PDP), an electroluminescence device (EL), an eletrophoretic display (EPD), etc., to allow a user to input predetermined information by pressing (or touching) a touch sensor in the touch screen while viewing the image display device.
Recently, in order to implement a slim mobile terminal, such as a smart phone, a tablet PC, or the like, demands are increasing for an in-cell type display device including an integrated touch panel where elements configuring the touch panel are installed.
Hereinafter, a driving of an in-cell type display device including an integrated touch panel will be described with reference to FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 is a view showing a display device including an integrated touch panel according to the related art. Specifically, FIG. 1 shows an in-cell self-capacitive type display device including an integrated touch panel.
In FIG. 1, an in-cell self-capacitive type display device including an integrated touch panel according to the related art includes a panel 10 where a plurality of electrodes 11 and a plurality of lines (not shown) connected to the plurality of electrodes 11, respectively, are formed, and a display drive integrated circuit (IC) 20.
For example, the display drive IC 20 may transmit a change in capacitance due to a touch input applied to the plurality of electrodes 11 of the panel 10 to a touch IC (not shown).
In the panel 10, a parasitic capacitance is generated between the plurality of electrodes 11 and the plurality of lines. As a distance from the display drive IC 20 to the electrodes 11 increases, an overlapping area of the plurality of electrodes 11 and the plurality of lines increases. Accordingly, as the distance from the display drive IC 20 to the electrodes 11 increases, the parasitic capacitance of the plurality of electrodes 11 increases.
The deviation in parasitic capacitance may cause reduction in sensing accuracy and reliability of a touch sensing method using a differential self sensing unit (DSSU).

Display device including integrated touch panel


Embodiments of the present disclosure include a system having a turbine blade segment having a blade and a mounting segment coupled to the blade, wherein the mounting segment has a multi-piece assembly configured to mount in a radial direction into a slot of a turbomachine rotor.

The subject matter disclosed herein relates to turbomachines, and, more particularly, to mounting systems for attaching turbomachine blades to a turbomachine rotor.
Turbomachines include compressors and turbines, such as gas turbines, steam turbines, and hydro turbines. Generally, turbomachines include a rotor, which may be a shaft or drum, which support turbomachine blades. For example, the turbomachine blades may be attached to the rotor by a mounting segment, which mates with a slot in the rotor. Unfortunately, the slot may not permit direct insertion into the slot due to retention features of the one-piece mounting segment and the slot. For example, the one-piece mounting segment may include lateral hooks, which cannot pass into the slot in a radial direction. As a result, the slot requires an assembly gate, such as an enlarged opening, configured to receive the mounting segments during turbomachine blade installation. Unfortunately, assembly gates can increase costs, create stress concentrations in the turbomachine rotor, and prolong turbine start times.


A method for random access, a terminal device, and a network device are provided. The method includes that: a terminal device sends an access request message to a network device and indicates access auxiliary information of the terminal device to the network device through the access request message; the terminal device receives an access response message sent by the network device according to the access request message, wherein the access response message includes indication information for indicating rejection of access of the terminal device, and the indication information includes access suggestion information corresponding to the access auxiliary information.

In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, when a terminal device performs random access, if a current network is congested, the network will reject the access of the terminal device through a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection rejection message after the terminal device initiates an RRC connection setup request; or the network releases the terminal device that has set up an RRC connection through an RRC connection release message and indicates to the terminal device that the network is congested. However, when the network rejects the access of terminal device, it releases all terminal devices or all services. These terminal devices will try to re-access after being rejected by the network device. When the quantity of terminals is large, an access success rate of the terminal device is obviously reduced.

Random access method, terminal apparatus, and network apparatus

GUANGDONG OPPO MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP., LTD.


A portable system for non-destructive evaluation of geological material structures comprises an impact device which impacts a spherical surfaced member against the surface of the structure. A vertical displacement transducer and a horizontal displacement transducer detect reflected signals from an interface of the structure, the signals being processed to give a indication of the depth of the interface from the surface of the interface and also provide an evaluation of the physical properties of the structure.

By geological material is meant artificial or natural materials, such as concrete or rock.
The assessment of the condition of concrete shaft and tunnel linings in underground excavations is difficult since most of the deterioration processes take place in the rock-side or blind-side (in the rock/concrete interface of the lining). Ground water and variations in stress conditions are the main causes and can result in deterioration and damage to the linings. The traditional method of evaluating linings is to extract core samples from the structure and measure the thickness, locate delaminations and test for strength and elastic properties. However, coring is costly and can cause further damage. It would therefore, be advantageous to be able to use non-destructive methods of evaluation.
While seismic systems are known for evaluating underground rock formations by reflective elastic waves, such systems, with their associated apparatus, are quite large, and are not usable in confined spaces.

Non-destructive evaluation of geological material structures

The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning


An endoscope apparatus includes a light source device, an image pickup device, and an observation monitor. The video processor applies, on the basis of a difference between a first image signal having a peak wavelength of a spectral characteristic and a second image signal having a peak wavelength of the spectral characteristic that a value in the absorption characteristic is lower than the value in the absorption characteristic of the first image signal and a scattering characteristic of the living tissue is suppressed more than the scattering characteristic of the first image signal between a wavelength band including a maximum value and a wavelength band at a minimum value in an absorption characteristic of a living tissue, processing for enhancing the first image signal and generates an enhanced and corrected image signal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope apparatus and, more particularly, to an endoscope apparatus capable of displaying a blood vessel on an inside of a subject.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a medical field, minimally invasive various kinds of tests and operations have been performed using an endoscope. A surgeon can insert the endoscope into a body cavity, observe an image of an object picked up by an image pickup apparatus provided at a distal end portion of an endoscope insertion portion, and, according to necessity, apply treatment to a lesion site using a treatment instrument inserted through a treatment instrument channel. An operation performed using the endoscope has an advantage that a physical burden on a patient is small because laparotomy and the like are not performed.
An endoscope apparatus includes an endoscope, an image processing device connected to the endoscope, and an observation monitor. An image of a lesion site is picked up by an image pickup device provided at a distal end portion of an endoscope insertion portion. The image is displayed on the monitor. A surgeon can perform a diagnosis or necessary treatment while looking at the image displayed on the monitor.
With some endoscope apparatus, not only normal light observation performed using white light but also special light observation performed using special light such as infrared light can be performed in order to observe a blood vessel on an inside.
In the case of an infrared endoscope apparatus, for example, indocyanine green (ICG) having a characteristic of an absorption peak in near infrared ray near a wavelength of 805 nm is injected into blood of a patient as a drug. Infrared light near a wavelength of 805 nm and near 930 nm is irradiated on an object in time division manner from a light source device. A signal of an object image picked up by a CCD is inputted to a processor of the infrared endoscope apparatus. For example, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-41942, concerning such an infrared endoscope apparatus, as a processor, a device that allocates an image near a wavelength of 805 nm to a green signal (G), allocates an image near a wavelength of 930 nm to a blue signal (B), and outputs the signals to a monitor is proposed. Since the image of the infrared light near 805 nm often absorbed by the ICG is allocated to green, a surgeon can observe an infrared image during administration of the ICG at high contract.
For example, in endoscopic submucosal dissection (hereinafter referred to as ESD) or the like for dissecting and peeling off a submucosa, in which a lesion site is present, using an endoscope, not to cut a relatively thick blood vessel in a mucosa with an electric knife or the like, a surgeon checks a position of such a blood vessel and performs treatment such as dissection.


A process for removing aluminum contaminants from the product of a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction wherein said contaminants comprise at least 1 ppm of aluminum expressed as elemental metal in aluminum-containing contaminants having an effective diameter of less than 1 micron, said process comprising the steps of (a) collecting the contaminated Fischer-Tropsch product from the Fischer-Tropsch reactor; (b) forming a mixture comprising the contaminated Fischer-Tropsch product, at least an equal molar amount of a dicarboxylic acid containing from 2 to about 8 carbon atoms based upon the amount of aluminum present, and sufficient water for the dicarboxylic acid to form hydrogen ions; (c) maintaining the mixture under pre-selected conditions for a time sufficient for the aluminum contaminant and the dicarboxylic acid to form an aluminum containing precipitate having an effective diameter of greater than about 1 micron; (d) passing the mixture of step (c) through a particulate removal zone capable of removing substantially all of the aluminum-containing precipitate; and (e) recovering from the particulate removal zone a Fischer-Tropsch product containing less than about 1 ppm total aluminum.

The majority of fuel today is derived from crude oil. Crude oil is in limited supply, and fuel derived from crude oil tends to include nitrogen-containing compounds and sulfur-containing compounds, which are believed to cause environmental problems such as acid rain.
Natural gas is abundant and may be converted into hydrocarbon fuels, lubricating oils, chemicals, and chemical feedstocks. One method for producing such products from natural gas involves converting the natural gas into synthesis gas ("syngas") which is primarily a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. In the Fischer-Tropsch process, the syngas produced from a natural gas source is converted into a product stream that includes a broad spectrum of products, including gases, such as, propane and butane; a liquid condensate which may be processed into transportation fuels; and wax which may be converted into base oils as well as lower boiling products, such as, diesel. The conversion of the wax and condensate usually involves passing the feed downwardly along with a co-current hydrogen enriched gas stream through a catalyst bed contained in one or more hydroprocessing reactors (i.e., a downflow reactor). The liquid hydrocarbon feed "trickles" down through the catalyst beds in the hydroprocessing reactor and exits the reactor bottom after the desired upgrading is achieved.
The Fischer-Tropsch feed stream as recovered from the Fischer-Tropsch reactor may contain filterable particulate contaminants, such as, for example, catalyst fines and rust and scale derived from the equipment. In addition, in some instances, un-filterable aluminum-containing contaminants have been found in the feed stream which cannot be removed using conventional particulate recovery methods. These un-filterable aluminum contaminants will coalesce into particulates under the conditions prevailing in a downstream hydroprocessing reactor and can cause serious operating difficulties in a fixed-bed, trickle-flow hydroprocessing reactor. The most frequent difficulty is pressure drop build-up and eventual plugging of the flow-paths through the catalyst beds as the catalyst pellets filter out the feed particulates. Such build-up can cause significant economic loss in lost production and replacement catalyst costs. These non-filterable aluminum-containing contaminants usually will concentrate in the heavier wax fraction of the Fischer-Tropsch product stream.
It would be advantageous to provide an efficient process for removing the un-filterable aluminum contaminants from the Fischer-Tropsch feed stream prior to the downstream hydroprocessing operations. The present invention provides such a process.
As used in this disclosure the word "comprises" or "comprising" is intended as an open-ended transition meaning the inclusion of the named elements, but not necessarily excluding other unnamed elements. The phrase "consists essentially of" or "consisting essentially of" is intended to mean the exclusion of other elements of any essential significance to the composition. The phrase "consisting of" or "consists of" is intended as a transition meaning the exclusion of all but the recited elements with the exception of only minor traces of impurities.

Process for removing aluminum contaminants from Fischer-Tropsch feed streams using dicarboxylic acid


Alumina-silica catalyst supports having substantially high surfaces areas are formed by extrusion, drying and firing of a plasticized batch including an alumina-silica powder component, acid, organic binder and water. The alumina-silica powder component can be formed either by the mixing of alumina- and silica-source powders or by forming a slurry therefrom which is spray dried to form a particulate material prior to batching.

The present invention relates to ceramic monolithic catalyst or catalyst supports, and, in particular, a process of manufacturing alumina-silica honeycomb catalysts or catalyst supports.
The petrochemical industries currently use a variety of pellet type structures formed of gamma alumina or other oxides, e.g., pellets, pills, beads, rings, trilobes, stars, and so forth, as catalysts or catalyst support media for catalytic reactions. These structures are typically formed by extrusion from batch mixtures of alumina or other selected oxides, followed by drying and calcining. Pellet beds, however, tend to exhibit relatively high flow resistance, and also develop preferential flow paths which exhaust portions of the catalyst while leaving other portions relatively unused.
Monolithic catalyst supports, such as honeycomb structures, have been proposed as an alternative to the aforementioned pellet type structures for providing several advantages. These including lower pressure drop, greater surface area, higher yield, higher selectivity, and more compact reactor designs. Generally, ceramic honeycombs are used in applications in which the monolithic substrate serves simply as a physical structural support for a chemically active, high-surface-area catalyst coating (e.g., a washcoating of alumina deposited on the channel walls of the ceramic honeycomb.) However, for many applications porous washcoatings are inadequate and catalysts or catalyst supports made up mostly or entirely of active, high surface area material must instead be used.
One such application is the hydro-desulfurization of fossil fuels in the petrochemical industry to make low sulfur gasoline and diesel fuels. Since the reaction kinetics are the slow step in such processes, it is important to provide a relatively large accessible BET catalyst support surface (more catalyst sites in a given volume) in order to allow the most effective use of reactor volume. This in turn requires that the entire volume of the catalyst or catalyst support structure be made of active, high-surface-area material, and that the pore structure of the material be such that that the reactants can diffuse in and products diffuse out of the volume of the catalyst support effectively over relatively long distances.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,631,267 relates to the manufacture of extruded honeycombs of alumina, silica and titania compositions that incorporate precursors for permanent silica, alumina and titania binders in powdered alumina, titania or silica extrusion batches. The precursors for the permanent binders are generally liquid solutions or dispersions of oxide-yielding compounds such as titanium isopropoxide or silicone solutions or hydrated alumina slurries, these being converted to small crystallite bonding deposits of the respective oxides on firing.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,365,259 relates to the manufacture of extruded honeycombs of gamma alumina compositions absent permanent binders in the starting batches. The forming process includes providing a powder component of alumina powders including at least one anhydrous alumina powder, which is combined with water, an acid, and a plasticizing temporary binder to form a plasticized mixture. The plasticized mixture is extruded into a honeycomb structure, which is dried and fired.
However, there still remains a need for a process of making silica-alumina catalyst supports of high-surface area, in an effective and economic manner.

Method of producing alumina-silica catalyst supports


A transmitting and receiving system is provided. The transmitting of receiving system includes a transmitting apparatus to transmit data and a receiving apparatus to receive the data by means of radio communication. The transmitting apparatus includes: data transmission means for transmitting the data; state information reception means for receiving state information indicative of states of the radio communication from the receiving apparatus; and control means for controlling transmission using the data transmission means. When the state information reception means receives state information indicating a degraded state of the radio communication, the control means stores control information for the data transmission means to control transmission immediately before the state information is received; and, when the state information reception means thereafter receives state information indicating a normal state of the radio communication, the control means uses the most recently stored control information to control transmission by means of the data transmission means. The receiving apparatus includes: data reception means for receiving data transmitted from the data transmission means by means of the radio communication; determination means for determining the radio communication state based on data received by the data reception means; and state information transmission means for transmitting state information indicating the radio communication state determined by the determination means to the transmitting apparatus.

The present application relates to a transmitting and receiving system, a transmitting apparatus, a transmitting method, a receiving apparatus, a receiving method, and a program. More specifically, the application relates to a transmitting and receiving system, a transmitting apparatus, a transmitting method, a receiving apparatus, a receiving method, and a program capable of fast resuming data transmission quality during recovery from a degraded state to a normal state based on a transmission control state before the degradation in consideration for radio variations and radio link control.
In due course of progress in the recent home networking and increasing need for radio communications (e.g., cellular network, radio LAN (Local Area Network), and UWB (Ultra Wide Band)), there is expected an increasing demand for streaming reproduction of high-quality audiovisual data via radio networks in the future.
In an expected situation, for example, a user may want to use bidirectional communication services such as video on-demand services and video chatting supplied by a content provider. The user may want to streamingly reproduce data transmitted from the content provider on a personal computer (PC) or a display unit wirelessly connected to the content provider at home.
Transmission of data on IP (Internet Protocol) networks requires control over transmission rates in accordance with states of data reproduction encoding rates, available bands on the IP network, and IP network congestion. General techniques for controlling transmission rates include not only the technique using TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) having data arrival reliability, but also the technique using RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) defined in highly realtime RFC (Request For Comment) 1889 (e.g., TFRC (TCP-Friendly Rate Control) defined in RFC3448). These techniques are constructed to aim at wired networks with small communication errors.
Generally, a radio network may experience multi-path propagation due to reflected waves from various obstacles. According to the transmission channel characteristic (communication channel characteristic), propagation delay differences cause frequency selective fading that distorts frequency characteristics within transmission bands to remarkably vary or degrade communication states (communication quality).
By contrast, a radio network area is formed between a sending party and a receiving party and is composed of a radio base station and a radio terminal. In order to improve remarkable variations or degradation of communication states, the radio network area is provided with techniques (radio link control) such as antenna diversity, error resistive bit coding, and error packet retransmission.
Even though these techniques are provided, radio communication states or ambient environment degrades communication states such as an increase in packet error rates (radio packet error rates) or Round Trip Time (RTT) during radio communication for a short or long period of time. Such degradation of the communication state is exceptional for the above-mentioned techniques of controlling wired network transmission rates. As a result, the degraded communication state causes congestion in the radio communication and degradation or instability of the data transmission quality (transmission rate (sending rate), transmission delay, etc.). After the radio communication state recovers, the transmission rate recovery delays. Accordingly, the above-mentioned techniques of controlling wired network transmission rates are improper for the streaming reproduction.
FIGS. 1A through 1C show examples of indoor experiment on a radio LAN. With reference to these diagrams, the following describes communication situations of controlling transmission rates according to the transmission rate control technique using the RTP operating on the UDP (User Datagram Protocol) under fading environment.
FIG. 1A shows temporal changes of radio packet error rates (%). FIG. 1B shows temporal changes of transmission rates (Mbps). An upper part of FIG. 1C shows temporal changes of RTT (ms). A lower part of FIG. 1C shows temporal changes of loss rates of packets (packet loss rates) (%). In FIGS. 1A through 1C, the abscissa represents time (s).
As shown in FIG. 1A, several states correspond to the radio packet error rates at the boundary of approximately 20%: a degraded state having large values for a short period, less than several hundreds of milliseconds; a degraded state having large values for a long period, ranging from several hundreds of milliseconds to several seconds; and a normal state having small values. The boundary and values indicate specific tendencies depending on fading situations and radio chip algorithms.
In FIG. 1A, a high radio packet error rate for one second or longer occurs approximately at the time point of 42 seconds (circle A1 in FIG. 1A) to decrease the corresponding throughput (transmissible effective rate) for improving the radio network. As shown in FIG. 1C, the RTT and the packet loss rate increase accordingly (circles C1 and D1 in FIG. 1C). As a result, the transmission rate control technique using RTP decreases the transmission rate as the RTT and the packet loss rate increase.
Afterwards, as shown in FIG. 1A, approximately at the time point of 44 or 45 seconds, the long degrading radio state is restored to the normal state with a low error rate (point A2 in FIG. 1A). Also in this case, it takes approximately three or four seconds b1 for the transmission rate to resume a state (point B2 in FIG. 1B) equivalent to the state before the degraded radio state. This is because the AIMD (Additive Increase, Multiplicative Decrease) algorithm is used to gradually increase the transmission rate for recovery.
Similarly, in FIG. 1A, a high radio packet error rate for one second or longer occurs approximately at the time point of 55 seconds (circle A3 in FIG. 1A). As a result, the throughput for the radio area decreases. As shown in FIG. 1C, the RTT and the packet loss rate increase accordingly (circles C2 and D2 in FIG. 1C). Also in this case, the transmission rate decreases as the RTT and the packet loss rate increase (circle B3 in FIG. 1B). The transmission rate remains low approximately at the time point of 57 seconds (point A4 in FIG. 1A) where the radio packet error rate is restored to the normal state. It takes approximately 10 seconds b2 for the transmission rate to be restored (point B4 in FIG. 1B).
As a result, the transmission rate is controlled based on the transmission rate control technique using the RTP in FIGS. 1A through 1C. Increasing the RTT (points C1 and C2 in FIG. 1C) causes irregular framing in a streamed image. Afterwards, remarkable degradation occurs when the transmission rate decreases (between points B1 and B2 and between points B3 and B4 in FIG. 1B).
As mentioned above, the transmission rate control technique using the RTP causes discrepancy between the transmission rate and the throughput for the radio area during a long degraded radio state. The RTT and the packet loss rate increase to remarkably decrease the transmission rate. In addition, the transmission rate slowly recovers after the radio state recovers. Because of these two factors, that control technique is inappropriate for streaming reproduction.
To solve this problem, there is a demand for a transmission rate control technique that has a congestion control function requested for wired networks, complies with the above-mentioned transmission channel characteristics specific to radio networks and effects of the control provided for radio networks, and provides high-performance and stable data transmission quality.
It is desirable to possibly avoid changes in the existing system construction such as introducing a new apparatus.
For example, a possible transmission rate control technique compliant with radio networks determines a congestion state and a degraded radio state based on the RTT, the packet loss rate, and the radio packet error rate. To correct degraded radio states, there is the technique that maintains and stabilizes the transmission rate (e.g., see JP 2001/160824).
However, the technique disclosed in JP 2001/160824 gives no consideration to the radio link control such as the above-mentioned packet retransmission performed on radio networks, thus causing congestion during radio communication.
According to the other techniques (e.g., see JP 2004/153616 and JP 2004/153619), a radio communication terminal determines the radio communication transmission rate using control information such as DRC (Data Rate Control) in the 1xEV-DO cellular packet network system and transmits the transmission rate to a data delivery apparatus. The techniques disclosed in JP 2004/153616 and JP 2004/153619 cannot be applied to radio LANs that are provided with no protocol for transmitting control information such as DRC. Further, the techniques disclosed in JP 2004/153616 and JP 2004/153619 give no consideration to the congestion control for wired and radio communications.
According to yet another technique, a relay node on the wired network converts data encoding rates depending on degradation of radio communication states detected by using the packet loss rate to adjust rates of transmission to the radio base station. In this manner, the relay node prevents a delay in data arrival from increasing. That is, the technique separates the radio communication from the wired communication for control (e.g., see JP 2004/15761).
However, the technique disclosed in JP 2004/15761 uses the packet loss rate to detect degradation of communication states, thus slowing down the response time of the transmission rate control. The system using this technique requires a relay node.
Moreover, JP 2001/160824, JP 2004/153616, JP 2004/153619 and JP 2004/15761 provide no control over radio communication states in consideration for the long-term and short-term states discussed with reference to FIGS. 1A to 1C.

Transmitting and receiving system, transmitting apparatus, transmitting method, receiving apparatus, receiving method, and program


In a pneumatic pump of the float actuated variety, a radial check valve array is utilized for minimizing the trigger point of the pump relative to the bottom of the leachate and/or groundwater table. The pump includes a fluid-tight casing from which fluid to be pumped can be discharged to an outflow conduit such as a well casing. An outflow conduit extends from a outflow conduit inlet at the bottom inside of the fluid-tight casing to a pumped fluid discharge--such as a well casing--exterior of the casing. An actuating float is disposed within the pump casing and is moveable over a distance responsive to liquid level within the casing from a first lower position adjacent the bottom of the casing to a second upper position for actuating an air inlet to discharge air into the casing. An air inlet check valve is provided having an inlet for communication to a source of air under pressure exterior of the pump casing and an outlet to the interior of the pump casing. Inlet of fluid to be pumped to the interior of the pump casing from the exterior of the pump occurs through the radial check valve array. The array functions to surround the outflow conduit of the pump to enable the outflow conduit and check valve array to overlap, reducing the minimum trigger depth of the pump.

Landfill sites are utilized for the disposal of waste. In the usual case, the landfill site is required to have a water-impermeable bottom. Oxygenated groundwater or leachate is circulated through the landfill. Sometimes the leachate is sprayed onto the top of the landfill site and is oxygenated during the spraying process. This oxygenated water or leachate then passes through the material of the landfill and causes desired oxidation with accompanying desired decomposition of materials within the landfill. Typically, the decomposition produces methane gas, which can be a useful by-product of the landfill site.
There is a requirement that the leachate within the landfill site be pumped. Otherwise, the leachate will fill the site, lose its oxygen content to the oxygen demanding environment of decomposing material of the landfill, and thereafter prevent the desired circulation of oxygenated water through the landfill. By the expedient of pumping the leachate from the water-impermeable bottom of the landfill, aerating the leachate by passing the leachate through conventional sprinklers, and allowing the leachate to recirculate through the landfill, systematic and desired decomposition of the materials within the landfill occurs.
Pneumatic pumps are often preferred relative to electric pumps in such landfill applications for several reasons. First, in landfill applications, it is not possible to predict the flow rate at any individual pump. Pneumatic pumps can accommodate a wide range of flow rates; electric pumps are more restricted due to the fact that their driving motors are usually run at a constant speed.
Secondly, the leachate contains particulate matter. Pneumatic pumps are much more tolerant of particulate matter than electric pumps. Electric pumps can jam or wear excessively when encountering particulate matter; pneumatic pumps can undergo one or more imperfect cycles and then pass the particulate matter through the pump.
Third, the flow of the leachate is not always constant. The flow can either be extremely low or erratic. Electric pumps in accommodating periods of low flow often start and stop frequently. This can and does cause such pumps to become overheated and burn out.
Fourth, leachate can be extremely corrosive. Electric pumps with their required electrical connections accommodate the corrosive leachate with difficulty; pneumatic pumps because of their simplicity can be given a higher tolerance to the corrosive leachate.
Fifth, electrical connections are difficult to install in landfill sites. Specifically, the electrical connections must pass across landfill sites to each well site. Because of the dynamic decomposition occurring, levels of the landfill constantly change requiring constant attention to rerouting of the electrical connections. Further, and because of the content of the landfill, the leachate is frequently conductive. As a consequence, down-hole electrical connections in the individual wells to power such pumps are much more difficult to maintain than pneumatic connections.
As applied to landfill leachate recirculation, pneumatic pumps have a serious drawback. Typically, it is desired to have the input to such pneumatic pumps as close to the bottom of the landfill leachate groundwater table as possible. The pneumatic pumps of choice operate on a "float-triggering" principle in connection with a lever and stainless steel poppet air valve (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,487,647 (Breslin); 5,358,038 (Edwards, et al.); and 5,358,037 (Edwards, et al.)). The float vertically reciprocates from a lower, intake position to an upper, pump actuation position in response to the level of leachate which enters the pump from the soil immediately surrounding the pumps. While an electric pump can have an inlet immediate to the bottom of the groundwater table, pneumatic pumps because of the requirement of float actuation must have a so-called "trigger depth." This trigger depth is the required submergence of the pump necessary to actuate a pump cycle.
The necessity of this trigger depth requires a static head of leachate of a minimum depth before a pumping cycle can be initiated. Unfortunately, the greater the trigger depth, the larger the volume of leachate which is maintained at the bottom of the landfill. It is desired to keep the volume of leachate at the bottom of the landfill site to a minimum. With current intake check valve designs on such pumps, trigger depths are over 12 inches. Certain laws now require such trigger depths to be 12 inches or less.
In the disclosure that follows, I utilize a radial check valve array to lower the trigger depth of a pneumatic pump. The reader will understand that although such radial check valve arrays are known, they have not been utilized or suggested to be utilized for lowering the trigger depth of pneumatic pumps. This is especially true as these pneumatic pumps are applied to the problem of leachate in landfill sites. Accordingly, I claim invention in this combination.

Pneumatic pump having radial ball check valve array


An apparatus comprising a first loss of signal circuit, a second loss of a signal circuit and a gate circuit. The first loss of a signal circuit may be configured to (i) receive an input signal containing a series of data and (ii) generate a first indication signal when the input signal is operating within a first frequency range. The second loss of signal circuit may be configured to (i) receive the input signal and (ii) generate a second indication signal when the input signal is operating within a second frequency range. The gate circuit may be configured to generate an output signal in response to either the first indication signal or the second indication signal being active.

Conventional serializer and deserializer circuits (SERDES) are often used to transmit high speed parallel data across a lossy channel. For a set of high speed parallel data, the timing or synchronization is difficult to achieve when the set of data is sent out through different paths.
For this reason, the parallel data can be first converted into serial data in a transmitter. Then the transmitter will send out the serial data with a certain amplitude to a remote receiver across a lossy channel. The receiver then amplifies the attenuated input signal. The amplified signal is sampled by a clean clock to remove noise. The phase of the received signal is aligned to a well defined clock phase. The received serial signal is then converted back to a parallel digital signal. The channel is usually built by transmission lines in a printed circuit board. With higher data rates and longer channels, the loss is large.
Conventional approaches often implement a pre-emphasis circuit in the transmitter and a linear equalizer and decision feedback equalizer (DFE) in the receiver. The pre-emphasis and equalization circuits are built in the SERDES to remove inter-symbol interference (ISI).
The equalization circuits implemented in receivers tend to use a lot of power. If there are no real data received in the receivers, the equalization circuit can be powered down in order to save power, which needs a circuit to determine the effectiveness of the received signal. In general, a circuit with this function is called loss of signal detector (LOS). Conventional approaches implement a loss of signal detector at a receiver to continuously monitor the channel data and the link status. If the output of the loss of signal detector is high (or effective), an indication is sent that the channel data is lost or the received data is too small to power up the other signal processing circuit in the receiver.
A loss of signal detector includes a linear amplifier to amplify the received data, a rectifier to convert the amplified AC signal to DC voltage, a comparator to compare the rectified DC voltage with a reference voltage. The output of the comparator is sent to the digital control core of the SERDES. For data communication, the data rate processed by a SERDES is increased from a few Gbps up to 30 Gbps. Data rates tend to continuously increase as designs evolve.
To enable the loss of signal circuit to differentiate significantly attenuated data from noise is challenging. With the progress of CMOS technology, supply voltages tend to scale down, but the data rates tend to increase. The attenuation across a circuit board proportionally decreases the data rate. The overall effect is that with a smaller feature size, a lower supply voltage, a faster operating speed and a larger attenuation, the signal amplitude at the far end of a remote receiver decreases. The signal to noise ratio (SNR) also decreases. Therefore, the sensitivity of a LOS circuit has to increase. Since the received data could be in any frequency range (from 100 Mbps up to 30 Gbps), LOS circuits need to maintain an ultra wide bandwidth.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,377,082, entitled "Loss-of-Signal Detector for Clock Data Recovery Circuit", discloses using clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit to detect the loss of signal. One drawback with such an approach is the reliance on the function of the CDR decision circuit. The pre-requirement for the functionality of a CDR decision circuit is that the input signal amplitude has to be large enough. Such an approach is power hungry since most of the blocks in receiver need to be powered on.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,868,470, entitled "Apparatus and Method for Detecting a True Average of N Signal Samples", discloses an average detector in bipolar technology, which uses an input capacitor C, an output capacitor nC, and a number of diodes. Such an architecture can not be applied in low voltage CMOS process.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,102,392, entitled "Signal Detector for High-Speed SerDes", discloses an improved signal detector by using two peaking amplifiers to amplify simultaneously the differential received signals and differential reference voltages. The major drawback is that such an approach consumes large amounts of power due to the power consumption of the peaking amplifier. Another issue is that the gain for the reference voltage from a peaking amplifier is a DC gain. The gain for input signal is a large-signal AC gain. The gain from these two peaking amplifiers can not be accurately matched.
It would be desirable to implement an ultra-wideband loss of signal detector that may be used at a receiver for high speed SERDES application.

Ultra-wideband loss of signal detector at a receiver in a high speed serializer/deserializer (SERDES) application

Avago Technologies General IP (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.


A photonic assembly for observing a preselected color includes an assembly of colloidal particles in a continuous liquid phase, the colloidal particles comprising a core scattering center and a shell layer surrounding the core, wherein the core scattering center is selected to scatter light having a predetermined wavelength, and wherein the shell has a thickness selected to provide an overall colloidal particle size that is about the same dimension as the wavelength of preselected color to be observed.

Many species of birds have feathers that are brilliantly colored without the use of pigments. In these cases, light of specific wavelengths is selectively scattered from nanostructures with variations in index of refraction on length-scales of the order of visible light. This phenomenon is called structural color. Structural color is distinct from pigmentary color in that it does not rely on the absorption of light.
Structural color arises from constructive interference of light scattered by variations in the refractive index within a material. A naturally occurring example is opal, whose iridescence is a consequence of Bragg diffraction from its ordered internal arrangement of silica. Similar structural colors can be produced in synthetic systems. For example, artificial opals can be made from self-assembled colloidal crystals in which the particle spacing is on the order of the wavelength of light. In all such materials, the colors vary with the viewing angle because the resonance condition changes as the incident light direction varies with respect to the crystal orientation. This variation of color with angle is well-understood and can be predicted from photonic band theory. Empirical and experimental observation has shown that the color of the preferentially scattered wavelength is on the same order as the average distance between the scattering nanostructures. For nanoparticle arrays, therefore, the particle size determines the array spacing and therefore the color of the observed light.
Less well-understood—and less exploited—are materials in which the structural color does not vary with angle. A recently discovered example from nature is the bright blue plumage of the plum-throated cotinga, whose feathers are patterned with a dense, disordered arrangement of pores. The short-range correlations in the pore network give rise to constructive interference of scattered light. Because the structure is isotropic, the interference condition does not vary with orientation, and therefore the color is independent of the viewing angle. Synthetic materials with similar appearance can be made through a variety of approaches. Amorphous colloidal structures can be made by drying bidisperse mixtures of particles. Thin films of these disordered structures show angle-independent structural color. Similar systems, termed "photonic liquids" or "photonic glasses" can be made from suspensions of highly-charged spheres that, though monodisperse, can nonetheless form amorphous structures due to the soft, long-range electrostatic repulsion between the particles. An alternative approach that does not involve making a disordered system is to dope ordered structures (colloidal crystals) with nanoparticles, which act as scattering sites. The structural color in all of these materials—bird feathers, binary packings, photonic glasses, and nanoparticle-doped crystals—is not due to Bragg reflection, which requires a weakly scattering system with long-range order, but is instead a result of scattering with a strong wavelength dependence that arises from correlations in the colloidal structure.

Photonic balls containing a microstructure of core-shell particles exhibiting angularly-independent structural color

President and Fellows of Harvard College


A nozzle of dust blower is mainly a hollow tube with one open end connected to the dust blower and the other end a closed end. The wall near the closed end has several outlets on the same side toward a radial direction of the tube, so that the high-pressure air blown by the dust blower into the tube blows out of the outlets in the radial direction. Corresponding to each of the outlets, the tube has an auxiliary nozzle base. Each nozzle base has a passage connected to the corresponding outlet. The passage of each of the nozzle bases extends along the radial direction of the tube. The end of each of the nozzle bases near the tube has at least one inlet, so as to suck more air into the nozzle base as the air is blown out.

1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to a nozzle of dust blower and, in particular, to a nozzle whose outlets are on a single side.
2. Related Art
A conventional dust blower nozzle is shown in FIG. 5. It is a hollow tube 7 with a line of outlets 71 opened on one side of the tube 7. The high-pressure air connected to the dust blower 72 therefore blows out of the outlets 71 in a radial direction of the tube 7.
However, due to the structure of the nozzle, the airflow right outside the outlets 71 immediately diffuses instead of forming a concentrated flow. On the other hand, the airflow out of such a nozzle structure depends on the high-pressure air source connected to the dust blower 72. To obtain a larger airflow, one has to increase the power of the high-pressure air source at a higher cost.
It is thus an objective of the invention to provide a better solution.


A method of fabricating an air-gap spacer of a metal-oxide-semiconductor device includes the following steps. First, a substrate having a gate oxide layer and a polysilicon layer successively formed is provided. The polysilicon layer and the gate oxide layer are patterned to form a gate electrode region. A silicon nitride layer and an oxide layer are successively formed on the surface of the substrate and the surface of the gate electrode region. The oxide layer and the silicon nitride layer are anisotropically etched to form a cross-sectional L-shaped silicon nitride layer and a first spacer at the sidewall of the gate electrode region. After the first spacer is removed, an ion implantation is performed to form an extended lightly doped region below the L-shaped silicon nitride layer in the substrate and a lightly doped region in the substrate surrounding the extended lightly doped region. A second spacer is formed at the sidewall of the L-shaped silicon nitride layer wherein the second spacer covers the L-shaped silicon nitride layer. An ion implantation process is performed to form source/drain regions, using the second spacer and the gate electrode region as masks. The L-shaped silicon nitride layer is removed to form an L-shaped air-gap region.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to the fabrication of a metal-oxide-semiconductor device (MOS), and more particularly to the method of forming a MOS device, having an air-gap between the gate electrode and the spacer.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to avoid short-channel effect, lightly doped drain (LDD) structure is frequently utilized in a MOS device. Referring to FIG. 1, LDD structure 11 contains a lightly doped region located at a region between the source/drain region 15 and the gate electrode 12 at the substrate 10 surface. However, the existence of the spacer 13 between the gate electrode 12 and the LDD region 11 results in an overlap capacitor 14, which is easy to cause the misjudgement during data access.
To reduce the overlap capacitor forming between the gate electrode region and LDD region, material with lower dielectric constant is frequently utilized as spacer. Besides, a MOS having an air-gap region between the gate electrode region and the spacer is proposed to prevent the formation of the overlap capacitor. Referring to FIG. 2, a MOS device 20 includes a gate electrode region 21, source/drain regions 22, a LDD region 23 and a spacer 24. The spacer 24 and the gate electrode region 21 are not directly connected but isolated by an air gap region 25. Therefore, the overlap capacitor between the gate electrode region 21 and the LDD region 23 is reduced.
However, the MOS device with the air-gap structure can not completely avoids the formation of the overlap capacitor since the spacer partially contacts with the LDD region.

Method of fabricating an air-gap spacer of a metal-oxide-semiconductor device


An engine ECU executes a program including the step of performing an operation for rapid catalyst warm-up, under the conditions that an engine is started and rapid catalyst warm-up is necessary, by setting the ratio of fuel injection by an in-cylinder injector to be equal to or higher than that of an intake manifold injector and retarding the ignition timing to a large degree, and the step of performing normal operation under the condition that the catalyst is warmed up to be activated.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a control apparatus for an internal combustion engine including a first fuel injection mechanism (in-cylinder injector) for injecting fuel into a cylinder and a second fuel injection mechanism (intake manifold injector) for injecting fuel into an intake manifold or intake port. In particular, the invention relates to a control apparatus for an internal combustion engine for use in the case where a catalyst for cleaning exhaust gases is rapidly warmed up.
2. Description of the Background Art
An internal combustion engine is well-known that includes an intake manifold injector for injecting fuel into an engine intake manifold and an in-cylinder injector for injecting fuel into an engine combustion chamber, for which the ratio of fuel injection between the intake manifold injector and the in-cylinder injector is determined based on an engine speed and an engine load.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-324765 discloses a control apparatus for a direct-injection spark-ignition internal combustion engine that activates, at an early stage after engine start, a catalyst for cleaning exhaust gases. This control apparatus for the direct-injection spark-ignition internal combustion engine includes a fuel injection valve for injecting and supplying fuel directly into a combustion chamber of the engine, fuel supply means for creating a homogeneous air-fuel mixture in the entire combustion chamber, and a spark plug for producing a spark to ignite the air-fuel mixture within the combustion chamber. The direct-injection spark-ignition internal combustion engine is controlled in such a manner that the quantity of injected fuel and the fuel injection timing of the fuel injection valve in a compression stroke as well as the ignition timing of the spark plug are controlled such that the air-fuel ratio of an air-fuel mixture layer locally located around the spark plug when the mixture is ignited is stoichiometric under a predetermined engine operating condition, and accordingly stratified charge combustion is performed. The control apparatus further includes temperature-increase condition determination means for making a determination as to the condition under which an exhaust cleaning catalyst provided in an exhaust manifold of the engine should be increased in temperature as well as control means for controlling, under the condition where the exhaust cleaning catalyst should be increased in temperature, the quantity of fuel injected by the fuel supply means so as to allow the air-fuel ratio of the air-fuel mixture generated in the whole combustion chamber to be lean rather than stoichiometric and to be an air-fuel ratio at which flame can be propagated, and controlling the quantity of injected fuel and the fuel injection timing of the fuel injection valve in a compression stroke and the ignition timing of the spark plug so as to allow the air-fuel ratio of the air-fuel mixture locally located around the spark plug when the mixture is ignited to be rich rather than stoichiometric, thereby achieving a second stratified charge combustion.
Regarding this control apparatus for the direct-injection spark-ignition internal combustion engine, the air-fuel ratio of the air-fuel mixture layer around the spark plug is set to be rich rather than stoichiometric, and thus an incomplete combustion product (CO) is generated in a main combustion process (ignition by spark and subsequent combustion through flame propagation) and this CO remains in the combustion chamber after the main combustion. Further, since the air-fuel mixture generated around the rich air-fuel mixture is lean rather than stoichiometric, oxygen remains in this region after the main combustion. Flow of gases in the cylinder after the main combustion causes the remaining CO and the remaining oxygen to be mixed and re-burned, resulting in an increase in exhaust temperature. Since the incomplete combustion product (CO) is generated in the process of main combustion, the incomplete combustion product has already been in a high-temperature state when the main combustion is completed. Therefore, the CO can be burned in a relatively favorable state even under the condition where the combustion-chamber temperature is low. In other words, almost all of the generated CO can be re-burned in the combustion chamber and in the exhaust manifold upstream of the catalyst. Although an increased quantity of CO could flow to the catalyst as compared with homogeneous charge combustion which generates a smaller quantity of CO in the main combustion itself, the catalyst starts CO conversion at a temperature lower than the HC conversion starting temperature and thus exhaust emissions are influenced to a relatively small degree. Further, since the air-fuel ratio of the lean air-fuel mixture layer is set to an air-fuel ratio at which flame can be propagated, un-burned HC is not generated at the boundary between the rich air-fuel mixture layer and the lean air-fuel mixture layer. Furthermore, since the flame is propagated to every corner of the combustion chamber in a favorable state, the low-temperature region (quench area) in the combustion chamber may be a small region which is the same as the one for the homogeneous charge combustion. Moreover, since an excessive quantity of oxygen in a region where the lean air-fuel mixture is burned is left after the main combustion, the temperature of the remaining oxygen when the main combustion is completed is relatively high, so that CO is more quickly re-burned.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 11-324765 discussed above includes a fourth embodiment showing the following structure. Fuel supply means for creating a homogeneous air-fuel mixture in the entire combustion chamber is provided to generate a homogeneous air-fuel mixture that is relatively lean rather than stoichiometric in the whole combustion chamber through fuel injection by means of a fuel injection valve (fuel injection valve for intake port injection) provided in the intake manifold in an exhaust stroke or in a period from an exhaust stroke to an intake stroke. A fuel injection valve for injecting fuel into the cylinder is used to inject and supply fuel into the combustion chamber in a compression stroke and create an air-fuel mixture in a layered form that is relatively rich (high fuel concentration) rather than stoichiometric around the spark plug, and the mixture is burned. For a stratified stoichiometric charge combustion with the purpose of activating a catalyst, fuel is supplied in the following way. Specifically, of the total quantity of fuel that can be almost completely burned with a quantity of intake air per combustion cycle (weight of fuel necessary for achieving a substantially stoichiometric ratio), from approximately 50% to approximately 90% for example of the weight of fuel is injected and supplied into the intake manifold by means of the fuel injection valve for intake port injection (in an exhaust stroke or from exhaust stroke to intake stroke), thereby generating a homogeneous air-fuel mixture that is relatively lean rather than stoichiometric in the entire combustion chamber in an intake stroke. Further, from approximately 50% to approximately 10% of the remaining weight of fuel is injected and supplied into the combustion chamber by means of the fuel injection valve for injecting fuel into the cylinder in a compression stroke, and an air-fuel mixture that is relatively rich (high fuel concentration) rather than stoichiometric around the spark plug is generated in a layered form, and the mixture is burned. In other words, when the catalyst is heated, regarding the fuel injection ratio between the in-cylinder fuel injection valve and the intake manifold fuel injection valve, at least the fuel injection ratio of the intake manifold fuel injection valve is higher.
However, in order to achieve early warm-up of the exhaust catalyst, the aforementioned fuel injection ratio is not optimum for the internal combustion engine having the fuel injection valve for injecting fuel into the cylinder (in-cylinder injector) and the fuel injection valve for injecting fuel into the intake manifold (intake manifold injector). In other words, as to the ignition timing that is the most important factor for catalyst warm-up, a sufficient retard cannot be achieved at such a fuel injection ratio.

Control apparatus for internal combustion engine


A rack for supporting containers upside down for drainage. The rack includes container holders for maintaining the containers in a desired orientation during the drainage process.

Devices for recovering or draining residual fluids from recently emptied containers and vessels containing viscous fluids, such as motor oil bottles and motor oil filters, among others, are known. Typically, such devices, commonly known as draining stands or racks, generally comprise a plurality of funnel-like elements having their wide inlet end oriented upwardly, and their narrow outlet end extending downwardly into a network of conduits that are joined to a common output port located above the opening of a collecting reservoir or the like that receives the drained fluids from all the containers.
The containers to be drained are positioned upside down into the funnel-like elements and remain there for a sufficient lapse of time to allow the residual viscous fluids to slowly flow down by gravity into the network of conduits and eventually into the collecting reservoir. Currently existing drainage racks however have many disadvantages.
Indeed, the containers positioned upside down into the funnel-like elements are more often than not containers having a substantially rectangular format, with an opening extending upwardly at one upper end thereof, rather than a symmetrical cylindrical container with its centered opening on top. Thus, the containers generally end up resting at an oblique angle relative to the vertical, which results in more time required for draining each container.
The problem is often worsened by the presence of sometimes relatively deep transversal ribs along side surface portions of the containers, as well as a hollow handle formed along an upper corner the container. These handles can define small inner pocket regions in curved portions thereof, particularly adjacent the mouth, or neck finish of the container. This will result in some of the liquids to recover remaining stuck in the container.
Against this background, there exists a need in the industry to provide an improved drainage rack. An object of the present invention is therefore to provide such an improved drainage rack.


A fatigue resistant gravity based spread footing under heavy multi-axial cyclical loading of a wind tower. The foundation having a central vertical pedestal, a substantially horizontal continuous bottom support slab, a plurality of radial reinforcing ribs extending radially outward from the pedestal. The pedestal, ribs and slab forming a continuous monolithic structure. The foundation having a three-dimensional network of post-tensioning elements that keep the structural elements under heavy multi-axial post compression with a specific eccentricity intended to reduce stress amplitudes and deflections and allows the foundation to have a desirable combination of high stiffness and superior fatigue resistance. The foundation design reduces the weight and volume of materials used, reduces cost, and improves heat dissipation conditions during construction by having a small ratio of concrete mass to surface area thus eliminating the risk of thermal cracking due to heat of hydration.

Field of the Invention
This invention relates to building fatigue resistant foundations for supporting columns, towers and structures under heavy cyclical loads such as for onshore and offshore wind turbine towers. Wind turbine support structures are subjected to high cyclical loading with the number of load cycles up to 109. Therefore, the fatigue design becomes more important for concrete construction and the influence of multi-stage and multi-axial fatigue loading have to be considered. Studies have recommended modification of the design rules for concrete construction of wind turbine foundations in order to consider the influence of multi-axial loading.
Wind turbine manufacturers have successfully developed large wind turbines with rated power ranging from 1.5 to 10 MW, for onshore and offshore installations. The E-126 model turbine by Enercon with a 7 MW rated power required a 29 meter diameter circular foundation with 1,400 cubic meters of concrete and 120 tons of rebar. The RePower 5M turbine with a 5MW rated power required a 23 meter diameter circular foundation with 1,300 cubic meters of concrete and 180 tons of rebar. The task of building such large foundations is monumental and requires a great deal of construction planning and logistics. The proposed foundation designs and their associated construction methods provide cost-effective solutions for such challenging foundation projects.
Some wind turbine installations that have been constructed in the last 10 years in the US and Europe have encountered structural problems stemming from thermal cracking during construction, or from fatigue cracking requiring repairs. The present invention improves the geometry of the foundation in order to enhance dissipation conditions for the typical temperature rise due to heat of hydration after casting and also provides a cost effective fatigue resistant design.
Description of the Related Art
Conventional gravity style foundations for large wind turbines usually comprise a large, thick, horizontal, heavily reinforced cast in situ concrete base; and a vertical cast in situ cylindrical pedestal installed over the base. There are several problems typically encountered during the construction of such foundations.
Fatigue resistance of such conventional footings is achieved by over sizing the structural concrete elements and the reinforcing elements such that the resulting stress amplitudes are small enough for the structural elements to pass fatigue design checks.
The main problem is the monumental task of managing large continuous concrete pours, which require sophisticated planning and coordination in order to pour large amounts of concrete per footing, in one continuous pour, without having any cold joints within the pour.
Another problem is logistics coordinating with multiple local batch plants the delivery plan of the large number of concrete trucks to the job site in a timely and organized manner.
A further problem is the complexity of installing the rebar assembly into the foundation which requires assembling two layers of steel reinforcing meshes that are two to six feet apart across the full area of the foundation, while maintaining a strict geometric layout and specific spacing. This rebar assembly is made of extremely long and heavy rebar which requires the use of a crane in addition to multiple workers to install all the components of the assembly. The rebar often exceeds forty feet in length, thus requiring special oversized shipments which are very expensive and usually require special permits. The installation of the rebar is a labor intensive and time consuming task requiring a large number of well trained rebar placing workers.
Another important problem is the fact that the majority of the construction process consists of field work which can easily be compromised by weather conditions and other site conditions.
Another problem is thermal cracking of concrete due to overheating of the concrete mass. When concrete is cast in massive sections, the temperature can reach high levels and the risk of thermal cracking becomes very high. Thermal cracking often compromises the structural integrity of foundations as reported in many projects in Europe and North America.
Multi-cell caissons used in offshore installations always lack multi-axial post-tensioning elements and their fatigue resistance relies completely on heavily reinforced oversized concrete elements which involves expensive and labor intensive construction.

Method of constructing a wind tower foundation