Process for the production of ammonium thiosulfate from gas streams comprising ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. One embodiment of the invention provides absorbing SO2 into a solution of ammonium sulfite and then contacting gaseous feed streams with portions of the resulting solution in a plurality of contact zones where portions of ammonium sulfite in the liquid streams are converted to ammonium thiosulfate upon contact with the gaseous feed streams.

Ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) are frequently found together in by-product mixtures from petroleum refining processes such as hydrotreating, cracking, and coking, as well as in ore reduction, metal refining, paper production, and gasification of coal, coke, residual oils, and the like.
When NH3 and H2S are found in aqueous liquid streams, a sour water stripper is often employed to remove the NH3 and H2S from the water, producing a gaseous stream of H2S and NH3, which must be treated. In the past, NH3 and H2S by-products were incinerated or burned as fuel. However, combustion results in the formation of nitrogen and sulfur oxides which are corrosive and contribute to atmospheric pollution.
One method of processing gas streams containing a mixture of H2S and NH3 is to convert the H2S and NH3 into ammonium thiosulfate (ATS), (NH4)2S2O3. ATS is a commercially marketable product which can be sold to offset the costs of treating NH3 and H2S.
In a previous process for converting NH3 and H2S to ATS, a gaseous stream comprising NH3 and H2S was fed to a first contact zone in which it was contacted with a solution of ATS and ammonium sulfite. A second part of the solution is fed in parallel to a second contact zone wherein it absorbs SO2 from a second gas stream. In this formation, the contact zones were operated independently so that the first absorbed ammonia while selectively rejecting some H2S. The other contact zone absorbed SO2. However, this process requires high liquid rates, which reduce the energy and cost efficiency of the process.
ATS production processes can also produce elemental sulfur as a by-product. Elemental sulfur precipitates from an aqueous solution and must be removed from the system and disposed of, increasing the costs of treating the gas stream. The sulfur produced as elemental sulfur also reduces the amount of sulfur available for ATS production.
Consequently, there is a need for an efficient process of producing ammonium thiosulfate utilizing waste ammonia without the production of elemental sulfur.

Process for producing ammonium thiosulfate


According to the present invention, a laser annealing apparatus (10) includes a beam splitter (14) composed of first and second beam splitters (21, 22) disposed in parallel to each other to split one laser beam into four laser beams not interfering with each other, and a reflecting mirror (23). Upon the second beam splitter (22), there are incident a transmitted beam from the first beam splitter (21) and a laser beam outgoing from the first beam splitter (21) and then reflected by the reflecting mirror (23). The second beam splitter (22) provides two transmitted beams to outside, and the reflecting mirror (23) reflects the reflected beam from the second beam splitter (22) for traveling to outside. The distance between the two beam splitters (21 and 22), and the distance between the first beam splitter (21) and reflecting mirror (23), is larger than L/(2 cos θ) (where θ is an incident angle and L is a coherence length).

Recently, in a thin film transistor used in a liquid crystal display (LCD) and the like, a polysilicone film having a high carrier mobility is used as a channel layer. The polysilicone film in the thin film transistor is produced by forming an amorphous silicone over a glass substrate and annealing the amorphous silicone by irradiating a laser beam to the latter. An apparatus to anneal a substance by irradiating a laser beam to the latter is called "laser annealing apparatus".
Conventionally, the laser annealing apparatus used in production of the thin film transistor employs, as the light source, the excimer laser which can emit a high power, ultraviolet-region laser beam. FIG. 1 schematically illustrates the construction of a conventional laser annealing apparatus using the excimer laser as the light source.
As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional laser annealing apparatus generally indicated with a reference 200 includes a stage 202 on which a substrate 201 to be annealed is mounted, a laser source 203 which emits a laser beam, a telescope 204 which shapes the laser beam emitted from the laser source 203 into a parallel beam having a predetermined diameter, first and second fly-eye lenses 205 and 206 which split the laser beam coming from the telescope 204 into a plurality of beams and then condense them together into a group of point light sources, and a condenser lens 207 which multiplex the plurality of laser beams having coming from the second fly-eye lens 206 and irradiate them onto a predetermined area on the substrate 201.
In the above conventional laser annealing apparatus 200, a single laser beam is split by the first and second fly-eye lenses 205 and 206 into a plurality of secondary light sources, and a plurality of laser beams from the secondary light sources are irradiated to the predetermined area on the substrate 201. Generally, in case a single laser beam is irradiated as it is to the substrate 201, the intensity distribution will be a Gaussian distribution so that the substrate 201 cannot homogeneously be given the light energy. In the conventional laser annealing apparatus 200, however, the laser beam can be irradiated to the substrate 201 with the intensity thereof being homogeneously distributed by splitting the laser beam by the first and second fly-eye lenses 205 and 206 and then multiplexing the split beams together.
By making the laser annealing of the substrate 201 with the laser beam having the intensity thereof thus homogeneously distributed, the laser energy can be given homogeneously to the surface of the substrate 201 and a polysilicone film having a uniform particle size can be produced.
Note however that the excimer laser used as the light source in the conventional laser annealing apparatus is not easy to handle because the output is not stable. On this account, the light or laser source for use in the laser annealing apparatus should preferably be an ultraviolet-region solid-state or semiconductor laser or the like which can provide a stable laser beam energy and has a long life.
However, the laser beam emitted from such a solid-state or semiconductor laser is highly coherent as compared with a laser beam emitted from the excimer laser. Therefore, in case a solid-state or semiconductor laser is adopted as the laser source 203, the laser beams provided as the plurality of secondary light sources by splitting the single laser beam by the first and second fly-eye lenses 205 and 206 will interfere with each other when they are multiplexed and irradiated to the substrate 201. They will be coherent with each other to result in an interference fringe as shown in FIG. 2. Therefore, even in case the light source in the conventional laser annealing apparatus 200 is replaced with a highly coherent semiconductor or solid-state laser, the laser beam cannot be irradiated to the substrate 201 with the intensity thereof being homogeneously distributed and thus there cannot be produced any polysilicone film in which the particle size is uniform.
Also, in case the solid-state or semiconductor laser or the like is used as the light source in the laser annealing apparatus, only a single light source can hardly provide a sufficient power. On this account, for application of the solid-state or semiconductor laser as the laser source in the laser annealing apparatus, laser beams emitted from a plurality of sources may be multiplexed to produce a laser beam which has a high power and can be irradiated to a wide area. To form a polysilicone film, however, a substrate has to be annealed with a laser beam with a homogeneous intensity distribution in the beam diameter. If not, the crystal particle size will not be uniform and thus a thin film transistor thus produced from the polysilicone film will have no satisfactory characteristic.


A power switching apparatus includes a breaker unit, an operating unit, a measuring unit, and a controlling unit. The breaker unit is connected on a three-phase current line, and includes switches each corresponding to one of phases of the three-phase current line. The operating unit simultaneously turns on or off the switches. The measuring unit measures a current flowing in each phase, and determines a time point where current flowing in one of the phases becomes zero as a reference time point. The controlling unit controls, when interrupting load current, the operating unit to turn off the switches in a range from 20 degrees to 40 degrees of an electric angle from the reference time point.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for control of power switch.
2. Description of the Related Art
A power switching device, such as a circuit breaker, has a problem that reignition occurs during operation of breaking a small capacitive current, such as a charging current in an unloaded power line or a load current in a capacitor bank. One conventional approach for preventing such reignition is to operate the power switching device at high speed before the recovery voltage reaches its crest value, i.e., for approximately 10 milliseconds, when the power switching device interrupts current. As a result, insulation recovery can be achieved before the recovery voltage rises.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-55420 discloses a conventional circuit breaker in which a movable contact is coupled to a switch driving mechanism through a cam mechanism, which moves the movable contact at relatively high speed at an early stage of opening stroke of the movable contact. Accordingly, the movable contact can be moved at relatively high speed only in necessary part of its full stroke, and does not need to be moved at high speed throughout the full stroke. As a result, energy for driving the movable contact can be lowered, and the size of the circuit breaker can be reduced.
With the conventional circuit breaker, however, a coupling mechanism including the cam mechanism needs to be arranged between the movable contact and the switch driving mechanism. Therefore, the circuit breaker is necessitated to be of complex configuration, making it difficult to simplify the switch driving mechanism. Furthermore, because a large force is applied to the coupling mechanism during operation, the cam mechanism needs to be composed of rigid members, and thereby the cost and the size of the circuit breaker increase.
Although the conventional circuit breaker can be operated while there is no reignition, it is a single-phase circuit breaker capable only of separately interrupting a current flow in each phase.

Power switching apparatus and method of controlling the same


The present invention provides a nonlinear compensating apparatus and method and a transmitter. The nonlinear compensating apparatus includes: an information sequence acquiring unit, configured to acquire a symbol information sequence of the pulse signal; a perturbation quantity acquiring unit, configured to calculate, by pre-obtained weighting coefficients to which each item corresponds, the weighted sum of interaction items of pulses on one or more moments relative to the current moment; a perturbation quantity processing unit, configured to combine the items of the perturbation quantity based on the weighting coefficients; and an information compensating unit, configured to calculate a difference between the symbol information sequence and the processed perturbation quantity to obtain a compensated symbol information sequence. With the embodiments of the present invention, the complexity of calculation may be further lowered, and requirements on hardware may also be lowered.

The intra-channel nonlinearity is inherent damage in an optical transmission system and is originated from the Kerr effect of an optical fiber. When the rate of the single channel reaches 40-60 Gbits/s or more, the pulses within the same channel will be greatly widened and overlapped each other due to the effect of dispersion, and with the effect of the nonlinearity, energy exchange will occur between the overlapped pulses. In such case, even though the residual dispersion in the link was compensated for at the receiving side, the system would still be severely nonlinearly damaged. The effect of nonlinearity within the channel on the system includes: timing jitter, signal amplitude fluctuation, and generation of ghost pulse.
In recent years, as the increase of the capacities of optical transmission systems, more complex multidimensional modulation technologies, instead of simple intensity modulation formats, have been a hot spot in studies. For ensuring that a complex modulation has a sufficient signal to noise ratio, it is needed that a link system has higher input power, and this undoubtedly results in the increase of cost of nonlinearity in the system.
For a long-haul optical communication system, how to compensate for or mitigate the cost of nonlinearity within a channel is an important issue for study. Studies have been done with respect to design of link, DSP processing of receiver and coding of transmitting signal. A method for mitigating nonlinearity by subtracting nonlinear perturbation at a transmitter side has been proposed in the prior art. Such a method is based on double oversampling, wherein a perturbation item is equal to a weighted sum of products of a series of three items (symbol information data of three moments), and the weighted value is decided by the dispersion, gain/attenuation and nonlinear coefficient of the link. The advantage of the method exists in the reduction of complexity, and especially in a PSK system, a pre-compensated waveform may completely be realized by means of addition and subtraction.
However, in the implementation of the present invention, the inventors found that the disadvantages of the prior art exist in: in a phase modulation system, the complexity of hardware in an existing compensating method is mainly dependent on the complexity of the complex additions and the number of the complex additions; and when the residual dispersion of the link is relatively large, in order to obtain a better effect of compensation, the number of the pulse interactive items is also relatively large, which puts forward a relatively high requirement on the hardware.
Following documentations are listed for better understanding of the present invention and the prior art, which are incorporated herein by reference, as they are fully stated herein.
[Reference 1]: IEEE PTL Vol. 12, No. 4, 2000, Antonio Mecozzi et. al.
[Reference 2]: L. Dou, Z. Tao, L. Li, W. Yan, T. Tanimura, T. Hoshida, and J. C. Rasmussen, "A low complexity pre-distortion method for intra-channel nonlinearity," in Proc. OFC/NFOEC2011 Conf., Los Angeles, U.S.A., March. 2011, paper OThF5.

Nonlinear compensating apparatus and method and transmitter


Price improvement in credit screened trading systems is achieved by entering a maximum price improvement (MPI) amount with a maker quote. The system prepares separate quote queues for each trading floor including only quotes where bilateral credit exists. Quotes are arranged using Price, MPI, time priority. When a quote is dealt, a dealable price improvement is calculated as the amount of the MPI required to improve the dealt quote's position in the queue.

Price improvement has been used in the financial markets for many years and refers to the filling of an order at a price between than that bid or offered. Price improvement is used extensively in the equities trading market.
From the point of view of the taker, sometimes referred to as the active trader or aggressor, price improvement occurs when the taker receives a better than requested price. In an equities market this may he due to the order being fulfilled through a source that is prepared to trade at better-than-market price, for example to improve their order flow.
A version of taker price improvement is implemented as an anonymous trading system operated by EBS Dealing Resources, Inc of New York USA to trade foreign exchange spot and precious metals. The EBS system, which is used very widely in the Interbank market, considers taker orders to be limit orders. This means that they are considered to be buy-up-to or sell-down-to orders rather than buy-at or sell-at orders. When the system finds a match, and there is a difference between buying and selling price, the difference is given to the taker. Done deals are displayed to the taker in a deals panel on their workstation and a price improved deal is indicated by an icon (a smiley ) next to the deal as shown below:
AmountTimeBuy/Sell(Million)RateDeal CodeCCY21.13Buy11.8331 XPBXGBP/USD
Price improved deals occur frequently when the market is busy and volatile.
From the point of view of the maker, or passive trader, price improvement occurs where the maker improves the price of a quote, that is a bid is increased or an offer price decreased, slightly to increase the chances of getting dealt. An example of maker price improvement is a system operated by eSpeed Inc of New York USA and described in GB-A-2,389,687. The eSpeed system allows the maker to improve his price by a range of pip fractions, called PI increments. Other traders can tell a price improved order by a PI icon (a diamond) displayed next to the order. A party who includes price improvement in their order is referred to as the PI contributor while a party acting on a PI price is referred to as the PI recipient. Both parties benefit as the PI contributor is increasing their chances of being dealt and the PI recipient is getting a better price by acting on the PI order.
The eSpeed system includes a PI best feature which allows the maker to use PI only when necessary to improve their probability of execution. This enables a maker to maximise the likelihood of securing a trade with the minimum number of PI increments possible.
The eSpeed system as disclosed in GB 2,389,687 defines price improvement as a price that is improved over a touch price. In the eSpeed system, a market moves from a bid/offer state to a trade state when a trader hits or lifts a bid/offer posted by another trader. That hit/lift price becomes the touch price of the market for the selected item and the market becomes active for that item. A price improved bid/offer has a price that is improved with respect to that touch price. The touch price is a price that is seen by all traders in the market.
Once a price improved order has been dealt, the eSpeed system distributes at least a portion of the difference between the touch price and the price-improved order price between the parties to the trade and the system host.
A further example of price improvement in electronic trading systems is disclosed in WO2004/045214 of Boston Options Exchange. This application discloses conducting rapid automated auctions in which participants can provide price improved orders. As with the eSpeed system, the price improvement increment is smaller than the minimum price variation of the instrument being traded. Price improved orders may be submitted during a limited time period and are defined as an improvement over the best bid or offer prevailing across multiple markets for the particular instrument. This is similar to the concept of touch price, an established market price for an instrument that is visible to and dealable by all traders in the market place.
Although the idea of implement price improvement is attractive to the foreign exchange markets, the technical solutions proposed in WO04/042514 and GB-A-2,389,687 are unworkable in the Interbank foreign exchange (FX) markets as the concept of a touch price does not exist.
Unlike the equities markets, the dealable price that is available to an F/X trader varies depending on the credit relationship the taker's trading floor has with other trading floors of currently active market makers. A quote submitted by a maker that has no bilateral credit with the taker will be filtered out by the system and not shown to the taker. It will, however, be shown to any other taker that has bilateral credit with the maker's trading floor. Thus, the market view seen by a trading floor is specific to that trading floor and dependent on that trading floor's credit relationships. The manner in which prices are credit-filtered prior to distribution to trading floors is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,055 (Togher et al.).
From a maker's perspective, a quote submitted on the EBS system might be the best quote, and first in line to be dealt, on almost all trading floors in the system, even though it is worse than both his dealable price an the best price on the system, which could be entered by a party to whom few trading floors extend credit.
Thus, a marker at a large bank may see a dealable price of 33-34 (bid-offer) on his EBS display but could submit a bid of 32 and be dealt immediately, even though his dealable price remains unchanged. In this case the 33 dealable bid price was submitted by a smaller bank that has credit with a limited number of floors. Many traders in the system saw a dealable price of only 31-34 and a best price (which is not credit screened) of 33-34. This makes the makers bid of 32 attractive and it was taken immediately. This situation is common in credit screened markets and illustrates that there is no concept of a market touch price and so no possibility of price improvement with respect to touch price.
A maker is always uncertain of the position in the queue of his quote as he is necessarily unaware of the whole market in a credit screened system. There are ways in which the maker can gain information. The first is by looking at the done deals on the makers display. This shows all deals that have been executed on the system regardless of credit relationships and by observing where other trades are taking, the maker may gain an indication of the proper quoting level. The deals panel shows lowest bid that was taken by a single sell order, the lowest sell that was dealt in a single time slice etc. Thus, in the above situation, the trader would see from his deals panel that a number of trades had been "given" at 31. From this the trader could deduce that a dealable bid of 33 was not being seen, and so not available to some or all of the market.
The second technique is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,282,521 and is implemented on the EBS trading system and is referred to in the market as "red quote". The system notifies the maker when the maker's quote is close to the head of the queue at a significant percentage of the trading floors by turning the quote display red. In the example above, the 32 bid would turn red even though it is worse than the dealable price displayed on the maker's workstation.
Thus, although it is desirable to implement price improvement on a credit screened trading system, there is no available mechanism for doing so due to the absence of a touch price and the distribution of different dealable prices to different trading floors. Furthermore, for price improvement to be attractive to users the system must only apply it when it is necessary.

Price improvement in electronic trading system


The claimed invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the semiconductor device. More particularly, the claimed invention relates to a method of fabricating the semiconductor device in which parts of a gate electrode at the ends of a channel are lightly doped compared to the center part of the gate electrode, thereby eliminating a hump on a subthreshold current slope. To achieve the objects of the claimed invention, there is provided a semiconductor device that includes a semiconductor substrate divided into an isolation region and an active region. A gate oxide film is formed on a first upper surface of the active region. A gate electrode is formed on a second upper surface of the gate oxide film, the gate electrode having a first part and a second part. The first part is more lightly doped with impurities than the second part. A channel is formed in an upper end of the active region proximate the gate electrode. A source and a drain are formed in the active region on opposite sides of the gate electrode.

This Application claims the benefit of Korean application No. 3939/2000 filed on Jan. 27, 2000 which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The claimed invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the semiconductor device. More particularly, the claimed invention relates to a method of fabricating the semiconductor device wherein a hump on a subthreshold current slope is eliminated.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A conventional n-channel metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) device is schematically illustrated in FIG. 1. A semiconductor substrate 10 is divided into an active region 11 and an isolation region 12. The substrate 10 is a p-type substrate doped with p-type impurities, such as Boron (B). The active region 11 forms a transistor, and the isolation region 12 electrically isolates the transistor from other transistors (not shown). It is known to form the isolation region 12 using a field oxide film which is formed by a local oxidation of silicon (LOCOS) method. It is also known to use a shallow trench isolation (STI) method to enhance the integrity of the semiconductor.
A gate electrode 13 is formed across a center of the active region 11. A source 14 and a drain 15 are formed in the active region 11. The source 14 and the drain 15 are separated by and are on opposing sides of the gate electrode 13. The source 14 and the drain 15 are doped with n-type impurities, such as phosphorus (P) or arsenic (As).
A disadvantage of using the trench isolation structure described above to fabricate n-channel transistors is that a hump occurs in a subthreshold current region. Electric fields concentrate along ends of a channel region (not shown), so that the threshold voltage is lower along the ends of the channel region than at a center portion (not shown) of the channel. The result is current leakage due to subthreshold current flows at the ends of the channel.
The areas where subthreshold current leakage occurs are indicated by A1 and A2 in FIG. 1. A first area A1 is elliptically shaped with a first major axis parallel to a longitudinal axis of the substrate 10. A first minor axis of the first area A1 lies on an axial axis of the substrate 10. A first region of the first area A1 spans the first major axis and encompasses a first portion of the gate electrode 13 and two equal portions of the isolation region 12, the two equal portions of the isolation region 12 being opposite the gate electrode 13. A second region of the first area A1 spans the first major axis and encompasses a second portion of the gate electrode 13, a first portion of the source 14 and a first portion of the drain 15, the first source portion being equal in surface area to the first drain portion.
A second area A2 is elliptically shaped with a second major axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the substrate 10. A second minor axis of the second area A2 lies on the axial axis of the substrate 10. A first region of the second area A2 spans the second major axis and encompasses a third portion of the gate electrode 13, a second portion of the source 14 and a second portion of the drain 15, the second source portion being equal in surface area to the second drain portion. A second region of the second area A2 spans the second major axis and encompasses a fourth portion of the gate electrode 13 and two equal portions of the isolation region 12 being opposite the gate electrode 13.
Subthreshold current leakage occurs in the first area A1 and the second area A2. To solve this problem, it is known to increase the concentration of impurities, such as B at the ends of the channel region (not shown). In other words, a conventional solution to the hump occurrence is to increase the threshold voltage at the ends of the channel by implanting B ions into the sidewalls of the channel. However, this conventional solution results in decreased performance of the semiconductor device.
The claimed invention relates to a semiconductor device and a method of fabricating the semiconductor device that substantially obviates the decreased performance of semiconductor devices due to the limitations and disadvantages of the related art described above.
Accordingly, it is an object of the claimed invention to provide a gate electrode with differently doped parts so that a threshold voltage along a channel is substantially uniform. Another object of the claimed invention is to maintain the threshold voltage at ends of the channel.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purposes of the claimed invention, as embodied and broadly described, a semiconductor device of the claimed invention and a method of fabricating the device includes a semiconductor substrate divided into an isolation region and an active region. A gate oxide film is formed on a first upper surface of the active region. A gate electrode is formed on a second upper surface of the gate oxide film, the gate electrode having a first part and a second part, wherein the first part is more lightly doped with impurities than the second part. A channel is formed in an upper end of the active region proximate the gate electrode. A source is formed in the active region at a first side of the gate electrode and a drain is formed in the active region at a second side of the gate electrode.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.

Semiconductor device and method of fabricating the same

Hyundai Electronics Industries Co., Ltd.


The 8-gear multi-step transmission comprises a drive input shaft (AN), a drive output shaft (AB), four planetary gearsets (RS1, RS2, RS3, RS4), eight rotary shafts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) and five shift elements (A, B, C, D, E). An internal gear (HO1) of the first planetary gearset (RS1) and the drive input shaft (AN) are connected to one another as the first shaft (1). A carrier (ST4) of the fourth gearset (RS4) and the drive output shaft (AB) are connected to one another as the second shaft (2). A sun gear (SO2) of the second gearset (RS2), and a sun gear (SO3) of the third gearset (RS3) are connected to one another as the third shaft (3). An internal gear (HO2) of the second gearset (RS2) forms the fourth shaft (4). An internal gear (HO3) of the third gearset (RS3) forms the fifth shaft (5). A carrier (ST2) of the second gearset (RS2) and an internal gear (HO4) of the fourth gearset (RS4) are connected to one another as the sixth shaft (6). A sun gear (SO1) of the first gearset (RS1) and a sun gear (SO4) of the fourth gearset (RS4) are connected to one another as the seventh shaft (7). A carrier (ST1) of the first gearset (RS1) and a carrier (ST3) of the third gearset (RS3) are connected to one another as the eighth shaft (8).

According to the state of the art, automatic transmissions, particularly for motor vehicles, comprise planetary gearsets, which are shifted using friction and/or control elements, such as clutches and brakes, and which are typically connected to a starting element that is subject to a slip effect and optionally provided with a converter lockup clutch, for example a hydrodynamic torque converter or a fluid clutch.
A multi-step transmission of this type is described, for example, in DE 199 49 507 A1 by the applicant. It basically comprises a drive input shaft and a drive output shaft arranged co-axially to one another, a total of four planetary gearsets and several frictional shift elements. Two non-shiftable, front-mounted gearsets are provided on the drive input shaft, which generate two rotational speeds on the output side, which, apart from the rotational speed of the drive input shaft, can be selectively shifted to several input elements of a shiftable, multi-component main planetary gearset acting upon the drive output shaft by selectively engaging the shift elements used, and are shiftable such that, for changing from one gear to the next higher or lower gear, of the two activated shift elements, only one shift element must be engaged or disengaged. The main gearset is in turn constructed as a two-carrier, four-shaft planetary gearset, whose both planetary gearsets are firmly coupled to one another, via two elements. By using five shift elements, seven forward gears are shiftable without range shifts, and by using six shift elements even nine or ten forward gears are shiftable.
Within the scope of DE 101 15 983 A1 by the applicant, a multi-step transmission is described, with a drive input shaft that is connected to a front-mounted gearset, which is connected to a rear-mounted gearset, and to a maximum of seven shift elements, via which, by selective shifting, at least eight forward gears may be shifted into without range shifts. The front-mounted gearset is formed by a shiftable or non-shiftable planetary gearset or by a maximum of two non-shiftable planetary gearsets coupled to one another. The rear-mounted gearset is constructed as a two-carrier, four-shaft transmission with two shiftable, rear-mounted, planetary gearsets having four free shafts. The first free shaft of this two-carrier, four-shaft transmission is connected to the first control element, the second free shaft with the second and third control elements, the third free shaft with the fourth and fifth control elements, and the fourth free shaft is connected to the output shaft. According to the above named invention, connecting the third free shaft or the first free shaft of the rear-mounted gearset additionally to a sixth shift element is proposed for a multi-step transmission with a total of six shift elements. For a multi-step transmission with a total of seven control elements, the invention proposes the additional connection of the third free shaft to a sixth shift element and the first free shaft to a seventh control element.
Several other multi-step transmissions are also known, for example, from DE 101 15 995 A1 by the Applicant, where four shiftable planetary gears coupled to one another and six or seven frictional shift elements are provided, via whose selective engagement a rotational speed of a drive input shaft of the transmission is so transmitted to a drive output shaft of the transmission, that nine or eleven forward gears and at least one reverse gear can be shifted into. Depending on the transmission diagram, two or three shift elements are engaged in each gear, whereby only one shift element is disengaged at a time on shifting from one gear to each of the next higher or lower gear, and a previously disengaged shift element is engaged to avoid range shifts.
An 8-gear multi-step transmission is further known from DE 29 36 969 A1, comprising eight co-axial simple planetary gearsets and eight frictional shift elements.
A multi-step automatic transmission is further known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776, comprising four simple planetary gearsets and six frictional shift elements. All four planetary gearsets are designed as so called negative planetary gearsets in simple planetary design. The first two planetary gearsets, viewed from the input drive side form a shiftable front-mounted gearset, and are firmly connected to one another, via two shaft couplings, whereby the first shaft coupling of the front-mounted gearset firmly connects both sun gears with one another and with the drive input shaft of the transmission, and whereby the second shaft coupling of the front-mounted planetary gearset connects the internal gear of the first planetary gearset and the carrier of the second planetary gearset firmly to one another, simultaneously forms the output shaft of the front-mounted gearset. The other two elements of the front-mounted gearset, i.e., the carrier of the first planetary gearset and the internal gear of the second planetary gearset, may each be attached to the transmission housing via an individual brake. The third and fourth planetary gearset form a shiftable main gearset, and are likewise connected firmly to one another via two coupling shafts, whereby the first coupling shaft of this main gearset firmly connects both sun gears of the main gearset to one another, and whereby the second coupling shaft of the main gearset firmly connects the carrier of the third planetary gearset with the gear of the fourth planetary gearset, and is likewise connectable with the drive input shaft of the transmission, and is selectively attachable to the transmission housing, via a brake. The internal gear of the third planetary gearset, as a further input element of the main gearset, is firmly connected to the output shaft of the front-mounted gearset and may be attached to the transmission housing via a further brake. The carrier of the fourth planetary gearset finally forms the output element of the main gearset and is connected firmly to the drive output shaft of the transmission. The transmission enables nine forward drive gears to be shiftable without range shifts, and one reverse gear in total, implemented by selective engagement of two of he six shift elements at a time.
Furthermore, from U.S. Pat. No. 6,176,803 B1, a 9-gear automatic transmission is known with four shiftable simple planetary gearsets arranged co-axially to one another, which is very similar in design to the automatic transmission according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776. Like in U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776, a total of six frictional shift elements are provided, two of which are implemented as multi-disk clutches and four as multi-disk brakes. Unlike U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776, the first of the four planetary gearsets viewed from the flow of power is designed as a plus planetary gearset in double planetary design. Like in U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776, the other three planetary gearsets are constructed as minus planetary gearsets in simple planetary design. Except for the coupling of the sun gear of the second planetary gearset with the carrier of the first (plus) planetary gearset, the coupling of the planetary gearsets, the structural coupling of the planetary gearsets among them, with both clutches and drive input shaft respectively, with the four brakes as well as with the drive output shaft are identical with U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776. In principle, in the 9-gear automatic transmission according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,176,803 B1 only the plus planetary gearset acts as a front-mounted gearset, whereby the other three planetary gearsets form the main gearset of the transmission.
Similar multi-step automatic transmissions with nine shiftable forward gears free of range shifts are further known: from DE 42 38 025 A1, comprising four co-axial simple planetary gear sets and six or seven frictional shift elements (four multi-disk brakes and two or three multi-disk clutches). Viewed in the flow of power, the two first planetary gearsets always form a front-mounted gearset coupled with the drive input shaft of the transmission, via two firmly connected coupling shafts, where one of its planetary gearsets is implemented as a plus planetary gearset in double planetary design, and its other planetary gearset is implemented as a minus planetary design in simple planetary design. The other two planetary gearsets form a main gearset designed as a two-carrier four-shaft planetary transmission identical to U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,776.
Automatic shiftable vehicle transmissions in planetary design have in general been described in the state of the art on many occasions, and are subject to continuous development and improvements. These transmissions should feature a sufficient number of forward gears as well as one reverse gear and an excellently suitable gear ratio for motor vehicles with a high overall ratio spread as well as favorable progressive ratios. Furthermore, they should allow a high start gear ratio in the forward direction and include a direct gear, and additionally be suited for use in both passenger cars and commercial vehicles. In addition, these transmissions should require low design and construction costs, in particular a small number of shift elements, and avoid double shifts during sequential gear shifts, so that only one element at a time is changed when shifting in defined gear groups.
The object of the present invention is to propose a multi-step transmission of the type mentioned above with at least eight shiftable forward gears and at least one reverse gear, where, by using a total of four planetary gearsets, a preferably small number of shift elements is required. All forward gears should be free of range shifts during sequential gear shifts, i.e., when changing from a forward gear to the next higher or lower gear, only one previously engaged shift element should be disengaged and a previously disengaged shift element should be engaged each time. In addition, the transmission should exhibit a large transmission-ratio spread with comparably harmonic gear shifting, and manifest a favorable degree of efficiency, i.e., comparatively low drag and gear losses, in the main driving gears.


Topically applicable, stable, transparent self-tanning aqueous gels, suited for artificially tanning and/or browning human skin, contain at least one self-tanning agent and at least one water-soluble or water-dispersible, crosslinked or non-crosslinked (co)polymerizate of at least the acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid (AMPS) monomer, or partially or totally neutralized form thereof, formulated into a topically applicable, cosmetically acceptable support therefor.

Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to transparent aqueous gels for topical application, which are suited for artificially tanning and/or browning the skin, and which comprise, formulated into a cosmetically acceptable support therefor, at least one monocarbonyl or polycarbonyl self-tanning agent and at least one water-soluble or water-dispersible, crosslinked or non-crosslinked polymer or copolymer polymerized from at least the acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid (AMPS) monomer, in a form partially or totally neutralized with a mineral base other than ammonia.
The present invention also relates to a cosmetic treatment regime or regimen for artificially tanning and/or browning the skin, comprising topically applying thereon, for such period of time as required to elicit the desired effect, a thus effective amount of such a gel composition.
Description of Background and/or Related and/or Prior Art
It is known that monocarbonyl or polycarbonyl compounds, for instance isatin, alloxan, ninhydrin, glyceraldehyde, mesotartaric aldehyde, glutaraldehyde, erythrulose and dihydroxyacetone (DHA) are particularly advantageous products that are commonly included in cosmetics as agents for artificially tanning the skin.
When applied to the skin, especially to the face, these compounds make it possible to obtain a tanning or brown effect that is more or less similar in appearance to that which may result from prolonged exposure to sunlight (natural tanning) or under a UV light. Such a use also has the advantage of totally avoiding the risks of cutaneous reaction generally associated with the abovementioned prolonged exposures (erythemas, burns, loss of elasticity, appearance of wrinkles, premature aging of the skin, and the like).
Transparent cosmetic formulations are more and more appreciated by consumers for aesthetic reasons. Aqueous gels are particularly desired in cosmetics on account of their provision of water, which gives a pleasant sensation of freshness to the skin and due to the fact that they do not have a greasy appearance.
Transparent aqueous gels based on crosslinked acrylic polymers of the Carbomer type, for instance the Carbopol products from Noveon, may be obtained, but these gelling agents are incompatible with self-tanning agents such as dihydroxyacetone (DHA). Thickened aqueous formulations based on hydroxyethylcellulose and hydroxypropyl guar (Jaguar HP from Rhodia) may also be prepared. The products obtained have an unpleasant runny feel, are very tacky after application, and have poor stability over time. The use of cellulose derivatives as gelling agents gives transparent gels that have a tendency to peel on application.
Self-tanning aqueous gels containing a gelling agent of the polyacrylamide type are also described in WO 93/07856, especially Example II comprising dihydroxyacetone, the polyacrylamide/C13-C14 isoparaffin/laureth-7 mixture and benzyl alcohol. This type of composition does not allow transparent gels to be obtained.
An example of a transparent self-tanning gel containing polyacryloyidimethylammonium taurate polymer (crosslinked polymer of acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid partially neutralized with ammonia, sold under the trademark Hostacerin AMPS) in combination with a copolymer of anhydride/alkyl vinyl ether (Stabileze QM), is also described in FR-2,816,316. This type of gel is not stable over time.
Need continues to exist for novel self-tanning compositions based on a monocarbonyl or polycarbonyl compound in the form of transparent aqueous gels, which do have the drawbacks indicated above and which have good cosmetic properties: non-runny feel, non-peeling, freshening effect, good stability over time and good self-tanning efficacy on the skin (intensity and staying power for the coloration).

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Transparent self-tanning gels containing a water-soluble/dispersible acrylamido-2-methylpropanesulfonic acid polymer


A method of populating page tables of an executing workload during migration of the executing workload from a source host to a destination host includes the steps of: before resuming the workload at the destination host, populating the page tables of the workload at the destination host, wherein the populating comprises inserting mappings from virtual addresses of the workload to physical addresses of system memory of the destination host; and upon completion of populating the page tables, resuming the workload at the destination host.

In a virtualized computing system, a computing platform of a physical host may be encapsulated into virtual machines (VMs) running applications. A VM abstracts the processing, memory, storage, and the like of the computing platform for a guest operating system (OS) of the VM. Virtualization software on a host, also referred to as a "hypervisor," provides an execution environment for VMs, and a virtualization manager migrates VMs between hosts. Such migrations may be performed "live," i.e., while VMs are running. For such live migrations, one goal is to migrate VMs with minimal impact on performance.
Prior to a "switch-over" in which a VM is "quiesced" on a source host and resumed on a destination host, various operations are performed on the VM. Such operations include copying the state of the VM's memory from the source host to the destination host. However, until the VM is switched over to the destination host, the VM continues executing applications at the source host. During this execution, some of the memory of the source host that is copied to the destination host is later modified by the VM at the source host. As such, an iterative "pre-copying" phase may be used in which at a first iteration, all the VM's memory is copied from the source host to the destination host. Then, during each subsequent iteration, memory of the source host that has been modified is copied again to the destination host.
During the pre-copying phase, the VM's memory may be copied to the destination host in relatively small units, e.g., in 4-KB "pages." The use of small units reduces the amplification of "dirty" data by isolating the modifications made between iterations to smaller units of memory. For example, if a few modifications are made in a certain memory region, it is preferable to only retransmit a few 4-KB pages that contain the modifications than to retransmit an entire, e.g., 2-MB page that contains the modifications.
Although the VM's memory may be copied to the destination host in relatively small units, the hypervisors of the source and destination hosts may employ virtual memory spaces that divide memory into larger units. For example, the VM may employ a virtual address space that divides memory into "small" 4-KB pages. However, the hypervisors may employ separate virtual address spaces that divide memory into "large" 2-MB pages, each large page containing 512 contiguous 4-KB pages.
Use of large pages is generally advantageous for virtual memory system performance. For an application of a VM to touch system memory of the destination host, the application may issue an input/output operation (IO) to a virtual address of the VM, also referred to as a "guest virtual address." The guest virtual address may be translated into a physical memory address of system memory by "walking," i.e., traversing two sets of page tables that contain mapping information: a first set maintained by the VM and a second set maintained by the hypervisor. The page tables maintained by the hypervisor are referred to as "nested" page tables. To speed up translation, a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) may be utilized that contains beginning-to-end mappings of guest virtual addresses to physical memory addresses. However, such a TLB is limited in size and thus only contains some mappings, e.g., those of recently-accessed guest virtual addresses. When an application requests to access memory at a guest virtual address for which the TLB contains no mapping, a "TLB miss" occurs, and the page tables must be walked. Use of relatively large pages minimizes the number of TLB misses and thus minimizes the number of expensive page-table walks.
When a VM is migrated to a destination host, the nested page tables of the destination host do not contain mappings from the VM's address space to physical memory addresses of the destination host. As such, in existing systems, once the VM resumes on the destination host and begins accessing memory at various virtual addresses, new mappings must be created on demand. Creating such mappings on demand often significantly degrades VM performance for extended periods of time, especially for memory-intensive VMs that touch memory rapidly. A method is needed that improves the responsiveness of VMs after migrations.

Prepopulating page tables for memory of workloads during live migrations


A sky turbine, having impeller blades with a plurality of panels that can telescope inward and outward. The pitch of the panels can be adjusted, and the pitch of each panel on a blade, passing from the innermost panel to the outermost panel, differs from the pitch of the previous panel by a certain adjustable amount. The sky turbine is preferably mounted above a city at a sufficiently high elevation that air current will be generally faster than just above the ground. In the preferred embodiments, a wing with two pods is pivotally mounted on a tower. Each pod has front and rear shafts, from which four blades extend. Servomotors cause the wing to turn so that its center of symmetry is parallel to the direction the sky is moving, cause the pitch of the panels of the blades to change, and cause the panels of the blades to telescope.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to turbines for generating electrical power from the motion of air in the sky relative to the ground, or "sky motion" (the motion that moves the clouds across the skies), which may be mounted on top of a city.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Mankind's recorded history began in the stone age, then continued in the bronze age and the iron age, to our present age, the industrial revolution. At the present time, electricity is produced by hydroelectric dams, atomically or by the burning of hydrocarbons. Production of electricity by hydroelectric dams is limited and is also destructive to the environment. The burning of coal deposits mercury and acid rain into the environment. Toxic ash must also be disposed of. Nuclear power production is plagued with the problem of long term storage of radioactive waste. In 1954, Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, said that atomic reactors might someday produce such an abundance of energy that electricity would become "too cheap to meter". What nuclear power failed to do, sky power using the present invention may accomplish. It will be the backbone of our next age, the solar age, in which all our energy needs are satisfied by power currently provided by the sun.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,556,715, issued on Oct. 13, 1925, to William Monroe Riggs, discloses a windmill, including plural shafts with blades, but does not disclose that the blades extend from the shafts, with each blade having at least three telescoping panels, such that the angles of the panels are adjustable, with rotation of the shafts being used to generate electricity, as in the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,757,667, issued on May 6, 1930, to Erich Hesse, discloses a device for regulating wind wheels to obtain a uniform rotational speed, by changing the pitch of their vanes with rods in the arms on which the vanes are located. The instant invention is distinguishable, in that the blades of the turbine can be telescopically extended (in low sky speed) or retracted (in high sky speed) to regulate their length (and thereby their "aspect ratio", i.e., the ratio of length to width) according to the speed of the sky.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,108,245, issued on Feb. 15, 1938, to Thomas Ash, Jr., discloses a gyratory airplane wing, with telescoping blade sections.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,173,291, issued on Sep. 19, 1939, to Thomas Leo Ash, discloses an aerodynamic rotor, with telescoping blade sections.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,388,377, issued on Nov. 6, 1945, to John R. Albers, discloses an electric wind plant, with parallel rotors joined by a wing.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,713,393, issued on Jul. 19, 1955, to Vittorio Isacco, discloses a telescopic blade for rotating wing aircraft.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,776,017, issued on Jan. 1, 1957, to Jesse B. Alexander, discloses a telescoping rotor for a helicopter.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,869,649, issued on Jan. 20, 1959, to Horst Dieter Lux, discloses a helicopter rotor with telescoping blade sections.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,995,972, issued on Dec. 7, 1976, to Esam M. Nassar, discloses wind machine with reciprocating blades mounted on top of a tall building.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,045,144, issued on Aug. 30, 1977, to John Lodewyk Loth, discloses a wind energy concentrator with a wing and parallel pods.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,065,225, issued on Dec. 27, 1977, to William D. Allison, discloses a multivane windmill, in which the pitch of the vanes can be changed in response to wind speed, to keep the speed of rotation constant. Again, the instant invention is distinguishable, in that the blades of the turbine can be telescopically extended or retracted to regulate their aspect ratio.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,131, issued on Jan. 10, 1978, to Marcellus L. Jacobs and Paul R. Jacobs, discloses a wind-driven electric power plant.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,717, issued on Jan. 15, 1980, to Motohiro Yamada, discloses a windmill structure with parallel rotors joined by a wing.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,257,736, issued on Mar. 24, 1981, to Dennis Jacobs, discloses a governed propeller type wind motor arrangement, in which the pitch of the blades is changed, but the blades do not telescope, as in the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,374,631, issued on Feb. 22, 1983, to Dale R. Barnes, discloses a windmill speed limiting system utilizing hysteresis.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,259, issued on Feb. 19, 1985, to Berthold W. Schumacher, discloses a fluid flow energy converter, with several screws (or "helicoid structures") rather than propeller-like blades, as in the instant invention. It is disclosed in column 8, lines 45–49 that, "an ideal location for a wind mill is, for instance, the roof of a highrise building in a city. Of course, a special tower may also be built for carrying the helicoids." But its structure is completely different from that of the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,710,101, issued on Dec. 1, 1987, to Peter M. Jamieson, discloses a wind turbine, with each blade having a fixed inner portion and an outer portion that can move outward to lengthen the blade, to increase drag and slow down rotation of the turbine. The instant invention is distinguishable in that it has several panels, not just two, that can telescope inward or outward, and it can regulate its speed of rotation by changing the angles in the panels in its blades.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,878,807, issued on Nov. 7, 1989, to Keith G. Baker, discloses a device for producing electricity from wind, having a vertical belt and interspaced hydrodynamic foil members. Its use in high rise buildings is disclosed in column 8, lines 13-21, but its structure is different from that of the instant invention, e.g., it has no telescoping blades.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,103, issued on May 17, 1994, to John J. Hickey, discloses an auger shaped fluid medium engaging member. Its use "on tops of roofs of a high rise building" is suggested in column 1, lines 66–67, but its structure is readily distinguishable from that of the instant invention, e.g., it has no telescoping blades.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,609,472, issued on Mar. 11, 1997, to Masahiro Obukata and Masaaki Nakadate, discloses a rotor blade for a rotary wing aircraft (such as a helicopter) having a different shape from the impeller blades of the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,279, issued on Mar. 26, 2002, to Anne Marie Rodde, Joel Reneaux and Jean Jacques Thibert, discloses a blade profile for an aircraft rotor, again having a different shape from the impeller blades of the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,810, issued on Sep. 2, 2003, to Kaj Olsen et al., discloses a wind turbine blade with a system for deicing and lightning protection.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,726,439, issued on Apr. 27, 2004, to Amir S. Mikhail and Geoffrey F. Deane, discloses a wind or water turbine with retractable rotor blades controlled by a computer responsive to wind or current velocity.
British Patent No. 252,461, complete specification accepted on May 27, 1926, inventor Kurt Bilau, discloses improvements in or related to wind-driven prime movers, including braking action by producing eddy currents in a slot or slots between displaced sections of the sail vane or the sail vane and a head piece, but not by telescoping as in the instant invention.
Swiss Patent No. 170,548, published on Sep. 17, 1934, to Hermann Honnef, discloses a wind turbine having plural rotors, mounted at heights of about 180 to 360 meters, where the speed of the air current is from about 3.25 to 3.75 time the air current speed on the ground, for the purpose of generating more power from higher air current speeds at greater heights.
Japanese Patent No. 57-32074, published on Feb. 20, 1982, inventor Teru Matsumiya, discloses a wind mill, with blades having a fixed inner member and an outer member that can retract inward into the inner member to reduce the wind receiving area, or extend outward from the inner member to increase the wind receiving area. The instant invention is distinguishable in that it has not just two, but several telescoping panels, which also have an adjustable pitch.
Soviet Patent No. 992,804, published on Jan. 30, 1983, discloses a wind motor rotor with telescopic blades, having a fixed part and a moving part. Again, the instant invention is distinguishable in that it has not just two, but several telescoping panels, which also have an adjustable pitch.
Soviet Patent No. 1,276,849, published on Dec. 15, 1986, discloses a wind power generator supporting frame, with plural shafts, but does not disclose blades extending from the shafts with telescoping, adjustable panels.
Electric Power from the Wind—II, Electrical World, May 12, 1945, pp. 102–104, discloses the possibility of generating electric power from wind, but only in limited areas, and that wind is faster above the surface of the ground.
Marks' Standard Handbook, 9th Edition, 1987, p. 9–173, FIG. 9.11.18, discloses that the sky speed at an altitude of 350 meters is more than twice the wind speed on the ground.
Handbook of Airfoil Sections, Rice, Michael, 1971, p. 47, discloses that in a symmetrical airfoil, the center of pressure is stable for all angles of attack.
Mechanical Engineering Review Manual, 7th Edition, Lindeburg, Michael R., 1984, p. 5–17, FIG. 5.12, discloses that maximum efficiency takes place when the ratio of blade tip speed to air current speed is six to one.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.


A soft foldable consumer electronic product comprises an envelope having a top member and a bottom member, each member being of soft flexible sheet material, a first unit of the electronic product received within a first portion of the envelope and affixed to one of the members thereof, a second unit of the electronic product received in a second portion of the envelope and affixed to one of the members thereof, and at least one conductor within the envelope extending from the first to the second portion and connecting the first and second units to electrically connect them for operation of the product. The envelope is foldable such that the positions of the first and second portions relative to each other can be changed selectively.

Miniaturization of electronic components has made it possible to produce small, portable consumer electronic products of all sorts, such as radios, tape cassette players, disc players, telephones, television receivers, calculators and computers. The downsizing of those products from their larger-sized ancestors has included incorporating them into rigid cases like their ancestors were. Some products have parts that articulate relative to other parts, such as folding screens in some television receivers and the erectable screens of most "laptop" and "notebook" computers. Some products, such as audio devices, have soft padded cases in which they remain during use. Padded carrying cases, from which the device is removed for use, are frequently provided with the product or are available for separate purchase.
It is, accordingly, well-known to provide protection for portable electronic products by means of soft carrying cases, which receive a unitary product, i.e, a complete product contained in a hard case, or a product with an articulating case of hard parts (the computer example).

Soft, foldable consumer electronic products


This invention is to a method of oligomerizing an olefin feed stream. The olefin feed stream contains at least one C2 to C12 olefin to obtain an olefin feed stream and has less than 1,000 ppm by weight oxygenated hydrocarbon. The olefin is oligomerized by contacting with an acid based oligomerization catalyst.

The oligomerization of olefin compounds is conventionally accomplished by catalytic reaction. Oligomerization catalysts are typically nickel based catalysts or acid based catalysts. Generally, oligomerization processes which use nickel based catalysts are carried out by forming a homogenous suspension of catalyst, olefin feed and product, whereas the acid based catalyst systems are carried out using a flow-through, fixed bed type of arrangement. The homogeneous suspension type of system is generally much more technically difficult to operate, but offers certain advantages in its ability to product a greater degree of "semi-linear" oligomer products. These semi-linear products are products with limited branches, and can be beneficial in certain uses such as further reaction to form plasticizers, solvents or diesel type fuels in which limited branching is desirable.
Cosyns, J. et al., in "Process for upgrading C3, C4 and C5 olefinic streams," Pet. & Coal, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1995), describe a nickel based catalyst system known as the Dimersol® process. This process is useful for dimerizing or oligomerizing a variety of olefin feeds. In particular, the process is useful for dimerizing or oligomerizing propylene, butylene and pentylene streams.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,143,942, to Verrelst et al., describes the oligomerization of C2 to C12 olefins using a mixture of ZSM-5 and ZSM-22, and ZSM-57 and ZSM-22. The particular combination of catalysts produces a high yield of trimer products.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,874,661, to Verrelst et al., describes a system for reducing branching of oligomerized olefins. In this system, lower olefins, such as propene or butene, are oligomerized to an oligomer or higher olefin using an acid based catalyst such as ZSM-5. The higher olefin is then isomerized also using an acid based catalyst, such as ZSM-5 or ZSM-22, to isomerize the higher olefin and reduce the degree of branching. The isomerized higher olefin is then hydroformylated to form surfactants and polyolefin stabilizers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,762,800, to Mathys et al., describes a process for oligomerizing C2 to C12 alkenes using a zeolite oligomerization catalyst. The catalytic life of the catalyst is increased by hydrating the olefin feed to the oligomerization reactor.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,049,017, to Vora et al., describes the dimerization of a predominantly n-butylene containing feed stream. The n-butylene feed stream is ultimately derived from an olefin stream containing a variety of butylenes produced by a methanol to olefins reaction unit. The butylene stream from the methanol to olefins unit is pretreated by a combination of partial hydrogenation of dienes and isobutylene removal by way of an MTBE process, before sending the resulting n-butylene stream to the dimerization unit.
Often, efficiency of the oligomerization process is reduced due to the presence of greater than desirable quantities of inert components in the feed stream; for example, alkanes such as propane and butane. These inert components, in essence, take a free ride through the reaction system, taking up valuable reactor volume without being reacted to desirable products. Therefore, multiple separations processes to remove inert components are often required.
Olefin feed streams can also contain contaminants that act as poisons to oligomerization catalysts. For example, nickel based oligomerization catalysts are quite sensitive to sulfur and nitrogen. Such contaminants can have a particularly significant impact on the active life of the catalyst, shortening the life of the catalyst to the point where the reaction process is not feasible to operate.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide olefin feed streams which can be oligomerized at high efficiency and run for an extended period without causing early replacement or regeneration of catalyst. It would be particularly desirable to take advantage of an olefin feed stream which needs little pretreatment for use in an oligomerization system.


A method of determining a thickness at a thickness position of a conductive film on a substrate with a center zone and an edge zone is disclosed. The method includes providing a set of thickness correlation curves at a set of sensor position radii from a center of the substrate to a position where a sensitivity of an eddy current sensor to the edge zone is greater than zero. The method also includes measuring a set of eddy current responses at a sensor position of the set of sensor position radii. The method further includes correlating the set of eddy current responses to the thickness at the thickness position.

The present invention relates in general to substrate manufacturing technologies and in particular to methods and apparatus for measuring a conductive film at the edge of a substrate.
In the processing of a substrate, e.g., a semiconductor wafer, MEMS device, or a glass panel such as one used in flat panel display manufacturing, plasma is often employed. As part of the processing of a substrate (chemical vapor deposition, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, etc.) for example, the substrate is divided into a plurality of dies, or rectangular areas, each of which will become an integrated circuit. The substrate is then processed in a series of steps in which materials are selectively removed (etching) and deposited (deposition) in order to form electrical components thereon. Conductive films, such as metals, are particularly important materials in substrate manufacturing. For example, in a manufacturing method, known as dual damascene, dielectric layers are electrically connected by a conductive plug filling a via hole. Generally, an opening is formed in a dielectric layer, usually lined with a TaN or TiN barrier, and then subsequently filled with other conductive material (e.g., aluminum, copper, tantalum, ruthenium, tungsten, platinum, etc.) that allows electrical contact between two sets of conductive patterns. This establishes electrical contact between two active regions on the substrate, such as a source/drain region. Excess conductive material on the surface of the dielectric layer is typically removed by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP). A blanket layer of silicon nitride or silicon carbide may then be deposited to cap the copper.
Subsequently, in order to insure that the process is within acceptable parameters, it is often important to determine the thickness of a conductive film at a particular point on the substrate. One method of measurement is the use eddy current sensors. Generally, eddy currents are currents that are induced in a conductive media by an alternating magnetic field.
In general, if a first alternating current is applied to a wire wrapped in a generally solenoidal shape (e.g., the wire in an eddy current sensor), a first alternating electromagnetic field forms in and around the solenoid extending beyond the ends of the solenoid a distance on the order of the diameter of the solenoid. If this first field is brought into proximity with a second conductor (e.g., a conductive film on the substrate) a second alternating electrical current will also flow in the second conductor, causing a second field that interacts with (e.g., adds vectorially to) the first field and resulting in a perturbation to the field around the probe. These perturbations in the probe's initial field may cause detectable changes in the probe's electrical characteristics including the probe's impedance and frequency response. Using an impedance-voltage converter, the impedance change can be converted into a voltage change for further signal processing and analysis.
Many techniques are available for producing a signal from these detected differences in eddy current probe characteristics. For example, in a first technique, the width of the frequency dependent power absorption of the probe/eddy current sensor system (sensor system) can be reported. Likewise, in a second technique, the change in the magnitudes of the real and/or imaginary parts of the probe impedance can be reported between the probe with no second conductor and with the second conductor. These measurements are generally made using passive or active circuitry to produce a range of voltages that can be bounded by the signal with no second conductor present and the signal with a second conductor causing maximal change in the signal. The exact shape, thickness and conductivity of the second conductor that causes the maximal change in the probe signal generally depends on the probe geometry, excitation frequency and the method adopted for measurement, but generally it is a thick (on the order of many times the diameter of the probe) conductive film placed as near to the probe as possible.
Depending on the application, conductive or magnetic elements can also be incorporated into the design of the sensor to modify the spatial extent and magnitude of the sensor field and hence spatial and electrical sensitivity to the second conductive layer. For optimum performance in film thickness detection applications, the eddy current sensor system should maximize system sensitivity to the conductive target film's thickness while minimizing the sensor system's sensitivity to all other effects and variables. In ideal planar films, simple models and formulas exist to relate film parameters which may be of interest as well as thickness (including sheet resistivity, bulk film resistivity, grain size, etc.).
In such sensor systems, often the magnitude of the measured perturbation can subsequently be correlated to the thickness of a conductive film on the substrate thus enabling the sensor system to be configured to report film thickness. The reason eddy currents are generally calibrated to other parameters rather than deriving film properties from first principles is that the general three dimensional temporal field problem with an unknown second body is an under defined problem. Unfortunately, if the situation is sufficiently defined to allow closed form solutions that are useful to derive a film quantity, the physical situation is so simplified as to be impractical for use in a lab. That is, a calibration curve may be empirically determined that correlates a particular sensor signal voltage to a specific conductive film thickness in a particular geometric configuration.
However, the response of sensor to the magnetic field (e.g., eddy current perturbations), and hence its accuracy, is generally also affected by the proximity of the sensor to the substrate. That is, as the exciting sensor field is of limited spatial extent and its magnitude decreases as the position increases from the sensor, the overall eddy current perturbations caused by a second conductor being measured also decrease as the second conductor is moved further from the sensor. Thus, typically an eddy current sensor is said to be sensitive to proximity as well as film thickness. Numerous sensor systems are designed to exclude this proximity based cause of sensor perturbations as it is confounding to the correlation with perturbations caused by the target film's thickness.
Referring now to FIG. 1A, a simplified diagram of an eddy current sensor is shown. Generally, changes in the sensor's coil impedance 102 are caused by varying the distance 104 between the sensor (coil) and substrate 106. Since the electrical parameters of target material resistivity and permeability may determine the magnitude of the measured sensor perturbation, the sensor system is generally calibrated for the target material.
Referring now to FIG. 1B, a more detailed diagram of a sensor or head of the eddy current sensor of FIG. 1A is shown. As previously described, sensor coil 102 generates a first alternating electromagnetic field 204 that when brought into proximity by a distance 104 with a second conductor on the substrate 106, a second alternating electromagnetic field 206 will also flow in the substrate that can be correlated to the thickness of a conductive film. In addition, the direction 104 refers to the effective measuring proximity of sensor coil 102 and is usually on the order of a few radii of the coil 102. In general, the larger the first alternating electromagnetic field 208, the greater the area that can be measured.
Referring now to FIG. 2, a simplified diagram of a substrate on a turntable with an eddy current sensor arm is shown. Although in this example, substrate 202 rotates in direction 208, as sensor swing arm 204 moves sensors 206 across the surface of substrate 202, other configurations which move the sensors relative to the substrate exist.
Eddy current measurements generally assume an infinite plane of conductive film. For example, one method of eddy current measurements is to consider an infinite plane of conductive film placed a certain proximity to a set of parallel eddy current sensors. Usually the desired sensor system reported output is the film thickness, where factors such as conductivity, connectivity, grain structure, etc. are assumed to be constant, or alternatively, to have a negligible effect on the raw measured eddy current signal.
However, common methods of eddy current measurement presume the lack of edge effects to create eddy current discontinuities. In practice, this assumption tends only to exists in the center area of the substrate (center zone), since a portion of dies on the substrate surface may be placed near the substrate edge (edge zone) where the eddy current discontinuity may exist.
As previously described, eddy current sensors generally depend on creating an oscillating magnetic field and detecting the changes caused by the presence or absence of conductive material within the region of oscillating (vacuum) fields. Since a common way to make a magnetic field is with a coil of current carrying wire, the size of the eddy current sensors' sensing region (transverse size) is generally on the order of the size of the coil or magnetic material sheathing which can modify the flux shape at the sensor tip. That is, the smaller the coil or magnetic sheathing at the tip, the more spatially restricted and hence the more spatially sensitive (and expensive) the eddy current sensor.
Subsequently, reducing the size of the coil would only reduce the discontinuity effect of the substrate edge, and not eliminate it. Additional problems with sensor system repeatability and complexity may plague a solution attempting to reduce the edge effect by reducing the spatial size of the eddy current inducing field region. This can be understood because essentially the same magnitude of field is required to induce detectible perturbations in the coil due to film properties as in a large sensor, the gradient of the eddy current inducing field strength is much larger near a small coil than near a comparably film sensitive larger sensor.
One solution may be matrix deconvolution in which the measured spatial sensitivity of the sensor is expressed as a matrix. That is, the total sensor signal is generally expressed as a summation of the sensor's sub-local spatial sensitivities times and the as yet unknown film at the sub-local location. Given that the sensor sensitivities can be measured, by measuring at many points a matrix problem for the unknown film thicknesses can be determined. However, this method tends to be sensitive to the data input. Subsequently, many more measurements may be required to achieve a sufficient level of accuracy, substantially slowing down the measuring process.
Another solution may be the use thin conductive film measurement tools with reasonably small spatial resolution with either less smaller edge effects or of sufficient spatial restriction that the effects are not of interest for the measurement application. For example, the use of four point probes with about a 3 mm resolution and reasonably well understood edge compensation models, or the use of laser based surface acoustic wave detection less than 1 mm, etc. However, although thin conductive film measurement tools may measure various convolutions of quantities (i.e., conductive film conductivity, conductive film thickness, crystalline structure, film stack, sensor geometry, contact resistance, etc.), the raw data from the measurements must generally be processed at a later time in order to determine conductive film thickness.
In view of the foregoing, there are methods and apparatus for measuring a conductive film at the edge of a substrate.

Method and apparatus for measuring a conductive film at the edge of a substrate


A microphone array processing system and method carried out in the system. In one embodiment, the system includes: (1) a beamformer configured to perform adaptive beamforming on gain-compensated signals received from a plurality of microphones, the adaptive beamforming including dynamic range compression and diagonal loading of a sample correlation matrix based on order statistics and (2) a postfilter configured to receive an output of the beamformer and reduce noise components remaining from the beamforming.

Microphone array processing has become an important subject with the advent of low power, high performance mobile devices, such as Bluetooth wireless headsets, in-car speakerphones, smartphones, tablet computers and small-office/home office (SOHO) video conferencing systems through Smart TV initiatives. Some of these devices provide consumers with a rich voice communication experience by combining (through a suitable technique) spatial signals obtained from an array of microphones placed in certain geometric configuration to reduce any ambient noise or interference present and enhance speech quality.
The process of combining the spatial signals is often referred to as "beamforming." With a knowledge of the microphone geometry, the signals obtained from the array of microphones are combined such that speech coming from a desired direction is preserved, and noise or interference coming from other directions is attenuated.

Real-time microphone array with robust beamformer and postfilter for speech enhancement and method of operation thereof


Log messages are compressed, searched, and decompressed. A dictionary is used to store non-numeric expressions found in log messages. Both numeric and non-numeric expressions found in log messages are represented by placeholders in a string of log “type” information. Another dictionary is used to store the log type information. A compressed log message contains a key to the log-type dictionary and a sequence of values that are keys to the non-numeric dictionary and/or numeric values. Searching may be performed by parsing a search query into subqueries that target the dictionaries and/or content of the compressed log messages. A dictionary may reference segments that contain a number of log messages, so that all log message need not be considered for some searches.

Technology companies today can generate petabytes of logs per day. Such log data may be analyzed for a variety of tasks, including failure diagnosis, intrusion detection, security forensics, obtaining business insights, trend analysis, and resource optimization. For example, when computer systems experience errors or security intrusions, logs are often the main or only source of information available for engineers to search for a root cause.

Compression, searching, and decompression of log messages


The purpose of the present invention is to provide a novel medicinal use in regeneration medicine, said medicinal use comprising using pluripotent stem cells (Muse cells). Provided is a cell preparation for treating skin ulcer, said cell preparation comprising SSEA-3 positive pluripotent stem cells isolated from a mesenchymal tissue of a living organism or cultured mesenchymal cells. The cell preparation according to the present invention is based on such mechanism of skin tissue regeneration that, when the Muse cells are administered to a skin ulcer site of a subject suffering from the aforesaid disease, the Muse cells differentiate into skin-constituting cells.

Diabetes is a disease that is associated with persistent hyperglycemic state and is said to occur as a result of the actions of a diverse range of environmental and genetic factors. The main regulatory factor of blood sugar is insulin, and hyperglycemia is known to occur due to insulin deficiency or an excess of factors that inhibit the action thereof (such as genetic predisposition, lack of exercise, obesity or stress). Diabetes is classified as type 1 diabetes, which occurs primarily due to a decrease in pancreatic insulin secretory function attributable to such factors as autoimmune diseases, and type 2 diabetes, which is caused by a decrease in pancreatic insulin secretory function or insulin resistance caused by pancreatic exhaustion associated with persistently high levels of insulin secretion. In Japan, diabetes has become a modern-day national affliction and more than 95% of diabetes patients (which is estimated to exceed 20 million people when including persons at risk to the onset of diabetes) have been diagnosed with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, and increases in the number of patients is becoming a problem accompanying lifestyle changes. The number of sufferers of diabetes around the world has been estimated at roughly 200 million persons (Non-Patent Document 1), and the global market for antidiabetic drugs is on the order of roughly 1 trillion yen. This makes diabetes the top-ranked disease both in terms of market size and population.
Many serious complications of diabetes such as heart disease, kidney failure or blindness have an effect on individuals together with diabetes, and complications involving the lower extremities result in the greatest damage. As much as 40% to 70% of all lower extremity amputations are related to diabetes mellitus, and in actuality, 85% of all diabetes-related lower extremity amputations occur following ulcers of the leg or foot. Patients afflicted with diabetes mellitus are at greater risk to the onset of chronic skin ulcers such as ulcers of the leg and foot accompanying long-term complications. Ulcers occur as a result of ischemia and/or nerve disorders. Local tissue ischemia is the major cause of diabetic ulcers. Similar to large vessel disease, patients with diabetes are at greater risk to skin perfusion associated with non-conductive arteries during the course of impairment of the microcirculation control mechanism referred to as atherosclerosis or microvascular disease. Under normal circumstances, blood flow increases in order to promote healing in response to injury. However, in cases in which microvascular disease (or ischemia) is present, this response is significantly impaired, and this is considered to most likely be important in the etiology of ulcers together with a tendency towards the occurrence of thrombosis in the microcirculation during reduced blood flow. On the other hand, nerve disorders lack an adequately established treatment method with respect to both the symptomatic treatment thereof and the prevention of the progressive decline of nerve function, and is one of the major complications of diabetes mellitus. The effects of peripheral nerve disorders are particularly complex. Although the mechanism leading to nerve damage associated with diabetes has yet to be fully understood, it is said to involve multiple factors, such as genetic predisposition, metabolic and vascular abnormalities or a lack of perturbation of related growth factors.
Attention is being focused on regenerative medicine using pluripotent stem cells for treatment of the aforementioned refractory diseases. Adipose tissue-derived stromal cells (ASC) are known to be one type of such cells, and are thought to have the ability to differentiate into not only adipocytes and blood vessels, but also various other tissue cells and tissue lines (Non-Patent Documents 2 to 4). An attempt to treat ischemic injury by producing diabetic mice has been reported as an example of the use of ASC (Non-Patent Document 5). In addition, an example of applying adipose-derived regenerative cells to the clinical treatment of diabetic ulcers of the lower extremities of patients afflicted with peripheral arterial diseases has also been reported (Non-Patent Document 6). However, these attempts have not led to complete recovery at the injured site.
In addition, although mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) having the ability to differentiate into bone, cartilage, adipocytes, nerve cells or skeletal muscle and the like are known to be examples of cells obtained from the adult body that have the ability to differentiate (Non-Patent Documents 7 and 8), these constitute a cell population that includes various cells, the actual state of that differentiation ability is not fully understood, and there have been considerable variations in the therapeutic effects thereof. In addition, although iPS cells have been reported to be adult-derived pluripotent stem cells (as reported in Patent Document 1, for example), in addition to the establishment of iPS cells requiring an extremely complex procedure consisting of introducing a specific gene into mesenchymal cells in the form of skin fibroblasts or introducing a specific compound into somatic cells, iPS cells are also highly tumorigenic, thereby resulting in the presence of extremely difficult obstacles to their clinical application.
According to research conducted by Dezawa, one of the inventors of the present invention, pluripotent stem cells present in a mesenchymal cell fraction that express a surface antigen in the form of stage-specific embryonic antigen-3 (SSEA-3) (referred to as multilineage-differentiating stress enduring cells (Muse cells)) are responsible for the pluripotency of that mesenchymal cell fraction, and were determined to have the potential to be applied to disease treatment targeted at tissue regeneration (Patent Document 2, Non-Patent Documents 9 to 12). However, there have yet to be any examples describing the use of Muse cells for the prevention and/or treatment of skin ulcer that clearly demonstrate the obtaining of anticipated therapeutic effects.

Pluripotent stem cell for treating diabetic skin ulcer


In a system for providing user input information to multiple independent, concurrent applications, the applications send subscription messages to a device receiving user input such as a telephone receiving key presses from a keypad. Each subscription message identifies a pattern of user input that the application is to be notified of. The device monitors the user input to identify the occurrence of the identified patterns. When a specified pattern of user input is detected, the device notifies the corresponding application via a signaling channel linking the application with the device. The subscription messages use regular expressions including various formats to specify the patterns of interest, such as a single digit (explicitly or wildcard), one of a set of digits, a range of digits, and a repeating pattern of digits. The subscription messages can also contain tags associated with the regular expressions, which are returned to the application upon reporting the occurrence of a pattern to enable the application to readily identify the context of the notification.

The present invention is related to the field of user input to computer applications, and in particular to the use of a single input device such as a telephone keypad to provide user input to multiple concurrent computer applications.
Many communications and information services are enabled by telephone access to computer applications. A common mode for interacting with such computer applications is through a touch-tone telephone. Services often connect multiple applications to the user. For example, it is possible for a voice messaging service to be accessed through a pre-paid service. However, this creates a modality problem. For example, the pre-paid platform might wish to know when the user presses and holds the "#" key for a relatively long time (this being referred to as both the "long pound" and the "long octothorpe"), while the voice messaging platform might wish to know when the user enters digits, such as for menu navigation. The modality problem is that all digits entered by the user today get sent to both applications, as the digits are sent and both applications listen to the bearer channel. Each application must be prepared to receive and discard notifications of key presses in which it has no interest, complicating the design of the application as well as wasting the use of processing and communications resources during operation.
Numerous applications have been deployed for use in conjunction with the traditional time-division-multiplexed (TDM)-based telephone network. In many cases the applications simply receive the TDM-based "in-band" media stream, i.e., the voice channel, and the applications are responsible for continually decoding the media and monitoring for the presence of certain user input of a signaling nature, such as tones indicating that a particular key on the telephone keypad has been pressed. Certain improvements to the TDM network have been made, such as the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN), which have the goal of separating signaling traffic from media traffic. However, in practice most of the application logic resides in an "intelligent peripheral" that is coupled along the media path, because of the low-level, device control nature of the associated protocols. There are too many messages with too short a latency budget for a total separation of application logic from the Intelligent Peripheral. The result is that application developers write their applications for deployment on the intelligent peripheral, usually with proprietary intelligent peripheral languages. Thus, AIN does not fulfill the promise of separating application logic from media processing.
The situation is more complex for the packet-switched environments, such as Voice-over-IP. Existing approaches such as H.248.1 (MEGACO), Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and an in-band technique described in RFC 2833 are described in turn.
H.248.1 (MEGACO) has a provision for reporting key press digits detected or generated by an "endpoint", which in H.248.1 is a media gateway (MG). The MG can be an IP phone, an access gateway, or a trunking gateway. In the case of the IP phone, the IP phone can transmit the key presses directly at the protocol level. In the case of a gateway, the gateway can detect the key presses using DTMF detectors. Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) is a proprietary Cisco protocol that operates in much the same manner as H.248.1. These protocols employ a master-slave approach in which a Media Gateway Controller (MGC) commands the MG (using a device control protocol signaling link) to connect a tone detector to an incoming circuit and wait for a digit map match. When the MG detects a key press pattern of interest, it notifies the MGC over the same signaling link, returning the actual digit string detected.
In H.248.1, however, one and only one MGC may control the resources in an MG. Applications that have an interest in user signaling must be a part of the MGC application—there is no provision for independent, third-party applications to receive user signaling information. In MGCP, a first MGC may "pass off" control to a second MGC, but one and only one MGC may control a resource at any given time. The limitation of one and only one controller controlling a resource is a direct result of the master/slave nature of the MGCP and H.248.1 protocols. That is, the protocol requires the MG to be in an exclusive relationship to an MGC. Although these protocols also allow for "virtual MGs" within a physical MG, in which case there may be multiple MGCs serving as masters to the set of virtual MGs in a single physical MG, the virtual MGs are simply partitions of a physical MG. There is no provision for enabling multiple independent applications to selectively obtain user signaling information from a single stream of user input.
It has been proposed that a peer-to-peer protocol such as the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) be used to transport key press signaling, such as via the SIP INFO method. The proposed mechanism closely follows the protocol of MGCP and H.248.1, including the use of MGCP and H.248.1 messages for specifying digit maps and notifications. However, the proposals have envisioned only a single application requesting notifications, which is a result of there being no mechanism for addressing endpoints of interest.
Cisco Systems has introduced a method for transporting DTMF digits using SIP in the SIP signaling path using the SIP NOTIFY method. However, this method has a number of disadvantages. First, notifications can only go to a single egress gateway—it is not possible for a third-party application to register for notifications. Second, the egress gateway receives notifications of every DTMF digit, whether it has an interest in them or not. Third, there is no provision for selectively passing through or clamping the DTMF tones from the media stream. If the ingress gateway passes DTMF, there is the risk of network elements interpreting both the in-band DTMF and the corresponding DTMF signaling received via the NOTIFY mechanism, potentially resulting in incorrect operation.
Another proposed method of transporting key press signaling is to use in-band representations for the keys. For example, RFC 2833 describes transporting key presses as named events, rather than as digital waveforms representing the key presses. While this approach uses less bandwidth and processing resources in the media path, it has serious drawbacks that limit its usability. First, a point-to-point media relationship between the endpoint and the application is generally assumed, leaving no provision for third-party involvement with collecting digits. Although in theory RFC 2833 could be used with third-party applications, rather complicated and unrealistic setup and operation are required. Additionally, because of the particular way that RFC 2833 handles redundancy, it does not meet the reliability requirements for signaling traffic. Moreover, RFC 2833 uses more bandwidth than is necessary, by sending multiple copies of the same packet for normal, lossless operation. Finally, applications receive all key presses, whether they have an interest in the key presses or not, making for inefficient use of communication and processing resources.
Thus what is needed is an efficient system and method for detecting and notifying applications of a single mode of user input, such as user key presses, where the user input signaling follows a signaling path distinct from the media path, and that provides for multiple, independent applications to receive the signaling independently.

System and method for providing user input information to multiple independent, concurrent applications