A display apparatus has a display to emit image-bearing light to a prism assembly that defines an optical path between an incident surface of the prism assembly and an output surface that is orthogonal to within +/−30 degrees relative to the incident surface, wherein the prism assembly has a curved reflective surface opposite the incident surface. The prism assembly encases a beam splitter at an oblique angle to the defined optical path and to both the incident and the output surface of the prism assembly. A shim, in contact against the display surface and against the incident surface of the prism assembly, defines a sealed air gap for light between the display surface and the incident surface. A frame houses the display, the shim, and the incident surface of the prism assembly, wherein the frame further provides connection features for coupling the apparatus to a head-worn article.

A number of solutions have been proposed for providing image content from wearable devices. Various types of eyewear apparatus have been described for displaying image content to a viewer. In some cases, these devices may be completely immersive, so that the viewer sees only images generated by the apparatus and has no ability to see the outside world when wearing the device, thus providing virtual reality (VR) display. However, there are many applications for which high degrees of visibility of the real world are of value, with generated images or messages presented in an unobtrusive manner, such as along the edge of the visual field or visually superimposed against the real-world image content. Systems providing this capability are termed augmented reality (AR) or mixed reality displays.
Wearable display devices offer considerable promise for providing information and displaying complementary imagery that can improve safety, performance, and efficiency in a number of fields, including military, industrial, and medical applications, for example. These devices can help to direct a viewer to a particular task and to enhance a viewer's understanding of visual content that lies in the field of view.
However, with many of the apparatus that have been proposed for wearable displays, the viewer is encumbered by the device in some way; this can be due to device size, bulkiness and discomfort, component and image positioning, poor see-through visibility, poor image quality, eye fatigue, and other difficulties. Although many solutions for providing a more natural viewing experience have been outlined, and a number of advances toward improved image quality have been introduced, design factors may not be suitable for the intended use. For example, weight or form factors for many of these solutions may make it difficult to win broad-based acceptance for these devices, particularly for long-term use, or for demanding functions such as military or police applications.
One problem that is widely acknowledged in the art relates to adaptability of systems to different mounting arrangements. Design approaches tend to be highly customized. Display optics that work well for some types of head-mounted devices (HMDs) may not be well suited for use with other types. Optical systems are often configured for specific types of headgear and, in general, are not readily adaptable for use with multiple mounting geometries.
Thus, it can be appreciated that it would be advantageous to provide a display engine that can be adapted for configuration with any of a number of different types of head-mounted devices, allowing for different mounting and protective arrangements and well-suited for use with auxiliary devices.

Optical engine for head-mounted display apparatus


An elastically averaged alignment system includes a first alignment portion comprising an alignment member and a first plurality of elastically deformable alignment elements. The alignment system also includes a second alignment portion comprising an elastically deformable alignment member configured and disposed to be received by and deformably and matingly engaged with the alignment member and a second plurality of elastically deformable alignment elements configured and disposed to deformably and matingly engage the first plurality of deformable alignment elements, wherein the engagement of the alignment member and deformable member and first plurality of elastically deformable alignment elements and the second plurality of elastically deformable alignment elements elastically average a predetermined position of the second alignment portion relative to the first alignment portion.

Currently, components, particularly vehicular components such as those found in automotive vehicles, which are to be mated together in a manufacturing process are mutually located with respect to each other by features that are oversized and/or undersized to provide spacing to freely move the components relative to one another to align them. One example includes 2-way and/or 4-way male alignment features, typically upstanding bosses, which are received into corresponding female alignment features, typically apertures in the form of holes or slots. There is a clearance between the male alignment features and their respective female alignment features which is predetermined to match anticipated size and positional variation tolerances of the male and female alignment features as a result of manufacturing (or fabrication) variances. As a result, significant positional variation can occur between the mated first and second components which may contribute to the presence of undesirably large variation in their alignment, particularly with regard to the gaps and spacing between them. In the case where these misaligned components are also part of another assembly, such misalignments can also affect the function and/or aesthetic appearance of the entire assembly. Regardless of whether such misalignment is limited to two components or an entire assembly, it can negatively affect function and result in a perception of poor quality.
In addition, it is desirable to ensure precise alignment of two components by providing a precise or fine positioning and alignment system or mechanism; however, it is often necessary, or at least desirable, to obtain a rough or coarse alignment of the components prior to proceeding with the precise alignment. Current two-way and four-way alignment features, such as those described above, do not provide coarse and fine alignment of the respective components on which they are incorporated. As a result, it is desirable to provide alignment systems that provide both coarse and fine alignment of the components on which they are incorporated.


A process for producing coumarin or a derivative thereof, which process comprises dehydrogenation of 3,4-dihydrocoumarin or a derivative thereof in the presence of a palladium catalyst by heating under reduced pressure.

Known processes for obtaining coumarin or a derivative thereof include cyclization and dehydrogenation of a 3-(2-cyclohexanoyl)propionic acid ester or a derivative thereof in the presence of a hydrogenation-dehydrogenation catalyst, e.g., palladium, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,442,910 or in the presence of a noble metal catalyst, e.g., palladium, in combination with a co-catalyst, such as barium sulfate or nickel oxide, as disclosed in JP-A-60-181082 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application").
It is also known to obtain coumarin or a derivative thereof by dehydrogenation of 3,4-dihydrocoumarin or a derivative thereof in the presence of a noble metal catalyst, such as palladium, as disclosed in Ber., 70B, pp. 735-738 (1936) or by using chlorine, bromine, oxygen, or sulfur as disclosed in Monatsh., Vol. 34, pp. 1671-1672 (1913) and German Patent 276,667.
The cyclization and dehydrogenation of a 3-(2-cyclohexanoyl)propionic ester in the presence of a palladium catalyst under heating does not always attain a high yield of coumarin and is accompanied with by-production of 3,4-dihydrocoumarin in a large proportion. The dehydrogenation of 3,4-dihydrocoumarin using chlorine, sulfur, etc. meets difficulty in removing the chlorine or sulfur, etc. from the reaction mixture and therefore involves complicated purification steps.
The dehydrogenation of 3,4-dihydrocoumarin in the presence of a palladium catalyst has an advantage of relatively easy purification. However, hydrogen which is by-produced by the dehydrogenation concurrently induces hydrogenation of coumarin produced into 3,4-dihydrocoumarin, the dehydrogenation as purposed does not always proceed sufficiently, and the yield of coumarin is not so high as expected.

Process for producing coumarin and derivatives thereof


A vent cover for covering an opening in a building structure to vent its interior is provided. The vent cover includes a hollow cover member with an open bottom for positioning over and covering the opening in the building and a front end with an opening. A grill is removably secured in the opening in the front end of the cover member. The grill has a plurality of partitions. Each of the partitions is defined by intersecting members, which have a tapered cross section for accelerating the flow of air through the grill. The grill also has a splash guard and an overhang structure optimal for preventing rain, snow and water from entering the grill and the opening in the building structure. The cover member may be aerodynamically shaped for use atop vehicles such as trailers and RVs.

The invention generally relates to air vents, and more particularly, to an outdoor vent cover.
Vent covers are known. One such cover is shown in U.S. D629,094. Like this design, vent covers for outdoor use typically include a venting portion to permit airflow and a protective shell to keep rain and snow out. Thus, the challenge to innovators is to produce a design having features for keeping the weather out, but also permitting the air to flow freely and efficiently to vent the enclosed area. Despite state-of-the-art technology and materials, problems of partially occluded grills and leaky covers persist. There is, therefore, a need for an improved outdoor vent cover capable of optimal venting of the interior of a building structure, but which prevents rain, wind and water from entering the building. The present invention is directed toward meeting this need.


For facilitating re-experience of an event of a gaming device with a player, data is sampled from the gaming device by a gaming system having supervisory hierarchical control over the gaming device, the data provided by the gaming system to a data processing device in communication with the gaming system, that is external to the gaming device. The sampled data is processed to create a facsimile animation recreation of the event at a subsequent time.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to gaming devices and systems, and more particularly to mechanisms for facilitating re-creation of an event of a gaming machine at a subsequent time using input/output (I/O) overlays.
2. Description of the Related Art
Games of chance have been enjoyed by people for many years and have undergone increased and widespread popularity in recent times. As with most forms of entertainment, some players enjoy playing a single favorite game, while others prefer playing a wide variety of games. In response to the diverse range of player preferences, gaming establishments commonly offer many types of electronic games. Many electronic gaming machines (EGMs), such as slot machines and video poker machines, have been a cornerstone of the gaming industry for several years. The EGMs are computer based and contain multiple external interfaces for connecting with external devices and mobile devices.

Facilitation of gaming event re-creation


A lighting device control apparatus used in a vehicle which includes a headlight for illuminating a running direction of the vehicle; a first lighting device provided at a side of an external mirror of the vehicle; a second lighting device provided at a front side of the external mirror; and a direction indicator operating device, operated by a driver of the vehicle, for indicating the running direction of the vehicle, wherein the direction indicator operating device controls at least the on/off state of the first lighting device. The apparatus has a lighting device control device for producing a daytime on-state of the second lighting device, according to an on state of the headlight and an operational position of an ignition switch of the vehicle. The second lighting device, conventionally used as a direction indicator, can be used as a daytime running light for improving the visibility in the daytime.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lighting device control apparatus for controlling the on/off state of a lighting device for vehicles.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2004-006635, filed Jan. 14, 2004, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, such a lighting device control apparatus may be used as a direction indicator (or a side turning light) for indicating the running direction of a vehicle (which has the lighting device control apparatus) to the surroundings (refer to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2003-237460). In this case, a main light source and a sub (or auxiliary) light source (as an accessory), which satisfy standardized conditions such as (road) regulations, are provided at an external mirror of the vehicle, and both light sources are synchronously turned on and off.
In conventional vehicles, in order to make the vehicle sufficiently visible (i.e., to improve the visibility of the vehicle) in the daytime, daytime running lights (DRL) may be provided, that is, the headlights for illuminating an area in the running direction of the vehicle may be turned on in the daytime, or a lighting device of exclusive use may be provided at the vehicle, which is turned on while the vehicle is running in the daytime.
However, when the vehicle is running while the headlights, which consume large power, are turned on, power of the battery is excessively consumed. In addition, when a lighting device exclusively for increasing visibility in the daytime is provided, costs for the vehicle are increased.

Lighting device control apparatus for vehicles


An improved material for forming vehicle trim panels includes natural fibers formed reinforcing mats. The natural fibers replaced the prior known use of glass fibers. Prior art glass fibers may sometimes cause skin irritation, and the natural fiber eliminates this problem. The fibrous mats are preferably placed on both sides of the central foam layer, and a decorative layer is placed outwardly of one of the fibrous mats. Various naturally occurring fibrous materials such as hemp may be utilized.

This invention relates to a vehicle trim panel having a sandwich construction including a central foam layer and fiber mats formed of natural fibers on opposed sides of the central foam layer.
Sandwich constructions including fibrous mat layers and central thermoformable foam layers are widely utilized in manufacturing vehicle trim panels such as headliners. The foam layer provides formability and strength to the overall trim panel. The fibers provide sound insulation and additional strength. These panels are widely utilized and have proven successful in achieving functional goals for vehicle trim panels.
There are some concerns with this type of panel, however, due to the fibrous materials that have been utilized. The fibrous materials have almost always been fiberglass layers having small glass fibers embedded in a plastic binding layer. The fibers are exposed at the edges of the trim panel, and thus are handled by assemblers or eventual users of the vehicle. The handling of the glass fiber can cause skin irritation, and thus it is desirable to minimize contact between the glass fibers and any users.
In the prior art, covering edges have been proposed. The covering edges are not fully satisfactory since they are expensive and require additional post-manufacturing steps to be applied. Typically, the trim panels are cut to size from a larger panel, and the edge would then have to be placed on the final trim panel. Moreover, the covering edges are unsightly.

Vehicle trim panel with natural fiber layers


A photosensitive element comprising a temporary support having thereon an aqueous resin layer which contains at least one kind of fine particles having an average particle size or agglomerated particle size of 1 to 10 .mu.m. The fine particles impart a roughened surface to the aqueous resin layer. Furthermore, a photosensitive insulating resin layer is provided on the aqueous resin layer. Also disclosed is an insulating resin image having a roughened surface which is prepared by a process comprising the steps of providing the above-described photosensitive element, laminating the photosensitive element on an insulating substrate, and pattern exposing and developing the photosensitive insulating resin layer. Also disclosed is a process for producing an multilayer printed wiring board comprising the steps of laminating the above-described photosensitive element on an insulating substrate having thereon a first wiring pattern, forming via holes in the photosensitive insulating resin layer, depositing a conductive material on the photosensitive insulating resin layer and in the via holes, and forming a second wiring pattern on the insulating resin layer which is interconnected to the first wiring pattern through the via holes.

With the recent rapid advancement of electronic equipment in terms of function, weight and size reduction, there has been a demand for high-density mounting of electronic components. To achieve these objectives, it is important to increase the density of PWB. A so-called build-up system has been proposed as one approach for increasing the PWB density. The build-up system is characterized in that interlayer connection is achieved by forming fine via holes through a photosensitive interlayer dielectric instead of drilling conventional through-holes.
A specific example of a build-up system which makes use of a photosensitive interlayer dielectric is disclosed in JP-A-4-148590 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). In this method, a photosensitive insulating resin layer is provided on a first circuit pattern. After forming via holes by photolithography, the resin layer is subjected to chemical surface roughening. The chemical surface roughening enhances adhesion of the resin layer to an electroless copper deposit and also to an electro copper deposit overlaid thereon. The chemical treatment provides the resin surface with fine unevenness to thereby achieve improved adhesion through an anchoring effect.
However, the adhesion achieved by providing surface unevenness (surface roughening treatment) in JP-A-4-148590 is still insufficient, leaving room for further improvement. Moreover, chromic acid, etc. which is used in the chemical surface roughening, is unfavorable in consideration of safety and environmental conservation.
JP-A-63-126297 discloses a method comprising hardening a photosensitive insulating resin having dispersed therein fine particles soluble in an acid or an oxidizing agent and dissolving the dispersed particles with a strong acid or a strong oxidizing agent, such as chromium (VI) oxide. This forms unevenness on the resin surface, to thereby improve adhesion to a metal deposit.
However, the treating agents used in the technique of JP-A-63-126297 are also problematical for safety and environmental consideration. In addition, when the photosensitive resin layer is provided on an insulating substrate by a laminating method (heat bonding or press bonding), which is simpler than a printing or coating technique and is relatively free from defects, defects such as bubble entrapment on the surface of the insulating substrate tend to occur because of the fine particles contained in the photosensitive insulating resin. Thus, this technique does not provide a practically useful product.

Photosensitive element and process for producing multilayer printed wiring board


Multiple traffic management nodes may be coupled with separate networks and with a connecting network. The traffic management nodes monitor and classify traffic passing through the connecting network. Current paths through the connecting network are identified and used to build detour paths through the connecting network using traffic management nodes as detour nodes. The detour paths may be shortened, thereby excluding the detour nodes from each detour path. The traffic management nodes and the detour paths may be used to create a traffic engineered system for traffic passing through the connecting network.

The present application describes systems and techniques relating to network traffic engineering such as multi-path analysis for managing machine communications in a network.
A network is a collection of nodes coupled together with wired or wireless communication links. Each node is capable of communicating with other nodes over the communication links using network protocols. A node may be any machine capable of communicating over the network using one or more of the network protocols. Multiple networks may be combined into a larger network using an inter-networking protocol, such as Internet Protocol (IP). Such larger networks typically include packet-routing nodes (e.g., routers, gateways, switches, bridges) and network-management nodes (e.g., network servers).
Forwarding data packets within a network and between networks is generally performed by routers using one or more routing protocols to exchange information about network topology (i.e., the current layout of the interconnections forming the network). This is generally known as "topology discovery" and "dynamic routing." Each router typically maintains a graph representing the local network topology, and this graph is typically used to maintain a routing table.
Generally, two main types of routing protocols are used: interior gateway protocols (IGPs), and exterior gateway protocols (EGPs). An IGP typically is a protocol used by all the routers within a common networking system (e.g., an autonomous system within the Internet, a private network, a virtual private network, an enterprise network, etc.), which is frequently under a single administrative control. Typical examples of IGPs include distance-vector routing protocols such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP-2), and link-state routing protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF-2).
In a distance-vector routing protocol, each router sends messages (typically vectors of hop-count distances) to its neighboring routers describing the sending router's routing table. In a link-state routing protocol, each router actively monitors the state of links with the router's neighbors and broadcasts any changes in link-state to all the other routers in the network. Each router uses the link-state information to generate a directed graph that represents the network topology, which is then used to load the routing table with next-hop data.
An EGP typically is used between routers residing in different networking systems, and allows routers to exchange network reachability information. Typically, this information includes full path information for the networks to be crossed to reach other networks.
Network traffic engineering generally involves mapping traffic flows onto an existing physical topology in order to better utilize network resources. For example, MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) is an IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) initiative that routes packets based upon assigned labels in order to provide differential quality of service features for different network traffic.
Tunneling is a technique commonly used for creating virtual private networks (VPNs) on a public network. Tunneling typically involves encapsulating packets using one network protocol into packets using another network protocol.
Details of one or more embodiments are set forth in the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals refer to like components, and the description below. Other features and advantages may be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.

Multi-path analysis for managing machine communications in a network


A circuit, system, and method are provided for generating edge-aligned, complementary output signals from complementary input signals. The output and input signals can, according to one example, be clock signals. The circuit, system, and method can use the rising edges of the complementary pair of input signals to trigger transitions on the complementary pair of output signals. More specifically, the rising edge of a true input clock signal will trigger the rising edge of the true output clock signal and the falling edge of the inverted output clock signal. A rising edge of the inverted input clock signal will trigger the falling edge of the true output clock signal, and the rising edge of the inverted output clock signal. Moreover, the circuit, system, and method ensures that at any time only one transition occurs on the active inputs of a final logic stage of the clock generation circuit. Also, the circuit, system, and method support double data rate (DDR) data and echo clock generation, where the echo clock transitions in sync with the DDR output.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic circuitry and, more particularly, to circuitry used within a system that can essentially eliminate skew in complementary signals, such as clock signals used to synchronize double data rate data output for source synchronous systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The following descriptions and examples are not admitted to be prior art or conventional by virtue of their inclusion within this section.
Electronic subsystems typically operate as synchronous systems. A synchronous system is often thought of as a system that enters one state after departing a preceding state. The impetus for transitioning between states might be, for example, a regular and periodic signal that triggers the transition. Most such signals are referred to as clocking signals. Thus, synchronous electronic systems rely upon a reliably periodic stream of clocking cycles.
Unfortunately, not all clocking signals maintain their regular and periodic cycles due, in part, to jitter and noise placed on those signals. Not only might the transitional edges of the clock signal periodically vary due to jitter and skewing effects, but when electronic subsystems rely on complementary clock signals, then any jitter on one of the complementary pair will delay one clock relative to the other. As used herein, the term "skew" refers to essentially the time difference between signals due to jitter, noise, or timing differences for logic that produce those signals.
When applied to clock signals, any clocking signal skew will change the transition point between cycles on an irregular or inconsistent basis or, possibly, on a cumulative basis. Complementary signals or complementary clock signals utilize what is known as a true signal and an inverted signal. If there is any clock skew between the true and inverted signals, then transitions on the inverted signal will occur in advance of, or be delayed relative to, the true signal.
In electronic subsystems that rely upon complementary signals in general or complementary clock signals specifically, it is desirable for the complementary clock signals to transition at the same time. If not, then transitions in the state sequence affected by the true clock signal will be skewed from transitions in the sequence affected by the inverted clock signal. Most digital sequential systems rely upon complementary clock signals and, more specifically, complementary clock signals that do not have substantial skew or delay between transitions of the true and inverted signals. It is, therefore, desirable to reduce clock skew and jitter in complementary signals used to sequentially operate electronic subsystems.

System and method for reducing skew in complementary signals that can be used to synchronously clock a double data rate output


The proceedings of a business meeting are recorded on a portable digital audio recorder. The resulting digitized speech signals are uploaded to a personal computer which is part of a data communication network. Users of the network may arrange to access the uploaded digitized speech signals for downloading to the user""s location. The downloaded digitized speech signals are audibly reproduced at the location of the requesting user.

This invention is concerned with recording and reproduction of audio signals for business and office applications.
It is a common practice in connection with business meetings to assign to one person attending the meeting the responsibility for taking notes of the meeting and distributing the notes to all of the attendees and to other interested persons. The person responsible for preparing the minutes customarily takes handwritten notes during the meeting, has the notes transcribed, and causes the transcribed text of the notes to be distributed to appropriate recipients. Alternatively, the handwritten notes may be distributed without having been transcribed.
According to another known practice, a tape recorder such as a portable cassette recorder may be employed to tape-record the meeting. The tape cassette on which the meeting is recorded is then supplied to a transcriptionist, who transcribes the recorded proceedings. The transcribed text is then distributed.
The foregoing conventional techniques for documenting meetings have a number of disadvantages. Of course there are labor costs involved in the process of transcription. Furthermore, transcription usually entails a delay in making the meeting documentation available, and this delay is usually extended by the time required to deliver the documentation to the recipients. Even the process of distributing copies of handwritten meeting notes entails some delay and inconvenience.
It is an object of the invention to make proceedings of business meetings available for review by meeting participants and other interested persons in a manner that is rapid, convenient and inexpensive.
According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of making and distributing voice recordings, including the steps of providing a portable digital audio recorder; using the portable digital audio recorder to record words spoken by a plurality of individuals at a meeting location, the spoken words being stored in the portable digital audio recorder in the form of digitized speech signals; and after the recording step, interfacing the portable digital audio recorder to a personal computer; uploading the digitized speech signals from the portable digital audio recorder to the personal computer; using a data communication network to distribute the uploaded digitized speech signals from the personal computer to a plurality of listener locations; and audibly reproducing the distributed digitized speech signals at the listener locations. The uploaded digitized speech signals may be transferred directly from the personal computer to the listener locations, or may be forwarded to a network server, from which the digitized speech signals are electronically distributed to the listener locations. Alternatively, the uploaded digitized speech signals are made available for retrieval via the network from the personal computer or the server.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided an apparatus for making and distributing voice recordings, including a portable digital audio recorder for recording, in the form of digitized speech signals, words spoken by a plurality of individuals at a meeting location, a plurality of personal computers including a first personal computer, an arrangement for interfacing the portable digital audio recorder to the first personal computer, a data communications network which interconnects the plurality of personal computers, first control circuitry programmed to upload the digitized speech signals from the portable digital audio recorder to the first personal computer via the interfacing arrangement, and second control circuitry programmed to receive from ones of the personal computers requests for access to the uploaded digitized speech signals, and to respond to the requests for access by distributing to the ones of the personal computers the uploaded digitized speech signals, with the apparatus further including speakers or other devices associated with the ones of the personal computers for audibly reproducing the distributed digitized speech signals.
The portable recorder may use a removable solid state data memory card as a recording medium. If so, the recording medium may by removed from the recorder and interfaced with the first personal computer for uploading the digitized speech signals to the first personal computer without interfacing the recorder itself to the first personal computer.
The present invention thus calls for distributing the proceedings of business meetings over a computer network and in the form of digitized speech signals. The invention thereby avoids the delays and costs entailed by transcribing meeting notes or recorded proceedings, as well as the inconvenience of distributing the resulting text in hard copy form.
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the subsequent more detailed description of preferred embodiments.


A plurality of chipper inserts that may be installed on a hammermill rotor in place of the hammer inserts to selectively convert the rotor to a chipper. The chipper inserts include drum surfaces that cooperatively define a chipper drum. The chipper inserts may include cutter inserts that have a cutter disposed in a cutter pocket. The chipper drum may be a generally continuous cylindrical interrupted essentially only by the cutter pockets. The cutters and cutter pockets may be positioned in essentially any desired pattern around the drum. The chipper inserts may include a left cutter insert, a center cutter insert, a right cutter insert and three different size spacer inserts. The different types of cutter inserts and spacer inserts may be installed about the rotor with at least one left cutter insert mounted on the left end of the chipper drum and at least one right cutter insert mounted on the right end of the chipper drum. The chipper inserts may be configured in quadrant sections, such that it takes four inserts to extend around the rotor.

The present invention relates to equipment for reducing wood and more particularly to wood reduction machines for chipping or grinding scrap timber, limbs, brush and other wood waste.
There is a wide variety of machines available on the market for reducing waste wood, such as scrap timber, tree limbs and brush. The two most common types of wood reduction machines are chippers and grinders. As the names imply, chippers reduce wood by cutting it into wood chips using a set of chipper knives and grinders operate by essentially hammering wood into wood fragments using a hammermill.
The type of wood reduction equipment used in a given situation is often dictated by the character of the wood waste. On the market, wood chips typically bring a premium over ground wood. However, not all wood waste is suitable for the production of wood chips. With lower quality wood waste that may include a substantial amount of sand, gravel and other contaminants, it may be desirable to use a wood grinder. The hammers used in wood grinders typically have a greater ability to withstand the contaminants than the knives contained in wood chippers. As a result, it may be desirable to grind lower quality wood waste to avoid the excess wear that might occur during chipping. Given the premium enjoyed by wood chips, higher quality wood waste is often reduced using a wood chipper. Wood reduction equipment can be rather expensive, and many wood waste processors may not be able to afford both wood grinders and wood chippers.
With the continued push toward renewable resources and recycling, there has been a growth in the demand for wood fuel sources. Reduced wood waste is an ideal wood fuel source for many wood fuel applications. Although lower quality wood waste may be used as a fuel source, ground wood waste can present problems for wood fuel handling systems. For example, large consumers of wood-based fuels will often include pneumatic feed systems for conveying wood fuel from a supply center to the wood burner. Many conventional pneumatic feed systems do not work as well with ground wood waste, presumably because it has a greater tendency than wood chips to cling or clump together. Many wood processors that process lower quality wood waste have purchased wood grinders to avoid the excess wear that might accompany wood chippers. Because of the increasing demand for wood chips produced from lower quality wood waste, these processors might wish to be able to at least occasionally produce wood chips. However, the cost of adding a wood chipper to permit occasion use may be cost prohibitive. Accordingly, there is an increased need to allow existing wood grinders to be at least temporarily converted into chippers for reducing wood waste into wood chips.
At least one wood grinder (or wood hog) available on the market is available with interchangeable chipper attachments that allow its hammermill to be converted into a chipping mill. This wood grinder includes a generally conventional stacked-plate rotor in which hammer inserts are secured in annular channels in the rotor by a plurality of rotor pins. To convert to a wood chipper, the hammer inserts are removed and replaced with knife inserts. The knife inserts are spaced apart from one another around the rotor, and are mounted in the annular recesses on the rotor pins in essentially the same manner as the hammer inserts. The knife inserts are similar in width to the hammers inserts. The design and configuration of the knives is such that there the converted chipper mill has relatively large spaces between the knives and the knife holders. In fact, significant portions of the rotor plates are exposed to the wood waste during wood reduction. Although the knife inserts allow the wood grinder to be converted into a chipper, the system has inherent limitations that may affect chip quality and may lead to inconsistent chip size. For example, because of the open spaces between and around the knives, the chipper mill has relatively large dead spaces and provides relatively little control over chip size and chip quality.

Interchangable chipper inserts for wood grinder


An assemblage for monitoring an output of a random generator is provided, which assemblage compares chronologically successive sample values at a sampling point with one another in order to detect a relationship of the compared sample values with one another.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method and an assemblage for monitoring an output of a random generator.
2. Description of the Related Art
Random numbers, which are referred to as the outcome of random elements, are required for many applications. So-called "random generators" are used to generate random numbers. Random generators are methods that supply a sequence of random numbers. A crucial criterion for random numbers is whether the outcome of the generation can be regarded as independent of previous outcomes.
Random numbers are required, for example, for cryptographic methods. These random numbers are used, for example, to generate keys for encoding methods. Such keys are subject to stringent requirements in terms of randomness properties. Pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs), represented e.g. by a linear feedback shift register (LFRS), are therefore not suitable for this purpose. Only a true random number generator (TRNG) meets the applicable requirements. These utilize natural noise processes in order to obtain an unpredictable outcome. Noise generators that utilize the thermal noise of resistors or semiconductors, or the shot noise at potential barriers, for example at p-n transitions, are usual. A further possibility is to utilize the radioactive decay of isotopes.
While the "classic" methods use analog elements, such as e.g. resistors, as noise sources, digital elements such as, for example, inverters, have often been used in the recent past. These have the advantage of lesser complexity in terms of circuit layout, since they are available as standard elements.
It is known, for example, to use ring oscillators, which represent an electronic oscillator circuit. With these, an odd number of inverters is interconnected into a ring, producing an oscillation having a natural frequency. The natural frequency depends on: the number of inverters in the ring; the properties of the inverters; the interconnection conditions, i.e. lead capacitances; the operating voltage; and the temperature. The noise of the inverters results in a random phase shift with respect to the ideal oscillator frequency, which is used as a random process for the TRNG. It is noteworthy that ring oscillators oscillate independently, and do not require external components such as, for example, capacitors or coils.
One problem in terms of the utilization of randomness occurs because the ring oscillator must be sampled as close as possible to an expected ideal edge so that a random sample value is obtained. The publication of Bock, H., Bucci, M., Luzzi, R.: An Offset-Compensated Oscillator-Based Random Bit Source for Security Applications, CHES 2005, indicates a possibility for always sampling in the vicinity of an oscillator edge, by controlled shifting of the sampling point in time.
Published European patent document EP 1 686 458 B1 discloses a method for generating random numbers with the aid of a ring oscillator, in which a first and a second signal are made available, the first signal being sampled in a manner triggered by the second signal. In the method described, a ring oscillator is repeatedly sampled, in which context only non-inverting delays, i.e. an even number of inverters as delay elements, are always used. The oscillator ring is always sampled, simultaneously or with a mutual delay, after an even number of inverters beginning from a starting point. Shifting of the sampling time can thereby be omitted; instead, the repeatedly sampled signals are evaluated.
A further possibility involves the use of multiple ring oscillators, as explained, e.g., in the publication Sunar, B. et al.: "A Provable Secure True Random Number Generator with Built In Tolerance to Active Attacks," IEEE Trans. on Computers, January 2007. Here multiple sample values from different ring oscillators are combined with one another and evaluated. A good random value can be achieved in this manner if the corresponding prerequisites in terms of implementation are met. Unfortunately the necessary XOR instruction cannot operate at the required high frequency, and because of substrate coupling on the chip the multiple ring oscillators are not independent of one another; they potentially correlate in terms of frequency (which, if applicable, is harmless), but also in terms of phase, with the result that it may not be possible to achieve the desired quality of the random numbers that are generated.
It should be noted that the complexities of known circuits according to the existing art are very substantial. Either a structure for shifting the sampling point in time must be used, which structure can moreover also be susceptible to attacks and make the generated bits dependent on one another; or a very large number of sample values must be processed in parallel. Additional delay elements may also be necessary. An additional, slow ring oscillator is furthermore required.
It is necessary in any event to monitor the output of the random generator in order to be able to identify whether the random generator is in fact supplying random output values.

Method for monitoring the output of a random generator


A speaker indexing device extracts a plurality of features from a speech signal on a frame-by-frame basis, models a distribution of first feature sets by a mixture distribution containing as many probability distributions as there are speakers, selects for each probability distribution either first feature sets located within a predetermined distance from the center of the probability distribution or a predetermined number of first feature sets in sequence starting from the first feature set closest to the center of the probability distribution, selects a second feature for the frame corresponding to the selected first feature sets as first training data for the speaker corresponding to the probability distribution and, using the first training data, trains a speaker model to be used to append to each frame identification information for identifying the speaker speaking in the frame.

In recent years, fraud and other malicious solicitations conducted using telephones with an aim to defraud people out of money have become a social problem. To address this, techniques have been proposed for estimating a speaker's state of mind by analyzing the speaker's voice produced, for example, during a conversation being conducted over a telephone line (For example, refer to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2011-242755).
Such techniques work based on the premise that a speech signal containing speech uttered by one particular speaker whose state of mind is to be analyzed can be analyzed. However, a speech signal produced by recording a conversation contains speech from two or more speakers. In order to estimate the state of mind of one particular speaker with good accuracy based on a speech signal produced by recording a conversation, there is a need to identify from within the speech signal a speech segment in which the speaker whose state of mind is to be estimated is speaking. In view of this, speaker indexing techniques are proposed that can append speaker identification information to the speech segment of each speaker in a monaural speech signal containing speech from a plurality of speakers (refer, for example, to Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-175955 and to Fredouille et al., "The LIA-EURECOM RT'09 Speaker Diarization System", NIST paper of "The rich transcription 2009 Meeting recognition evaluation workshop", 2009 (hereinafter referred to as non-patent document 1)).
For example, the indexing device disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2008-175955 computes the degree of similarity between acoustic models created from speech features extracted at predetermined intervals of time, and creates acoustic models from the speech features within a range where the degree of similarity is equal to or greater than a predetermined value. Then, the indexing device, using the acoustic models and the speech features within the range, derives a feature vector that characterizes the speech signal for each second segment, and classifies such feature vectors on a speaker-by-speaker basis.
On the other hand, the speaker diarization system disclosed in non-patent document 1 first trains a Gaussian mixture model by using a single state hidden Markov model (HMM) for every speech segment contained in a speech signal. Then, the system repeats the speaker labeling and retraining for each speech segment by adding to the state of the HMM trained by using the features of the speech segment in which the same speaker is highly likely to be speaking.

Speaker indexing device and speaker indexing method


The use of water-soluble aromatic polysulfonic acid salts for inhibiting fouling in process equipment used in the thermal treatment of heavy oils.

Heavy oils are generally referred to those hydrocarbon comprising oils with high viscosity or API gravity less than about 20. Crude oils and crude oil residuum obtained after atmospheric or vacuum distillation of crude oils that exhibit an API gravity less than about 20 are examples of heavy oils. Upgrading of heavy oils is important in production, transportation and refining operations. An upgraded heavy oil typically will have a higher API gravity and lower viscosity compared to the heavy oil that is not subjected to upgrading. Lower viscosity will enable easier transportation of the oil. A commonly practiced method for heavy oil upgrading is thermal treatment of heavy oil. Thermal treatment includes processes such as visbreaking and hydro-visbreaking (visbreaking with hydrogen addition).
Primary limitations in thermal treatment of heavy oils, such as visbreaking, are the formation of toluene insolubles (TI) at high process severities and reactor fouling. Fouling of the reactor vessel results in down time as well as energy losses. The instant invention addresses the fouling limitation of thermal treatment, such as visbreaking and presents a method for improved operability of a heavy oil thermal treatment facility.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Fouling inhibition of thermal treatment of heavy oils

ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company


A damper device includes an outer cylinder, an inner cylinder disposed inside the outer cylinder and having an inner chamber, a lower open end, and an upper closed end wall with a vent hole, a piston disposed in the inner chamber and having a passageway, a check valve coupled to the passageway to permit only upward flowing of a working fluid in the inner chamber through the passageway, and a piston rod having a lower rod end disposed outwardly of the outer cylinder, and an upper rod mounted to permit the piston to slide with the piston rod. The sliding of the piston rod is dampened by sliding of the piston in the inner chamber. A hinge assembly including the damper device is also disclosed.

Taiwanese patent No. 1580856, corresponding to counterpart U.S. Pat. No. 9,617,772 B1, discloses a conventional hinge assemblage includes a leaf mechanism, an actuating unit and a damping unit. The leaf mechanism includes a first leaf and a second leaf pivotable relative to the first leaf such that the hinge assemblage is convertible between first and second states. The actuating unit is mounted to the leaf mechanism, and generates an actuating force during the conversion of the hinge assemblage. The damping unit is mounted to the leaf mechanism for generating a damping force. The damping force generated by the damping unit during the conversion of the hinge assemblage toward the first state is different from the damping force generated by the damping unit during the conversion of the hinge assemblage toward the second state.

Damper device and hinge assembly including the same


A non-isolated type voltage sensor is provided between a battery of less than 60 V and a circuit having a resistor, an end of which is connected to a wire harness while another end is connected to a reference power supply. The non-isolated type voltage sensor includes voltage dividing circuits, which include plural resistors connected in series such that those resistors are connected to the battery in parallel so as to obtain a voltage proportional to a terminal voltage of the battery and less than the reference voltage at a desired voltage dividing point of the plural resistors, a voltage follower, which receives an input of a voltage from the voltage dividing point of the voltage dividing circuit, and a voltage-current conversion circuit including a FET so as to supply a current proportional to a low impedance output voltage obtained through the voltage follower to the ground through a resistor.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a non-isolated voltage sensor provided specifically between a high-voltage battery and a circuit having a pull-up resistance one end of which is connected to a cable while the other end thereof is connected to a reference power supply, and more particularly to a non-isolated type voltage sensor capable of sending a detected voltage accurately without considering a cable length.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a recent high-voltage vehicle containing a plurality of batteries of 12V or the like connected to each other, for example, there is such a trend that a plurality of wire harnesses are included in a junction box (J/B) and sensors, measuring circuits and the like are accommodated in this junction box if possible. The location of this junction box in a vehicle compartment varies depending on the vehicle type.
However, because a conventional voltage measuring circuit for use in automobile has a limitation on the wire harness length, there is such a problem that the locations of the voltage measuring circuit and battery controller in the vehicle compartment cannot be changed. Further, if the vehicle type is changed so that the location of the junction box is changed, there is another problem that the sensor and voltage measuring circuit cannot be accommodated in the junction box because the wire harness length is limited.
To solve this problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H9-257837 has disclosed a conventional voltage sensor which eliminates the necessity of considering the harness length.
A voltage sensor 10 shown in FIG. 1 comprises a power supply line 13 for supplying an electric power from a battery 2 to a load 12 and an isolated type detector 16 having a hall device 15 in a gap of a magnetic core 14. The power supply wire 13 passes through a through hole of the detector 16 as a primary side wire.
This voltage sensor further comprises a differential amplifying circuit 17 for differential-amplifying an output from both ends of the hall device 15, a current buffer 18 connected to this differential amplifying circuit 17 and the like. An output wire 19 of the current buffer 18 is wound around the core 14 of the isolated type detector 16 by a predetermined number of turns as a secondary side wire. Then, a voltage signal is sent to a battery controller 22 through a harness 20.
An end of an input circuit 23 of this battery controller 22 is connected to an input terminal of the voltage follower 24 and the harness 20 while the other end thereof is connected to the ground. This ground is a weak current ground which is different from a ground for the battery 2 and the voltage sensor 10.
That is, when the detector 16 is used, magnetic flux proportional to a current flowing from the battery 2 to the load 12 is generated and then, the hall device 15 detects that magnetic flux as a hall voltage, so that the differential amplifying circuit 17 and a current buffer 18 supply a current in a direction which makes zero a hall voltage to the secondary wire side.
The current flowing to the secondary wire side is sent to the input circuit 23 of the battery controller 22 through the harness 20. That is, because an output from the voltage sensor 10 becomes an output of current, the harness length can be neglected (the harness may be long).
However, because in this voltage sensor 10, the battery voltage is not detected directly, there is a problem in terms of a detection accuracy although the harness length can be neglected. Further, there is another problem that this voltage sensor 10 necessitates the core, hall device, differential amplifying circuit and the like, the quantity of the components increases.
The present invention has been achieved to solve the above described problems and therefore, an object of the invention is to provide a non-isolated type voltage sensor for a battery of vehicle in which the restriction on the harness length is mild, the non-isolated type voltage sensor being capable of measuring a voltage accurately without use of the hall device.
The non-isolated type voltage sensor of the present invention is a non-isolated type voltage sensor provided between a battery and a circuit containing a pull-up resistor which is connected to a reference power supply and a cable.
This non-isolated type voltage sensor comprises a voltage dividing circuit, a voltage follower and a voltage-current conversion circuit.
The voltage dividing circuit is comprised of plural resistors connected in series and connected to the battery in parallel. Then, a voltage proportional to a terminal voltage of the battery and less than the voltage of the reference power supply is obtained at a desired voltage dividing point of these plural resistors.
Because the voltage follower converts a high input impedance to a low input impedance, it takes a role as a buffer circuit for removing respective influences between the voltage dividing circuit and the voltage-current circuit. Therefore, if a voltage at the voltage dividing point of the voltage dividing circuit is inputted to the voltage follower, a low impedance output voltage is obtained.
Next, the voltage-current conversion circuit supplies a current proportional to a low impedance output voltage obtained through the voltage follower to the ground through the cable and output resistor.
This voltage-current conversion circuit comprises: a field effect transistor a source of which is connected to the cable while a drain thereof is connected to the output resistor; an output resistor which is connected to a drain of the field effect transistor and the ground, the output resistor having a resistance higher than a resistance of the pull-up resistor; and an amplifier in which an output of the voltage follower is connected to a non-inverted input thereof, an inverted input thereof is connected to the output resistor and an output thereof is connected to a gate of the field effect transistor.
Thus, if the voltage dividing circuit obtains a voltage proportional to the battery voltage at the voltage dividing point, the field effect transistor is turned ON immediately through the voltage follower.
That is, because a current supplied to the gate of the field effect transistor is made very small when the field effect transistor is turned ON, even if the voltage at the voltage dividing point is converted to current, the current flowing to the ground through the cable becomes a current accurately proportional to a detection current at the voltage dividing point.
Further, the non-isolated type voltage sensor of the present invention is a non-isolated type voltage sensor provided between a battery and a circuit having a first pull-up resistor which is connected to the ground and the cable.
This non-isolated type comprises a voltage detecting circuit and a voltage-current conversion circuit.
The voltage detecting circuit obtains a voltage proportional to a battery voltage at the voltage dividing point and supplies a first current proportional to a low impedance output voltage obtained from a voltage at this voltage dividing point to the ground through a first output resistor.
The voltage-current conversion circuit supplies a second current proportional to a voltage signal determined based on the first current to the cable using a second output resistor.
This non-isolated type voltage sensor is provided between a circuit which is connected to the same type of ground as ground of the battery and the cable and the first pull-up resistor and which has a differential amplifying circuit carrying out differential amplification with the ground as a reference and the battery.
The voltage detecting circuit comprises a voltage dividing circuit, a voltage follower and a first voltage-current conversion circuit. The first voltage-current conversion circuit comprises: a first field effect transistor a source of which is connected to an input of the second voltage-current conversion circuit while a drain thereof is connected to the output resistor; a first output resistor which is connected to a drain of the first field effect transistor and the ground; and a first amplifier in which an output of the voltage follower is connected to a non-inverted input thereof, an inverted input thereof is connected to the output resistor and an output thereof is connected to a gate of the field effect transistor.
The voltage detecting circuit further comprises a second voltage-current conversion circuit. The second voltage-current conversion circuit comprising: a second pull-up resistor which is connected to the reference power supply and a source of the first field effect transistor; a second output resistor which is connected to the reference power supply; a second field effect transistor a source of which is connected to the second output resistor while a drain thereof is connected to the cable; and a second amplifier in which a non-inverted input thereof is connected to a source of the first field effect transistor, a non-inverted input thereof is connected to the second output resistor and a source of the second field effect transistor and an output thereof is connected to a gate of the second field effect transistor.
As described above, in the non-isolated type voltage sensor of the present invention, a high voltage of the battery is detected by the voltage dividing circuit so as to obtain a voltage proportional to a low impedance output voltage obtained by converting impedance. Consequently, if this non-isolated type voltage sensor is provided between a high voltage battery and a circuit having a pull-up resistor which is connected to a cable and the reference power supply, a current proportional to the detected voltage flows from this cable to the output resistor and ground in succession immediately.
That is, because the detected voltage signal is supplied as a current signal to the cable, a current signal proportional to the voltage signal is obtained at a subsequent circuit even if the cable is long. As a result, there is an effect that freedom of the layout of the non-isolated type voltage sensor in the vehicle compartment is increased.
Further, because the voltage-current conversion circuit employs the field effect transistor, a current for driving the gate can be minimized. Thus, there is an effect that an accurate current proportional to the detected voltage can be obtained even if the cable is long.
Further, in the non-isolated type voltage sensor provided between a high voltage battery and a circuit having a first pull-up resistor which is connected to a cable and the ground, a first voltage-current conversion circuit having a first field effect transistor and a second voltage-current conversion circuit having a second field effect transistor are provided. Then, a voltage signal corresponding to a current flowing through the first field effect transistor by the second pull-up resistor connected to the reference power supply in the second voltage-current conversion circuit is generated and this voltage is converted to current by the second voltage-current conversion circuit and sent to a subsequent circuit.
As a result, a stabilized current signal is sent to the subsequent stage, so that a difference of the current signal can be amplified with respect to a common ground to the battery. Consequently, there is an effect that a highly accurate differential signal can be obtained.
Further, there is an effect also that the circuit can be produced in a small size because no hall device is necessitated.


An electrical connector (100) adapted for mounting on a printed circuit board (300) includes an insulative housing (1) and a number of conductive contacts (2) attached to the housing. The conductive contacts include a number of signal contacts (20) and a number of ground contacts (22). Each ground contact includes a pair of solder tails (30). The solder tails include retention type tails (32) positioned in selected positions of the insulative housing and non-retention type tails (34). Each retention type tail includes a pair of lateral bulge (36) in back to back manner for interfering with corresponding through hole of the printed circuit board (300).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to an electrical connector which is mounted on a printed circuit board, and more particularly to one provided with circuit board retention structure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are currently numerous electrical connectors commercially available which are mounted on a printed circuit board. In order to aid in placement accuracy, location assistance or to prevent connector movement while mounting to the printed circuit board, there is a need to add a hold down feature. Generally, it is most cost effective to add such a function to an existing component in an assembly, rather than adding a new component. For instance, if a housing has an integrated, molded orientation post, a crush rib could be added which would provide interference with the hole on the printed circuit board. However, if the same approach is used with a through hole component in a variable pin count connector and every one of the contacts contains a retention feature, as the connector length grows longer, the number of hold down increases, the insertion force would accordingly increase even be out of a desirable range. So, to meet the requirement of a maximum force, only a part of the contacts are modified to have the retention feature.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,634,893 B1, issued to Hon Hai, discloses such an electrical connector having some contact tails with retention features and others contact tails without retention feature. The contact tails are overlapped in pairs and each pair of contact tails is inserted into the through hole of a printed circuit board. Some contact tails with retention features, called retention contact tails, have longitudinally extending protrusions deviating from each other for bearing against peripheral walls of the through holes of the printed circuit board. The retention contact tail defines a notch at a side thereof and has a barb protruding outwardly from an opposite side thereof. In use, the barbs of the retention contact tails will be subject to forces substantially along a longitudinal direction of the connector.
The present invention concerns contact tails of the above kind in general but with a different design in creating the retention force.

Electrical connector having circuit board retention structure


A system of reserving a connecting service to the internet at a time period, includes a reservation table and a contract unit. A state with regard to a reservation for a connecting service to the internet at a time period is stored in the reservation table. The contract unit inputs a reserving demand to reserve the connecting service to the internet at a certain time period from a user to judge whether the reserving demand is permitted with reference to the reservation table.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for and a method of providing an online time period reserving service. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system for and a method of providing an online time period reserving service, which can carry out a communication having a stable quality due to a reservation of a time period provided by an Internet connection dealer.
2. Description of the Related Art
An example of a user registration system of a conventional Internet connection dealer is disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 9-179905). In this conventional technique, as shown in FIG. 1, a proper access point 6 is selected from an access point table 3 noted in a personal computer 1. Then, a user information is registered in the access point 6. Accordingly, a new user is registered. By the way, in FIG. 1, a symbol 2 denotes a keyboard, a symbol 4 denotes a controller, a symbol 5 denotes a modem, a symbol 7 denotes a telephone line, and a symbol 8 denotes a host computer, respectively.
This registration method is also applied to the Internet connection dealer. So, an icon on a screen of the personal computer 1 can be clicked to conclude a contract with the Internet connection dealer on an online.
Also, as a conventional technique for keeping a quality on the Internet, there is RSVP (Resource ReserVation Protocol) defined on September 1997 by RFC 2205 (Request For Comments 2205). This method is the protocol for reserving a necessary band by requiring a necessary communication band from a transmission destination of a transmission source.
However, the conventional system has the following problems.
The first problem lies in a fact that it is difficult to keep a communication quality desired by a user.
This is because many users try to carry out communications at the same time, as compared with a communication facility of the Internet connection dealer. In order to protect such an event from occurring, there are a method of limiting the number of users and a method of employing a communication system for insuring a communication quality.
For example, the user registration system disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 9-179905) can provide the stable communication, though all of the users request communications at the same time, if the number of subscribers (users) to the Internet connection dealer is limited to the maximum number that can be allowed by the communication system of the dealer.
However, there is almost no case that all the users request the communications at the same time. Usually, the communications are carried out in only a range less than a power of the communication system. Thus, its efficiency is poor.
On the other hand, as the communication system for insuring the communication quality, there is the RSVP defined by the RFC 2205. However, as the second problem, there is the problem of the necessity of a facility investment cost to insure the communication quality such as the RSVP and the like.
This is because the introduction of the communication system corresponding to the RSVP requires all communication apparatuses on a communication route to introduce the devices corresponding to the RSVP.
By the way, as other conventional technical documents, there are Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-15754), Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-272711) and the like.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-15754) is intended to reduce the number of connections to a provider in such a way that one user carries out a reservation registration for a plurality of communications, and one trial of a connection to the provider enables the plurality of communications to be executed in a batch manner. On the other hand, the present invention is intended to adjust reservations from a plurality of users, and thereby protect the many users from requesting communication services at a time, and accordingly insure the communication quality for users within a range of reservation receptions. Also, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-15754) is configured such that a module for carrying out a reservation process is installed on a side of a client (a communication terminal apparatus). This is because it is enough to adjust only a reservation from one user. On the other hand, in the present invention, the reservation process is installed in a server (a provider side). This is because it is necessary to install on the server side in order to adjust the reservations from the plurality of users. Also, since a typical Web client (actually, a browser) is assumed to be located on the user side, the mechanism (namely, the reservation process) peculiar to the present invention can not be installed in the client.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-272711) is intended to avoid the occurrence of an excessive communication time because of a user interaction, an unstable communication and a thinness of a dialup line, by reserving a download of large information and collectively downloading it in a batch manner. On the other hand, the present invention is intended to provide a stable communication with a high quality to a user obtaining a reservation. The user obtaining the reservation can interactively download an information, similarly to a typical net surfing. Also, the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-272711) is configured such that a function of reading out an information carries out the download instead of the user. On the other hand, in the present invention, a contract server carries out a control only as to whether an access of a user is filtered or passed, on the basis of a presence or absence of a reservation, and the download of a file is done by the user itself.
Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A, 2000-59359) discloses the following Internet connection method. In the Internet connection method having a subscriber terminal connected to an IP network, a WWW server for receiving a connection request to the Internet at the subscriber terminal, a customer information manager for storing an information of the subscriber terminal, and an accounting call meter for controlling the connection to the Internet of the subscriber terminal, the Internet connection method sends the connection request to the Internet from the subscriber terminal, and with regard to the connection request, the WWW server receives the information of the subscriber terminal corresponding to an IP address of the subscriber terminal, from the customer information manager, and the WWW server further reports the allowance or rejection of the connection to the Internet of the subscriber terminal, on the basis of the information of the subscriber terminal, to the accounting call meter.
Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 10-31635) discloses the following portable electronic mail terminal. This is the portable electronic mail terminal that has a scheduling function, and sends and receives an electronic mail by using a radio communication, and then sending and receiving the electronic mail in a two-way, and it is further provided with: a radio communicator for sending and receiving the electronic mail; a schedule manager for managing a schedule of a user; a display for displaying a content of an electronic mail received by the radio communicator and a schedule managed by the schedule manager; a mail command decoder for decoding the electronic mail received by the radio communicator, and prompting the user to carry out an operation for invoking the schedule if a schedule invoking command is included as its content, and commanding the schedule manager to display the schedule of a day specified by the electronic mail on the display if the user carries out the operation of the schedule invoking command; and an input device for receiving the operation of the user and then sending the operational content to the mail command decoder and the schedule manager.
Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-212995) discloses the following method of transmitting an information reservation. The method of transmitting an information reservation includes the steps of: specifying an information to be obtained, in a user terminal, a timing when the information is obtained, and a transmission destination of the obtained information; transmitting a data indicative of the specified information to be obtained, the timing and the transmission destination, through a communication network to a transmission server; and obtaining the information to be obtained, at the specified timing, on the basis of the sent data, in the transmission server, and then transmitting to the specified transmission destination.
Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 11-328277) discloses the following reservation reception system. This reservation reception system is provided with: a terminal for inputting and outputting a data with regard to a reservation; a reservation judgment processor that is installed in a destination of a reservation and intended to carry out the processes including a reservation judgment, a transmission/reception and a registration of a data with regard to a reservation in the destination; and a collecting/delivering device for collecting/delivering the data with regard to the reservation between the terminal and the reservation judgment processor.
Japanese Laid Open Patent Application (JP-A-Heisei, 9-83678) discloses the following online advertisement system. In an information processing system that is connected to a network and intended to provide an advertisement of a sponsor through an online, in accordance with an access from a user, this online advertisement system is provided with: an advertisement information memory for storing an advertisement information including an access number of a free dial connected to the sponsor; and a communicator for sending the advertisement information to a user terminal when receiving an access request of the advertisement information from the user terminal through the network.
Japanese Patent No. 2998785 discloses the following user registration system. This is the user registration system for registering in a host computer the information necessary for a user registration at a time of a first setup of an electronic apparatus after a purchase of the electronic apparatus having a communication function, wherein the electronic apparatus has a modem for enabling a communication through a telephone line and an access point table for storing all access points that can be connected to the holt computer through the telephone line, and it also stores therein a program for commanding a built-in controller to execute a predetermined user registration operation at the time of the first setup, wherein when a user enters a user registration information containing at least a name and an address necessary for the user registration at the time of the first setup, the controller searches through the access point table on the basis of the address, and selects one access point, and connect to the host computer through the telephone line via the access point, and then stores the entered user registration information in the host computer through the online, and wherein as the predetermined user registration operation, the controller executes the steps of: judging whether or not the setup of the electronic apparatus is the first setup; prompting the user to enter the user registration information if it is judged as the first setup; searching for the one access point through the access point table on the basis of the entered address; and connecting to the host computer through the telephone line via the searched access point, and then sending the entered user registration information through the online.

System for and a method of providing an online time period reserving service, which can protect an excessive load from being applied to a communication system, in order to provide a stable communication to a user


To provide a DC/DC converter equipped with a clamp circuit having low power consumption, and reducible in chip area. A clamp circuit which clamps an output terminal of an error amplifier circuit equipped with an amplifier and a first transistor connected to an output terminal of the amplifier is configured to include a second transistor having a source connected to a source of the first transistor, a gate connected to a constant voltage circuit, and a drain connected to a constant current circuit, and a third transistor having a gate connected to the drain of the second transistor and a drain connected to the output of the amplifier.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a DC/DC converter which supplies an operating voltage of an electronic apparatus, and more specifically to a DC/DC converter low in power consumption, which clamps the output of an error amplifier circuit of the DC/DC converter.
2. Background Art
A related art DC/DC converter will be described. FIG. 3 is a circuit diagram illustrating the related art DC/DC converter.
The related art DC/DC converter is equipped with an error amplifier circuit 107, a comparator 109, an oscillation circuit 110, an amplifier 108, a flip-flop circuit 111, a clamp circuit 300, a reference voltage circuit 106, a coil 115, a capacitor 116, a PMOS transistor 112, an NMOS transistor 113, resistors 104, 105 and 114, a ground terminal 100, an output terminal 102, and a power supply terminal 101. The clamp circuit 300 is equipped with a constant current circuit 302, a constant voltage circuit 301, PMOS transistors 303 and 305, NMOS transistors 304 and 306, and a PNP bipolar transistor 307.
The constant voltage circuit 301 outputs a voltage VE1. When an output voltage of the error amplifier circuit 107 exceeds the voltage VE1, a current is drawn through the PNP bipolar transistor 307, so that the output voltage of the error amplifier circuit 107 is clamped up to the voltage VE1 regardless of the output operation of the error amplifier circuit 107. Incidentally, when the output voltage of the error amplifier circuit 107 falls below the voltage VE1 due to the output operation thereof, the current drawing operation of the PNP bipolar transistor 307 is stopped and a voltage value obtained by the output operation of the error amplifier circuit 107 is outputted as it is (refer to, for example, FIG. 1 in Patent Document 1).

DC/DC converter and electronic apparatus


Method of recognizing phones in speech of any language. Acquire phones for all languages and a set of languages. Acquire a pronunciation dictionary, a transcript of speech for the set of languages, and speech for the transcript. Receive speech containing unknown phones. If the speech's language is unknown, compare it to the phones for all languages to determine the phones. If the language is known but no phones were acquired in that language, compare the speech to the phones for all languages to determine the phones. If phones were acquired in the speech's language but no corresponding pronunciation dictionary was acquired, compare the speech to the phones for all languages to determine the phones. If a pronunciation dictionary was acquired for the phones in the speech's language but no transcript was acquired then compare the speech to the phones for all languages to determine the phones.

A phone is the minimum unit of sound articulated during speech. A phoneme is the minimum unit of speech that distinguishes one word from another. A phoneme may consist of one or more phones, and variations of phones (i.e., allophones) may be used without changing the meaning of the corresponding word. The exact number of phonemes in English depends on the speaker, but it is accepted that English contains between 40 and 45 phonemes, which is about average. At the extremes, one language contains only 10 while another contains 141.
Phonetic writing, or transcription, is the representation of the sounds of speech with a set of distinct symbols. For example, the letters used to spell the word "call" are intended to represent the meaning of the word, whereas the phonetic representation of the word (i.e., "kO1") is meant to represent how the word should be pronounced. The primary script used for phonetic writing is the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Speech processing applications often require a database of writings (corpus) or a number of such databases (corpora). Corpora have been generated with and without phonetic information. Phonetic information is required for any speech processing application that performs an interpretation of, or conversion to, a spoken sound.
Speech data is phonetically labeled either manually or by an automatic method commonly referred to as brute-force alignment or force alignment for short. In force alignment, each phone in question is associated with the closest phonetic sound available. For example, if a book written in English were force aligned using two different databases of phones where each database had a wide enough selection of phones to cover all of the words used in the book (e.g., English and Italian), the results would be understandable to an English speaking person, but the result that used the Italian phone database would have a distinctive Italian sound to it because the closest sounding Italian phone would not exactly match the sound of the corresponding English phone.
With the every increasing globalization of activities, it is becoming more important for speech processing application to process more than one language and, therefore, recognize the phones of more than one language.
One approach to adding multi-lingual capability to speech processing applications is to combine corpora which have been tailored to a specific language. However, blindly combining corpora which have been phonetically transcribed by different methods or people often produce worse results than just using one corpus. The reason for this is that inaccuracies may be introduced by a method or person having its own threshold for determining when a textual unit matches a phone and vice versa. Since the difference in sound between one word and a word of another meaning can be very slight, any inaccuracy in the interpretation or conversion of a sound could result in something that is totally unintelligible. For example, in has been reported that voice recognition systems trained on corpora of American English speakers do a poor job of interpreting the words of British English speakers.
In an article entitled "Learning Name Pronunciations in Automatic Speech Recognition Systems, Francoise Beaufays et al. disclose a method of learning proper name pronunciation by finding the phone sequence that best matches a sample speech waveform. The method employs linguistic knowledge to determine if the resulting pronunciation is linguistically reasonable.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,758,023, entitled "MULTI-LANGUAGE SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEM," discloses a device for and method of transcribing speech into one of many pre-determined spoken languages by identifying phones, combining the phones into phonemes, and translating the phonemes into the desired foreign language. U.S. Pat. No. 5,758,023 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,159, entitled "WORD SPOTTING USING BOTH FILLER AND PHONE RECOGNITION," discloses a device for and method of word spotting by processing acoustic data to identify phones, generate temporal delimiters, generate likelihood scores, identifying sequences of phones, and using the temporal delimiters and likelihood scores to recognize keywords. U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,159 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,095, entitled "FAST VOCABULARY INDEPENDENT METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SPOTTING WORDS IN SPEECH," discloses a device for and method of spotting words by using Viterbi-beam phone level decoding with a tree-based phone language model. U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,095 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,579 B1, entitled "METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR FORMING COMPOUND WORDS FOR USE IN A CONTINUOUS SPEECH RECOGNITION SYSTEM," discloses a device for and method of identifying consecutive word pairs and replacing the same with a corresponding compound word. U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,579 B1 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. Appl. No. 2003/0135356 A1, entitled "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETECTING PROSODIC PHRASE BREAK IN A TEXT TO SPEECH (TTS) SYSTEM," discloses a device for and method of processing speech by receiving text, identifying parts of speech, generating a part of speech sequence, detecting prosodic phrase break using a neural network, and generating a prosodic phrase boundary based on the prosodic breaks. U.S. Pat. Appl. No. 2003/0135356 A1 is hereby incorporated by reference into the specification of the present invention.
There is a need to add multi-lingual capability to speech processing application. To do this, one needs to be able to recognize phones from multiple languages.

The United States of America as represented by the Director, National Security Agency


There is provided a magnetic disk apparatus including at least one magnetic disk having a magnetic layer and a surface protective layer on a substrate; a magnetic head which faces the magnetic disk in a rotating state with a micro gap and is supported by a slider; rotating means for rotating the magnetic disk; and magnetic head positioning means for moving and positioning the magnetic head to a predetermined position on the magnetic disk, wherein a plurality of protrusions each having a flat surface are formed in at least a region on the surface of the magnetic disk where a contact start/stop operation can be executed, an area ratio of the protrusions per 1 mm.sup.2 lies within a range from 0.1 to 80%, a height of the protrusion of the maximum height among the protrusions lies within a range from 5 to 40 nm, and the magnetic layer is formed on the whole surface on the base plate. According to the above magnetic disk apparatus, the frictional force between the disk and the head is small, and the floating height of the head can be reduced, and good floating stability is obtained, so that excellent recording and reproducing characteristics are obtained.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic disk apparatus and a magnetic disk which is used in the magnetic disk apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, a significance of a magnetic disk apparatus as an external memory device of a computer system has been more and more increased and its recording density has remarkably been improved every year.
It is better to reduce a floating amount of a magnetic head upon recording/reproduction in order to improve the recording density of the magnetic disk apparatus. To assure the floating stability of the magnetic head in such a case, it is required that the surface of a magnetic disk is as flat as possible.
On the other hand, upon actuation and stop of the magnetic disk apparatus, a frictional force which is generated between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk causes an abrasion between them and becomes a cause of deterioration of characteristics such as a writing characteristic, a reading characteristic, and the like. Further, if moisture or the like exists between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk in a stop state of the magnetic disk, both of them are strongly adsorbed. If the apparatus is actuated in such a state, a large frictional force occurs between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk and there is a fear such that the magnetic head and the magnetic disk are damaged. There is a tendency such that the above frictional force increases as the surface of the magnetic disk is flat. Such a tendency is contradictory to the requirement for the floating stability of the magnetic head in association with the improvement of the recording density mentioned above.
There has been known a method whereby micro depressions and protrusions portions are formed on the surface of the magnetic disk in order to reduce such a frictional force.
In JP-A-1-134720, for instance, there has been disclosed a method whereby island-like protrusions are formed on the surface of a magnetic disk.
In JP-A-1-122028, there has been disclosed a method whereby a metal alkoxide solution is coated onto the surface of a magnetic layer of a magnetic disk and is rapidly heated and a protective layer having depressions and protrusions portions is formed onto the surface of the magnetic layer.
In JP-A-57-20925, there has been disclosed a method whereby cylindrical protrusions each having a diameter of 0.03 to 0.1 mm and a height of about 0.05 .mu.m are formed onto the surface of a magnetic layer or a protective layer.
All of the above conventional techniques intend to reduce a floating amount of the magnetic head for the magnetic disk and to prevent, in such a case, a slider to support the magnetic head from being adsorbed to the magnetic disk.
In the above conventional techniques, nothing is considered with respect to a point that the floating stability of the magnetic head is maintained for a long time.

Magnetic disk with surface protective layer having convex portions and magnetic disk apparatus including such a magnetic disk


The invention relates to an antiseptic tampon and a method of preparing it, which method consists of introducing metered quantities of a liquid mixture of antiseptic product and hydrophobic excipient into individual sheaths (14) for packaging tampons, then introducing standard tampons (22) into said sheaths (14) so that their lower ends are immersed in the mixture of antiseptic product and excipient, and then closing and sealing said sheaths (14).

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an antiseptic tampon and a method of preparing it.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A standard tampon is known to constitute a focus of potential infection of the vagina because its insertion can be accompanied by the introduction of more or less pathogenic bacteria present in the vulva and on the surrounding skin surface. The tampon is made from an absorbent material and tends to dry the mucous membranes of the vagina, which makes them fragile and more sensitive to various infections.
To reduce this inconvenience it has been proposed to make tampons from a less absorbent material, although they then have to be changed more frequently, for example every four hours, which is highly inconvenient and a great nuisance.
A tampon has also been proposed, in particular in the document EP-A-0 110 793, which has a cup-shaped cell at one end and a pessary containing an antiseptic or medication and fixed into the cell by a soluble adhesive gum. When the tampon is inserted, the pessary is in the vicinity of the neck of the uterus and renders aseptic the vagina and the blood flowing into the vagina.
The above tampon is difficult to mass produce economically, in particular because of the cell formed at the end of the tampon, the application of a soluble adhesive gum and the placing of a pessary of antiseptic or medication in the cell.

Antiseptic tampon and method of preparing it


An adaptive variable length pulse synchronizer including a state keeper circuit, an asynchronous pulse edge detection circuit, a data synchronization circuit, and a pulse edge synchronization circuit. The state keeper circuit detects a leading edge of the asynchronous pulse. The asynchronous pulse edge detection circuit detects a trailing edge of the asynchronous pulse after the state keeper circuit has detected the leading edge. The asynchronous pulse edge detection circuit further provides a pulse synchronized with a clock signal after the asynchronous pulse has been detected. The data synchronization circuit latches the asynchronous data and provides the synchronous data in response to the synchronous pulse. The pulse edge synchronization provides the synchronous ready signal after synchronous data has been provided. In one embodiment, the synchronous pulse occurs between successive rising edges of the clock whereas the synchronous ready signal is provided in response to the intermediate falling edge of the clock.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to data communications, and more specifically to a system and method which captures and synchronizes an asynchronous signal with unknown length and occurrence to a digital clock having any rate or a variable rate.
2. Description of the Related Art
The time that is needed to generate valid output data provided by an asynchronous analog block varies over process, voltage, and temperature. The output data provided by an asynchronous block must be synchronized with a digital logic clock signal in order for the data to be captured and stored correctly by the digital logic. The clock rate that is used by the digital logic to capture the analog output data, however, varies for different applications. Digital logic which uses a rigid synchronizer design is not able to guarantee capture of spurious and unpredictable analog data when used for different chips using different clock signals, processes, temperatures and voltages. A data ready indicator must be generated and sent to the digital block, and the digital logic that uses this analog data should see the output data earlier than the data ready indicator to provide sufficient setup time. Existing schemes are unable to ensure detection of an asynchronous pulse that is faster than the reference clock used by the digital logic.
It is desired to provide a system and method for capturing valid data provided by an asynchronous analog domain for use by a synchronous domain over a wide range of processes, voltages, temperatures, and clock frequencies, including detecting asynchronous pulses that are faster or slower than the reference clock used within the synchronous domain.

Adaptive variable length pulse synchronizer