A stimulus sensitive composition containing a compound capable of generating an acid or a radical on receipt of an external stimulus, the compound being represented by the following formula (I):

A stimulus sensitive composition generates an acid or a radical on receipt of an external stimulus, such as active light rays, radiations or heat, and undergoes chemical reaction by the action of the generated acid or radical thereby changing its physical properties in the stimulated area. Preferably, it is a pattern forming material that changes its solubility in a developer between an irradiated or heated area and a non-irradiated or non-heated area to provide a pattern on a substrate.
A variety of acid generators capable of generating an acid when irradiated with active light rays or radiations have been proposed for use in such stimulus sensitive compositions. For example, sulfonium salts having an oxoalkyl group or a cyclic oxoalkyl group are disclosed in JP-A-2002-116546, JP-A-2001-187780, EP 1113334A, JP-A-10-133371, and JP-A-10-73919. The following compounds are among them.

However, these known acid generating compounds are unstable to heat, liable to deterioration with time, or excessively hydrophilic. Pattern formation using resist compositions containing them results in tapered profiles or rounded top profiles.

Stimulus sensitive compound and stimulus sensitive composition containing the same

Abstract: wherein Y represents a group having a bridged cyclic structure; R1 and R2 each independently represent a hydrogen atom, an alkyl group or an aryl group; R1 and R2 may be taken together to form a ring; Y1 and Y2 each independently represent an alkyl group or an aryl group; Y1 and Y2 may be taken together to form a ring; and X− represents a non-nucleophilic anion.


A hydrocarbon production system comprises a base pipe; and a separator having a body with an inner surface defining a conduit, the inner surface being coated with a polymer blend comprising a hydrophilic component and a hydrophobic component, an inlet, a water outlet, and an oil outlet fluidly coupled to the base pipe.

Downhole completions are often used to produce or harvest fluids, e.g., hydrocarbons, from subterranean reservoirs, formations, or production zones. Undesirable fluids, e.g., water or brine, also are often located downhole. Moreover, downhole fluids can also contain particulates such as fines. As a result, flow control devices and oil/water separators have been contemplated for limiting production of the undesirable fluids or particulates in order to maximize the yield of the desirable fluids. Although various methods and devices have been developed, advances in flow control devices, and other systems and methods for limiting water, brine, or undesirable particles into a downhole production assembly are well received by the industry.

Method and apparatus for producing hydrocarbon


The present invention relates to a novel hyperthermophile, in particular, to a hyperthermophile belonging to a novel genus isolated from compost by fermenting organic wastes at a temperature of 85° C. or more which is capable of growing at 80° C. or more (Caldothrix satsumae). The hyperthermophile of the present invention does not multiply at 50° C. or below, but grows and multiplies vigorously at 70 to 85° C. It is non-spore forming, gram-negative, and an absolutely aerobic rod.

Heretofore, thermophilic microbes have been made to act on organic wastes such as droppings of domestic animals, excrement and urine, sludge, and city waste to aerobically ferment the wastes and to make them odorless and dry, thereby preparing compost. Further, as such thermophilic microbes, there have been known thermophilic actinomycetes belonging to the genera Thermoactinomyces or Thermomonospora (JP 55-121992 A), a mixture of thermophilic, aerobic and spore-forming bacteria such as those belonging to the genera Bacillus or Geobacillus or lactic acid-producing bacteria (JP 51-129759 A), aerobic Bacillus subtilis (JP 6-5197 A), bacteria belonging to the genus Thermus aquaticus having lignin-solubilizing capability (JP 6-105679 A), aerobic cellulose degrading bacteria Clostridium thermocellum, Thermus aquaticus (JP 6-191977) and so forth.
However, in spite of use of these microbes, although the fermentation temperature is elevated to 70° C. or more due to fermentation heat at the time of fermentation, the temperature is elevated up to 80° C. at the most, and thus, saprophytes, in particular, spore-forming saprophytes could not be extinguished. In addition, the number of useful bacteria cells in the obtained fertilizer is at most around 100,000,000 per g (dry fertilizer), so that when the cells are used as a fertilizer, the fertilizing effect could not be exhibited sufficiently.
To solve these problems regarding the disposal of sludge, the inventors of the present invention have made intensive studies to obtain a fermented product which purifies the sludge by subjecting the sludge to fermentation treatment at high temperatures of 85° C. or more, more preferably 95° C. or more, to extinguish saprophytes, seed of weeds, and the like, and which contains a large number of useful bacteria cells. As a result, the inventors found a method of obtaining a fermented sludge product containing a large number of solely the useful bacteria cells, comprising: adding a culture of a bacterium that grows at temperatures not lower than 85° C. obtained from the soil of Kirishima volcanic region in the prefecture of Kagoshima, Japan to raw sludge and mixing them; and subjecting the resulting mixture to aerobic fermentation to extinguish the saprophytes and seeds contained in the sludge at a fermentation temperature of 85° C. or more to purify the sludge, and have obtained a patent on the method (JP 3064221 B). And, the fermented sludge has been used as compost, in which mesophilic aerobic spore-forming bacteria, thermophilic aerobic, spore-forming bacteria, thermophiles and the like belonging to the genera Bacillus or Geobacillus have been found in large numbers.
That is, about 1,000,000,000 bacteria cells are included per g of the fermented sludge, the bacteria predominantly including aerobic bacteria, thermophilic bacteria and thermodulic spores as shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1Number of viableSubject bacteriumbacteria cells per gAerobic bacteria9.9 × 108Thermophilic bacteria8.4 × 107Thermodulic spores2.8 × 107Enterobacteria100 or lessGram-negative bacteria100 or lessGram-positive bacteria2.8 × 106Lactic acid bacteria100 or lessAnaerobic bacteria100 or lessMesophilic actinomycetes1.1 × 103Thermophilic actinomycetes6.0 × 102Filamentous fungi100 or lessYeast100 or less
On the other hand, in the culture, a colony that grew dominantly on the culture plate was selected to obtain an isolated bacterium, and the isolated bacterium was subjected to morphological observation and the like in order to searched for microbes that may be concerned with fermentation. As a result, it was revealed that the following microbes are concerned with the fermentation.
TABLE 2Number of viableIsolated bacterium groupbacteria cells per gPolymorphic, sporeless gram-positive bacillus7 × 102Aerobic spore-forming bacteriamesophilic3 × 108thermophilic8 × 107Catalase-positive gram-positive cocci1 × 107Actinomycetesmesophilic1 × 103thermophilic6 × 102
As described above, it was revealed that mainly polymorphic, sporeless gram-positive bacilli, aerobic spore-forming bacteria (mesophilic and thermophilic) are involved.
On the other hand, measurement of thermophiles was performed referring to the description in, "Methods for Isolating Microbes", YAMAZATO, Kazuhide and three others, ed., published by R&D Planning. The dominant thermophile was aerobic spore-forming bacteria (thermophilic).
Further, the mesophilic aerobic spore-forming bacterium (isolated bacterium a), thermophilic aerobic spore-forming bacterium (isolated bacterium b), and thermophile (isolated bacterium c) that were isolated predominantly in the above-mentioned search of microbes were subjected to morphological observation, physiological property tests and measurement of the GC content of DNA in bacterial cell. The results obtained are shown in Table 3.
TABLE 3Test resultIsolatedIsolatedIsolatedTest Itembacterium abacterium bbacterium cMorphologyrodrodrodGram stain+++Spore+++ShapeCircular toEllipsoidalEllipsoidalellipsoidalSiteCentralQuasi-Quasi-peritrichousperitrichous toperitrichousSporangiumNot swollenSwollenNot swollento slightlyswollenMotility−−+Behavior toward enzymesAerobicAerobicAerobicCatalase+++Growth under anaerobic−−−conditionsV-P reaction−−−pH of V-P broth6.58.0*25.6Acid formationGlucose−−*2−ArabinoseNT*−*2NT*XyloseNT*−*2NT*MannitolNT*−*2NT*Gas formation from glucose−−*2 −Casein decomposition+−NT*Gelatin salination+−+Starch decomposition−−−Assimilation of citrate−−*2−Assimilation of propionate−−*2−Tyrosine decomposition−−−Phenylalanine deamination−NT*NT*Egg yolk reaction−−−Nitrate reduction+−−Growth at pH 6.8+−+(Nutrient broth)Growth at pH 5.7−−−Growth in the presence of++−5% NaClGrowth in the presence of++−7% NaClGrowth at 10° C.−−NT*Growth at 30° C.+slow−Growth at 40° C.+++Growth at 50° C.−+NT*Growth at 55° C.NT*++Growth at 65° C.NT*−+Growth at 70° C.NT*NT*+Growth at 71° C.NT*NT*+Growth at 72° C.NT*NT*−GC content of cell DNA52*152*140*1(mol %)*NT: No test performed;*1By an HPLC method;*2Medium adjusted to pH 8.0 being used.
The isolated bacterium a did not correspond to any of the species in respect of the properties so that its species was not identified. The isolated bacterium b showed good growth on a slightly alkaline medium (pH 8.0 to 8.5) but did not grow on a medium at pH 7.0, and the results of tests on other properties suggested that it was a species close to Bacillus badius or B. brevis. However, bacterium b has properties which are non-typical to either of them, so that no identification of species was attained. Further, because the isolated bacterium c showed bacteriological properties identical to those of Geobacillus stearothermophilus, it may be identified as the same species. However, a great difference in their GC contents suggested that they are closely-related species.
These isolated bacteria have been deposited at Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, National Institute of Bioscience and Human-Technology (presently, International Patent Organism Depository, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), where accession numbers were respectively assigned: YM-01 accession number FERM P-15085 for the isolated bacterium a, YM-02 accession number FERM P-15086 for the isolated bacterium b, and YM-03 accession number FERM P-15087 for the isolated bacterium c.
The inventors of the present invention further made studies on the presence of such microbes that grow at high temperatures in compost and have surprisingly found a hyperthermophile belonging to a new genus that vigorously multiplies at high temperatures of 75° C. or more, still shows its multiplication at 85° C. but shows no multiplication at 50° C. or less.

Abstract: The hyperthermophile is useful as a fermenting microbe when organic wastes are fermented at high temperatures to produce compost. Further the hyperthermopile can be utilized for the production of heat resistant enzymes.


A method for improving the wear characteristics of a system for operating a variable vane comprising the steps of providing a trunnion connected to the variable vane via an vane platform and means for causing rotation of the trunnion, and positioning a thrust washer formed from a carbon material about a lower portion of the trunnion and in a space between the vane platform and an outer split case so that during operation of the system the space between the vane platform and the outer split case is maintained substantially constant and unwanted deflection of the vane is avoided.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for operating a variable vane in a gas turbine engine having improved wear characteristics and more particularly to a thrust washer constructed of electro-graphitic carbon for reducing wear used in said system.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In gas turbine engines, the variable vanes of the high pressure compressor are rotated via a trunnion assembly. With reference to FIG. 1, there is illustrated the construction of a portion of an engine including a trunnion 15. The trunnion 15 is situated between a liner housing 41 and an outer split case 22 and extends to a platform 21 through a thrust washer 23. Variable vane 17 is attached to the trunnion 15 via a vane platform 21.
In the past, the thrust washer 23 has been typically constructed of a wear resistant and low friction material such as graphite filled polyimide materials capable of continuous operation up to 650° F. The thrust washers 23 constructed of such polyimide materials are not capable of withstanding the high temperatures and loads of advanced high performance compressors. Potentially, this is a problem because it is necessary to avoid metal to metal contact between the vane platform 21 of the variable vane 17 and the outer split case 22. Such metal to metal contact could serve to degrade the vane platform 21 and the outer split case 22 and alter the physical geometry of each and induce higher friction in the variable vane kinematic system. Geometric alterations are undesirable because they can result in an undesirable angular displacement of the variable vane 17. Specifically, if a variable vane 17 is displaced with respect to adjacent vanes by more than 6°, a less than optimal operating scenario may be induced. It is therefore important that the vane platform 21 and the outer split case 22 operate in such a manner as to maintain their shapes, and, thus, maintain a constant variable vane angle.
What is therefore needed is a thrust washer which does not suffer material breakdown at high temperatures and which serves to maintain the fit and orientation of the vane platform 21 and the outer split case 22.

Variable vane electro-graphic thrust washer


In a multilayer ceramic capacitor, SG represents an average of a distance between end portions of inner electrodes in a width direction and side surfaces of a ceramic body, OT represents an average of a distance between inner electrodes closest to main surfaces and the main surfaces, ET1 represents an average of dimensions of each portion of third and fourth terminal electrodes located on the main surfaces, and ET2 represents an average of dimensions of each portion of the third and fourth terminal electrodes located on the side surfaces. A dimension of the ceramic body in the width direction is larger than a dimension of the ceramic body in the height direction and Equations (1) and (2) are satisfied:SG>OT  (1)ET1>ET2  (2).

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor.
2. Description of the Related Art
As disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-201417 for example, in the related art, multilayer ceramic capacitors are known in which terminal electrodes are provided on first and second end surfaces and first and second side surfaces of a ceramic body.
It is required that multilayer ceramic capacitors have high moisture resistance reliability.


A light sensing apparatus includes a light sensing module, a signal conversion module and a processing module. The light sensing module is configured to output a first and second sense signals according to a light intensity emitting thereon. The signal conversion module is electrically coupled to the light sensing module and configured to receive the first and second sense signals and output a sense value according to a relative difference between the first and second sense signals, The comparison module is electrically coupled to the signal conversion module and configured to adjust a light sensing characteristic of the light sensing module according to the sense value so as to adjust a light sensing characteristic of the light sensing module. An adjustment method for a light sensing apparatus is also provided.

The present touch technologies basically are categorized to several types: impedance, capacitance, light sensing, electromagnetic, supersonic and liquid crystal display (LCD) in-cell; wherein the LCD in-cell can be further categorized to: impedance, capacitance and light sensing. In a display adopting a light sensing in-cell touch panel, the determination of a light sensing apparatus whether or not is being switched-on, so as to further determine whether or not the LCD in-cell is being touched, is based on the leakage current variation caused by different light intensities emitted thereon.
For example, a light sensing apparatus primarily is implemented with thin-film transistors, and the thin-film transistors each may have various leakage currents in response to various light intensities emitted thereon. For example, the leakage current may have a first current value, a second current value and a third current value when the light sensing unit is being touched by an object (for example, a finger), emitted by an environmental light and emitted by a light from a light pen, respectively. Because the leakage current is proportional to the light intensity, accordingly the first current value is smaller than the second current value and the second current value is smaller than the third current value. In addition, a light sensing apparatus further includes an integrator, which is configured to convert the charges derived from the leakage current into an output voltage. Thus, the light sensing in-cell touch panel can determine that whether or not the associated thin-film transistor is being touched according to the output voltage. However, once the light sensing apparatus has been used for a relatively long time, the voltage difference between a gate and source terminals of the light sensing apparatus may have an offset and thereby changing the light sensing apparatus's light sensing characteristics; and thus, consequently a sensing result error is resulted in.

Light sensing apparatus and adjustment method thereof


Technologies are provided herein for automated operating system installation. Through the concepts and technologies presented herein, the process of installing multiple operating systems on a system under test (“SUT”) can be automated and monitored, thereby permitting the unattended installation of the operating systems. Multiple operating systems can be installed and errors detected during the installations can be logged in an automated fashion, thereby reducing the cost of such testing. Errors generated during the automated installation process can be analyzed and utilized to identify and correct errors in a computing system firmware. A device selector for facilitating the automated installation process is also provided.

Most computing systems utilize firmware to control their low-level operation. In many computing systems, the firmware provides functionality for performing a power-on self-test ("POST") of the computing system, for performing an initial program load, or boot, of the computing system, for providing interfaces to the low-level operation of the computing system hardware to an operating system, and for performing other functions. Because the firmware controls the low-level operation of a computing system, it is imperative that the firmware operates without program errors, sometimes called "bugs." Because of the complexity of most computing system firmware, however, this type of software can be very difficult to test and debug.
One commonly used mechanism for testing the operation of a computing system firmware involves installing an operating system on a computer system under test ("SUT"). If errors are detected during the installation of the operating system, the errors can be utilized to identify bugs within the computing system firmware. This process is typically repeated for many different operating systems and, potentially, many different versions of the computing system firmware. There are cases where slight variations in task completion time, or other timing problems or delays could cause installations to fail. Therefore, it is also useful to test the identical operating system installation multiple times; something that might be referred to as "burn-in" testing. Because this testing process is typically performed manually by a human operator, however, this process can be extremely time consuming, costly, and prone to human errors due to the often repetitive nature of these tasks.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure presented herein has been made.


A hydraulic control apparatus for switching an operation of a hydraulically operated mechanical apparatus, by selectively operating two frictional engagement elements of a first, a second, a third, and a fifth frictional engagement elements, the hydraulic control apparatus including a first control valve which, in association with an event that respective hydraulic pressures to operate the first and second frictional engagement elements are both produced, drains one of the third and fifth frictional engagement elements and outputs a control hydraulic pressure; and a second control valve which, when at least two hydraulic pressures of (a) the control hydraulic pressure and (b) respective hydraulic pressures to operate the third and fifth frictional engagement elements are supplied to the second control valve, drains the other of the third and fifth frictional engagement elements.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hydraulic control apparatus which is preferably used to control, e.g., an automatic transmission of a vehicle, and in particular to the art of draining a frictional engagement element when an electric system fails.
2. Discussion of Related Art
There is known a hydraulic control apparatus which controls an operation of a hydraulically operated mechanical apparatus. One example of the hydraulic control apparatus is for hydraulically controlling a vehicle's automatic transmission including a plurality of hydraulically operated frictional coupling devices that are selectively operated to establish an appropriate one of a plurality of speed steps of the automatic transmission. The hydraulic control apparatus includes a plurality of electromagnetic valve devices which cooperate with each other to change the combination of respective operations of the frictional coupling devices and thereby establish one of the speed steps. Usually, the hydraulic control apparatus additionally includes an electronic control device which electrically controls the electromagnetic valve devices so as to establish one of multiple speed steps, e.g., five or six forward speed steps, depending upon an operating (e.g., running) state of the vehicle.
Meanwhile, it can be predicted that an electric system of a hydraulic control apparatus will halt its operation for some reason, i.e., so-called "fail". In order to deal with the predictable fail, it is needed to introduce a fail-safe technique when the hydraulic control apparatus is originally designed. To this end, it has been proposed to introduce the art of preventing interlocking, into a hydraulic control apparatus for a vehicle's automatic transmission. This is disclosed by, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication No. P2001-248723A. The disclosed hydraulic control apparatus employs a fail-safe valve which shuts off an appropriate hydraulic passage, when at least two hydraulic pressures of (a) a signal hydraulic pressure that is outputted from a signal-hydraulic-pressure composing valve when two frictional engagement elements belonging to a first group are both operated or engaged, and (b) respective hydraulic pressures that are outputted to operate a plurality of frictional engagement elements belonging to a second group are supplied to the fail-safe valve. Therefore, the hydraulic control apparatus can stop, when the electric system fails, the supplying of hydraulic pressure to an appropriate frictional engagement element, and thereby prevent the occurrence of interlocking.

Hydraulic control apparatus for hydraulically operated mechanical apparatus


An information processing system includes a first information processing apparatus coupled to a first magnetic-disk-device groups including first magnetic disk devices whose motors rotate, a second information processing apparatus coupled to a second magnetic-disk-device group including one or more second magnetic disk devices whose motors rotate and a plurality of third magnetic disk devices whose motors are in a stop state. A management apparatus which included in the system is configured to manage the first and second information processing apparatuses, wherein, when data is to be written, the management apparatus outputs a write request to any of the plurality of first magnetic disk devices and any of the one or more second magnetic disk devices, and when data is to be read, the management apparatus outputs a read request to any of the plurality of first magnetic disk devices.

For example, for a disk array device including a plurality of hard-disk drives, write data is divided and written to the plurality of hard-disk drives, and data read from the hard-disk drives are combined together and output as data to be read. In such a disk array device, when the frequency of accesses becomes lower than a threshold, power supply to one or some of hard-disk drives is stopped, and data is written to the hard-disk drives for which the power supply is maintained, without being divided (for example, see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2002-297320).
There is also a proposed scheme for reducing the power consumption by controlling execution of a task and power supply of a storage device based on, of schedule plans for executing tasks using a storage device, a schedule plan that satisfies a predetermined condition (for example, see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2009-48583).

Information processing system and control method for information processing system


A plasma reactor containing within the processing chamber pieces of magnetic material located to reduce and/or substantially eliminate systematic processing rate nonuniformities. These pieces are placed inside the chamber or attached inside of the pedestal adjacent to the top of the pedestal, where the wafer is to be located for processing. The thickness, shape and magnetic permeabilities of these magnetic pieces are selected to optimize process uniformity.

This invention relates in general to a magnetically enhanced wafer processing system and relates more particularly to a wafer processing plasma reactor in which the processing rate at the wafer is adjusted by means of magnetic material included within the reactor processing chamber.
Plasma processing, such as plasma etching and deposition processing, in the fabrication of circuits is attractive because it can be anisotropic, can be chemically selective and can produce processing under conditions far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Anisotropic processing enables the production of integrated circuit features having sidewalls that extend substantially vertically from the edges of a the masking layer. This is important in present and future ULSI devices in which the depth of etch and feature size and spacing are all comparable.
In FIG. 1 is shown a typical wafer processing plasma reactor 10. This reactor includes a metal wall 1 1 that encloses a plasma reactor chamber 12. Wall 11 is grounded and functions as one of the plasma electrodes. Gases are supplied to chamber 12 from a gas source 13 and are exhausted by an exhaust system 14 that actively pumps gases out of the reactor to maintain a low pressure suitable for a plasma process. An rf power supply 15 connected to a second (powered) electrode 16 capacitively couples power into a plasma in chamber 12. A wafer 17 is positioned on or near powered electrode 16 for processing. Wafers 17 are transferred into and out of reactor chamber 12 through a port such as slit valve 18.
A plasma consists of two qualitatively different regions: a quasineutral, equipotential conductive plasma body 19 and a boundary layer 110 called the plasma sheath. The plasma body consists of substantially equal densities of negative and positive charged particles as well as radicals and stable neutral particles. RF power coupled into the reactor chamber couples energy into the free electrons, imparting sufficient energy to many of these electrons that ions can be produced through collisions of these electrons with gas molecules. The plasma sheath is an electron deficient, poorly conductive region in which the gradient in the space potential (i.e., the electric field strength) is large. The plasma sheath forms between the plasma body and any interface such as the walls and electrodes of the plasma reactor chamber.
When the powered electrode is capacitively coupled to the rf power source, a negative dc component V.sub.dc, of the voltage at this electrode (i.e., the dc bias) results (see, for example, H. S. Butler and G. S. Kino, Physics of Fluids, 6, p. 1348 (1963). This dc component, typically several hundred volts, is a consequence of the unequal electron and ion mobilities and the inequality of the sheath capacitances at the electrode and wall surfaces.
The dc component of the sheath potential at the powered electrode is useful in accelerating ions to higher energy in a direction substantially perpendicular to the powered electrode. Therefore, a wafer 17, to be processed by ions from the plasma, is positioned on or slightly above the powered electrode 16 so that this flux of positive ions is incident substantially perpendicular to the plane of the wafer.
The process rate is dependant on the dc component of the sheath potential and on the density of ions in the plasma near the sheath. To achieve high process throughput, it is advantageous to have an increased density of ions near this sheath. One method of increasing plasma ion density near the wafer utilizes magnets to produce a magnetic containment field that traps electrons within the vicinity of the wafer, thereby increasing the ion production rate and associated density at the wafer. The magnetic containment field confines energetic electrons by forcing them to spiral along helical orbits about the magnetic field lines, caused by a Lorentz force F=q(E+vxB), where E is the electric field vector and B is the magnetic field vector. Unfortunately, nonuniformities of the magnetic containment field of such "magnetically enhanced" plasma processing systems result in increased nonuniformity over the surface of the wafer.
To reduce the spatial variation of process rate uniformity over the surface of the wafer, some systems, such as the model 5000E from Applied Materials, Inc., produce a magnetic field that is substantially parallel to the surface of the wafer along a direction that rotates around an axis that is concentric with and perpendicular to the wafer. This rotation produces at the wafer surface an approximately cylindrically symmetric time-averaged field that has improved average uniformity over the wafer, thereby producing improved process uniformity.
Although the rotating magnetic field is to produce a uniform processing rate across the entire surface of the wafer, tests of the process rate at various points of the wafer exhibit some significant nonuniformity. It is therefore advantageous to identify the source of this nonuniformity and to provide a mechanism for eliminating or compensating for this nonuniformity.

Uniformity for magnetically enhanced plasma chambers


A system and method allows a user to authenticate a communication from a computer system, a computer system to authenticate a user, or both. When a user requests a web page from the web site, customization information that is recognizable to the user is provided to allow the user to authenticate the web site. A signed, encrypted persistent file stored on the user's computer system or installed on a different computer system, or a trusted computing subsystem allows the web site to authenticate the user. If the user is using a system that will not allow that user to be authenticated, the user may instruct the system to continue providing information without the user's customization information. The system and method may be used to allow the user to authenticate an e-mail message or its source, and Flash movies or other computer code may be used if the user's e-mail client does not employ cookies.

The Internet and the World Wide Web allow users to communicate with software operating at various sites on the Web. The communication may be performed in real time, or via a messaging system such as e-mail. However, it may be helpful to allow one or both of these entities to ensure that the other entity with whom the entity is communicating really is that other entity.
If the web site believes it is communicating with one entity, but it is in fact communicating with a different entity, it may provide access to sensitive information of the entity with which it falsely believes it is communicating. It may cause the transfer of securities, the shipment of products or the delivery of services to the different entity in the name of the entity with which it believes it is communicating. For example, some operators of web sites lose significant amounts of money by shipping products or transferring cash or other securities to thieves who falsely identify themselves to the web site as a registered user.
Many of these thieves trick the users into providing confidential information that the thief can use to identify herself as a registered user, by appearing to the user as if a web site operated by the thief is in fact a web site with which the user has registered or by sending the user an e-mail message containing information or a link that can cause the user to provide confidential information to the thief, or both. For example, a thief may send out a batch of e-mails inviting the user to log on to paypal.com with a link to the web site paypai.com, hoping that the recipient of the e-mail is registered at the financial web site paypal.com. However, the thief capitalizes the last letter in her site to read paypaI.com, hoping the 'I' looks like the lower case last letter 'l' in "paypal". The web pages provided by the web site paypai.com are then made to look like the web site paypal.com, and when the user attempts to log in, the user's username and password are captured by the thief's web site. The thief then logs into paypal.com using the user's username and password thus received and authorizes the transfer of money from the user's account into an account controlled by the thief.
In another variation of the scam, the thief provides to the user a link containing what appears to be a URL of the actual site, but in fact is a command to log into the thief's site. For example, a link that reads "http://" appended to "www.paypal.com/%sdafghdgk%fdsgsdhdsh . . . " may appear to be a genuine link to paypal.com, with a long list of parameters that extend off the end of the URL window in the user's browser. Unknown to the user, the above link actually terminates with " . . . @paypai.com", which causes the user to be logged into the web site paypai.com using as a username, the set of characters to the left of the "@" sign. The web site paypai.com allows any such username to log into the web site, and then operates as described above, presenting a replica of the paypal.com user interface to the user that allows the user to log on to the application software at the thief's web site (even though the phony username has been provided via the link). The thief then uses the username and password thus received to log onto the real paypal.com web site and make the transfer.
To combat this problem, some web sites provide a certificate to allow the user to verify that the web site is authentic, but the procedures for performing such authentication are complex, cumbersome and unknown to most users. Thus, conventional methods that could be used to allow a user to authenticate the web site are ineffective because they are too difficult to use.
Not only can a dishonest operator of a web site mislead a user into believing that a web site is authentic, a dishonest user can mislead an authentic web site into believing that the user is authentic. As described above, confidential information from a user can be captured and then used to cause the web site to believe it is dealing with that user. Some web sites place cookies on the user's computer and these cookies could be used to attempt to verify the possibility that the person attempting to log in is in fact that person. However, a cookie can be faked by a thief to indicate that the thief's computer system is the computer system of a user the thief is attempting to impersonate.
The related application described an arrangement by which a signed, encrypted cookie was placed on the user's computer system during a registration process that could be used by software to authenticate a user, and recognizable customization information was provided or indicated by the user to software that could be provided to the user to allow the user to authenticate a communication from a computer system. This approach works well, but has certain limitations, all of which are being addressed in this application.
One such limitation is the lack of a verifiable ability of the user to authenticate himself during the registration process. The related application employed the provision of an out-of-session identifier that the user received through means other than the communications session the user was using to register himself. However, the method may not be secure if the out-of-session method (e.g. a telephone call via a telephone number or an e-mail address) was not known to belong to the user or was not secure. Another limitation is that, once registered, the user can only authenticate himself from then on using the client computer system on which the cookie has been stored. Another limitation is the potential for multiple users of the computer system to view one another's customization information or for an unauthorized user of the computer system to view a user's customization information.
It can also be desirable to allow a user to authenticate an e-mail message or other communication without a significant chance that the confidentiality of the user's customization information will be compromised. As described herein, cookies and other persistent files can solve this problem. However, some e-mail clients do not support the use of cookies. Furthermore, it can be desirable to allow a user to authenticate an e-mail message without being connected to a network.
What is needed is a system and method that can securely authenticate a user to a computer system, easily allow the user to authenticate communications from a computer system without requiring the user to use complex authentication procedures, or both, can authenticate a user even during the registration process, can allow a user to authenticate himself or herself to a computer system from various client computer systems or bypass the need for strict authentication, can protect the user's means of authenticating the computer system from others who have access to the user's client computer system, and can allow a user to authenticate e-mail messages or other communications without significant chance that the user's capability to authenticate the computer system will be compromised.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

System and method for authentication of users and communications received from computer systems


A heat insulating stamper is disclosed. The heat insulating stamper includes an uppermost section made of a metal material, a lowermost section made of the same material as the uppermost section, and a middle section having a heat conductivity lower than the uppermost section. The middle section includes the same metal material as the uppermost section and the lowermost section, and heat insulating portions.

Stampers having heat insulating layers for molding optical disc substrates have been known in the art. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-184046 (Patent Document 1) discloses a stamper that has a simple polyimide layer as a heat insulating layer, and a method for manufacturing the stamper with improved curing conditions. This stamper includes a transfer metal layer with a pattern thereon, a second metal layer, and an insulating layer interposed between the transfer metal layer and the second metal layer and having approximately the same thermal expansion coefficient as the transfer metal layer. The quality of the stamper is improved due to a curing process divided into two steps of pre-curing for curing a resin layer after application of a heat insulating material and post-curing after formation of the metal layers, curing with heat conduction by hot pressing, and filling of pigment into an appropriately degenerated resin matrix.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-83450 (Patent Document 2) discloses a heat insulating stamper with high durability that utilizes anchor effects of an interface by incorporation of filler into a coating layer, and a method for manufacturing the stamper. The coating layer incorporating the filler is provided so as to withstand shear stress generated between a heat insulating layer and a metal layer. The filler in the coating layer is exposed by etching and exerts anchor effects on a thick Ni layer. The heat insulating stamper is formed by sequentially laminating a transfer metal layer for transferring the shape of a resin surface, the heat insulating layer, and the metal layer. The heat insulating layer is connected to the metal layer through the coating layer that incorporates the filler, made of metal or an inorganic material, projecting to the metal layer from the connection interface. However, such a projecting filler structure can not be applied to a backside interface of the uppermost face. As a separation phenomenon mostly occurs at a backside interface of the uppermost face, this method is not very effective to improve durability of stampers.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-297488 (Patent Document 3) discloses a stamper including a Ni plating layer, in place of a resin layer, at a peripheral part and an inner edge of the stamper so as to eliminate a point that causes a separation. According to a method for manufacturing this stamper, an electroplating layer having a predetermined thickness is formed on the entire surface of a glass master, which is provided with information recording grooves and subjected to conduction processing. Then, a boss-shaped plating portion is formed by electroforming at a predetermined part of a mirror surface inside and/or outside a recording region. A heat insulating layer having a predetermined thickness including a predetermined material is formed around the boss-shaped plating portion. After that, conduction processing is performed, and a thick electroplating layer is formed on the entire surface. Then a resulting stamper is removed from the glass master.
The stampers disclosed in Patent Documents 1 and 2 show improvements in initial quality. The stamper disclosed in Patent Document 3 shows improvements both in initial quality and quality after lapse of time. However, deterioration of a resin layer cannot be prevented.
Japanese Patent No. 3378840 (Patent Document 4) also discloses a method for manufacturing an optical disc substrate using a stamper. The method includes a step of injecting a molten resin into a cavity for the stamper defined by a pair of low-temperature molds that couple with each other, and a step of separating the molds to remove the resin after cooling. The stamper comprises a layer on which a transfer face for molding an optical disc substrate is formed, a heat insulating material provided along the transfer face on the layer, and a metal layer disposed on a face of the heat insulating material opposite to the face in contact with the transfer face. The thickness and heat conductivity of the heat insulating material are adjusted so as to prevent rapid cooling of the layer with the transfer face immediately after injection of the molten resin into the low-temperature molds and to cool the molten resin by the low-temperature molds in a subsequent process while maintaining a transfer property and reducing the time of an optical disk substrate molding cycle. According to Patent Document 4, heat resisting inorganic ceramics or metal is used as the heat insulating material. However, it is not easy to use heat resisting inorganic ceramics as the heat insulating material. This is because a sintering temperature of 1500° C. or higher is usually (not in an especially prepared environment) required during deposition, and also because an adhesive agent that resists a temperature of 300° C. or higher for use in a sintered product is rarely available (see "Development of heat insulation stamper" Ricoh Technical Report No. 27 (Non-Patent Document 1), p 79). Even if semimetal Bi (bismuth) is used as the insulating material, it is a little impractical because of its rough surface, its strength as low as one third of Ni, and its melting temperature of 271° C.
The invention disclosed in Patent Document 4 is positioned as a basic patent of a heat insulating stamper, and have no conflicts with other art prior thereto. There are published patent applications on the basis of the invention of Patent Document 4. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-236698 (Patent Document 5) discloses a method for manufacturing a high-quality heat insulating stamper at low cost, which minimizes and saves consumption of source materials of the heat insulating layer, eliminates the need for a mask in a process of forming the heat insulating layer for simplifying the process and for improving working efficiency, and prevents irregularity in inner and outer peripheral edges of the heat insulating layer. According to Patent Document 5, while a stamper master including a lamination of multiple nickel films having a predetermined thickness is rotated, an applicator nozzle is moved on the stamper master in the radial direction so as to apply a solution of a heat insulating source material onto the stamper master in a concentric form or a spiral form. After resting and curing the stamper master, the solution of the heat insulating source material is spread in the radial direction of the stamper master to form a flat annular solution layer of the heat insulating source material. The solution layer is then cured to form an annular heat insulating layer. Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-117593 (Patent Document 6) also discloses a stamper and a method for manufacturing the stamper. According to Patent Document 6, a polyimide sheet is applied to a glass master, on which a first nickel film is formed, so as to form a heat insulating layer made of a material having low heat conductivity and high heat resistance. Predetermined grooves are formed in the glass master in advance. Nickel plating of a predetermined thickness is formed by electroforming, and the heat insulating layer is separated from the glass master. An inner periphery and the outer periphery are stamped out along concentric circles having predetermined radiuses so as to produce a sophisticated annular stamper. Although the method has proven satisfactory, neither of the methods can completely solve problems resulting from a big difference in thermal and mechanical properties on an interface between a heat insulating layer and a metallic Ni layer.
A method for manufacturing a heat insulating stamper is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-273685 disclosed by the applicant of this invention, and the method has been actually utilized in media production. However, it was found that when the number of times of stamping exceeds 100,000 times, occurrence of interfacial separation between a polymer layer and a Ni layer may increase. Therefore, inventors of the present invention have studied a new manufacturing method that further prolongs a stamper life in view of the following backgrounds.
Background 1: A Need for a Solution to Adhesion Instability
Elimination of line inspections and achievement of high resistance are desired.
Background 2: Adaptation to Demanding Molding Conditions Due to Growing Capacity
The problem of lack of adhesion at a stamper interface is caused by changes of molding conditions (increasing resin temperature, increasing mold clamping force) due to growing media capacity, and by increase of resistance upon mold releasing. Demanding molding conditions:
An effective use of existing facilities not by changing design of apparatuses and molds but by improving a stamper structure and manufacturing methods has been sought. Molding resin (polycarbonate) for media was improved to achieve sufficient thermostability under a condition very close to thermal decomposition temperature (about 40° C.). This realized a reduction of mold clamping force. Although the mold clamping force of a 75 ton class (having a pressure per unit area of about 1000 kg/cm2) was required over ten years ago, a 35 ton class is most commonly used now. However, the mold clamping force has begun to return to a 50 ton class due to expected rapid capacity increase or density increase. That is, effects of improvement of molding materials are being lost because of the capacity increase.
Background 3: Both the improvement of transfer property and improvement of optical property (reduction of birefringence caused by residual strain) are the difficult issues involved in a media injection molding process. As the control of the molding process inevitably becomes more difficult due to a trend of reduction of a filling space and rapid increase of pattern density, easily moldable stampers are desired for facilitating the process.


An electronic device and method are provided. The fingerprint recognition method includes: obtaining a verification fingerprint image; transmitting the verification fingerprint image to the second processing unit; generating verification fingerprint data according to the verification fingerprint image by the second processing unit; transmitting the verification fingerprint data to the first processing unit by the second processing unit; comparing the verification fingerprint data with a plurality of registered fingerprint datasets to generate matching information by the first processing unit; transmitting the matching information from the first processing unit to the second processing unit; and verifying the verification fingerprint data according to the matching information by the second processing unit.

Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to fingerprint recognition technology, and more particularly, to a method of generating fingerprint matching information in high-performance environment and generating a fingerprint matching result in high-security environment by referring to the matching information.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, biometric recognition technology has developed greatly. Since security codes and access cards may be easily stolen or lost, more and more attention has been paid to fingerprint-recognition technology. Fingerprints are unique and never-changing, and each person has multiple fingers for identity recognition. In addition, fingerprints can be easily obtained through fingerprint sensors. Therefore, fingerprint recognition can provide increased security and convenience, and financial security and confidential data can be better protected.
The computing environment of electrical devices, such as wireless devices, mobile phones, personal communication service (PCS) phones, cordless phones, session initiation protocol (SIP) phones, notebooks, and personal digital assistants (PDAs), can be divided into a high-performance environment and a high-security environment. A high-performance environment has higher computing performance but less security. A high-security environment, such as a Trust-Zone or Security Element, has higher security but less computing performance.
When performing fingerprint recognition, the user may swipe or press his or her finger over or on the fingerprint sensor, and then the fingerprint sensor will capture the verification fingerprint image for fingerprint recognition. If the fingerprint recognition is performed in a high-performance environment, the registration fingerprint data and/or the matching result may be tampered with. In addition, when the verification fingerprint data matches with the registration fingerprint data, the matching result may be overwritten. Therefore, the fingerprint recognition may be performed in a high-security environment (e.g. Trust-Zone or Security Element) for increasing security and reliability of fingerprint recognition. However, when fingerprint recognition is performed in a high-security environment, the computation capability of the high-security environment is very limited so that the computing performance for fingerprint recognition may be poor.

Fingerprint recognition methods and electronic device


A pharmaceutically acceptable salt of 2-methyl-3-butenyl-l-pyrophosphoric acid; an agent for treating lymphocytes which comprises at least one of 2-methyl-3-butenyl-l-pyrophosphoric acid, a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof, and a hydrate thereof; Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells treated by the same; and a medicine containing the same specifically stimulate and proliferate the human Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells, and also induce and enhance an antitumor activity thereof.

As a method for inducing and enhancing an antitumor effect in human lymphocytes, it has been known LAK therapy using interleukin-2. That is, it has been known that by having about 800 U/ml of interleukin-2 to act on the lymphocytes, cell groups induced thereby with an antitumor activity can be used as an antitumor effecter. However, in this method, there are serious side effects, for example, destruction of the self cells such as endovascular cells due to non-specific cytotoxic property possessed by LAK cells and the like or induction of autoimmunity due to non-specific activation of T cells by interleukin-2, thereby making it difficult to apply this methods to an actual clinical field.
As compounds which specifically activate Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells, there have been known mycobacteria-derived isopentenyl pyrophosphoric acid and mono ethyl phosphoric acid obtained by an organic synthesis. In those methods, however, the concentrations of those compounds are required to be several hundreds of μM to several mM in order to activate Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells. Such high concentrations of the compounds may have a toxic effect on the cells, therefore, it was difficult to use those compounds to induce and enhance an antitumor effect of the lymphocytes in a large scale. In any case, it has not yet been known a synthetic compound which can act on the Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells in a concentration of several hundreds of nM to several hundreds of μM, and specifically proliferate those cell groups.
The present invention has been aimed to solve the above-mentioned problems of the prior art. An object of the present invention is to provide a novel compound that can specifically stimulate and proliferate the human Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells, an agent for treating lymphocytes that induces and/or potentiates an antitumor effect of the human Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells, Vγ2Vδ2 type T cells treated by the same, and a medicine which comprises the same.

2-Methyl-3-butenyl-1-pyrophosphoric acid salt and agent for treating lymphocytes


Using a common area sensor to build a high resolution electronic camera requires a large sensor chip with an incumbent high cost. Using a line sensor results in slow imaging and therefore limited applications. An electronic camera using a small sensor chip with high speed imaging is therefore provided. A two-dimensional imaging device that is narrower than an area sensor subscans the imaging plane of the lens system by means of a scanning device. The charge transfer register of the two-dimensional imaging device is driven by an X clock generator in the opposite direction and at the same speed as the subscanning speed, thereby achieving TDI operation and high speed image capturing.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an electronic camera for forming images by mechanically scanning an imaging device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Imaging methods used by conventional still-camera type image input devices include the common method using a two-dimensional imaging device (commonly called an "area sensor"), and methods whereby a two-dimensional image is obtained by mechanically scanning an image using a one-dimensional imaging device (commonly called a "line sensor") as disclosed in Japanese laid-open (tokkai) patent number H5-316302.
An area sensor 60 with an imaging area of H pixels by V pixels is shown in FIG. 11, and a V-pixel long line sensor 61 which is driven in the direction of the arrow to subscan H pixels wide to image an area of H pixels by V pixels is shown in FIG. 12. If the per-pixel sensitivity of these sensors is equal, the line sensor requires an imaging time of H times that of the area sensor due to the charge storage time in order to achieve the same sensitivity. On the other hand, the line sensor has 1/H as many pixels as the area sensor, can therefore be achieved with a smaller sensor chip, and is thus used in image input devices having a large pixel count.
In one specialized image input method an image moving continuously across an area sensor is obtained by a time-delay integration (TDI) operation. Examples of devices using this TDI operation are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,740,681, an apparatus for capturing images of stars that are moving due to the rotation of the imaging satellite, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,922,337, an apparatus for capturing images of objects moving at a constant rate on a conveyor as shown in FIG. 13.
Referring to FIG. 13, a subject 38 on a conveyor 37 moving at a constant rate of speed is imaged by a camera 36 comprising a lens 35 and an area sensor 31. The area sensor 31 executes a TDI operation synchronized to the output of a tachometer 39 detecting the speed of the conveyor 37 to capture a still image of the subject 38.
What is common to each of the above-described apparatuses is that images are captured of subjects moving at a constant speed in a constant direction relative to a camera comprising a sensor that is in a fixed position relative to the lens. There are no examples in the literature of methods using this TDI operation compatible with conventional cameras used to capture images of common, indeterminately-moving subjects.
Using an area sensor to construct a high resolution camera such as an HDTV camera having more than two-million pixels requires a large-scale chip, resulting in an extremely high cost. Camera-type scanners using a line sensor are widely available, but require a per-image scanning time of many seconds. As a result such scanners are limited to applications in which the camera is fixed on a stand and used to capture still subjects.

Electronic camera with mechanical subscanner

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A power saving control method for an electronic communication device having a wireless communication module and a control software is provided. The control software includes at least a detection mode and executes the steps of detecting the action of the wireless communication module and obtaining a result. The power supply status of the wireless communication module is controlled via the control software according to the obtained result, thereby preventing waste of electricity.

The recent prosperity in electronics and communication industries has brought computer network into all kinds of places, such as in family, in school and in business. The computer network has eliminated the limitation of spatial separation and largely changed the style of communication between people. Since portable electronic products, such as a laptop computer, personal digital assistant, have also gained their popularity. The user of these electronic products not only needs a high speed network connection, but also needs to get access to the network anywhere without looking for a network socket to plug in. Therefore, wireless local area network is developed.
Wireless local area network (WLAN) performs local wireless network connection by using a wireless network module, such as a wireless card or a PCMCIA card in combination with a wireless access point to transmit and receive wireless data signals and connect to the Internet via the wireless access point. One can thus get access to the Internet resources.
Wireless broadband network service has become very popular worldwide. Many international airports, hotels, coffee shops provide similar services. The user is required to bring in his/her own portable electronic products (e.g. laptop computer or personal digital assistant), which include a wireless card, to get wireless access to the Internet by entering the account name and password acquired from the network service supplier. Such wireless network service has the following advantages.    1. The computer can get connected to the network without being restricted to certain network wiring scheme.    2. The wireless network connection does not require any compliance of wiring and socket specification, which can save a lot of time and man power in network installation.    3. According to the IEEE802.11b standard, the wireless access point can provide a transmission speed up to 11 Mbps, which is roughly 200 times faster than a 56 Kbps modem. This speed can satisfy most of the everyday file transmission requirement.    4. New users are easily added to the network without considering the limited number of access points in conventional wired network.
Due to the advantages set forth above, Intel Corporation developed a Centrino®) mobile processor. The mobile processor includes a Pentium-M processor, an 802.11b wireless module and an 855 chipset. This mobile processor is primarily used in laptop computers, such that the computer can easily be connected to a wireless access point and the network without using an external PCMCIA wireless network card. This can largely enhance the capacity of the laptop computer. Nevertheless, most of the computers now still require a wireless network card or a built-in 802.11b wireless module on the motherboard in order to get access to the wireless access point and the network.
However, wireless communication modules are often enabled when starting up electronic communication devices. The wireless communication module can then search and detect for available wireless channels. If the user forgets to turn off the wireless communication module, the wireless communication module will continuously search and detect for available wireless channels. In this manner, the wireless communication module will continuously radiate electromagnetic waves, which is a great waste of electricity and very likely to bring high risk to the health of the user. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a wireless communication module that can be turned on or off in proper timing or during a certain period of time.

Power saving control method for a wireless communication module


Embodiments of the invention generally provide an electrochemical plating system. The plating system includes a substrate loading station positioned in communication with a mainframe processing platform, at least one substrate plating cell positioned on the mainframe, at least one substrate bevel cleaning cell positioned on the mainframe, and a stacked substrate annealing station positioned in communication with at least one of the mainframe and the loading station, each chamber in the stacked substrate annealing station having a heating plate, a cooling plate, and a substrate transfer robot therein.

1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to an electrochemical plating system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Metallization of sub-quarter micron sized features is a foundational technology for present and future generations of integrated circuit manufacturing processes. More particularly, in devices such as ultra large scale integration-type devices, i.e., devices having integrated circuits with more than a million logic gates, the multilevel interconnects that lie at the heart of these devices are generally formed by filling high aspect ratio, i.e., greater than about 4:1, interconnect features with a conductive material, such as copper. Conventionally, deposition techniques such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and physical vapor deposition (PVD) have been used to fill these interconnect features. However, as the interconnect sizes decrease and aspect ratios increase, void-free interconnect feature fill via conventional metallization techniques becomes increasingly difficult. Therefore, plating techniques, i.e., electrochemical plating (ECP) and electroless plating, have emerged as promising processes for void free filling of sub-quarter micron sized high aspect ratio interconnect features in integrated circuit manufacturing processes.
In an ECP process, for example, sub-quarter micron sized high aspect ratio features formed into the surface of a substrate (or a layer deposited thereon) may be efficiently filled with a conductive material. ECP plating processes are generally two stage processes, wherein a seed layer is first formed over the surface features of the substrate (generally through PVD, CVD, or other deposition process in a separate tool), and then the surface features of the substrate are exposed to an electrolyte solution (in the ECP tool), while an electrical bias is applied between the seed layer and a copper anode positioned within the electrolyte solution. The electrolyte solution generally contains ions to be plated onto the surface of the substrate, and therefore, the application of the electrical bias causes these ions to be plated onto the biased seed layer, thus depositing a layer of the ions on the substrate surface that may fill the features.
Once the plating process is completed, the substrate is generally transferred to at least one of a substrate rinsing cell or a bevel clean cell. Bevel edge clean cells are generally configured to dispense an etchant onto the perimeter or bevel of the substrate to remove unwanted metal plated thereon. The substrate rinse cells, often called spin rinse dry cells, generally operate to rinse the surface of the substrate (both front and back) with a rinsing solution to remove any contaminants therefrom. Further the rinse cells are often configured to spin the substrate at a high rate of speed in order to spin off any remaining fluid droplets adhering to the substrate surface. Once the remaining fluid droplets are spun off, the substrate is generally clean and dry, and therefore, ready for transfer from the ECP tool. The bevel clean cells generally operate to clean the bevel of the substrate by dispensing an etchant solution onto the bevel while the substrate is rotated under the fluid dispensing nozzle. The etchant solution operates to clean the bevel of any unwanted materials generated during plating processes.
Thereafter, the cleaned/rinsed substrate is often transferred to an annealing chamber where the substrate is heated to a temperature sufficient to anneal the deposited film. However, the throughput of conventional plating systems may be limited by the availability of the annealing chamber, as an annealing process for a semiconductor substrate after plating may take several minutes. Further, once the annealing process is completed, the annealed substrate generally takes several minutes to cool down to a temperature that allows for transfer of the substrate to another processing chamber or device.
Embodiments of the invention generally provide an electrochemical plating system having multiple plating cells capable of using multiple chemistries, a substrate rinsing cell, a substrate cleaning cell, and a two position annealing chamber, all of which are in communication with the electrochemical plating system.


In an occupant weight detection system, a pair of weight detection units are mounted along upper faces of base members fixed to a floor of an automobile. A square-frame-shaped linking member made of an iron sheet is interposed between the pair of weight detection units and a pair of seat rails. The pair of weight detection units are integrally linked by the linking member to maintain a positional relationship to each other at a predetermined relationship. Therefore, it is possible to prevent these weight detection means from being mounted in a state in which they are twisted or displaced relative to each other, thereby maintaining the detection accuracy.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an occupant weight detection system that includes a plurality of weight detection means for sharing detection of the weight of an occupant seated on a vehicle seat.
2. Description of the Related Art
Operation/non-operation of an airbag system for a passenger seat and variation of the deployment speed of an airbag, etc. are controlled according to the body size of an occupant seated on the passenger seat and whether or not an occupant is present, that is, according to the status. For example, control is carried out as follows: when the occupant is an adult or a child, the airbag system is operated, and when the occupant is an infant seated on a child seat or there is no occupant seated, the airbag system is not operated; furthermore, when the airbag system is operated, if the occupant is an adult the airbag is deployed at a high speed, and if the occupant is a child the airbag is deployed at a low speed. This enables the airbag system to exhibit a restraining performance that is optimum for the status of the occupant, thereby avoiding unnecessary deployment of the airbag.
An arrangement in which the above-mentioned status is determined based on the weight of an occupant detected by a single load cell provided in a seat is known from Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-94637. In this weight detection system, the weight of an occupant seated on the seat is applied to the single load cell via a link mechanism, thereby preventing the occurrence of detection error due to the posture of the occupant seated in the seat while minimizing the number of load cells.
The above-mentioned conventional arrangement has the problem that it is necessary to employ a complicated link mechanism in order to reduce the number of load cells to one; this problem can be solved by arranging weight detection units beneath left and right seat rails, and obtaining the weight of an occupant by adding the weights detected by the left and right weight detection units. However, when the left and right weight detection units are separate and are independently mounted on a vehicle body, it is difficult to maintain the precision with which they are mounted on the vehicle body, and there is a possibility that the left and right weight detection units might be twisted or displaced relative to each other, thereby affecting the detection accuracy.

Occupant weight detection system having linked weight detection means with maintained positional relationships


A paper or paperboard including a cellulose substrate and a coating applied to each side of the paperboard substrate to form a coated structure, the coated structure having a basis weight, a caliper thickness and a Parker Print Surf smoothness, the Parker Print Surf smoothness being at most about 2 microns, the basis weight being less than about Y1 pounds per 3000 ft2, wherein Y1 is a function of the caliper thickness (X) in points and is calculated as follows: Y1=29.15+11.95X−0.07415X2.

The present patent application is directed to low density paper and paperboard and, more particularly, to low density paper and paperboard having a smooth, coated surface on both sides.
Paperboard is commonly used in various packaging applications. For example, high end personal care or commercial printing applications and the like. The paperboard often receives a variety of graphic treatments to enhance its visual impact on the shelf. Likewise, quality papers to be utilized as a medium for printing require smooth coated surfaces, with few imperfections to facilitate the printing of high quality text and graphics.
Conventionally, smoothness is achieved by calendering. Calendering serves to mechanically compress the sheet, providing a surface roughness low enough to produce final coated smoothness acceptable to the industry. However, this compression results in the severe densification of the sheet. Therefore, smooth papers and paperboard are typically more dense (i.e., less bulky) than less smooth paper and paperboard. This effect is magnified when a smooth, coated print surface is required on both sides of the paperboard.
For example, in FIG. 1, the basis weight in pounds per ream (1 ream=3000 ft2) of certain prior art coated two-side (C2S) solid bleached sulfate (SBS) paperboard products and C2S fine paper products is plotted against caliper thickness (1 point=0.001 inch=1 mil), thereby providing a visual representation of prior art paper and paperboard density (i.e., basis weight divided by caliper thickness). As can be seen, for a given caliper, the sheet will have typically been pressed to a given density range in order for the needed surface smoothness to be developed.
Nonetheless, low density is a desirable quality in many paper and paperboard applications. However, preparing a smooth surface using the conventional calendering process requires substantially increasing the density of the fiber substrate.
Accordingly, there is a need for a low density paper and paperboard that provides the desired smoothness on both sides for high quality printing, while reducing raw material cost.

Low density paper and paperboard with two-sided coating


A robotic hand comprises a base having fingers and a palm. The fingers define a working volume. The hand is able to grasp objects between the fingers and the palm by varying a distance from the palm to the working volume. Varying this distance can be achieved by either moving the palm towards the working volume or by moving the working volume towards the palm. Robotic hands that move the palm comprise an actuator that extends the palm from the base towards the working volume. Robotic hands that move the working volume relative to the palm have the fingers mounted to a common finger support unit that is configured to translate relative to the base.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of robotics and more particularly to end-effectors used to grasp objects.
2. Description of the Prior Art
One goal of robotics is to develop robots that can better be used in unstructured environments. Towards this goal, it is necessary to improve robotic grasping so that robots are able to more securely grasp a wider variety of objects that differ in size, shape and weight. An improved end-effector, or hand, for robotic grasping should be simple, robust, and reliable.
Robots used in industrial environments have end-effectors designed specifically for the parts to be grasped. Such special purpose end-effectors are ideal for grasping a single type of part repeatedly and over a long production run. Robots that are able to handle several part types typically employ a turret with multiple end-effectors, or a tool changer is used. These alternatives are feasible so long as the number of different parts involved is small.
In contrast, a robot to be used in an unstructured environment would ideally have an end-effector that can securely grasp a wide variety of objects differing considerably in their size, shape, and weight. Such end-effectors must be able to adapt to the object to be grasped and are generally referred to as robotic "hands."
The many designs for robotic hands can be broadly classified into two groups. The hands of the first group have simple linkages and are limited in their adaptability, while the hands of the second group employ complex linkages to provide greater adaptability. An early design of the first kind is described in a paper by F. Skinner, "Multiple Prehension Hands for Assembly Robots," Proc. 5th International Symposium on Industrial Robotics, Chicago, 1975, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,866,966 and 3,901,547. Another early hand of the first kind is described in a paper by A. Rovetta, "On Specific Problems of Design of Multi-Purpose Mechanical Hand Industrial Robots," Proc 7th ISIR, Tokyo, 1977. A later design with simple linkages is described in a paper by N. Ulrich, R. Paul, and R. Bajcsy, "A Medium-Complexity Complaint End Effector, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Philadelphia, 1988, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,957,320 and 5,501,498. Another design with simple linkages is described in a paper by K. Mirza and D. E. Orin, "Force Distribution for Power Grasps in the Digits System," Symposium Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators, 1990. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,792,338 and 5,108,140 provide still further robotic hands with simple linkages.
The hands of the second group have complex linkages to offer greater adaptability. These include a hand described in a paper by K. Salisbury, Robot Hands and the Mechanics of Manipulation, MIT Press, 1985, the "Utah/MIT hand" described in a paper by S. Jacobson, "Design of the Utah/MIT Dexterous Hand," Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1986, a hand described in a paper by G. Vassura and A. Bicchi, "Whole-Hand Manipulation: Design of an Articulated Hand Exploiting All Its Parts to Increase Dexterity," in Robots and Biological Systems, ser. NATO-ASI, New York, Springer-Verlag, 1989, and the "DLR" hand described in a paper by G. Hirzinger, "Torque-controlled Light Weight Arms and Articulated Hands," in Siciliano (ed), Experimental Robotics VIII, Springer, 2003. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,172,951, 5,447,403, 5,588,688, 6,244,644, and 6,517,132 and U.S. Patent Application 2003/0090115 also disclose further robotic hands with complex linkages.
Hands with great adaptability employ fingers with multiple active joints per finger. To position a tip of a finger to an arbitrary position in 3-dimensions, at least three degrees of freedom are required. As each active joint can be used to control one degree of freedom, most adaptable robotic hands have three or more fingers, each with three or more active joints. For example, the MIT/Utah hand has a total of 16 active joints. The hand described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,244,644 issued to Lovchik has two fingers and one thumb each with three joints plus three other active joints, for a total of 12 active joints. The DLR hand has four fingers with a total of 13 active joints. The use of a large number of active joints, however, causes hands to be mechanically complex as each active joint can include an actuator, a controller, and means for speed reduction and power transmission. The large number of components combined with stringent space constraints make these designs costly, difficult to manufacture, and expensive to maintain.
Some robotic hands can form grasps by using a palm in addition to the fingers. As explained in more detail below, grasps that utilize a palm are typically more robust than those that only use fingers. Several of the hands described above utilize a palm to form grasps. Skinner, Ulrich, Mirza, Vassura, Hirzinger, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,866,966, 5,108,140, 5,172,951, 5,501,498, 5,588,688 and 6,517,132, and U.S. Patent Application 2003/0090115 each have a fixed palm. Rovetta has a spring-loaded palm, but one that is not actuated. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,792,338, and 6,244,644 each have an actuated palm, but one in which the palm is coupled to one or more of the fingers and in which the palm motion is relatively small. In each of these designs the ability of the palm to participate in a wide range of desirable grasps is limited.
Hence, there is a need for a robotic hand having a palm that is moveable over a wide range and can be actuated independently of the fingers.


The disclosure relates to a field emission cathode. The field emission cathode includes a microchannel plate, a cathode electrode and a number of cathode emitters. The microchannel plate is an insulative plate and includes a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface. The microchannel plate defines a number of holes extending through the microchannel plate from the first surface to the second surface. The cathode electrode is located on the first surface. The number of cathode emitters are filled in the number of holes and electrically connected with the cathode electrode.

Field emission display (FED) is a new, rapidly developing flat panel display technology. Generally, FED can be roughly classified into diode and triode structures. In particular, carbon nanotube-based FED have attracted much attention in recent years.
Field emission cathode is important element in FED. A field emission cathode based on carbon nanotubes usually includes an insulating substrate, a cathode electrode attached on the substrate, a number of carbon nanotubes distributed on the cathode electrode. Usually, the carbon nanotubes are fabricated on the cathode electrode by printing carbon nanotube slurry or carbon nanotube ink. However, the carbon nanotubes fabricated by printing are not secured on the cathode electrode. Thus, the carbon nanotubes tend to be pulled out from the cathode electrode by a strong electric field force causing the field emission cathode to have a short life.
What is needed, therefore, is to provide a field emission cathode based on carbon nanotubes for solving the problem discussed above.

Field emission cathode and field emission device


Disclosed is a carrier network fulfilling a distributed virtual routing function, said carrier network comprising one or more components, each of the components comprising at least two nodes communicating with one another by means of an artery, a node comprising a an access function. At least one component of said network comprises the following elements:                several bridge ELANs, each bridge ELAN being connected to a virtual network VLAN,        at least one transit ELAN, all access functions of the same component being adjacent through said transit ELAN, and        at the level of an access function:                    router LEC means adapted to connect the access function to at least one bridge ELAN associated with a VLAN            means for the identification of the VLANs serviced by the access function,            means (transit LEC) to connect the transit ELAN to the access function.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a virtual router distributed over a carrier network and a method for the routing of packets among several virtual local area networks relying on a switching network whose graph may be variable owing to the mobility of its nodes.
The expression "distributed virtual router" is used to designate the routing method. The underlying switching network is also known as a "carrier network".
The nodes of the network communicate with one another for example by means of arteries whose configuration or existence may evolve over time, leading to a mobility of the nodes.
The invention can be applied especially to IP format packets of the Internet protocol.
The present invention can be applied for example in ATM type networks.
It can be applied to the emulation of routing in all networks using switching techniques.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the prior art, the routing is done by means of a piece of equipment known as a router that relays the packets entering a junctor of this equipment towards an output junctor as a function of the destination IP address of the packet and as a function of the routing table.
When the routing is done between a large number of local area networks at very great distances from one another, a meshed network of routers consisting of access routers and transit routers is generally used.
A configuration of this kind has certain drawbacks, especially the following ones:
1) the transit time of a packet in the network is adversely affected by the large number of routers to be crossed,
2) the notion of quality of service (QoS) is not taken into account.
One way to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks consists for example in integrating the IP routing (level 3) with a switching technology (level 2) such as the ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) switching. Three lines of development have been emphasized.
For example, what is called the gigarouter technology achieves a routing function at the core of a switch in taking account of the destination IP address in the switching process. In the ATM context, the destination IP address is taken into account during the translation of logic channels.
The label-switching technology identifies the flows within the IP traffic by a process of signalling associated with these flows of labels used by the level 2 switching. Applied to the ATM, a logic path indicator VPI/VCI is associated with a flow. This technology is being standardized at the IETF under the name of multiprotocol label switching (MPLS).
The technology known as "local area network and routing emulation" is used to create virtual circuits that directly connect the communications applications (short circuits) in using a specific protocol that defines customer entities, server entities, connections between these entities and rules for making short circuits between customers. In the ATM context, this technology is covered by a standard known as local area network emulation (LANE) and multiprotocol over ATM or MPOA.
This technology relies on the implementation of essential centralized functions of servers, flow routers with short lifetimes capable of being duplicated or even triplicated to provide minimum redundancy. However, when the network is subdivided into several non-interconnected components, there is no certainty that each component will have all the functions essential to the service nor that when two networks are combined, the redundant functions (offered by each of the components taken individually) will merge harmoniously, namely transparently for the user.
The object of the invention relates especially to a method of routing between virtual local area networks when the underlying switching network has a graph that may be variable owing to the mobility of its nodes, the network possibly being constituted by several components. A component is defined as a sub-network comprising at least two nodes that communicate with each other by arteries.
The number of components may be equal to the numbers of switches of the network.

Method for the routing of IP frames between the users of a variable graph network


The present invention provides a high transmittance, low emissivity film stack having an overcoat of an oxide of a metal chosen from the group of zinc, tin, indium, or bismuth, or an alloy including one or more of these metals, the oxide being applied in a thickness sufficiently low as to have no significant affect upon the optical properties of the coated substrate. That is, if the overcoat is lost through abrasion or chemical attack, the loss will not significantly affect the optical properties of the coating. The resulting film stack exhibits significantly enhanced durability as compared to a film stack without such an overcoat. In a preferred embodiment, a film stack of the invention includes at least one reflective metal layer, an outer, scratch-resistant metal oxide overcoat, and a metal oxide layer between the silver layer and the overcoat which is less scratch resistant than the overcoat.

High visible transmittance, low emissivity coatings upon transparent substrates such as glass are characterized by their ability to transmit visible light while minimizing the transmittance of other wavelengths of light, such as light in the infrared spectrum. This characteristic is particularly useful in applications where it is desirable to minimize radiative heat transfer without impairing visibility, such as in architectural glass or automobile windows. For asthetic reasons, in many such applications it is important to maintain reflectance relatively consistent throughout the visible spectrum so that the coating has a "neutral" color, i.e., is essentially colorless.
Generally speaking, such high transmittance, low emissivity coatings comprise a "film stack" having a thin metallic layer or film with high infrared reflectance and low transmissivity disposed between metal oxide layers. The metallic layer may be virtually any reflective metal, such as silver, copper or gold, with silver being frequently used. Metal oxides useful in high transmittance, low emissivity films include oxides of titanium, hafnium, zirconium, niobium, zinc, bismuth, indium and tin. Prior art systems have also employed oxides of metal alloys, such as zinc stannate or oxides of indium/tin alloys.
The metal oxide layers of such coatings serve two important functions. First, they serve to reduce the visible reflection of the film stack to enhance transmittance. The metal oxides used in these layers should therefore have a relatively high index of refraction, e.g., on the order of 2.0 or more, in order to achieve this end. Second, they should serve to protect the reflective metal layer from the environment. The film stack is frequently isolated from contact with the environment, as by disposing the film stack between two spaced panes of glass in a composite window structure. However, when these products are being assembled, the film stack is frequently subjected to relatively harsh conditions, such as by handling, shipping or washing of the panes prior to assembly.
A variety of attempts have been made to enhance the ability of the metal oxide layers to protect the reflective metal layer. For instance, Gillery et al. teach the use of titanium oxide as a protective overcoat in U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,563, the teachings of which are incorporated herein by reference. Gillery et al. explain that titanium oxides achieve the best results, but that such an overcoat could be formed of a metal rather than a metal oxide; titanium and alloys of iron or nickel are listed as prime candidates for such a metal layer. Gillery also teaches that certain other oxides simply lack the requisite durability to be used as such a protective overcoat. Zinc oxide, bismuth oxide and tin oxide are all listed as having undesirable properties, such as a lack of durability, which make them unsuitable for a protective overcoat.
However, it has been found that the use of a titanium oxide overcoat such as that taught by Gillery et al. is particularly prone to scratching or abrasion during shipping and washing operations. When coated substrates are washed before being assembled into a final product, the film stack comes into physical contact with a washing solution apparatus. It has been found that such a washing stage can physically abrade an overcoat of titanium oxide or the like, noticeably degrading the appearance of the finished article.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a film stack which provides suitable protection for the underlying metal layer, but can withstand the rigors of normal handling associated with such substrates.

Abrasion-resistant overcoat for coated substrates


A display-screen stretch and retraction driving mechanism and an electronic apparatus are provided. The electronic apparatus has a flexible display screen. The flexible display screen includes a first end and a second end arranged opposite to each other. The mechanism includes a housing, a driving assembly and a movable assembly. The housing is configured to be connected to the first end. The driving assembly includes a driving portion connected with the housing, and a movable portion in transmission connection with the driving portion. The movable portion is configured to move relative to the driving portion. The movable assembly is in transmission connection with the movable portion and connected with the flexible display screen. The movable assembly is configured to be driven by the driving assembly to drive the second end to move away from or close to the first end.

The market for flexible display screens is expected to grow significantly over the next few years. Deformation characteristics of the flexible display screen enrich usage states of an electronic apparatus. For example, the flexible display screen may be configured as a stretchable display screen. In the electronic apparatus with the stretchable display screen, a stretched state and a retracted state may be realized by the stretchable display screen, in which a display-screen stretch and retraction driving mechanism is a design difficulty.

Display-screen stretch and retraction driving mechanism and electronic apparatus

BEIJING XIAOMI MOBILE SOFTWARE CO., LTD.


An injection molding apparatus for small pitch molding includes a plurality of mold cavities having a small pitch therebetween. The injection molding apparatus includes a manifold for delivering melt to a sub-manifold. The sub-manifold including at least one upstream manifold plate and a downstream nozzle plate. The upstream manifold plate and/or the nozzle plate includes a heater. At least one unheated nozzle is mounted in the downstream nozzle plate for receiving melt from the sub-manifold and delivering the melt to a mold cavity.

There is a need for an injection molding apparatus that provides a small pitch between nozzles in order to increase the number of molded parts that may be produced from an injection molding apparatus having a predetermined size. Due to the size restrictions the location of a nozzle heater along the melt channel of each nozzle is impractical because it increases the spacing between the nozzles.


A cascade scanning optical system which includes: a first laser scanning optical system having a first polygon mirror, provided with a plurality of first reflecting surfaces, for deflecting a first scanning laser beam to scan a part of a scanning surface to generate a first scanning line; a second laser scanning optical system having a second polygon mirror, provided with a plurality of second reflecting surfaces, for deflecting a second scanning laser beam to scan another part of the scanning surface to generate a second scanning line, wherein the first and second laser scanning optical systems are arranged so as to align the first scanning line with the second scanning line at a point of contact therebetween in a main scanning direction to form a single scanning line; means for measuring a degree of tilt of each of the plurality of first reflecting surfaces and the plurality of second reflecting surfaces; and means for determining combinations of the plurality of first reflecting surfaces with the plurality of second reflecting surfaces in accordance with results of measurements of the measuring means so that the single scanning line is formed by any one of the combinations while minimizing a phase difference between a first phase formed by degrees of tilt of the plurality of first reflecting surfaces and a second phase formed by degrees of tilt of the plurality of the second reflecting surfaces.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cascade scanning optical system having a pair of laser scanning optical systems which are arranged along the main scanning direction and controlled to operate in synchronization with each other so as to realize a wide scanning line. More specifically the present invention relates to an apparatus of such a cascade scanning optical system, having a pair of laser scanning optical systems, for synchronizing the rotation of a polygon mirror of one laser scanning optical system with the rotation of a polygon mirror of the other laser scanning optical system, to prevent a pair of scanning lines that are to be aligned, respectively generated by the pair of laser scanning optical systems, from being deviated from each other in the sub-scanning direction.
2. Description of the Related Art
A cascade scanning optical system having a plurality of laser scanning optical systems arranged along the main scanning direction to realize a wide scanning line is known. Such a type of scanning optical system is disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 61-11720, published on Jan. 20, 1986. This publication discloses a cascade scanning optical system having a pair of laser scanning optical systems each having a laser beam emitter, a polygon mirror serving as a deflecting device, an f.theta. lens, etc. The pair of laser scanning optical systems are synchronously driven to emit respective scanning laser beams to a photoconductive surface (scanning surface) of a photoconductive drum on a common line thereon extending in parallel to the axial direction of the photoconductive drum. The pair of scanning laser beams respectively scan two adjacent ranges of the common line on the photoconductive surface so as to scan the photoconductive surface of the photoconductive drum in the main scanning direction in a wide range.
There is a fundamental problem to be overcome in such a type of cascade scanning optical system. Namely, how can a scanning line, made on the photoconductive drum by the scanning laser beam emitted from one laser scanning optical system of the cascade scanning optical system, be accurately aligned with another scanning line, made on the photoconductive drum by the scanning laser beam emitted from another laser scanning optical system of the cascade scanning optical system, so that the scanning lines are not apart from each other in either the main scanning direction or the sub-scanning direction, i.e., so as to form a straight and continuous scanning line through the combination of the separate scanning lines.
It is sometimes the case that each reflecting surface (scanning laser beam deflecting surface) of a polygon mirror used in the cascade scanning optical system slightly tilts from its original position. In the case where the angle of each reflecting surface of the polygon mirror of one laser scanning optical system is different from that of the other corresponding laser scanning optical system, the pair of scanning lines, which are respectively generated by the aforementioned corresponding reflecting surfaces forming a straight and continuous scanning line, will deviate from each other in the sub-scanning direction on the photoconductive drum. This results in a gap or deviation occurring between the two scanning lines in the sub-scanning direction, so that a straight and continuous scanning line will not be formed. A similar problem will arise in the case where one or both of the polygon mirrors rotate with a tremor or oscillation.

Synchronizing apparatus of a cascade scanning optical system having tilting measurement of reflecting surfaces