A charge coupled device includes a substrate; a plurality of image pixels arranged in a two dimensional array in the substrate for capturing an electronic representation of an image and for transferring charge in a first direction; a transfer mechanism for transferring charge in a second direction from the plurality of the image pixels for further processing; an amplifier structure disposed in the substrate that receives the charge from the transfer mechanism and converts the charge into a voltage signal; a first opaque layer spanning over the amplifier for blocking near-infrared light inherently generated by an electrical field within the amplifier structure when a voltage is applied; and a second opaque layer deposited into the substrate for also blocking near-infrared light inherently generated by an electrical field within the amplifier structure when a voltage is applied.

A traditional camera system includes camera body, lens, electronics to control the functionality of the camera and most importantly the image-capturing media—film. In contrast, instead of using film, a digital camera system usually employs an image sensor made on semiconductor substrate. Typically the image sensor is either a charge coupled device (CCD) or a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. They can be either in two-dimensional array called area sensor or one-dimensional array called linear sensor. For illustrative purpose, the image sensor discussed in this patent is an area CCD image sensor.
An area CCD image sensor consists of a two-dimensional array of photosensitive elements called pixels of X columns by Y rows. These pixels capture light from a scene of interest during exposure and converts photons to electrical charge, namely electrons. The electrons are then transferred out of the CCD vertically and horizontally. Each CCD has at least one output structure or amplifier, which consists of one or more transistors to convert the electrons from the pixels to voltage signals. These voltage signals are then sampled and converted to digital counts through a correlated double sampling (CDS) and analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Finally a digital image processor processes these digital counts and the counts are rendered as a digital image.
An amplifier typically consists of transistors, each of which has a drain, a source and a gate. Referring to FIG. 1A, there is shown a symbol to represent a transistor. Also referring to FIG. 1B there is shown a cross-section of an NMOS or n-channel transistor 1 built on a p-type silicon layer 5. It is noted that other types of transistors are applicable to the present invention, in which case the doping will vary according, as those skilled in the art will readily recognize. The source 2 and drain 3 of the transistor 1 consist of n-type doping regions. The voltage at contact 6 of the source 2 is modulated by the voltage on the gate 4 when the transistor 1 is operated in a source-follower amplifier configuration. The drain 3 of the transistor 1 in this amplifier configuration is connected to a high-voltage applied to the contact 7, commonly referred to as VDD. This high voltage at drain 3 will create a strong electric field between the gate 4 and the drain 3 that may generate near-infra-read (NIR) light. This NIR light can propagate inside the silicon or radiate outside and over the silicon. If the light or electrons created thereby eventually enter the image area of the CCD, it will cause a spurious signal in the image area. These additional charges will superimpose with the existing charge related to the scene of interest and create a glowing phenomenon or artifact seen in one of the corners of the CCD where the amplifier is located.
Referring to FIG. 2 there is shown a diagram of a CCD 10 which has an amplifier 13 at the top-left corner. Charge is first transferred vertically row by row into a serial of horizontal register 14. The vertical transfer direction is indicated by an arrow 15. After each row of transfer, charge in the horizontal registers 14 is then transferred horizontally to the output amplifier 13. The horizontal transfer direction is indicated by an arrow 16. The light emitting from the amplifier 13 enters some portions of the top-left corner of image area 12 and creates so-called amplifier glowing artifact in that region 12 of the whole image area 11. The extra signal from the glowing will contaminate the image in that region if not removed or substantially reduced.
Referring to FIG. 3 there is shown a cross section of an amplifier transistor 20 in a CCD image sensor 28. It includes a source 21, a drain 22 and a gate 23. The source 21 and drain 22 typically consist of n-type doping and they are connected to metal contacts 24 and 34, respectively. Light mainly generates along the gate-drain side 25 and it propagates in every direction as indicated by the arrows. Among them there are three paths which may potentially impact the image area 12. One is the path 30 through which light strikes onto top layers (not shown) over the silicon surface 29 including oxides, protection layers and a cover glass (not shown) etc, and then bounces back into the image area 12. Another one is the path 31 through which the light passes through and underneath the silicon surface 29 and within the p-type epi layer 26 and reaches the image area 12. Path 31 has another potential impact. The charge 33, namely electrons, generated by the light along the path 31 can diffuse into the image area 12 also. Path 32 has little impact because of two reasons. One reason is the light going deep into the p+-type substrate 27 will be either absorbed by the silicon or pass through and out of the substrate 27. There will be no light reflection into the image area 12 from path 32. The charge 33 in the substrate 27 generated by the absorbed light will recombine quickly because of its short diffusion length in that region. Therefore, there is virtually no charge diffusion into the image area 12 either. This is particularly true for devices built in a well or a tub with opposite conductivity type to the substrate in which this well is formed. In summary, paths 30 and 31 have the most significant impact on creating the glowing artifact in the image area 12.
Since an amplifier only glows when the VDD voltage is applied to it, the prior art solution to this problem is to minimize the time when the amplifier operates, which means during the exposure time, VDD is reduced or set to zero to turn off the amplifier. This method will remove the glowing during exposure, but the amplifier needs to be turned back on during CCD readout and in that period, the glowing will appear again and it will affect the images which the CCD captures. In this case, the glowing will cause a white band across the image. Therefore, the impact from the amplifier glowing cannot be completely removed by this method. Besides, switching VDD ON and OFF can sometimes generate unnecessary electronic noise in the system.
Therefore, there is a need to prevent the amplifier glowing from entering the image sensor's image area and creating a glowing artifact in the images which the image sensor captures.

Methods to eliminate amplifier glowing artifact in digital images captured by an image sensor


A liquid dispensing valve assembly is provided with a vacuum release feature. The valve assembly is adapted to be fastened to a container opening. The assembly includes a unitarily formed one-piece cylindrical base having a vertical center axis. The base a mounting collar; an enclosure portion connected to the mounting collar forming an inner cavity within the base; a spout connected to the enclosure portion having an interconnected axial core substantially positioned within the spout forming an annular liquid passageway; and a gas passageway having at least one inlet orifice located on an outer surface of the spout, the gas passageway including at least one generally horizontally oriented radial pipe section having one end connected to the at least one inlet orifice and another end connecting to a vertically configured pipe section having an exit orifice. The valve assembly may further include a cap having a drain port, wherein the cap adapted to slip fit over the spout.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a liquid dispensing valve for a bottle or container. In particular, the present invention relates to a liquid dispensing valve assembly that has a vacuum release feature which prevents a vacuum from forming when liquid is being dispensed from the container or bottle. Furthermore, the present invention relates to dispensing valves adapted to be installed onto hermetically sealed containers.
2. Background of the Invention
When liquid is dispensed from a plastic container or bottle, such as a squeezable water bottle, sports drink bottle, or a bicycle bottle, it is not uncommon for a vacuum to form within the bottle. As a result of the vacuum buildup, flow of the liquid out from the spout and valve assembly of the bottle is typically inhibited. Eventually, the vacuum may even prevent the liquid from exiting from the bottle. To correct this phenomena, usually the bottle cap must be cracked open by the consumer to relieve the vacuum buildup so that air can re-enter the bottle and provide sufficient back pressure to re-establish flow. This phenomena can become annoying to the consumer of the product.
There are numerous liquid dispensing valve assemblies available for containers which have solved the vacuum build-up problem; however, while these products are functional, there still are numerous disadvantages affiliated with each design. All of the prior art examples utilize designs having several parts, resulting in costly manufacturing and assembly processes, which ultimately is reflected in the price of the product.
Furthermore, strict packaging regulations are now in effect which require beverage packing companies to adhere a hermetic seal on the outlet port of the container in certain instances. Many liquids packaged in containers or bottles are susceptible to bacterial growth. Furthermore, seals are utilized as a way to ensure to the consumer of the product that the liquid contained within has not been intentionally tampered with or contaminated. Currently, there are no cap drain assemblies, which provide a vacuum relief feature, that are compatible with liquid containers having a hermetic seal flushly mounted on the mouth of the container opening.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,988,448 to Foth provides a vacuum release container cap comprising a body, closure device, and seal member. The body has a liquid passage for the flow of liquid into and out of the container, and a gas passage for the flow of air back into the container. The closure device is mounted on the body for closing each of the passages and simultaneously opens the gas passage while opening the liquid passage. The seal member is mounted in the gas passage, which allows the passage of air into the container, but does not allow the passage of liquid out of the container through the gas passage. The Foth vacuum release cap has at least a couple disadvantages. First, the body and seal member comprises a two-piece assembly which translates to more expensive manufacturing and assembly costs. Second, the Foth design does not accommodate hermetically-sealed bottles.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,079,589 to Matsuyama et al. provides a drinking receptacle cover that can be removably applied to an opening of a receptacle main body. This cover has a drinking spout which can be shut off and a negative pressure relief valve. However, Matsuyama et al. has the same disadvantages as Foth, in particular, multiple parts and the inability to be installed on hermetically-sealed beverage containers. Moreover, the Matsuyama design is only compatible with wide-mouth containers. Therefore, Matsuyama has limited applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,048,705 to Lynd et al. discloses a bottle and drinking tube assembly for dispensing liquids. The Lynd device does provide a selectively operable vent valve in the cap to permit airflow into the bottle enabling the user to sip the liquid through the tube or to prevent liquid outflow from the bottle when the bottle is collapsed to forcibly expel liquid through the tube. However, Lynd has the same disadvantages as Foth and Matsuyama, in particular, multiple parts and the inability to be installed on hermetically-sealed beverage containers. Also, the Lynd design is only compatible with wide-mouth containers. Therefore, Lynd is also similar to Matsuyama, in that it has limited applications.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,005,737 to Rohr discloses a flexible dispensing closure having a slitted resilient valve and a flanged vent valve for vacuum build-up relief However, the Rohr device is designed to dispense creams or lotions, and is not practicable for dispensing liquids such as water or sports beverages.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,012, 596 to Oglesbee et al. discloses an adaptor cap for a fluid container which is compatible with a hermetically-sealed container. However, the Oglesbee design is adapted for medical applications and is not suited for drinking bottle applications.
It would be desirable to provide a liquid dispensing valve assembly having a vacuum release feature that overcomes the aforementioned disadvantages. In particular, it would be beneficial to provide an economical unitarily-formed one-piece base for a valve assembly which could be fastened to a bottle or container that may or may not be hermetically-sealed.

Liquid dispensing valve assembly having a unitarily formed base and a vacuum release feature


A hot water extraction process for extracting bitumen from tar sands is taught wherein the tar sand is conditioned using an alkali metal bicarbonate, an alkali metal carbonate and a liquid hydrocarbon. A source of calcium and/or magnesium ions can also be added. The conditioning step replaces the step of conditioning using caustic soda previously used in tar sand extraction. The use of the alkali metal bicarbonate and carbonate and a liquid hydrocarbon substantially eliminates the production of sludge in tar sand extraction and maintains or improves bitumen recovery. The process allows for hot conditioning solution to be recycled to the process by use of a recycle storage tank.

Throughout the world, considerable oil reserves are locked in the form of tar sands, also called bitumen sands. The hot water extraction process is the standard process for recovering bitumen from the sand and other material in which it is bound. The bitumen is then treated to obtain a synthetic crude oil therefrom.
In the hot water extraction process using existing extraction facilities, tar sand is first conditioned in large conditioning drums or tumblers with the addition of caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) and hot water at a temperature of about 180.degree. F. The nature of these tumblers is well known in the art. The tumblers have means for steam injection and further have retarders, lifters and advancers which create violently turbulent flow and positive physical action to break up the tar sand and mix the resultant mixture vigorously to condition the tar sands. This causes the bitumen to be aerated and separated to form a froth.
The mixture from the tumblers is screened to separate the larger debris and is passed to a separating cell where settling time is provided to allow the aerated slurry to separate. As the mixture settles, the bitumen froth rises to the surface and the sand particles and sediments fall to the bottom to form a sediment layer. A middle viscous sludge layer, termed middlings, contains dispersed clay particles and some trapped bitumen which is not able to rise due to the viscosity of the sludge. The froth is skimmed off for froth treatment and the sediment layer is passed to a tailings pond. The middlings is often fed to a second stage of froth floatation for further bitumen froth recovery. The water/clay residue from this second stage is combined with the sediment layer from the separating cell for disposal in the tailing ponds.
Recently, a modified hot water extraction process termed the hydrotransport system has been tested. In this system, the tar sand is mixed with hot water and caustic at the mine site and the resultant mixture is transported to the extraction unit in a large pipe. During the hydrotransport, the tar sand is violently mixed and aerated by turbulent flow and by injection of air at intermittent points along the pipe. As a result, the tar sand is conditioned and the bitumen is aerated to form a froth. This system replaces the manual or mechanical transport of the tar sands to the extraction unit and eliminates the need for tumblers.
The bitumen froth from either process contains bitumen, air, solids and trapped water. The solids which are present in the froth are in the form of clays, silt and some sand. From the separating cell the froth is passed to a defrother vessel where the froth is heated and broken to remove the air. Naphtha is then added to cause a reduction in the density of the bitumen, facilitating separation of the water and solids from the bitumen by means of a subsequent centrifuge treatment. The centrifuge treatment first includes a gross centrifuge separation followed by high speed centrifuge separations. The bitumen collected from the centrifuge treatment usually contains less than 2% water and solids and can be passed to the refinery for upgrading. The water and solids released during the centrifuge treatment are passed to the tailings pond.
The tailings in the tailing pond are largely a sludge of caustic soda, solids and water with some bitumen. During the initial years of residence time, some settling takes place in the upper layer of the pond, releasing some of the trapped water. The water released from the sludge can be recycled back into the hot water process. The major portion of the tailings remains as sludge indefinitely. The sludge contains some bitumen and high percentages of solids, mainly in the form of suspended silt and clay.
The tailings ponds are costly to build and maintain. The size of the ponds and their characteristic caustic condition creates serious environmental problems. In addition, environmental concerns exist over the large quantity of water which is required for extraction and which remains locked in the tailings pond after use.
It is known that sludge is formed in the initial conditioning of the tar sand, when the caustic soda attacks the silt and clay particles. The caustic soda causes the clays to swell and disburse into platelets. These platelets are held in suspension and form the gel-like sludge. Expanding-type clays such as the montmorillanite clays are particularly susceptible to caustic attack. Because of the problems caused by sludge formation and the low bitumen recovery available from highly viscous sludges, lower grade tar sands containing high levels of clays cannot be treated satisfactorily using the hot water extraction process.
The need exists for an extraction process which would result in a reduction or elimination of the production of sludge and therefore an increase in the water available for recycling. Any such process would also provide the possibility of increased bitumen recovery from medium and lower grade ores.
Also it is desirable that any tar sand extraction process should maintain or increase the present throughput possible by use of existing extraction processes and thereby not increase the cost of extraction. It is further desirable that a tar sand extraction process be of use in conventional extraction facilities. It is also desirable to eliminate the hazardous caustic used in today's commercial units.
Alternate processes, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,120,777, have been proposed which include the use of alternate conditioning agents such as soluble metal bicarbonates. However, such processes have generally not been adopted by the industry for a number of reasons. For example, proposed processes often increase the cost of extraction beyond reasonable levels by requiring the use of large amounts of agents or by reducing the rate at which tar sand can be processed. In addition, such processes are not readily adopted since they cannot be carried out in existing extraction facilities.


During wireless data communication with a digital camera, when a setting operation of communication parameters is designated by a communication setting button, the data communication with the camera is suspended, and the network is switched to a network for setting communication parameters for another camera. With this network, a setting operation of communication parameters for another camera is performed. Thereafter, the network for setting communication parameters is switched to the network for data communication with the original camera.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus, a wireless communication system, and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally a large number of methods of setting communication parameters for wireless communication have been considered. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 2004-193753 discusses a method of setting a network identifier for connection to a wireless LAN network.
Meanwhile, in a communication system constituting a network for wireless communication between communication apparatuses, assume a case where data communication is performed between a first and second wireless communication apparatuses and a job using the data is executed by the first wireless communication apparatus. In this case, the network connection between the first and second wireless communication apparatuses is maintained until the job is completed because the job completion of the first wireless communication apparatus has to be notified to the second wireless communication apparatus. More specifically, when communication is performed between a printer and a digital camera, data used in a printing job is transmitted from the camera to the printer. When the printer executes the printing job based on the data and completes the printing job, the printer notifies the camera of the completion of printing. In this case, the network connection between the printer and the digital camera is maintained from the beginning of the printing job transmission from the camera to the printer to the notification of printing job completion by the camera.
In the above-described case, assume that the third wireless communication apparatus requests communication to the first wireless communication apparatus and attempts setting of communication parameters. In this case, the third wireless communication apparatus is forced to wait until the job is completed by the first wireless communication apparatus and the job completion is notified to the second wireless communication apparatus. Therefore, if the job requires a long time before completion, the setting operation of communication parameters started by the third wireless communication apparatus faces a timeout.
More specifically, while a printer is executing a printing job for printing data transmitted by a first digital camera, if a second digital camera attempts to set communication parameters in the printer, the second digital camera is forced to wait until the printing job is completed. If the printing job requires a long time to complete, the setting operation of communication parameters started by the second digital camera faces a timeout, causing a situation where the second digital camera cannot set communication parameters in the printer, thereby the second digital camera can not print using the printer.

Wireless communication apparatus, wireless communication system, and control method thereof


A method for transmitting a message from a mobile terminal in a mobile communication system. The method includes displaying a list of messages attempted to be transmitted, selecting a message from the list of transmitted messages that was unsuccessfully transmitted, and displaying detailed information about the selected message that was unsuccessfully transmitted.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for transmitting a messages between mobile terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals provide a variety of services in addition to a calling service. For example, mobile terminals allow a user to access a message transmission service to send and receive text or multimedia messages, access the Internet, play games, download ring tones, etc. The message transmission service includes a SMS (short message service) for transmitting text data that is within 80 bytes, for example. The message transmission service also includes a MMS (Multimedia Message Service) for transmitting music, images, movies, etc. The message being transmitted and received may also be a combination of the SMS and MMS type messages. Thus, using the message transmission service, the user can create messages using the keys provided on the mobile terminal and then transmit the message to another party.
However, in the related art transmission method, the message transmission service is automatically terminated when a specific event occurs such as the user closing a folder of the mobile terminal while the message is being transmitted. The same is true with respect to a flipping closed a flip type terminal or sliding closed a sliding type terminal. For example, after the user initiates transmission of a SMS message and closes the mobile terminal before transmission of the SMS message is completed, the SMS message transmission is terminated (i.e., disrupted prior to completion).
Thus, in the related art method, the user must wait for the corresponding message to be completely transmitted before he or she closes the terminal. Thus, if the folder is inadvertently closed while the message is being transmitted, the user must recreate the message. This problem is more serious for MMS type messages. In more detail, the MMS type message typically includes more data than the SMS type message. Therefore, when a user transmits an MMS type message, he or she must keep the mobile terminal open for a longer time to complete transmission of the MMS.

Method for transmitting message of mobile terminal


A solid state light emitting device comprises one or more active layers comprising semiconductor nano-particles in a host matrix, e.g. silicon nano-particles in silicon dioxide or silicon nitride. The incorporation of carbon in the active layers provides a great improvement in performance through shortened decay time and enhance emission spectra, as well as reliability and lifetime. The emission wavelengths from the nano-particles can be made to correspond to the quantization energy of the semiconductor nano-particles, which allows the entire visible range of the spectrum be covered. Ideally an engineered structure of alternating active and buffer material layers are disposed between AC or DC electrodes, which generate an electric field. The buffer layers are comprised of a wide bandgap semiconductor or dielectric material, and are designed with a thickness, in the direction of an applied electric field, that ensures that electrons passing therethrough picks up enough energy to excite the nano-particles in the adjacent active layer at a sufficient excitation energy to emit light efficiently at a desired wavelength.

The next generation of solid-state lighting is seeking to provide advances in brightness, efficiency, color, purity, packaging, scalability, reliability and reduced costs. The creation of light emitting devices from silicon based materials, upon which the modern electronic industry is built, has been the subject of intensive research and development around the world. The main obstacle has been the indirect energy gap of bulk silicon, which limits the efficiency to an extremely low level. However, one particular technology, based on silicon nano-particles, e.g. nanocrystals, formed through various techniques, has been able to overcome this difficulty.
Prior art light emitting devices, such as those disclosed in United States Patent Publication Nos. 2004/149,353, entitled: "Doped Semiconductor Powder and Preparation Thereof", published Aug. 5, 2004 in the name of Hill; 2004/151461, entitled: "Broadband optical pump source for optical amplifiers, planar optical amplifiers, planar optical circuits and planar optical lasers fabricated using group IV semiconductor nanocrystals", published Aug. 5, 2004 in the name of Hill; 2004/214,362, entitled: "Doped semiconductor nanocrystal layers and preparation thereof", published Oct. 28, 2004 in the name of Hill et al; and 2004/252,738, entitled: "Light emitting diodes and planar optical lasers using IV semiconductor nanocrystals", published Dec. 16, 2004 in the name of Hill, which are incorporated herein by reference, have demonstrated that using silicon-rich silicon oxide (SRSO), which consists of silicon nano-particles embedded in a silicon dioxide (SiO2 or glass) matrix, reduces many of the problems associated with bulk silicon, and when doped with erbium, or other rare earth material, can exhibit efficient room temperature rare earth luminescence because of the high efficiency of the energy transfer process from excited nanocrystals to rare earth ions. Accordingly, the SRSO provides an alternative to thin film electroluminescent material. The silicon nano-particles act as classical sensitizer atoms that absorb incident photons or electrons and then transfer the energy to the rare earth ions, which then fluoresce in the infrared or visible wavelength ranges with several advantages compared to the direct fluorescence of the rare earth. First, the absorption cross-section of the silicon nano-particles is larger than that of the rare earth ions by more than three orders of magnitude. Second, as excitation occurs via an Auger-type interaction or via a Forster transfer process between carriers in the silicon nano-particles and rare earth ions, incident photons need not be in resonance with one of the narrow absorption bands of the rare earth. Unfortunately, existing approaches to developing such silicon nano-particle materials have only been successful at producing very low concentrations of the rare earth element, which is not sufficient for many practical applications.
Observations have shown that silicon nano-particles formed by such techniques generally have a relatively narrow distribution of photo-luminescent (PL) wavelength or energy despite the broad size distribution, i.e. the observed energies are not as high as expected from the quantum confinement of the nanocrystals. The reduced nano-particle excitation energy affects the efficiency of energy transfer from conducting electrons when films with embedded nano-particles are electrically powered, thereby causing severe limitations on the efficiency of light generating capability therefrom.
In general, the manufacture of group IV semiconductor nano-particles doped with a rare earth element is done by ion implantation of silicon ions into a silicon oxide layer, followed by high temperature annealing to grow the silicon nano-particles and to reduce the ion implantation damage. The implantation of silicon ions is followed by an ion implantation of the rare earth ions into the annealed silicon nanoparticle oxide layer. The resulting layer is again annealed to reduce the ion implant damage and to optically activate the rare earth ion.
There are several problems with this method:
i) it results in a decreased layer surface uniformity due to the ion implantation;
ii) it requires an expensive ion implantation step;
iii) it fails to achieve a uniform distribution of group IV semiconductor nano-particles and rare earth ions unless many implantation steps are carried out;
iv) it requires a balance between reducing the ion implant damage by thermal annealing while trying to maximize the optically active rare earth; and
v) the thickness of the film is limited because implanted ions do not penetrate deeply into the film for practical implant energies.
To diminish the above drawbacks, plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) has been utilized to make group IV semiconductor nano-particle layers. The prepared layers are subjected to a rare earth ion implantation step, and a subsequent annealing cycle to form the group IV semiconductor nano-particles and to optically activate the rare earth ions that are doped in the nano-particle region. Unfortunately, the layers prepared with this method are still subjected to an implantation step, which results in poor surface uniformity, non-uniform distribution of rare earth elements, and limited film thickness.
Another deposition method that has been used to obtain a doped group IV semiconductor nano-particle layer consists of co-sputtering the group IV semiconductor and rare earth metal, typically in an oxygen plasma. In this method, the group IV semiconductor and the rare earth metal were placed on a target substrate, which was then placed into a vacuum chamber and exposed to an argon ion beam. The argon ion beam sputtered off the group IV semiconductor and the rare earth metal, both of which were deposited onto a receiving silicon wafer. The newly formed film on the silicon wafer was then annealed to grow the nano-particles and to optically activate the rare earth ions. The doped group IV semiconductor nano-particle layers made through this method have the drawbacks that: i) the layer does not have a very uniform distribution of nano-particles and rare earth ions; ii) the layer suffers from up conversion efficiency losses due to rare earth clustering in the film; and iii) the concentration of rare earth film in the film is limited to little more than 0.1%.
An object of the present invention is to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art by providing a carbon doped optically active layer in a solid state light emitting device.

Carbon passivation in solid-state light emitters


Methods and systems for automatic denial of service protection in an IP device are disclosed. Packets are received at a network interface of an IP device, the packets being addressed to a network address of the network interface. The packets addressed to the network interface of the IP device are forwarded to a processor in the IP device. The processor determines whether the packets violate a rate-based policing policy of the IP device. In response to determining that the packets violate the rate-based policing policy, source identifying information associated with the packets is added to an access control list in the IP device. Packets matching criteria in the access control list are prevented from being forwarded to the processor in the IP device.

In modern telephony networks, media switching and call control functionality are separated. Call control, which includes setting up and tearing down calls and maintaining call state machines, is performed by a network entity referred to as a media gateway controller (MGC). Media stream switching, which includes switching media packets between input and output ports and converting the media packets into the appropriate formats for the sending and receiving parties, is performed by a media gateway (MG). Media gateway controllers communicate call control information to media gateways via a media gateway control protocol.
Typical media gateway control protocols, such as MGCP and MEGACO, include commands for communicating information about each endpoint of a session to the media gateway and instructing the media gateway as to how to process packets to be delivered to each endpoint.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram illustrating voice sessions between media gateways 100, 102, 104, and 106 interconnected through an IP network 108. Media gateways 100, 102, 104, and 106 may be connected through IP network 108 via multiple paths through a series of next-hop routers. Multiple bidirectional voice sessions may be set up between any two or more of media gateways 100, 102, 104, and 106. As voice packets are received at a media gateway (ingress packets) or exit the media gateway (egress packets), the particular session that a packet belongs to must be identified for proper delivery and/or processing of the packet. The process of assigning a packet to a particular session to which it belongs is commonly referred to as packet classification.
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating an exemplary media gateway 200. Referring to FIG. 2, media gateway 200 includes a control manager 202, a resource manager 204, a packet switch fabric 206, voice servers 208, and network interfaces 210. Each voice server 208 contains voice processing resources for processing VoIP and TDM voice streams.
For example, each voice server 208 may include codecs, VoIP, ATM, and TDM chips, and digital signal processing resources for processing VoIP streams. A detailed description of exemplary resources that may be found in voice server 208 can be found in commonly assigned, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/676,233, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Control manager 202 of media gateway 200 controls the overall operation of media gateway 200 and communicates with media gateway controller 212 to set up and tear down calls. Resource manager 204 of control manager 202 allocates new voice sessions to incoming calls. For example, resource manager 204 may assign one of voice servers 208 to a session and store session information for the session in a session table 214 in a memory. Session table 214 is then regularly accessed to classify ingress and egress packets to the appropriate sessions. Although session table 214 is shown logically as a single entity, session tables 214 may actually be distributed among, and accessed by, network interfaces 210, as will be discussed further below.
Voice servers 208 are each assigned individual IP addresses and are each reachable through packet switch fabric 206 via any of network interfaces 210. Multiple sessions may be processed by the same voice server 208. Furthermore, multiple sessions may be established between a given network interface 210 and a given voice server 208 through the packet switch fabric 206. Network interfaces 210 are also each assigned individual IP addresses. The traffic rate for a given voice server 208 or network interface 210 should not be exceeded to avoid degrading the voice quality of calls, or worse, overloading the media gateway 200.
A denial of service attack may be launched against media gateway 200 by flooding the media gateway with packets, thereby reducing the call handling capacity, or even overloading the media gateway 200. For example, a flood of packets addressed to a network interface 210 may be received from a source, such as a computer operated by malicious attacker with the goal of impairing media gateway 200. Conventionally, such attacks results in a temporary impairment or disabling of media gateway 200 until the source can be blocked by a network operator determining the source and manually adding the source to an access control list (ACL) to deny access to the source and prevent against future attacks. It would be advantageous to automatically detect excessive IP traffic from a source IP address or addresses and dynamically update an ACL and with the source IP address. Such capabilities, however, do not exist in current media gateway architectures.
Accordingly, a need exists for automatic denial of service protection in a media gateway.


The invention comprises a liquid composition which provides a drier feel and reduced leakage when used with certain types of applicators, especially an applicator having a porous surface, which composition is made by combining an active phase and a silicone phase. The active phase is made by combining: (a) 10-70% of a selected glycol; (b) 0.1-10% of a nonionic emulsifier having an HLB greater than 8; (c) 0.01-30% of a cosmetically active ingredient; and (d) 0-20% of ethanol and/or isopropanol. The silicone phase is made by combining: (a) from 0.1-10% of a selected emulsifier; (b) 0-30% of a non-volatile silicone; (c) 0-30% of a volatile silicone; and (d) 0-25% of an organic emollient; provided that: (a) the silicone phase contains at least 10% silicone; (b) the ratio of silicone phase to active phase is in the range of 1:1 to 1:4; and (c) the composition is processed to maintain a viscosity in the range of 2,000-200,000 centipoise ("cps").

A large variety of antiperspirant and/or deodorant formulations have been described in the patent literature and/or have been made commercially available. These products have included solids (for example, wax and gel sticks), semi-solids (for example, gels and creams), liquids (for example, roll-on products) and sprays (both aerosol and non-aerosol). In recent years a strong emphasis has been placed on improving both the performance and the aesthetics of these products. Any improvements must take into account both the form of the composition and the method of application.
With regard to emulsions, U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,570 to Soldati describes uniform, clear gelled antiperspirant compositions, free of waxes wherein the emulsions comprise in combination a volatile silicone fluid, a silicone emulsifier (such as a mixture of cyclomethicone and dimethicone copolyol), a destabilizing auxiliary emulsifier, water, a non-volatile emollient (such as C10-C20 alkyl fatty esters and ethers), linear silicone fluids, a coupling agent (such as low molecular weight alcohols and glycols), an active antiperspirant component and other ancillary agents.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,008,103 to Raleigh et al describes water-in-oil antiperspirant emulsions having a discontinuous polar phase containing water and optionally containing an emulsifier with a hydrophilic-lipophilic balance (HLB value) greater than 8, and a volatile silicone continuous phase with a dimethicone copolyol emulsifier. The HLB parameter is a well known parameter the calculation of which is disclosed and explained in numerous references. For nonionic surfactants, data obtained by actual analysis is usually a more accurate measure of HLB values (rather than theoretical determinations). For purposes of this invention it is intended that either the actual or theoretical HLB value may be used as the basis for selection. U.S. Pat. No. 5,401,870 to Raleigh et al and U.S. Pat. No. 5,292,503 to Pereira et al describe similar subject matter.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,033 to Pereira et al describes a transparent water-in-oil emulsion containing a silicone phase with a dimethicone copolyol and an aqueous phase containing a refractive index "transparency structurant" to produce a refractive index matched clear emulsion. The transparency structurant is a C3-C8 polyhydric alcohol.
There remained a problem with tack (stickiness), however, and attempts to create better products included removing water from the formulations. A presentation entitled "Novel Formulations Based on Nonaqueous Emulsions of Polyols in Silicones", by A. Zombeck and G. Dahms (Paper presented at the 19.sup.th IFSCC Congress, Sydney, Australia, Oct. 22-25, 1996) describes stable anhydrous antiperspirant emulsions prepared with propylene glycol; however, clear emulsions are not reported. Other parties have added ethanol but the quantities are so large that the regular emulsion (macroemulsion) is converted into a microemulsion with the result that the formulations are tacky.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,599,533 to Stepniewski et al describes the use of silicone elastomer in an aqueous water-in-oil emulsion, but does not describe a clear emulsion.
EP 0 732 273 B1 to De Laforcade describes an applicator and a viscous product for such applicator. These products are creamy or pasty or in the form of a foam. The applicator has a porous, rigid applicator element. A dome structure is used for the dispensing surface and may be made of sintered material having pores in the range of 1-500 microns which communicate with one another in all directions.
Other examples of applicators useful with gel compositions which applicators have a plurality of surfaces include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,801,052 and 5,372,285 as exemplified in Speed Stick.RTM. and Right Guard.RTM. gel products. Yet another applicator for semisolid products utilizes a sintered plastic material called Porex that has random, nonlinear, branched pores of varying cross-sectional diameters. Pressure relief mechanisms to solve post-extrusion of product and avoid leakage of unwanted product are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,540,361 and 5,547,302. U.S. Pat. No.5,547,302 also describes the use of a thin, flexible mesh with a plurality of discrete openings extending through the mesh as an applicator surface.
In a different approach, the use of an improved applicator with porous structures has been developed. This is the subject of the co-pending cases assigned to the same assignee as this application. This applicator requires a new type of formulation for a satisfactory product, in particular forming a product that minimizes leaking problems and has superior aesthetics when applied to the underarm. Previous formulations, especially including certain gels and other compositions containing thickening agents are not suitable because they do not have the desired aesthetics. On the other hand, one must be sensitive to the use of liquids in these new applicators since the liquid can ooze or drop out of the container. Separation of phases must also be prevented. Thus, there remains a need for new compositions which are suitable for use with porous top applicators which have mini-holes, pores, screen or woven applicator surfaces.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide antiperspirant and/or deodorant compositions which are suitable for use with the applicators described above. It is a further object of the invention to provide compositions suitable for use with the applicators described above which minimize problems from leaking. It is yet another object of the invention to provide formulations suitable for use with the applicators described above which minimize problems of phase separation. It is an additional object to provide formulations suitable for use with the applicators described above which are easy and convenient for the consumer to use. These and other objects will become apparent from the following description of the invention.

Antiperspirant formulation for porous applicator


Frame (2) for eyeglasses having an optical face (3) and two side arms (4) joined with hinges onto the two end portions (30) of said optical face, each side arm (4) having an inner longitudinal surface (42) and an outer longitudinal surface (43), and a front end surface (44) extending transversely to the longitudinal surfaces over a front end of said side arm, said front end surface extending to face a rear end surface (31) of the relevant end portion of the optical face when the side arm is in the open position, said frame further including at least one means for receiving a decorative piece (6), wherein the or each receiving means consists of a slotted hole (45) formed in one side arm and opening only into its front end surface or of a slotted hole formed in an end portion of the optical face and opening only into its rear end surface, the said or each slotted hole being designed to form a slide channel for receiving the decorative piece.

In a known manner, eyeglasses comprise of a frame designed for holding the lenses to be worn by a user. The frame includes an optical face meant for accommodating the lenses, with or without the circle, and two side arms joined with hinges onto two end portions of the optical face between an open position (with the side arms deployed or extended in order for the eyeglasses to be worn) and a closed position (with the side arms folded against the optical face).
Conventionally, a side arm has at least one inner longitudinal surface that is not visible when the eyeglasses are worn, and at least one outer longitudinal surface that is visible when the eyeglasses are worn. The side arm may also have various different cross sectional shapes, such as flat, circular, triangular, rectangular, square, etc. Thus, a side arm with flat cross section has two inner and outer longitudinal surfaces that are substantially planar, a side arm with circular cross section has two inner and outer longitudinal surfaces that are curved, a side arm with triangular cross section has one inner longitudinal surface that is planar and two outer longitudinal surfaces that are flat and bevelled, a side arm with a rectangular or square cross section has one inner longitudinal surface that is planar and three planar longitudinal surfaces respectively on the lateral-, upper- and lower sides, etc. A side arm also has a tiny front end surface extending transversely to the two longitudinal surfaces over a front end of the arm, and more particularly extending substantially orthogonally to the main longitudinal direction of the side arm.
The articulated joint is generally in the form of a hinge comprising a fixed knuckle mounted on the end portion of the optical face, a movable knuckle attached to the front end of the side arm, in particular on its inner longitudinal surface, and a hinge pin (joint axis) linking the two knuckles in rotation and extending in a substantially parallel manner to the front end surface of the side arm and substantially orthogonally to the main longitudinal direction of the side arm.
When the side arm is opened, the front end surface of the side arm is facing a rear end surface of the relevant end portion of the optical face. This end portion may be present in the form of a tenon projecting towards the rear of the optical face or indeed of a portion of the optical face extending over the exterior alongside the lenses.
To decorate a frame for eye glasses, it is a known practice from the document U.S. Pat. No. 3,582,192 A to provide a decorative piece for the eyeglass side arm which is slidably mounted around the side arm, the side arm forming a rail over which has been slid the decorative piece with U shaped cross section. In order to hold this decorative piece in place, a compressible and magnetic strip is provided on the outer longitudinal surface of the side arm.
From the document US 2007/0242211 it is also a known practice to provide a notch forming a dovetail slide channel on the outer longitudinal surface of the side arm to receive a decorative piece which is slidably engaged in this slide channel.
From the document FR 2 886 024 A1 it is also a known practice to attach an ornamental element, embellishing trim on the eyeglass side arm, by means of a groove provided on the front end of the inner face of the side arm for receiving a hook of the embellishing trim, a hole provided on the outer longitudinal surface of the arm, on the side of its rear end, for receiving a droplet pin of the embellishing trim, and a retaining element disposed in a recess provided on the outer longitudinal surface of the side arm, between the front end and the hole, this retaining element being in particular a magnet, an adhesive strip, a snap-in locking mechanism, or a hook and loop strip fastening system.
These eyeglasses however present the disadvantage that, once the decorative piece is removed, the arm present is very unattractive, both with respect to the eye glasses in document U.S. Pat. No. 3,582,192 A where the compressible and magnetic strip remains in place, for the eye glasses in US 2007/0242211, where the notch remains visible, and for the eye glasses in FR 2 886 024 A1 where not only the groove, the hole and/or the retaining element remain visible once the embellishing trim has been removed, but also the misalignment of the outer surfaces of the side arm and the end portion of the optical face, such that it is not aesthetically recommended to do without the decorative pieces with such frames.
Furthermore, from the document U.S. Pat. No. 4,903,375 it is also a known practice to provide for the mounting of a spring clip on a side arm of the eye glasses in order for them to be supported over a garment pocket. The fastening of the spring clip on the side arm is obtained by means of spring rings which tighten one appendage of the clip against the arm; these rings being furthermore engaged in annular notches provided on the circumference of the arm. Over and above the difficulty of engaging the appendage of the clip in the rings, the annular notches and the rings on the side arm are particularly unsightly and unappealing, especially when the clip is not present.


A first device specifies a privacy specification. The privacy specification includes at least a safe zone and a precision parameter may also be specified. A second device, such as an untrusted server, uses the privacy specification to provide guidance to the first device on how to perturb sensitive data. The first device then uses the guidance to transform sensitive data and provides it to the second device. The data transformation permits the first device to share sensitive data in a manner that preserves the privacy of the first user but permits statistics on aggregated data to be generated by an untrusted server.

The fast penetration of the Internet and mobile devices has allowed users to easily contribute their various personal data to different crowdsourcing applications that aggregate data from different users and provide a service. As an illustrative example, there are services that aggregate traffic data from multiple users to provide information on real-time traffic flow.
Many types of personal data are inherently sensitive, making privacy concerns a major impediment to the wider acceptance of crowd-sourcing based applications. Data sharing in a crowd-sourced based application often corresponds to a local setting where a user is typically willing to share his information only if it has been sanitized before leaving his own device. However, conventional approaches to privacy protection have various deficiencies.

Private dataaggregation framework for untrusted servers


The gas circuit breaker has a configuration such that a stationary contact section and a movable contact section are arranged in an arc-extinguishing gas sealed container, to face each other, and the movable contact section includes a hollow operating rod having an exhaust hole at its rear portion, a movable cylinder arranged around the rod, a hollow movable arc contact provided on the movable cylinder and an insulating nozzle surrounding the movable arc contact. The movable contact section further includes a stationary piston portion insertable/removable inside the movable cylinder, and the space formed by the movable cylinder and the current collecting cylinder fixed to the stationary piston portion is partitioned by a parting plate into a thermal pressure elevation room space at front side and a compression room space at rear side. During the electrode opening operation, the compression room space is compressed by the interaction between the movable cylinder and the piston portion, thus increasing the pressure in the space, and the speed of the movement of the operating rod is slowed down just before the completion of the electrode opening operation.

The present invention relates to a gas circuit breaker for interrupting a current which occurs due to a ground fault of a line or a short-circuiting failure between lines, for the purpose of protecting an electricity transmission system or an electricity distribution system, and more specifically to a gas circuit breaker capable of extinguishing an arc by utilizing both of a mechanical compression and a pressure elevation effect caused by the thermal energy of the arc, thereby interrupting a current.
At present, as a breaker for protecting a high voltage transmission system of 72 kV or higher, the puffer type gas circuit breaker made of a simple structure, and having a high reliability and an excellent gas-breaking performance, is widely used. The puffer type gas circuit breaker operates in the following manner. That is, an arc-extinguishing gas such as SF.sub.6 gas is compressed by the movable cylinder which is directly connected to the movable contact, so as to generate a high-pressure gas flow, and the gas flow is blown on the arc, so as to extinguish the arc, thereby interrupting the current. Therefore, the interruption performance is determined by the pressure elevation within the movable cylinder. Therefore, when a high pressure elevation is obtained, a high interruption performance is obtained; however the pressure elevation causes a reaction force of the mechanical driving force. Consequently, high driving energy is required to achieve a high interruption performance.
Under these circumstances, there have been a variety of developments and researches made for producing gas circuit breakers of a high interruption performance, which can obtain a high pressure elevation with small driving energy. An example of such breakers is disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKOKU Publication No. 57-54886 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,752. In these documents, the development on the basis of the following method is discussed. That is, a thermal pressure elevation room, the pressure inside of which is elevated as a high-temperature gas flows into the room from an arc, is provided in front of the compression room, and a check valve for inhibiting the gas from flow into the compression room from the thermal pressure elevation room is mounted to the partition wall between the thermal pressure elevation room and the compression room, so as to have both rooms communicated one another. Thus, the flow of the high-temperature gas from the thermal pressure elevation room to the compression room, which occurs when a large current is interrupted, is prevented, so as to maintain the pressure elevation in the compression room at a low rate, thereby decreasing the driving energy.
Further, as an improved version of the above-described technique, which can reduce the driving energy more effectively, a gas circuit breaker as shown in FIG. 1 has been developed. (See Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 7-109744)
The conventional gas circuit breaker will now be described with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a cross section of the conventional breaker, the lower half of which indicated by the center line in the figure, illustrates an electrode closing state, and the upper half of which illustrates the state of the completion of the closing operation.
As can be seen in FIG. 1, a stationary contact section 10 and a movable contact section 20 are arranged such as to face each other within a container (not shown) filled with an arc-extinguishing gas. It should be noted that with regard to the position of the movable contact section 20, the stationary contact section 10 side is defined as the forward side, and the opposite side is defined as the backward side, for the sake of the convenience of explanation.
The stationary contact section 10 is made of a stationary arc contact 1 and a stationary conductive contact 2 arranged around the arc contact 1. The movable contact section 20 is made of a hollow operating rod 3 having a flange 3a at its front end portion, a movable cylinder 4 arranged around the operating rod 3 and connected to the flange 3a, a hollow movable arc contact 5 fixed to the movable cylinder 4, and having a plurality of fingers arranged in line along the lateral face of the imaginary cylinder such as to be apart from each other, a movable conductive contact 6 disposed around the arc contact 5, an insulating nozzle 7 surrounding the movable arc contact 5 and a stationary piston member 8 inserted to the rear portion of the movable cylinder 4.
The interior of the movable cylinder 4 is partitioned by a middle partitioned plate 4a into a thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1 located at the front, and a compression room S.sub.2 at the back. A check valve 16 is provided on the middle partition plate 4a, so as to inhibit the gas flow from the thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1 to the compression room S.sub.2, and allow the counter gas flow. Between the movable arc contact 5 and the nozzle 7, a gas flow path is provided to guide the gas from the thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1 to the stationary arc contact 1 side.
In the movable contact section 20, the operating rod 3 is formed to reciprocate in its axial direction as driven by a drive device (not shown), and at the rear position of the operating rod 3, a plurality of exhaustion holes 3b which can make the hollow portion of the rod and the gas-filled atmosphere communicate, are made.
A piston 8a is formed to have a donut-disk shape, the inner circumferential surface of which slides on the outer circumferential surface of the operating rod 3 and the outer circumferential surface of which slides on the inner circumferential surface of the portion of the movable cylinder 4 which forms a compression room space S.sub.2. Here, the piston 8a has a hollow supporting tube 8b provided integrally at the rear portion thereof so as to extend in the axial direction, and the piston 8a is fixed by the supporting tube 8b within a container (not shown) via a supporting insulating member (not shown).
As the operating rod 3 and the movable cylinder 4 moves as an integral unit with relative to the piston 8a fixed as above, the movable cylinder 4 and the piston 8a move relative to each other, and thus the compression room space S.sub.2 created within the movable cylinder 4 is compressed. At the rear portion of the supporting tube 8b, a plurality of exhaust holes 8c which make the hollow portion of the supporting tube and the gas-filled atmosphere within the container communicate to each other, are made.
Further, the piston 8a is equipped with a release valve 18 which limits a pressure elevation in the space S.sub.2 by releasing gas within the compression room space S.sub.2 to the gas-filled atmosphere when the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2 exceeds a predetermined value during the electrode opening operation which interrupts a large current, and a check valve 17 can prevent the pressure reduction in the compression room space S.sub.2 by allowing the gas to flow from the gas-filled atmosphere to the compression space S.sub.2 during the electrode closing operation.
Further, a plurality of grooves 3d and 3e are made at two locations on the outer circumferential surface of the operating rode 3 by process, to extend in the axial direction. The groove 3d is formed to be situated, for its entire length, within the compression room space S.sub.2 when the electrode is closed as shown in the cross section of the lower half of FIG. 1, and to have the compression room space S.sub.2 communicate to the gas-filled atmosphere when the electrode is opened as shown in the upper half of FIG. 1.
The groove 3e is formed to have the compression room space S.sub.2 and the gas-filled atmosphere communicate to each other when the electrode is closed. The function of the groove 3d is to assure a decrease of the pressure elevation of the compression room space S.sub.2 at the final stage of the electrode opening operation, so as to contribute to the achievement of the lowering the driving energy. The function of the groove 3e is to assure the gas flow to the compression room space S.sub.2 at the final stage of the electrode closing operation.
Next, the operation of interrupting a current by means of the electrode opening operation of the conventional gas circuit breaker shown in FIG. 1 will now be described.
During the electrode opening operation, the operating rod 3 is moved in the direction indicated by arrow D, and therefore the movable section including the operating rod 3, that is, the operating rod 3, the movable cylinder 4 connected thereto, the movable arc contact 5, the movable conductive contact 6 and the nozzle 7 are moved as an integral unit to the direction indicated by arrow D. Thus, the volume of the compression room space S.sub.2 created by the rear portion of the movable cylinder 4, which is defined by the middle partition wall 4a, and the piston 8a, is reduced, and therefore the pressure within the compression room space S.sub.2 is increased. The check valve 16 opens its valve rapidly to follow the accelerated movement of the movable section in the beginning of the electrode opening operation, and thus the open state of the check valve 16 is maintained due to the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2, which occur from then onward. Therefore, the gas flows from the compression room space S.sub.2 to the thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1. Consequently, the pressure within the thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1 is slightly increased, and the gas flows in the direction towards the stationary arc contact 1 through a flow path between the nozzle 7 and the movable arc contact 5.
In the meantime, due to the electrode opening operation described above, first, the stationary conductive contact 2 and the movable conductive contact 6 are separated from each other, and then after some delay, the stationary arc contact 1 and the movable arc contact 5 are separated from each other. Thus, an arc is generated between the arc contacts 1 and 5. When the interruption current is as small as about 1 kA or less, the pressure elevation in the thermal pressure elevation space S.sub.1 due to the interruption current is so low that the gas flow state from the compression room space S.sub.2 to the thermal pressure elevation room S.sub.1 is maintained. Consequently, the gas is blown to the arc, thereby causing the interruption.
By contrast, when a large current of about several tens of kilo amperes is interrupted, the high-temperature gas from the arc flows reversely in the flow path between the nozzle 7 and the movable arc contact 5, and enters the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 so as to heat the gas within the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 thus elevating the pressure to a high value. Due to the high pressure, a gas flow is created from the nozzle 7 towards the stationary arc contact 1 to cool down the arc, and the arc is extinguished finally at the zero point of the alternating current wave, where the interruption current becomes zero.
When the pressure of the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 is raised high, the check valve 16 is closed and the gas flow from the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 to the compression room space S.sub.2 is inhibited. Therefore, the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2, which is caused by the flow-in of the high temperature gas, is prevented.
However, at the same time, the flow-out of the gas from the compression room space S.sub.2 to the thermal pressure elevation space S.sub.1 is ceased. Therefore, the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2 becomes significantly high as compared to the pressure elevation which occurs in the electrode opening operation with no load or in the electrode opening operation for interrupting a small current. However, at this time, the release valve 18 operates so as to keep the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2 at a predetermined low value. Further, at the final stage of the electrode opening operation, the compression room space S.sub.2 communicates to the gas-filled atmosphere via the groove 3d as can be seen in the cross section of the upper half of FIG. 1, thus assuring a decrease in the pressure elevation value in the compression room space S.sub.2. In this manner, the interruption of a large current and the lowering of the drive energy are achieved.
However, such a conventional gas circuit breaker as described above, has characteristics as shown in FIG. 2, that is, in order to interrupt a large current caused by a short-circuiting accident, when the current value becomes low as it goes beyond the vicinity of a peak, the pressure elevation value decreases steeply, and the pressure elevation value at the current zero point significantly decreases as compared to that at the peak of the pressure elevation value. The characteristics described here are discussed in thesis CIGRE-13-110-1994-P6-FIG. 11. A significant decrease in the pressure elevation is a phenomenon which occurs inevitably in the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1, which has no compression effect, and the phenomenon is caused by the ceasing of the flow of the high-temperature gas from the arc to the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1, which occurs when the current value is decreased, or by the rapid reduction of the volume of the high temperature gas located close to the arc.
Apart from the above, it is necessary to obtain a high pressure elevation at the zero current point, for achieving a high interruption performance. Therefore, the reduction of the pressure at the current zero point becomes more significant as the arc time is prolonged. Thus, it is difficult to maintain a high interruption performance. When the peak of the pressure increase value is increased, a high interruption performance can be maintained. However, it is clear that such a method would increase the reaction force to the driving force, and therefore it is not efficient.
Further, the pressure elevation in the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 at the interruption of a large current is achieved not by an increase in the density, caused by the compression and/or the flow of the gas from the compression room chamber S.sub.2, but by an increase in the temperature, caused by the high temperature gas from the arc. Consequently, when the gas flows out of the nozzle 7 while the temperature keeps on increasing after the interruption of the current, and the pressure decreases to substantially the same pressure of the gas-filled atmosphere, the gas density of the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 has already decreased significantly to a level lower than the initial value (which is the same as the gas density within the gas-filled atmosphere).
In order to maintain stable power supply after an accident in a power supply system, a gas circuit breaker is required to have a performance of a high speed electrode re-closing interruption, in which the electrode is re-closed immediately after an interruption, and thus another interruption is carried out immediately, as a specification of the device. When the gas density in the thermal pressure elevation room space S.sub.1 is significantly low after an interruption, it is very difficult to obtain a sufficiently high pressure elevation value when a re-interruption is carried out immediately after an interruption. Further, even if the pressure is elevated, a low-density gas is blown to the arc, and therefore the interruption performance is deteriorated. The deterioration of the high-speed electrode re-closing interruption performance is a serious problem, and as a solution, it is required to increase the gas compression cross sectional area of the compression room space S.sub.2 or to increase the driving energy. In the gas circuit breaker, there is an increased amount of load on the damper of the breaker, and therefore the size of the damper is increased.
In general, gas circuit breakers employ a damper operating on oil pressure or the like, for the purpose of decreasing the speed of the movable section immediately before the completion of the electrode opening operation, so that the section can stop at low impact. Although it has been stated above that an excessive pressure increase in a puffer-type gas circuit breaker which compresses the gas with a movable cylinder, is not desirable since it increases the driving energy, as far as the pressure elevation in the compression room immediately before the completion of the electrode opening operation is concerned, it is desirable for the reducing the speed, and further the load on the damper is lightened. In the case of the gas circuit breaker having the structure as shown in FIG. 1, the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2 is limited by the release valve, and in the final stage, it is further reduced by the groove 3d. Then, at the completion of the electrode opening operation, the pressure elevation becomes substantially zero. Therefore, the speed reduction effect for the movable section, caused by the pressure elevation in the compression room space S.sub.2, is not expected, and therefore the speed reduction must be taken care of only by the damper equipped. As a result, it is necessary to increase the size of the damper.
As described above, in order to solve the problems of the deterioration of the interruption performance and the enlargement of the equipment device, the size of the entire breaker including the driving mechanism must be increased to improve the performance. However, the enlargement of the size of the breaker will result in economical disadvantages in manufacturing and operation of the gas circuit breaker, and therefore it is not desirable.


A method for speech recognition. The method uses a single pronunciation estimator to train acoustic phoneme models and recognize utterances from multiple languages. The method includes accepting text spellings of training words in a plurality of sets of training words, each set corresponding to a different one of a plurality of languages. The method also includes, for each of the sets of training words in the plurality, receiving pronunciations for the training words in the set, the pronunciations being characteristic of native speakers of the language of the set, the pronunciations also being in terms of subword units at least some of which are common to two or more of the languages. The method also includes training a single pronunciation estimator using data comprising the text spellings and the pronunciations of the training words.

Speaker independent word recognition is an important technology for use in cell phones and other programmable, portable devices requiring user interaction. Such technology enables a user to call a person in his phone list by simply saying the proper name of that individual. First, a speech recognition system takes as input a text spelling of the proper name of the individual. The speech recognition system next maps the text spelling to an acoustic word model. The acoustic word model maps a proper name to sounds of utterances of the word. The acoustic word model joins a set of acoustic word models of proper names to be recognized by the speech recognition system. Upon receiving an utterance of a proper name by the user, the speech recognition system matches the utterance to the acoustic word models of the proper names to be recognized. The speech recognition system considers the best match to be the proper name that was uttered by the user. In some cases, a user's utterances of commands from a specified command set, in addition to proper names, can also be recognized by the speech recognition system.
Some speech recognition systems use a set of acoustic phoneme models to map text spellings of words to acoustic word models. A phoneme is a representation of any of the small units of speech sound in a language that assists to distinguish one word from another. For example, the phoneme "aa" is the 'a' sound in father, and the phoneme "jh" is the 'j' sound in joy. An acoustic phoneme model is a model of different possible acoustics that are associated with a given phoneme. Other subword units can also be used to represent speech sounds.
In some examples, the acoustic phoneme models are Hidden Markov Models (HMM). HMM are statistically trained models that yield the statistical likelihood that a particular series of sound was produced given that a known word was spoken.
Given the set of acoustic phoneme models, a speech recognition system can use a pronunciation estimator to map text spellings of words to be recognized into pronunciations. These pronunciations can be modeled as a sequence of phonemes. Next, the speech recognition system can map these pronunciations to some sequence of acoustic phoneme models using the set of acoustic phoneme models. The resulting sequences of acoustic phoneme models are the acoustic word models that are used to recognize utterances from the user.
Generating the pronunciation estimator for portable speech recognition systems has the following challenge. There are many people in contemporary society who function in a highly multilingual environment, such as is found in much of Europe. One might work with people from many different countries who speak many different languages. In the example of speech recognition of proper names, it is not uncommon for a multilingual speaker to say the name of a person from Mexico using a native Mexican accent, the name of a person from Germany using a native German accent, and so forth. It is also possible for a speaker to say the names of persons from Mexico and Germany using an American accent. Thus, there can be a one to many mapping from a text spelling of a name to its pronunciation.
Furthermore, there are a very large number of possible names for people (there are roughly two million different names in US phonebooks), and most portable speech recognition systems have small vocabularies to enable them to fit into the relatively small memories of portable devices such as cellphones. Thus, it is currently impractical to include the various pronunciations of all names in these portable devices.
In some cases, multilingual speech recognition has been employed in which pronunciations of words from different languages are represented using a common set of phonemes. Words in each language can be mapped to their pronunciations in a language-dependent manner, for example, using a different pronunciation dictionary for each language or using a language dependent pronunciation estimator.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


A method is described for performing fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) of various sizes simultaneously in one pipeline processor. The processor consists of several stages of butterfly computational elements alternated with delay-switch-delay (DSD) modules that reorder the data between the butterfly stages. The sequence of the DSD operations in the pipeline is made arbitrary. This flexibility in choosing the DSD sequence enhances the fault tolerance operation of the pipeline in case of a partial failure in one or more of the DSD modules. If one of the DSDs is no longer capable of operating in its prescribed mode, it is assigned a different operating mode. All the required changes are performed by software control without the need to physically remove or interchange any components. By properly ordering the input data to the pipeline and the butterfly twiddle factors, and by bypassing some butterfly elements for the smaller size transforms, it is shown that any mixture of FFT sizes can be performed. FFTs of radix 2, radix 4, and mixed 2 and 4 are considered. In each case, the principles of operation are explained and examples of timing diagrams are given.

The discrete Fourier transform (DFT) plays a key role in digital signal processing in areas such as spectral analysis, frequency-domain filtering, and polyphase transformations. Several efficient algorithms for computing the DFT have been proposed over the years. Indeed, the existence of such fast algorithms has made the DFT the workhorse of digital signal processing.
For each algorithm, one of several architectures may be chosen, depending on the given requirements (e.g., speed, cost, and power). For real-time, very high-speed signal processing, a dedicated special-purpose hardware processor is often required. An efficient pipeline architecture that implements the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm has been proposed and has received considerable attention. Interest is particularly great for spaceborne applications, such as satellite communications, where efficient implementations are of paramount importance because of power and size constraints.
The need for performing various size FFTs arises when digitally demultiplexing a number of frequency-multiplexed carriers that occupy bandwidths of various sizes, using a frequency-domain approach. An FFT is first performed on the digital samples of the composite signal. This is followed by multiplication of the resulting frequency coefficients across the overall spectrum by any desired filter functions to separate the various carriers and introduce spectral shaping, if desired. IFFTs are then performed on the individual carriers to recover the time domain waveforms. To minimize the amount of computation involved, the IFFT performed on a given carrier should only cover the frequency band occupied by that carrier. Thus, different carrier bandwidths will result in different IFFT sizes.
Multiple FFT sizes are also needed for multiple resolution spectral analysis and polyphase transformations on carriers of unequal size.
An old method of performing FFTs of various sizes dedicated a different processor to each size of FFT to be performed. Pipeline processors are often used when real time, high speed processing is desired. Therefore, in order to perform the different-size FFTs, several FFT pipelines were needed. The number of stages in each pipeline would be determined by the size of the FFT to be performed by the particular pipeline.
For each FFT pipeline, the sequence of the delays in the pipeline was strictly increasing or strictly decreasing.
However, the old pipeline method required a large amount of hardware to perform all the desired transforms which was disadvantageous. For example, if 3 different FFT sizes were required, 3 pipelines, each with a number of stages matched to one of the desired FFTs would be required.
Another disadvantage of the old method is that a failure in one of the delay elements could cause the entire pipeline processor to fail and consequently, the system was unable to perform more transforms having that particular size (assuming there was only one pipeline for each size transform).


In a receiver, a skew detector detects a skew between two synchronization symbols having different wavelengths among synchronization symbols included in received signals. A skew rough adjustment calculator calculates a delay compensation amount for each received signal based on the skew and a signal delay characteristic in a transmission path. A variable delay processor deskews the received signals based on the delay compensation amount.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a technology for correcting a skew. The present invention specifically relates to a technology for performing deskew to correct a skew.
2. Description of the Related Art
With recent progress in high bit-rate data-transmission in an optical communication system, transmission capacity is increasing. To achieving high bit-rate data-transmission, for example, wavelength division multiplexing can be used in which a plurality of signals is transmitted at different wavelengths.
In the wavelength division multiplexing, delay time due to optical fiber transmission is different with respect to each wavelength. Therefore, even if a plurality of signals each having a different wavelength are simultaneously transmitted from a transmission side, the signals do not always reach a reception side at the same time. A difference in transmission delay time of signals generated in the wavelength multiplexing method is generally referred to as skew.
FIG. 5 is a schematic for explaining a skew that occurs in a conventional optical fiber transmission system. The conventional optical fiber transmission system includes a transmitter 10 that transmits optical signals, and a receiver 20 that receives optical signals, which are connected to each other via an optical fiber 30.
The transmitter 10 includes an 8B10B encoder 11, an electro-optic converter 12, and a wavelength multiplexer 13. The 8B10B encoder 11 8B10B-encodes signals received via respective lanes (lanes 1 to 4). The electro-optic converter 12 converts an electric signal into an optical signal. The wavelength multiplexer 13 wavelength-multiplexes the optical signal.
The receiver 20 includes a wavelength demultiplexer 21, an opto-electric converter 22, and an 8B10B decoder 23. The wavelength demultiplexer 21 wavelength-demultiplexes a wavelength-multiplexed optical signal into signals of respective wavelengths. The opto-electric converter 22 converts an optical signal into an electric signal. The 8B10B decoder 23 8B10B-decodes the signals and performs deskew to correct a skew.
It is assumed herein that signals A5, B5, C5, and D5 of different wavelengths are simultaneously transmitted by the transmitter 10. Because of signal transmission delay characteristics of the optical fiber 30 depending on the signal wavelength, phases of the signals received by the receiver 20 are shifted, which generates a skew as shown in FIG. 5.
For example, when the transmission rate of the transmitter 10 is 10 Gb/s (the transmission rate of each lane after 8B10B encoding is 3.125 Gb/s), and an optical signal with a wavelength of 1.3 micrometers is transmitted via a 10-kilometer long single mode fiber (SMF), a skew of 1.4 nanoseconds (for about 4 bits) occurs.
Therefore, a specific synchronization symbol is embedded in a transmission signal by 8B10B encoding on the transmitter 10 side so that deskew is performed for compensating a skew between synchronization symbols detected on the receiver 20 side. As a result, a skew of up to about 30 nanoseconds can be compensated. Reference may be had to, for example, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc, "IEEE Std 802.3ae-2002, IEEE Standard for Information exchange between systems-Local and metropolitan area networks-Specific requirements, Part 3: Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) Access Method and Physical Later Specifications, Amendment: Media Access Control (MAC) Parameters, Physical Layers, and Management Parameters for 10 Gb/s Operation", pp. 289 to 310, Online, Aug. 30, 2002, retrieved from the Internet on May 25, 2006, <URL: http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802.3.html>.
In the conventional technology, however, when a modulation rate is increased or a transmission distance of the optical fiber 30 is extended, skew is increased to some extent. This makes it difficult to perform deskew appropriately.
For example, when the transmission rate of the transmitter 10 is 40 Gb/s (the transmission rate of each lane after 8B10B encoding is 12.5 Gb/s), and an optical signal with a wavelength of 1.5 micrometers is transmitted via a 40-kilometer long SMF, a skew of 60 nanoseconds occurs, which exceeds the skew compensation capacity of the 8B10B encoding.
FIG. 6 is a schematic for explaining problems in a conventional deskew process. In FIG. 6, it is assumed that synchronization symbols S1 and S2 are simultaneously transmitted in different wavelengths from the respective lanes 1 to 4 by the transmitter 10.
For convenience of explanation, the synchronization symbols S1 and S2 are shown differently. However, the synchronization symbols S1 and S2 are equivalent in practice, and the receiver 20 cannot distinguish the synchronization symbols S1 and S2 transmitted at different time points from each other.
The receiver 20 receives the synchronization symbols S1 and S2, and detects a skew. At this time, the receiver 20 determines the synchronization symbols S1 and S2 in each lane received closely in time to be the synchronization symbols S1 and S2 transmitted simultaneously by the transmitter 10, and detects a skew.
As shown in FIG. 6, when an excessive skew has occurred, the receiver 20 detects a skew from reception time of the synchronization symbols S1 and S2. Hence, a skew cannot be discerned correctly, and a correct deskew cannot be performed.
One approach to solve this problem could be to employ an encoding method more complicated than the 8B10B encoding. However, if a complicated encoding method is employed, the signal transmission rate increases, resulting in an increase in power consumption of the transmitter 10 and the receiver 20, or the time taken to achieve synchronization increases.
Thus, there is a need of a technology for performing deskew effectively without complicated encoding even when a large skew has occurred.


Forming fabric that includes a top layer having a plurality of top warp yarns woven with a plurality of top weft yarns. A bottom layer has a plurality of bottom warp yarns woven with a plurality of bottom weft yarns. A plurality of intrinsic binding yarns is utilized. At least one of the intrinsic binding yarns weaves with some of the top layer yarns and binds with one of the bottom layer yarns in each repeat.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to papermaking, and relates more specifically to multilayer fabrics employed in papermaking. The invention also relates to the binding of triple layer forming fabrics with weft yarns. The present invention also relates to multilayer papermaker's fabrics that employ weave patterns which can provide one or more of the following advantages: impart a disturbed and/or textured surface onto the paper; produce an improved three-dimensional formation of the paper sheet; produce an improved textured board or packaging paper
2. Discussion of Background Information
In the conventional fourdrinier papermaking process, a water slurry, or suspension, of cellulosic fibers (known as the paper "stock") is fed onto the top of the upper run of an endless belt of woven wire and/or synthetic material that travels between two or more rolls. The belt, often referred to as a "forming fabric," provides a papermaking surface on the upper surface of its upper run which operates as a filter to separate the cellulosic fibers of the paper stock from the aqueous medium, thereby forming a wet paper web. The aqueous medium drains through mesh openings of the forming fabric, known as drainage holes, by gravity or vacuum located on the lower surface of the upper run (i.e., the "machine side") of the fabric.
After leaving the forming section, the paper web is transferred to a press section of the paper machine, where it is passed through the nips of one or more pairs of pressure rollers covered with another fabric, typically referred to as a "press felt." Pressure from the rollers removes additional moisture from the web; the moisture removal is often enhanced by the presence of a "batt" layer of the press felt. The paper is then transferred to a dryer section for further moisture removal. After drying, the paper is ready for secondary processing and packaging.
Typically, papermaker's fabrics are manufactured as endless belts by one of two basic weaving techniques. In the first of these techniques, fabrics are flat woven by a flat weaving process, with their ends being joined to form an endless belt by any one of a number of well-known joining methods, such as dismantling and reweaving the ends together (commonly known as splicing), or sewing on a pin-seamable flap or a special foldback on each end, then reweaving these into pin-seamable loops. A number of auto-joining machines are available, which for certain fabrics may be used to automate at least part of the joining process. In a flat woven papermaker's fabric, the warp yarns extend in the machine direction and the filling yarns extend in the cross machine direction.
In the second basic weaving technique, fabrics are woven directly in the form of a continuous belt with an endless weaving process. In the endless weaving process, the warp yarns extend in the cross machine direction and the filling yarns extend in the machine direction. Both weaving methods described hereinabove are well known in the art, and the term "endless belt" as used herein refers to belts made by either method.
Effective sheet and fiber support are important considerations in papermaking, especially for the forming section of the papermaking machine, where the wet web is initially formed. Additionally, the forming fabrics should exhibit good stability when they are run at high speeds on the papermaking machines, and preferably are highly permeable to reduce the amount of water retained in the web when it is transferred to the press section of the paper machine. In both tissue and fine paper applications (i.e., paper for use in quality printing, carbonizing, cigarettes, electrical condensers, and like) the papermaking surface comprises a very finely woven or fine wire mesh structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,152,326 to VOHRINGER, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a composite papermaking fabric including an upper fabric upon which a fiber suspension will be deposited for producing paper and a lower fabric or running surface being driven by the papermaking machine. The upper and lower fabrics are connected by binding threads. Use of separate, independent binding threads or binding threads which are only a part of the upper layer is replaced by the interweaving of fabric-born threads which are an integral part of the lower fabric and fabric-born threads which are an integral part of the upper fabric. Relative slippage between the upper and lower fabric layers is eliminated or decreased and the strength of the connection is increased. The marking of the paper is decreased. The fabric-born threads of one fabric layer cross the fabric-born threads of the other after at least one length of weave pattern. VOHRINGER, however, utilizes a plain weave and vertically stacked pairs of intrinsic binders. Furthermore, the fabric of VOHRINGER is designed with a smooth surface, i.e., it utilizes a plain weave which is undisturbed and/or untextured, so as to impart this type of surface to the paper. That is, the fabric is not utilized to provide texturing to the paper. Finally, the binders in VOHRINGER are not designed to float over any crossing yarns and do not extend above a main paper side surface (as defined by an upper surface of the non-binding yarns) of the fabric and are not utilized to impart surface impressions into the paper surface, i.e., to produce a disturbed or textured surface on the paper.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,627 to SEABROOK et al., the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a composite forming fabric in which the woven paper and machine side layers are interconnected by pairs of intrinsic weft binder yarns which interweave with the paper side layer to occupy an unbroken weft path. Each member interweaves sequentially with the warps of the paper side layer and with at least one warp of the machine side layer. Each part of the unbroken weft path is separated from adjacent parts by at least one paper side layer warp yarn. The unbroken weft path is the same, or different, to the weft path of the immediately adjacent paper side layer weft yarns. This arrangement overcomes the paper side layer surface imperfections, which cause an unacceptable level of marking, hitherto associated with the use of additional weft binder yarns in composite fabrics. SEABROOK, however, also utilizes a plain weave and vertically stacked pairs of intrinsic weft binders. Furthermore, the fabric of SEABROOK is designed with a smooth surface, i.e., it utilizes a plain weave which is undisturbed and/or untextured, so as to impart this type of surface to the paper. That is, the fabric is not utilized to provide texturing to the paper. Finally, the weft binders in SEABROOK are not designed to float over any crossing yarns and do not extend above a main paper side surface (as defined by an upper surface of the non-binding yarns) of the fabric and are not utilized to impart surface impressions into the paper surface, i.e., to produce a disturbed or textured surface on the paper.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,967,195 to WARD, the disclosure of which is hereby expressly incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a multi-layer papermaker's forming fabric has stitching yarns integrated into the papermaking surface. Each of a plurality of repeating units of the fabric comprises: a set of top machine direction yarns; a set of top cross-machine direction yarns interwoven with the top machine direction yarns; a set of bottom machine direction yarns; a set of bottom cross-machine direction yarns interwoven with the bottom machine direction yarns; and pairs of first and second stitching yarns. The stitching yarn pairs are positioned between pairs of top cross-machine direction yarns. The stitching yarns of each pair are interwoven with the top and bottom machine direction yarns such that, as a fiber support portion of the first stitching yarn is interweaving with the top machine direction yarns, a binding portion of the second stitching yarn is positioned below the top machine direction yarns, and such that as a fiber support portion of the second stitching yarn is interweaving with the top machine direction yarns, a binding portion of the first stitching yarn is positioned below the top machine direction yarns. The first and second stitching yarns cross each other as they pass below a transitional top machine direction yarn. Also, each of the binding portions of the first and second stitching yarns passes below at least one of the bottom machine direction yarns. In this configuration, the stitching yarns are completely integrated into the top, or papermaking, surface of the fabric, and therefore do not adversely impact the papermaking qualities of the fabric. WARD, however, utilizes vertically stacked pairs of intrinsic weft binders. Furthermore, the fabric of WARD is apparently not designed to produce disturbed and/or textured surface onto the paper. That is, the fabric does not appear to provide texturing to the paper. Finally, the weft binders in WARD do not extend above a main paper side surface (as defined by an upper surface of the non-binding yarns) of the fabric and are not utilized to impart surface impressions into the paper surface, i.e., to produce a disturbed or textured surface on the paper.

Forming fabric having binding weft yarns