A stereo laparoscope for producing a stereoscopic optical image of an intracorporeal region to be view through a small incision. The stereo laparoscope includes a conventional elongate tubular casing having an illuminating window and left and right observation windows disposed in a distal extremity thereof, said distal extremity for insertion within the human body. At least two separate optical imaging assemblies are disposed within the casing to produce a stereoscopic optical image. At least one of the optical imaging assemblies is moveable relative to the other. Focusing devices are synchronized with variation in depth perception to permit variation in image distance responsive to variation in depth perception.

1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for producing a stereoscopic optical image. More particularly, the invention is directed to a stereo video laparoscope utilizing, in combination, two optical imaging assemblies, at least one of which is moveable relative to the other to vary depth perception, and with corresponding focusing adjustment of the lenses responsive to the variation in depth perception.
2. The Background Art
Modern surgeons seek to perform necessary surgical procedures on a patient while minimizing the disturbance and destruction to intervening tissues and organs. To this end, medical endoscopes have been developed as an aid to diagnostic, surgical and other medical procedures. Medical endoscopes enable visual examination of body channels, cavities, spaces and internal organs through a natural opening or small incision, and thus without conventional surgery. Medical endoscopes are also useful for visual observation during surgery. Specific endoscopes have been developed for access to various body lumens and cavities. For example, laparoscopes, bronchoscopes, sigmoidoscopes, gastroscopes, and so forth, are all available. The main difference between these devices is the size of the instrument. However, the general configuration and method of use of such scopes are quite similar. Many of the body cavities and hollow conduits (e.g. peritoneal, abdominal, bronchial, lung, esophagal, etc.) can thus be accessed through endoscopic means, without surgical incisions and the resulting trauma to the patient.
Endoscopes typically include a long, thin tubular casing optically connected to a viewing mechanism. The tubular casing is narrow enough to insert through a small natural or surgical opening in the body. When the endoscope is inserted and positioned for use, an image of the object being viewed is formed at an inserted end thereof by an objective lens. The image is passed through a series of relay lenses down the cylinder to an eye lens or video camera at a viewing end of the endoscope. A major drawback to using an endoscope as a surgical aid is that it gives a monocular view and therefore no depth perception. Surgical procedures such as suction, irrigation, biopsy, incisions, suturing and cutting must be learned without the benefit of three dimensional visualization.
Endoscopes have recently been developed which produce the illusion of three dimensions or depth by combining two dimensional images. However, the mechanics of providing such a stereoscopic or three dimensional view require an increase in the size, weight and/or number of endoscopes, thus adding to the problem of limited portal entry space and convenience.
The stereoscopic effect is created by producing two optical images of the desired region, each image having a different point of view, such as a left image and a right image. It is known to incorporate two separate optical fiber bundles in parallel inside a single casing to add the advantages of fiberoptics to stereoscopic viewing. The two images are carried by the two optical fiber bundles, respectively, to left and right image sensors, which may comprise charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras or other image sensing devices. The sensing devices convert the left and right optical images into left and right video images, respectively. The video images are then presented as alternating left-right images on a viewing monitor to the user to thereby create a stereoscopic or three-dimensional optical view.
Although prior art endoscopes have succeeded in producing a stereoscopic or three dimensional effect, they are characterized by a number of disadvantages. The known stereoscopic instruments are not designed to give good stereoscopic viewing inside the larger body cavities such as the pleural and peritoneal cavities. Moreover, they lack adequate depth perception variability.

Stereo laparoscope with synchronized optics


A tangential air entry fuel nozzle has a longitudinal axis and two cylindrical-arc scrolls with the centerline of each offset from that of the other. Overlapping ends of these scrolls form an air inlet slot therebetween for the introduction of an air/fuel mixture into the fuel nozzle. A combustor-end endplate has a central opening to permit air and fuel to exit into a combustor, while at the opposite end another endplate blocks the nozzle flow area. The scrolls are secured between these endplates. A centerbody is located between the scrolls coaxial with the axis. The centerbody has a base which includes at least one air supply port extending therethrough, and an internal passageway. The centerbody includes a frustum portion and aerodynamic ramps that prevent flow reversal and flame stabilization between the endplates.

The production of nitrous oxides (hereinafter "NOx") occurs as a result of combustion at high temperatures. NOx is a notorious pollutant, and as a result, combustion devices which produce NOx are subject to ever more stringent standards for emissions of such pollutants. Accordingly, much effort is being put forth to reduce the formation of NOx in combustion devices.
One solution has been to premix the fuel with an excess of air such that the combustion occurs with local high excess air, resulting in a relatively low combustion temperature and thereby minimizing the formation of NOx. A fuel nozzle which so operates is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,634, which discloses a scroll swirler with a conical center body. The scroll swirler comprises two offset cylindrical-arc scrolls connected to two endplates. Combustion air enters the swirler through two rectangular slots formed by the offset scrolls, and exits through a combustor inlet in one endplate and flows into the combustor. A linear array of orifices located on the outer scroll opposite the inner trailing edge injects fuel into the airflow at each inlet slot from a manifold to produce a uniform fuel air mixture before exiting into the combustor.
Premix fuel nozzles of this type have demonstrated low emissions of NOx relative to fuel nozzles of the prior art. Unfortunately, the nozzle experienced durability problems related to severe deterioration of the centerbody as a result of the flame stabilizing within the premixing volume of the nozzle. As a result, the operational life of such nozzles when used in gas turbine engines has been limited.
What is needed is a tangential entry nozzle that significantly reduces the tendency of the combustion flame to stabilize inside of the fuel nozzle, and tends to disgorge any flame that does migrate into the mixing zone of the fuel nozzle.

Flame disgorging two stream tangential entry nozzle


A radio base station (eNB1), when having received an upstream radio signal of a radio frequency band from a radio terminal (UE2), calculates, based on a demodulation reference signal included in the upstream radio signal, and stores reception weights of antennas (108A to 108D). The radio base station (eNB1) further sets, as the transmission weight of each of the antennas (108A to 108D), that one of the stored reception weights of the antennas (108A to 108D) which was calculated during a past given interval and which corresponds to a frequency band that is the nearest to the frequency band of a PDSCH that is a target for setting.

In 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project), according to a radio communication system corresponding to LTE (Long Term Evolution) having a standard being currently designed, a radio base station eNB performs assignment of a radio resource in radio communication between the radio base station eNB and a radio terminal UE (for example, refer to Non Patent Literature 1). Furthermore, in the radio communication system corresponding to the LTE, one of FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) and TDD (Time Division Duplex) is employed in the radio communication between the radio base station eNB and the radio terminal UE.
Moreover, in an LTE (TDD-LTE) radio communication system employing the TDD, there has been discussed a feature where the radio base station eNB performs control for adaptively directing a beam (adaptive array control) toward the radio terminal UE at the time of transmission of a downlink radio signal, in order to ensure communication quality between a radio base station eNB and a radio terminal UE that is moving.
For example, in the next-generation PHS (XGP) radio communication system, a frequency band for a downlink radio signal assigned to a radio terminal is equal to a frequency band for an uplink radio signal. Thus, a radio base station is able to calculate an antenna weight for the downlink radio signal with the frequency band, which is equal to that of the uplink radio signal, on the basis of a propagation environment of the frequency band for the uplink radio signal, which is understood by the uplink radio signal from the radio terminal.
Meanwhile, in the TDD-LTE radio communication system, OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access) is employed in downlink radio communication and SC-FDMA (Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access) is employed in uplink radio communication. In these multiplexing schemes, a radio resource is arranged in two dimensions of a frequency and a time to realize user multiplexing, and there is a case in which a frequency band for a downlink radio signal assigned to a radio terminal UE is not equal to a frequency band for an uplink radio signal.
Therefore, when the uplink radio signal was received from a radio terminal UE, a radio base station eNB may not calculate an antenna weight for the downlink radio signal with the frequency band, which is equal to that of the uplink radio signal, on the basis of the propagation environment of the frequency band for the uplink radio signal.

Radio base station and communication control method


The invention provided Mucorales CotH polypeptides and encoding nucleic acid molecules. The Mucorales CotH polypeptides and encoding nucleic acids can be advantageously used to diagnose, treat or prevent fungal conditions, in particular mucormycosis.

The present invention relates generally to compositions and methods for detecting, treating and preventing infectious diseases in a patient, and more specifically to compositions and methods that target specific proteins or nucleic acids unique to fungi that cause mucormycosis.
About 180 of the 250,000 known fungal species are recognized to cause disease (mycosis) in man and animal. Some of fungi can establish an infection in all exposed subjects, e.g., the systemic pathogens Histoplasma capsulatum and Coccidioides immitis. Others, such as Candida, Asergillus species and Zygomycetes are opportunist pathogens which ordinarily cause disease only in a compromised host. Fungi of the class Zygomycetes, order Mucorales, can cause mucormycosis, a potentially deadly fungal infection in human. Fungi belonging to the order Mucorales are distributed into at least six families, all of which can cause mucormycosis (Ibrahim et al. Zygomycosis, p. 241-251, In W. E. Dismukes, P. G. Pappas, and J. D. Sobel (ed.), Clinical Mycology, Oxford University Press, New York (2003); Kwon-Chung, K. J., and J. E. Bennett, Mucormycosis, p. 524-559, Medical Mycology, Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia (1992), and Ribes et al. Zygomycetes in Human Disease, Clin Microbiol Rev 13:236-301 (2000)). However, fungi belonging to the family Mucoraceae, and specifically the species Rhizopus oryzae (Rhizopus arrhizus), are by far the most common cause of infection (Ribes et al., supra). Increasing cases of mucormycosis have been also reported due to infection with Cunninghamella spp. in the Cunninghamellaceae family (Cohen-Abbo et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases 17:173-77 (1993); Kontoyianis et al., Clinical Infectious Diseases 18:925-28 (1994); Kwon-Chung et al., American Journal of Clinical Pathology 64:544-48 (1975), and Ventura et al., Cancer 58:1534-36 (1986)). The remaining four families of the Mucorales order are less frequent causes of disease (Bearer et al., Journal of Clinical Microbiology 32:1823-24 (1994); Kamalam and Thambiah, Sabouraudia 18:19-20 (1980); Kemna et al., Journal of Clinical Microbiology 32:843-45 (1994); Lye et al., Pathology 28:364-65 (1996), and Ribes et al., (supra)).
The agents of mucormycosis almost uniformly affect immunocompromised hosts (Spellberg et al., Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 18:556-69 (2005)). The major risk factors for mucormycosis include uncontrolled diabetes mellitus in ketoacidosis known as diabetes ketoacidosis (DKA), other forms of metabolic acidosis, treatment with corticosteroids, organ or bone marrow transplantation, neutropenia, trauma and burns, malignant hematological disorders, and deferoxamine chelation-therapy in subjects receiving hemodialysis.
Recent reports have demonstrated a striking increase in the number of reported cases of mucormycosis over the last two decades (Gleissner et al., Leuk. Lymphoma 45(7):1351-60 (2004)). There has also been an alarming rise in the incidence of mucormycosis at major transplant centers. For example, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Marr et al. have described a greater than doubling in the number of cases from 1985-1989 to 1995-1999 (Marr et al., Clin. Infect. Dis. 34(7):909-17 (2002)). Similarly, Kontoyiannis et al. have described a greater than doubling in the incidence of mucormycosis in transplant subjects over a similar time-span (Kontoyiannis et al, Clin. Infect. Dis. 30(6):851-6 (2000)). Given the increasing prevalence of diabetes, cancer, and organ transplantation in the aging United States population, the rise in incidence of mucormycosis is anticipated to continue unabated for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, there exists a need for compounds and methods that can reduce the risk of mucormycosis pathogenesis and provide effective therapies without adverse effects. The present invention satisfies this need and provides related advantages as well.

Immunotherapy and diagnosis of mucormycosis using CotH

LOS ANGELES BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE AT HARBOR-UCLA MEDICAL CENTER


This invention relates to a process for making 3-hydroxypropanal by intimately contacting. (a) ethylene oxide, PA0 (b) ditertiary phosphine-modified cobalt carbonyl catalyst, said phosphine being a hydrocarbylene-bis(monophosphabicyclononane) in which each phosphorus atom is joined to hydrocarbylene and is a member of a bridge linkage without being a bridgehead atom and which hydrocarbylene-bis(monophosphabicyclononane) has 18 to 50 carbon atoms, 8 carbon atoms thereof together with a phosphorus atom being members of each of the two bicyclic skeletal structures, PA0 (c) a catalyst promoter comprising an acid and a metal salt promoter selected from a salt of a metal of Group IIA, Group IIB, Group IIIB and the Rare Earth Series of the Periodic Table of the Elements (CAS version), PA0 (d) carbon monoxide, and PA0 (e) hydrogen, the molar ratio of carbon monoxide to hydrogen being from about 4:1 to about 1:6,. in liquid-phase solution in an inert reaction solvent, at a temperature of from about 30.degree. C. to about 150.degree. C. and a pressure of from about 50 psi to about 10,000 psi. The use of the acid/metal salt promoter enhances the activity of the catalyst.

3-Hydroxypropanal is a useful chemical intermediate. It can be readily converted to 1,3-propanediol which finds use as an intermediate in the production of polyester fibers and films.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,463,819 and No. 3,456,017 teach a process for the hydroformylation of ethylene oxide to produce 1,3-propanediol and 3-hydroxypropanal using a tertiary phosphine-modified cobalt carbonyl catalysts.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,687,981 uses cobalt octacarbonyl as a catalyst and discloses hydroquinone as a catalyst stabilizer in the hydroformylation of ethylene oxide. Inorganic halogen-containing compounds, such as hydrochloric acid and potassium chloride, are disclosed hydroformylation promoters, i.e., compounds that increase the conversion of ethylene oxide to the desired product. Trace amounts are said to be useful.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,401,204 and No. 3,527,818 ditertiary phosphine ligands and cobalt catalysts prepared therefrom are described as being suitable for hydroformylating olefins to alcohols.
It is an object of this invention to use an improved cobalt-ditertiary phosphine ligand catalyst in combination with a particular catalyst promoter system to hydroformylate ethylene oxide to 3-hydroxypropanal in high yield, which 3-hydroxypropanal can then be hydrogenated with hydrogen to 1,3-propanediol in substantially quantitative yield using conventional hydrogenation catalysts.

Process for making 3-hydroxypropanal and 1,3-propanediol


The present invention relates to pre-distortion in transmitter circuits and provides a circuit for introducing pre-distortion into the output of a transmitter, wherein said pre-distortion comprises a pre-cursor, a cursor and a post-cursor, the circuit comprising: a first driver arranged to switch an output drive between said pre-cursor and said cursor; a second driver arranged to switch an output drive between said post-cursor and said cursor; a third driver arranged to switch an output drive between a positive cursor drive and a negative cursor drive. The arrangement provided give flexibility when setting the pre-cursor, cursor and post-cursor levels.

The present invention relates to pre-distortion in transmitter circuits. In particular, the invention relates to the use and control of pre-cursor, cursor and post-cursor signals in a high data rate transmitter.
High speed data transfer between semiconductor devices in an electronic system may be achieved by the use of a serialiser/deserialiser (SerDes). In order to avoid the use of a plurality of parallel connections between devices, a single differential analogue path is used running at a high data rate. One exemplary arrangement is specified by IEEE 802.3/AE/P.
It is well known to provide pre-distortion to signals for transmission in an attempt to cancel out the distortion that will be introduced into the signal by the transmission channel.
By way of example, FIG. 6a shows a simple square wave that it to be transmitted over a channel. FIG. 6b shows that signal after is has been subjected to pre-distortion in an attempt to compensate for the impact of the channel on the signal.
The signal in FIG. 6b includes a negative pre-cursor element (indicated by the reference numeral 600), a large cursor element (indicated by the reference numeral 602) and a post cursor element (indicated by the reference numeral 604) between the level of the pre-cursor and the cursor. As shown in FIG. 6b, the pre-cursor element 600 is transmitted before the cursor element and the post-cursor element 604 is transmitted after the cursor element.


Uneven sintering is prevented in a sintering machine, and thus sintered ore having high strength and a high lump yield rate is manufactured. A method for manufacturing sintered ore comprising: charging sintering raw material comprising fine ore and carbon material on a circulatively moving pallet to form a raw material layer; igniting the carbon material on a surface of the raw material layer and sucking air from above the raw material layer down to below the palette so that the air is introduced into the raw material layer; and combusting the carbon material in the raw material layer to thereby manufacture sintered ore, wherein fuel gas is discharged from a nozzle at a flow speed of 40 m/s or more, the discharged fuel gas is combusted to generate combustion gas, and the combustion gas is used for igniting the carbon material.

For manufacturing sintered ore, a downward suction-type Dwight Lloyd sintering machine is widely used. In the downward suction-type Dwight Lloyd sintering machine, raw material comprising fine ore and carbon material such as coke breeze which functions as fuel are mixed and charged on a palette to form a raw material layer. Subsequently, the coke breeze on a surface of the raw material layer is ignited using an ignition furnace installed above the raw material layer and air above the raw material layer is sucked downward by negative pressure of a wind box installed below the palette. As the result, in the raw material layer, combustion of the coke breeze is gradually shifted downward in the layer to proceed sintering of the raw material, forming a sinter cake. The obtained sinter cake is crushed into lumps having a suitable particle size and subjected to particle size adjustment. Then, the lumps are charged into a blast furnace, where the sintered ore is reduced into pig iron.
As a burner used in the ignition furnace of the sintering machine, typically used are a slit burner in which fuel gas and air for combustion are pre-mixed and blown from a slit-shaped nozzle to combust the fuel gas and a line burner which has many nozzles for fuel gas and air for combustion disposed in the width direction of an ignition furnace (a direction intersecting a shift direction of a raw material layer). In recent years, a burner which has a structure as described in JP 2013-194991 A (PTL 1) is proposed.


Various aspects of the disclosure relate to modular sill systems for sliding panel doors and windows, collectively “sliding fenestration units.” In various examples, modular sill systems include multiple separate and distinct base components that provide tracks on which one or more panels are able to slide.

Sliding door or window fenestration units may have more than one sliding, or venting panel. Typically, such fenestration units incorporate multiple tracks upon which the sliding panels travel. Often times, fenestration units with multiple panels are manufactured as custom units for a particular opening. Improvements in the ability to manufacture units with multiple, sliding panels in an effective manner, with proper performance characteristics (e.g., water performance), remain to be realized.

Sill systems for sliding fenestration units


Described herein are hardware monitors arranged to detect illegal firmware instructions in a firmware binary image using a hardware design and one or more formal assertions. The hardware monitors include monitor and detection logic configured to detect when an instantiation of the hardware design has started and/or stopped execution of the firmware and to detect when the instantiation of the hardware design has decoded an illegal firmware instruction. The hardware monitors also include assertion evaluation logic configured to determine whether the firmware binary image comprises an illegal firmware instruction by evaluating one or more assertions that assert that if a stop of firmware execution has been detected, that a decode of an illegal firmware instruction has (or has not) been detected. The hardware monitor may be used by a formal verification tool to exhaustively verify that the firmware boot image does not comprise an illegal firmware instruction, or during simulation to detect illegal firmware instructions in a firmware boot image.

As is known to a person of skill in the art, firmware is a set of executable instructions that is stored in non-volatile memory (e.g. read-only-memory (ROM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), and flash-ROM) of an electronic device so the firmware remains in the memory of the device even without power. Firmware may comprise instructions for configuring, and controlling the operation of, hardware components of an electronic device. Some firmware may only include instructions that comprise boot data that initializes one or more hardware components. For example, the basic-input-output system (BIOS) firmware for a computer motherboard comprises instructions that, on powering up, initialize the hardware. However, other firmware may also comprise an operating system or control program.
Firmware is at the heart of every electronic device including routers, portable audio players, mobile phones, digital cameras, all the way down to keyboards and mice.
Since the firmware controls the hardware components of an electronic device errors or bugs in the firmware can be catastrophic.
The embodiments described below are provided by way of example only and are not limiting of implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known methods and systems for identifying errors or bugs in firmware.

Verifying firmware binary images using a hardware design and formal assertions


A convertible work station composed of chair and desk sections which are separated from each other in an active mode of the station and are combined in a storage mode to form a compact cube having square faces. The chair section is defined by a seat mounted between parallel front and rear side panels bridged by a square end panel to form an alcove, the rear side panel also being square and the front side panel being half square. The desk section is defined by a square desk top mounted on an L-shaped base formed by a square rear side panel hinged to the square rear panel of the chair section, and a half-square end panel.

1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to work stations, and more particularly to a station having interhinged chair and desk sections which are separated in the active mode of the station to create an entry into the station, and are combined in the storage mode to form a compact cube.
2. Status of Prior Art
A work station is a segregated area usually in an office, that is outfitted with a desk and a chair for a single worker. The station is furnished with other equipment necessary to the worker's activity, such as a computer and a computer terminal or a word processor.
To create several work stations in an office facility, the common practice is to partition the available space into alcoves, each large enough to accommodate a desk and a chair and whatever equipment is required by a worker occupying the alcove.
The serious drawback of this multiple work station arrangement is its lack of flexibility, for the partitioning of the available space must be such as to make each alcove accessible without having to pass through other alcoves. Hence it is not possible to rearrange the configuration of the alcoves without radically changing the partitioning.
All work stations must provide the worker with a desk. If the ground area defined by the work station is small, there may not be adequate room to accommodate a standard office desk. Thus in the space divider system disclosed in the Morrison patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,024,030, assigned to Knoll International, Inc., a well-known producer of office furniture, the work station is such as to integrate the desk with the panels forming the walls of the station. In the Morrison arrangement, the panels are interconnected by slotted vertical posts adapted to support brackets which are cantilevered from the posts, a desk top being mounted on these brackets. One can also mount shelves on other brackets within the work station.
The concern of the present invention is with a self-sufficient work station that can be placed wherever a suitable site is available in an-office, a school, a factory or other facility. An example of such a work station is a library carrel for private study which takes the form of a partitioned nook adjacent the stacks in a library.
A typical carrel is provided with a small desk placed within the enclosure and a chair positioned next to the desk. The drawback of a carrel or other self-sufficient work station is that it occupies as much space when in use as when it is vacant.
In this age of information, computers linked to an Internet highway are essential to students. In some schools, work stations are provided for individual student use, each station being equipped not only with a desk and a chair, but also with a computer and a computer terminal. In this way a student occupying the station has access to a world-wide reservoir of information.
It is desirable that students not only be provided with computers, but that the students be-given an environment conducive to the efficient use of computer. To this end, a work station is the best environment for a computer, for it gives the student operating the computer the privacy he needs to operate the computer and to observe the computer terminal without being distracted by other students operating computers.
In many schools, whether public or private, space is at a premium and therefore must be put to efficient use. When a significant portion of the available space in a school is occupied by work stations, these stations which are only in use for a limited period by students in the course of a school day, nevertheless preempt the use of the space occupied by the stations.
Self-sufficient work stations, when not in use, may be shifted to one side of a room or to a storage area. But in either case, the work stations occupy as much space when not in use as when in use. And storage areas in most schools are incapable of accommodating a large number of work stations.
There is therefore not only a growing need for computer-equipped work stations, but also stations of this type that when not in use take up a relatively small space. Yet in modern schools, there is increasing pressure to provide the students with computers, for to educate the student and make available to him the wealth of information to which a computer has access, the student must be taught to operate a computer. Thus there is not only a growing need for computer-equipped work stations, but also for work stations that when not in use, can be converted into a more compact storable form.


A roll (10) of glass ribbon (20), having a thickness of 0.3 mm or less, wherein a thickness compliant material interlayer (40) is wound together with the glass ribbon. The characteristics of the interlayer are chosen to form the roll with minimal lateral offset (9). For example, the static coefficient of friction between the interlayer and the glass ribbon may be greater than or equal to 3.0 (as measured with a vertical force of 0.5 N). Other characteristics may include the width, thickness, and compliance, of the interlayer. There is also disclosed a method of rolling a glass ribbon wherein the roll winding parameters, for example web tension and pressure between the layers of the roll, are chosen to minimize the lateral offset.

Although formed as a continuous ribbon, glass is typically segmented into sheets as soon as it has cooled and solidified. Recent product trends—in ePaper front plane substrates, protective cover sheets in photovoltaic modules, touch sensors, solid state lighting, and electronics, for example—have resulted in requirements for thinner and thinner glass. As glass thicknesses continues to decrease, however, these sheets become more flexible. This creates a challenge from a handling perspective, particularly for glass of 0.3 mm or thinner. Accordingly, there have been attempts to roll thin glass as a manner of facilitating handling. However, there are several unique features of glass that create challenges for successfully implementing a rolling process. First the edge "beads" of the glass, as formed, are substantially thicker than the constant thickness area in between. Second glass is extremely sensitive to surface defects. These defects create stress points that generate cracks and lead to breakage. Thus it is not advisable to have direct surface to surface contact of glass to itself, as is typical in a spooled roll of material. The challenges from these first two characteristics have been addressed by using various interleaf materials between layers of the glass ribbon when winding. Third, as noticed by the inventors of the present disclosure, and which has gone unaddressed—in terms of their effect on rolling thin glass ribbon, i.e. 0.3 mm or thinner—to this point as far as the present inventors are aware, is that the forming process can introduce differential thickness across the width of the glass ribbon and/or camber (continuous curvature in one direction caused by differential cooling between the two edge beads). When rolling a glass ribbon with differential cross-ribbon thickness and/or camber, lateral forces are generated in the spooled roll that result in angled, rather than straight, side walls on the wound roll. In some cases, the angle of the side wall may lead to the glass ribbon contacting a flange of a spool onto which the glass ribbon is being wound, thereby risking damage to the glass ribbon. Additionally, the angled side wall of the spool leads to difficulties in processing, when unwinding the roll to use the glass ribbon in a continuous manufacturing process. Accordingly, there is a need for rolls of wound glass ribbon having straighter side walls.

Roll of flexible glass and method for rolling


A submount is used to mount a diode between two metal areas on the upper surface of a substrate. One of the areas is connected to a metal plate at the lower surface of the substrate through a via. The submount is clamped between two metal sheets. The top metal sheet has a through-hole for anchoring and self-aligning the diode. The electrodes of the diode are each coupled to one of the clamping metal sheets. Clamping metals provide pressure contact without soldering to the contact. But soldering can be alternatively used to enhance product reliability. Either the top metal sheet or the bottom metal sheet can be fully or selectively coating of solder for batch soldering at the contact point upon heating. The large metal plates and the large metal clamping sheets provide good heat sink and speedy soldering.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to diode package, particularly to light emitting diodes or face emission laser diode.
2. Brief Description of Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 6,642,618B2 disclosed a light emitting diode (LED) 102. The LED has two bottom electrodes mounted on a submount 108 through solder bumps 103. The submount has two metallic sections 109 contacting to two respective electrodes. The submount 108 has two through holes 111 lined with metallic lining for coupling the two top metallic sections 109 to the bottom of the submount as extensions 110. Subsequently, the submount 108 can be placed on a printed circuit board 101a, which has two metal pads 101b for coupling with the extensions 110. The structure forms a diode unit or a matrix array.
The prior art used a printed circuit board 101a as a motherboard, and the submount 108 is connected to the motherboard 101a by means of soldering. In recent years, a bottleneck in the application of LEDs is the heat dissipation problem. The glass fiber circuit board does not have good heat dissipating property. A ceramic board has better heat dissipation property, but is more costly and requires time-consuming soldering to mount the submount to the motherboard.

Submount for diode with single bottom electrode


A system and method provide for adaptively monitoring and reporting pulse train characteristics. In one embodiment a DSP operating within a voice media gateway (VMG) is initialized with signal processing criteria, at least one control parameter and, optionally, one or more pulse train characteristic indicators for indicating pulse train characteristics to be determined or reported in accordance with the control parameter or parameters.

Various mechanisms for indicating the occurrence and/or extent of telephone calls or other voice/multimedia signals over a switched network are well known. Channel Associated Signaling (CAS), for example, remains widely used in voice media gateways (MGs) of many developing countries in conjunction with R2 signaling protocols for detecting pulse train type metering signals used in billing telephone calls. Such mechanisms typically provide a digital signal processor (DSP) within an MG that receives predetermined signal detection constraints from an MG controller or by user via configuration interface. For simplicity we are considering only the first case in this document. The DSP uses the constraints to identify received pulse train pulses for determining a pulse count or train frequency, and transmits a resultant value back to the MG controller (MGC). However, conventional signal handling may well fail to meet sometimes competing operational characteristics, such as scalability, accurate signal detection, efficient and complete signal reporting, and count or statistical information preservation.
Representative conventional R2 variants include predetermined signal processing constraints: minimum recognition time (MinMake), maximum recognition time (MaxMake), minimum break time (MinBreak), maximum break time (MaxBreak), current receive pattern (CurrRx), previous Rx Pattern (PreRx) and current transmit pattern (CurrTx).MG receives from the MGC the following: a pulse-reporting variant, a pulse count reporting variant and a frequency change reporting variant.
Pulse-reporting R2 variants provide for detecting and reporting to an external application (executed on a different processor) each pulse occurring in conjunction with each telephone call handled by the MG. The external application counts the number of pulses received during a succession of fixed time durations to detect pulse train frequency changes, and informs the media gateway controller (MGC) of the changes. Unfortunately, fixed period frequency detection with ongoing pulse reporting is incapable of assuring accurate pulse detection or efficient reporting (e.g., see FIGS. 1A and 1B). It also lacks scalability for handling high call rates. For example, based on an origination and destination of a call, as many as three metering pulses per second could be received during a call. In high-density gateways such as a 48E1-compatible gateway (having 1536 ports) the number of pulses that the application processor receives from DSP may therefore be on the order of 4608 pulses per second—well above this variant's ability to conduct pulse tracking and reporting.
In current pulse count reporting, the DSP counts the number of pulses that are received by the MG on a particular channel and the external application polls the DSP for a pulses count at various times. The application then attempts to use the received pulse count to derive the frequency of the incoming pulse train. Unfortunately, high call volumes may nevertheless result in low system performance; conversely, too low of a call volume may produce a delay in reporting pulse train metering and result in erroneous call charge reporting. Worse yet, a DSP/system malfunction (e.g., DSP crash or system reset) may well result in a standby system having an incorrect number of pulses as having been detected by a previously active DSP. Thus, while a newly active card (NAC) may attempt to derive a number of pulses received by a previously active card (PAC), a frequency change just before an application polls the DSP would result in incorrect information being conveyed to the MGC.
In basic frequency change reporting mechanisms, DSP counts the number of pulse train pulses received in successive predetermined, fixed time durations (e.g., indicated as fixed durations 102 and 112 of FIGS. 1A and 1B respectively) and calculates a pulse frequency corresponding to each detected fixed-duration number of pulses. Unfortunately, such a mechanism may result in an excessive number of frequency-change-notifications (FCN) to the application—even where the pulse train frequency is static. (e.g., see pulse train 110 of FIG. 2). While hysteresis-correcting algorithms might be used, reporting of even a slight valid change may be delayed, resulting in errors in applications such as call charge metering.
The above R2 variants also share certain common problems. For example, the predetermined and fixed manner in which the DSP operates may not be desirable in conjunction with a particular application. The predetermined and fixed pulse tracking that is reported, polled or used to calculate a then reported frequency is also, in each case, subject to producing erroneous results, among other problems.
Accordingly, there is a need for a mechanism that avoids the problems encountered with conventional CAS implementations.

Adaptive handling of pulse-train signals in a voice gateway


An RFID circuit and to a demodulator for an RFID circuit, the demodulator including an input and at least one output, a clock extractor connected to the input, a comparator connected to at least one output, a finite impulse response FIR filter arrangement connected to the input and connected to the comparator.

The invention generally relates to systems of radio-frequency-identification (RFID) usually consisting of sets of two kinds of devices, the first one named reader or transceiver, the second one named tag or transponder, that are able to communicate with the respective other kind of device through an electromagnetic field or wave.
The communication for transmitting information from a reader to a tag is called downlink, the communication of information in the opposite direction is called uplink. A tag capable of uplink only is qualified as read-only. In order to be able to communicate in uplink or downlink a tag needs to be supplied with electric energy that may be transferred from the reader to the tag via the electromagnetic field or wave or be provided by some source of electric energy innate to the tag such as e.g. a battery. In the former case, the tag is qualified as passive. In case a passive tag is intended to communicate in uplink with a reader while, at the same time, the reader transfers the electric energy required for the operation of the tag via the electromagnetic field or wave that carries also the information being communicated, the RFID-system is qualified to be full-duplex (FDX).
In case transfer of information in uplink and transfer of electric energy via the electromagnetic field or wave are not simultaneous, the RFID-system system is qualified to be half-duplex (HDX). The latter requires that the tag comprises a means to store electric energy temporarily. Various ways to transfer information between tag and reader via an electromagnetic field or wave are known.
For the cases this invention relates to, the electromagnetic field is alternating and the information transferred is contained in its modulated instantaneous amplitude, instantaneous frequency or instantaneous phase and speaks of respectively amplitude-modulation (AM), frequency-modulation (FM) or phase-modulation (PM). Accordingly, then electromagnetic field is subject to one of amplitude-shift-keying modulation (ASK), frequency-shift-keying keying modulation (FSK) or phase-shift-keying modulation (PSK).
For example in the case of a FDX RFID-system, the tag transfers in uplink information to the reader by modulating in time the amount of power it absorbs from the electromagnetic field or wave generated by the reader. The tag does so by modulating the load it presents to the electromagnetic field which leads to a corresponding variation of instantaneous amplitude of the electromagnetic field that may be detected by the reader. This method is called load-modulation. Known to the person skilled in art are tags operating with electromagnetic fields or waves having a frequency in the LF-band (low frequency) e.g. at 125 kHz, in the HF-band (high frequency) e.g. at 13.56 MHz or in the UHF-band (ultra-high frequency) e.g. at 868 MHz.
RFID tags may comprise at least one integrated circuit (referred to as integrated tag-circuit) having at least two terminals and an antenna having at least two terminals each connected electrically and joint mechanically to exactly one of the two terminals of the integrated tag-circuit and vice-versa. Said antenna may be a passive device i.e. without innate source of energy, capable to produce an electrical signal on its two terminals carried by a voltage and a current when interacting with a surrounding electromagnetic field. The integrated tag-circuit may be composed of a multitude of miniaturized electronic components such as e.g. transistors and resistors obtained by structuring adequately a single piece of monocrystalline semiconductor-material.
Even more specifically, there may be provided a sub-set of the integrated tag-circuit's electronic components called transponder front-end that implements the functions required to exchange information with the electrical signal at the integrated tag-circuit's terminals, i.e. the functions enabling communication with a reader in up- and downlink. The transponder front-end is typically implemented by analog circuitry. The integrated tag-circuit of a passive LF-tag typically comprises as sub-circuits a ground-generator providing a node with the integrated tag-circuit's reference-potential, a rectifier generating a direct voltage from the alternating voltage at the antenna's terminals, a voltage-limiter protecting its two terminals from over-voltage, a regulator generating a stable supply-voltage, a reference-circuit generating reference-voltages and -currents, a transponder front-end and a digital circuit. The transponder front-end receives and demodulates the signal at the antenna's terminals in downlink and modulates the carrier signal at the antenna's terminals with the data-signal provided from the digital circuit in uplink. The digital circuit usually comprises a memory, it decodes and processes the demodulated signal in downlink, generates the signal to be transmit in uplink and provides it to the transponder front-end.
The transponder front-end receives and demodulates the signal at the antenna's terminals, which signal is usually called RF input signal, in downlink and modulates the carrier signal at the antenna's terminals with the data signal provided from the digital circuit in uplink. The digital circuit usually comprises a memory, it decodes and processes the demodulated signal in downlink, generates the signal to be transmit in uplink and provides it to the transponder front-end.
A conventional transponder front-end of a passive LF-tag as known is typically comprises a clock extractor, a modulator and a demodulator. The clock-extractor behaves like a limiting amplifier with hysteresis and provides, if the signal-voltage at the antenna's terminals has sufficient amplitude, a digital clock-signal, used as clock signal for the digital circuit of the integrated tag-circuit, having the same instantaneous frequency than the antenna-signal-voltage.
The function of the modulator is to modulate the amplitude of the signal on the tag coils during uplink communication, i.e. from the tag to the reader. The variation of this voltage induces a variation of the induction field between the reader and the tag and produces a variation of voltage on the reader coils. The reader is able to demodulate the voltage variation on its coils and to decode the tag response.
The function of the demodulator is to provide to the digital circuit of the integrated tag-circuit the demodulated digital signal during down-link by down-converting from radio-frequency to baseband the RF input signal and then converting it from analog to digital signal. Some ASK demodulators demodulate the RF input signal in downlink using an envelope-detector implemented by a diode-rectifier or by a precision-rectifier followed by a continuous-time low-pass filter. The output of the envelope detector is then compared against a fixed voltage reference with a comparator to provide the demodulated signal to the digital circuit.
Other ASK demodulators demodulate the RF input signal in downlink using an envelope-detector implemented by a diode-rectifier or by a precision-rectifier followed by a continuous-time low-pass filter. The output of the envelope detector is then compared against a variable reference voltage with a comparator to provide the demodulated signal to the digital circuit. The variable reference voltage is generated by low-pass filtering with a continuous-time filter, usually named average detector, the envelope detector output.
Others ASK demodulators demodulate the RF input signal in downlink using an envelope-detector implemented by a diode-rectifier or by a precision-rectifier followed by a continuous-time low-pass filter. The output of the envelope detector is the input of a discrete-time differentiator. The differentiator samples the input signal with a sampling frequency equal to the carrier frequency by using the clock output from the clock extractor circuit with the phase eventually controlled by a multi-phase generator, and produces at the output, at every sampling time, the difference between two subsequent input samples. The output of the discrete-time differentiator is then compared against a fixed voltage reference with a comparator to provide the demodulated signal to the digital circuit. The demodulated signal is a measure of the RF input envelop variation rather than its absolute value.
In downlink, the modulator defines the short time-intervals during which the reader may transmit data, usually one data-bit per time-interval, to the tag by lowering the load-impedance during said time-intervals. The reader transmits one binary state by leaving the amplitude of the electromagnetic field it emits unchanged during the time-interval defined by the tag. The reader transmits the other possible binary state by lowering the electromagnetic field that it emits. As the voltage-signal on the tag's antenna has an amplitude already lowered by the action of the tag's modulator, further lowering of the amplitude by the reader upon transmission of the other binary state leads to the resulting antenna-voltage-signal to be too weak such that the clock may not be extracted and the clock-extractor's output is stuck in a fixed state.
The performance of a passive RFID tag is measured in terms of the distance, the tag may be read i.e. the tag correctly receives a message transmit by the reader, transmits back a message in reply and the reader correctly receives said message in reply. The bigger the maximum distance, at which this process works, is, the better is the tag's performance. Said maximum distance is referred to as reading-distance.
The antenna of passive RFID-tags is usually inductive, i.e. it comes in the form of an inductive coil and it interacts essentially with a magnetic field whereas the interaction with an electric field is negligible. Furthermore, the integrated tag-circuit has usually a capacitance connected between its two terminals that constitutes together with the inductance of the antenna a resonant circuit with high a quality-factor.
A high quality-factor of a value of e.g. 40 or even up to 60 is used to generate the maximum voltage-amplitude with the power available from the magnetic field and to be able to supply the integrated tag-circuit through the rectifier. However a high quality-factor equates to a low bandwidth of the tag's antenna. With quality-factors in the range between 40 and 60 and symbol-rates of roughly 4 kBd, the portion of the signal's spectrum carrying the information is significantly attenuated and phase- and amplitude-versus-frequency-characteristic is significantly distorted by the transfer-function of the tag's antenna.
Despite the high quality-factor of the usual antennae of passive RFID-tags, the power consumed in the integrated tag-circuit is still much lower than the power consumed in the resistive losses of the tag's antenna. Consequently, with passive RFID-tags of the state of the art, power-consumption of the integrated tag-circuit is not seriously limiting the tag's performance, i.e. its reading-distance.
A passive RFID-tag's performance may be limited by its sensitivity in downlink i.e. by the transponder front-end's ability to receive and demodulate the signal at the antenna because for sources of error such as noise or imprecision of device-characteristics innate to the integrated tag-circuit. The sensitivity of a tag in downlink is defined to be the weakest signal that it is able to receive and demodulate with a given low rate of errors. Because of the aforementioned attenuation and distortion of the phase- and amplitude-versus-frequency-characteristic of the signal to be received caused by the antenna's transfer-function, the tag's sensitivity in downlink is degraded and the reading-distance is reduced.
A passive LF-FDX-tag's performance may be limited by its transmit-strength in uplink. A passive RFID-tag as known in the prior art may not modulate its load-impedance too strongly such that the amplitude of the antenna-voltage-signal becomes so weak that the clock may not been extracted. If the clock is not extracted any more, the digital part of the integrated tag-circuit is not clocked and will remain in the present state without any means to leave it. This means that load-modulation of known tags in uplink needs to be limited in strength which results in a limitation of the amplitude of the signal received by the reader and thus in a limitation in reading-distance. Such a limitation is as well observed with tags and readers of the state of the art.
The manufacturing cost of an integrated circuit strongly depends on its size. In the case of passive RFID-tags, said size is strongly impacted by the presence of resistors with high resistance in the range of several MΩ. Such high resistance-values are required mainly as the currents consumed have to be restricted to the range of a few nA and as with carrier-frequencies in the range of 100 kHz and symbol-rates in the range of 4 kBd, the transponder front-end's time-constants that are usually implemented by products of a capacitance and a resistance are in the range of several μs and require capacitors and resistors of big size.
It is therefore desirable to improve the sensitivity of an RFID tag in the downlink direction and to improve or to increase an RFID tag's transmit strength in the uplink direction. It is a further aim to enable a further miniaturization of RFID tags and to enable use of rather cost efficient and compact electronic components, such as resistors and capacitors in an analogue front-end of an RFID circuit or RFID transponder.


A test circuit arrangement for testing latch units is provided which includes a) a voltage generator configured to adjust a voltage potential difference between a first ground line and a second ground line of the latch units and/or to adjust a voltage potential difference between a first supply voltage line and a second supply voltage line of the latch units; b) combiner configured to combine logical outputs of the latch units; and c) determiner configured to determine the voltage potential difference between the first ground line and the second ground line and/or the voltage potential difference between the first supply voltage line and the second supply voltage line in a state when all of the latch units have identical logical outputs.

The present invention relates to a test circuit arrangement. The present invention can be applied to the detection of write/read errors in SRAM devices (SRAM, S-random access memories). The present invention in particular relates to latch units consisting of N-type transistors and P-type transistors, e.g. NMOS and PMOS transistors or NPN and PNP bipolar transistors.
Latch units are used in various circuit arrangements. For example, the core of a SRAM cell comprises latch units in order to store the desired information. In order to guarantee the functionality of latch units it is essential to perform reliable tests that can be used in an efficient manner.


Optical waveguides are provided on a substrate, a thin film whose refractive index is optically less than the refractive indices of the optical waveguides is provided on the surface of the substrate, and a surface-acoustic-wave waveguide is arranged on the thin film so as to cross the optical waveguides in a direction oblique thereto. The optical waveguides are not directly influenced by the location of the SAW waveguide and the phase matching condition of the optical waveguides is not changed, whereby the sidelobe characteristic of an optical filter is not degraded by assigning weights to the SAW intensity.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an acousto-optic filter that utilizes an acousto-optic effect.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, data traffic has been rapidly increasing because of the proliferation of the Internet and an additional demand for greatly increasing the capacity for data traffic between in-house LANs. Because of this, optical communication that enables large-capacity communication is becoming widely used from backbone systems to access systems. An increase in optical transmission speed or multiplexing of optical wavelengths can increase the capacity of optical communication. One of the important components for achieving multiplexing of optical wavelengths is an optical wavelength filter. This is a filter that filters light of a predetermined wavelength, and is a key device for performing optical wavelength multiplex communication. In a case in which optical wavelengths are densely multiplexed, when a predetermined wavelength is filtered, it is necessary to block adjacent channels. In order to do so, a necessary filter characteristic of an optical wavelength filter must have low sidelobes with which adjacent channels can be blocked to at least a desired degree.
Acousto-optic filters configured to suppress the above-described sidelobes are described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-64809 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 8-114776.
FIG. 1 is a plan view showing the structure of an acousto-optic filter described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-64809. In this acousto-optic filter, optical waveguides 111 and 112 that extend in the y-axis direction on an X-cut LiNb03 substrate 110 are provided. On these optical waveguides 111 and 112, a surface acoustic wave (SAW) waveguide 118 defined by an optically transparent thin film whose refractive index is less than that of the substrate 110 is arranged such that the SAW waveguide 118 obliquely crosses the optical waveguides 111 and 112.
At one end portion of the SAW waveguide 118, a transducer 115 including comb-shaped electrodes that generate a surface acoustic wave is provided. Moreover, a SAW absorber 119 defined by a resist is provided at a location so as to sandwich the transducer 115 with the one end portion of the SAW waveguide 118. Moreover, a SAW absorber 120 defined by a resist is provided at the other end portion (a terminal) of the SAW waveguide 118.
In this manner, by arranging a SAW waveguide so as to obliquely cross the optical waveguides 111 and 112, Gaussian distribution weights are assigned in the longitudinal direction of the optical waveguides in TE-TM mode conversion regarding light that propagates in the optical waveguides 111 and 112, and thus, the sidelobes of the filter characteristics are reduced.
FIG. 2 is a plan view showing the structure of an acousto-optic filter described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 8-114776. In this acousto-optic filter, a transducer 212 for exciting a surface acoustic wave is provided on an x-cut LiNb03 substrate 210. On the substrate 210, a SAW waveguide 216 which is an area divided by two parallel SAW waveguide wall units 214a and 214b is provided, and an optical waveguide 218 is provided along the SAW waveguide 216. SAW absorbers 220a and 220b are each provided at a corresponding one of the end portions of the SAW waveguide.
Moreover, this acousto-optic filter includes an incident light polarizer 222, which is coupled to the optical waveguide 218 and which treats only polarized waves in a specific direction (TE waves) as signal light. Regarding the TE waves isolated by the polarizer 222, only signal light having a specific wavelength according to the wavelength of the SAW is converted into TM waves. As a result, signal light that has been converted into the TM waves whose polarizing direction is orthogonal to the polarizing direction of the TE waves is isolated from outgoing light by an outgoing light polarizer 224.
In this manner, since the two parallel SAW waveguide wall units 214a and 214b that sandwich the optical waveguide 218, which is straight, are arranged in a direction oblique to the direction in which the optical waveguide 218 extends, TE-TM mode conversion can be performed without significantly changing coupling coefficients along the optical waveguide.
In the acousto-optic filter described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-64809, the sidelobes of the filter characteristics can be reduced by assigning Gaussian distribution weights in the longitudinal direction of the optical waveguide in TE-TM mode conversion. However, when an apparatus was actually produced and the characteristics thereof were measured, it was discovered that a value that represents a reducing-sidelobe effect was considerably less than the theoretical value. FIG. 3 shows the characteristics. In this example, light of a wavelength of 1575 nm passes through and light of other wavelengths is blocked. The theoretical value of the maximum sidelobe ratio is −40 dB; however, the maximum sidelobe ratio is practically about −15.6 dB. Even in this case, there is a larger suppressing-sidelobe effect than in the conventional case in which the maximum sidelobe ratio is 90 dB and in which the assignment of weights to the SAW intensity is not performed. However, further suppression of the above-described sidelobes is required in order to improve the degree of optical wavelength multiplexing.


Pharmaceutical and cosmetic compositions for the prevention of skin aging, containing phospholipid complexes of extracts of Vitis vinifera, and phospholipid complexes of standardized extract from Centella asiatica.

Skin aging is a complex biological process affecting various layers of the skin, but whose major effects are seen in the dermis. There are two biologically independent aging processes that occur simultaneously. The first is intrinsic aging, which affects skin as well as, most likely, the internal organs. The second is extrinsic aging or photo-aging which is the result of exposure to the elements, primarily ultraviolet irradiation. The consequences of innate aging can be observed all over the skin, including areas protected from the sun. In the areas exposed to the sun, particularly the face and the backs of the hands, photoaging damage is superimposed to tissue degeneration due to innate aging. Thus, the most noticeable changes on facial and neck skin, the primary areas that patients are concerned about, result from the combination of intrinsic and extrinsic aging processes. It has been suggested that as much as 80% of facial aging may be ascribed to exposure to the sun, although other factors (i.e. cigarette smoking) can contribute to premature wrinkling.
From a biochemical standpoint, photoaging is thought though to be induced mainly by: some proteases, mainly metalloproteases, which are overproduced and overrealesed by keratinocytes and fibroblasts as a consequence of the interaction with ultraviolet radiation (these proteases are degradative enzymes irreversibly damaging collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid, bringing about dermis scars and visible wrinkles); and by oxidative stress, able to eliminate the normal skin antioxidant defenses in a very short time.

Pharmaceutical and cosmetic composition against skin aging


To improve the characteristics of oxides and other insulators formed by conventional techniques, particularly to improve its density, relative dielectric constant, resistance to acid, resistance to reduction and other characteristics, and to provide solid state devices or socharacteristics, the surfaces of the silicon oxide insulator, or the like, is irradiated with electrically neutral particles.

The present invention relates to an insulator surface layer such as an oxide and a fluoride. The present invention further relates to solid state electronic devices having insulators.
A solid state electronic circuit such as a semiconductor integrated circuit is constructed of semiconductor material, metal, insulators, and other materials, which are processed into fine patterns and are stacked.
Insulators are often composed of a silicon oxide thin film or a thin film of amorphous structure containing boric acid, phosphorous and other elements, with silicon oxide as its main component. These thin films are usually formed as layers on a substrate (including directly on other layers that are on the substrate) by silicon thermal oxidation or chemical vapor deposition (CVD), plasma CVD, and sputtering deposition.
For example, an insulating film used for an insulator between metal wirings of a semiconductor integrated circuit often has a film of SiO.sub.2 as its main component, which is formed by the CVD using a gas such as SiH.sub.4 and N.sub.2 or plasma CVD. The insulator film may be approximately 1 .mu.m thick. Then, usually, subsequent to the formation of wiring via-holes, and other patterns by the lithographic process and etching process, the next layer which is a metal layer for wirings is stacked by the CVD method, sputtering deposition or the like, and through subsequent lithographic and etching processes, fine metal wirings are formed. In the stacked structure of a semiconductor integrated circuit formed in such a series of processes, rarely it has been attempted to improve intentionally the modification of the film quality of the surface insulator film layer or interlayer insulator film. The insulator film as deposited is used as it is.
Also, a silicon oxide thin film of 10-20 nm thick and mostly formed by thermal oxidation is used for the gate insulator film for the silicon MOS type transistor. In this case, too, the thin film is used as it has been deposited without any particular improving modification treatment for improving the property of the silicon oxide film significantly with the exception of the simple treatment of annealing.
As another example, there is a capacitor insulator film for a memory device of the memory integrated circuit and others, and in recent years, in order to intensify the electrostatic capacity thereof, the silicon oxide film is used in layers with the silicon nitride film having a large dielectric constant.
For the insulator film of a semiconductor integrated circuit as described above, the insulator film deposited by thermal oxidation, CVD or the like is used as it is without any particular surface treatment before the present invention.
A technique for forming an insulator film for a semiconductor integrated circuit is explained in detail in S. M. Sze ed, VLSI Technology, Second Edition (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1988) pp. 98-140 and 233-271, for example.
In the above-mentioned conventional technique, insulator films of SiO.sub.2 and others are used as formed by thermal oxidation or CVD. In the case of the thermal oxidation formed SiO.sub.2 film, its density is usually approximately 2.2-2.3 g/cm.sup.3, for example, and it is known that such SiO.sub.2 film is susceptible to transmission of molecules of H.sub.2 O, O.sub.2 H.sub.2 and others and atoms dissociated therefrom, which often leads to a problem that the oxidation, corrosion, and other degradations of the metal wirings are caused by the water and other molecules thus transmitted. In contrast, a SiO.sub.2 film formed by plasma CVD is in general high in its density and is highly capable of preventing the transmission of water and other molecules. However, in the plasma CVD formed film, a considerable value of H is contained to often result in the film expansion, cracking, and production of other defectives due to the dissociation of the contained H at the time of thermal treatment.
Also, the relative dielectric constant of the SiO.sub.2 film formed by silicon thermal oxidation and others is 3.9-4.0, and since this value is insufficient, a multi-layer film, in which the Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 film or Ta.sub.2 O.sub.5 film having a greater dielectric constant is stacked with the SiO.sub.2 film, is used as an insulator film for the charge storage capacitor of the random access memory device. The dielectric constant of the SiO.sub.2 film is small, and the capacity of the capacitor is also small when made by the SiO.sub.2 film alone.
Further, the SiO.sub.2 film is formed by thermal oxidation or CVD is easily etched by rare fluorine acid or its surface is reduced by the irradiation of H or rare gas ions, and tends to be Si rich.

Solid state device fabrication method including a surface treatment step with a neutral particle beam with an energy between 10ev and 100ev


An embodiment of a utensil receptacle is disclosed including a peripheral wall structure having an upper end defining a top opening, a lower end and a substantially oval cross-section, an outer base member being releasably engageable to the lower end, a caddy configured to releasably engage the outer base member and including a bottom wall having holes, and a drainage tray for collecting fluids flowing through the holes.

Numerous devices disclosed in the prior art are capable of storing utensils that are wet and have means for collecting water dripping therefrom in a separate reservoir. Generally, such receptacles remain in place and are stored when the drying process is complete or the receptacle is no longer required, with articles contained therein emptied prior to storage. Other receptacles typically include removable draining mechanisms that are particularly adapted to hold and drain dishes and the like, which are also emptied and returned to storage.
Prior art devices adapted to hold and store utensils that tend to drip water after washing so that these utensils, such as spatulas, whisks, wooden spoons and the like, are displayed and available for use at a later time are also known. Such receptacles or "caddies" may hold the utensils in a single container that collects the drippings in a second container that is slidably mounted to the first container. However, caddies of this type form the utensil receptacle itself and are not capable of being disassembled for straightforward cleaning.


An electromagnetic wave absorber includes an electromagnetic wave-absorbing layer (10) and an adhesive layer (20). The adhesive layer (20) is disposed on at least one surface of the electromagnetic wave-absorbing layer (10). The electromagnetic wave absorber is capable of being adhered to a surface having a step in such a manner that the adhesive layer (20) is in contact with the surface. The adhesive layer (20) has a thickness equal to or greater than a reference height determined by subtracting 0.1 mm from the height of the step. In the electromagnetic wave absorber, a return loss ΔR defined by ΔR=Rt−Rr is 15 dB or more. Rt is a reflection amount of a 76-GHz electromagnetic wave and is measured for a reference specimen. Rr is a reflection amount of a 76-GHz electromagnetic wave and is measured for a specimen obtained by adhering the electromagnetic wave absorber.

In recent years, electromagnetic waves in a range of millimeter waves having a wavelength of about 1 to 10 mm and a frequency of 30 to 300 GHz and quasi-millimeter waves have been used as information communication media. The use of such electromagnetic waves in anti-collision systems has been under consideration. An anti-collision system is a system, for example, installed in a vehicle, detecting obstacles to automatically put on the brakes, or measuring the speed of vehicles around the vehicle equipped with the system and distance between the vehicle and another vehicle to adjust the speed of the vehicle and distance between the two vehicles.
For example, Patent Literature 1 describes a structure disposed at the front portion of an automobile body and including a millimeter-wave radar, a pair of shroud stays, and a mounting plate used to mount the millimeter-wave radar thereon. Both the left and right ends of the mounting plate are fixed to the pair of shroud stays by bolts and nuts. The mounting plate has three mounting portions, each of which is provided with a positioning bolt. Three fixing pieces of a case of the millimeter-wave radar are engaged with these positioning bolts in such a manner that the positions of the three fixing pieces can be freely adjusted back and forth.
Patent Literature 2 describes a radar unit mounting structure including a shroud upper, shroud lower, and shroud stays coupling the shroud upper and shroud lower. In the mounting structure, a radar unit is mounted on the shroud stays. The upper portions of the shroud stays are coupled to the shroud upper in such a manner that the upper portions of the shroud stays are uncoupled from the shroud upper when a load equal to or higher than a given load is imposed from the front side. Therefore, when a load equal to or higher than a given load is imposed from the front side in the event of a minor vehicle collision, the upper portions of the shroud stays are uncoupled from the shroud upper and the radar unit mounted on the shroud stays moves backwards. This can reduce impact imposed on the radar unit and can prevent damage to the radar unit.
It is thought that reception of as few unnecessary electromagnetic waves as possible is important to prevent false recognition and allows anti-collision systems to normally operate. Therefore, it is conceivable that electromagnetic wave absorbers that absorb unnecessary electromagnetic waves are used in anti-collision systems.
There are various types of electromagnetic wave absorbers classified according to their principles of electromagnetic wave absorption. For example, an electromagnetic wave absorber provided with an electromagnetic wave reflective layer, a dielectric layer having a thickness of λ/4 (λ is the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave to be absorbed), and a resistive film layer (such an electromagnetic wave absorber may be referred to as "λ/4 electromagnetic wave absorber") can be produced at a low cost owing to relatively inexpensive materials and ease of design. For example, Patent Literature 3 proposes, as a λ/4 electromagnetic wave absorber, an electromagnetic wave absorber exercising an excellent property of functioning in a wide incident angular range. Additionally, Patent Literature 4 describes an electromagnetic wave absorption material having a magnetic layer.


A catheter capable of articulating in two and three directions is provided. Articulation at the distal tip of the catheter is facilitated by applying selective tension on a steering wire disposed in a lumen that resides peripheral to a central working lumen. Tension on the steering wire through the peripheral lumen causes the catheter tip to bend while the central working lumen resists compression.

With the popularity of minimally invasive medical procedures, catheter designers continue to revise and improve catheters for medical use, trying to build catheters that can articulate in mammalian subjects and perform the challenging functions demanded of minimally invasive procedures. Catheters for minimally invasive procedures need to bend at the distal tip and need to allow access through the catheter-body by instruments that perform the procedure. Catheters with steerable wires and proximal controls have been built and described. The challenge continues with these catheters to build a device that can better articulate to a site in the mammal and once at that site to position the tip properly for the procedure. The catheters also need to steer easily and to hold an articulated position once the correct angle of catheter bend is achieved. Along these lines, problems have continued in determining optimal place merits of the steering wires in the catheter. The goal is to convey the most effective tension to the distal tip through the steering wire, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,507,725 which describes placement of the steering wires in the catheter wall.
Another problem has been how to steer the wires so that the practitioner can position the catheter and still be able to control instruments that access the catheter to perform the procedure, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,656,030 for a description of a catheter with a complicated steering control mechanism. Catheters that articulate in a single direction using a pull wire have been described, see e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 6,783,510, but this catheter lacks the usefulness of a catheter that can articulate in more than one direction.
Particularly for performing catheter-based procedures at the heart, or other procedures where it is advantageous to have a steerable catheter, it would be desirable to have a catheter with a distal tip that can articulate in more than one direction in order to adjust the positioning of the catheter to the contours of the site, and a catheter that can be controlled easily, and accurately, while still providing the opportunity for instrument access through a central working lumen. The present invention overcomes some of the deficiencies in the current catheter art by providing the following invention.


Techniques for determining distortion in a map caused by measurement errors are discussed herein. For example, such techniques may include implementing a model to estimate map distortion between the map frame and the inertial frame. Data such as sensor data, map data, and vehicle state data may be input into the model. A map distortion value output from the model may be used to compensate vehicle operations in a local region by approximating the distortion as linearly varying about the region. A vehicle, such as an autonomous vehicle, can be controlled to traverse an environment based on the trajectory.

Data can be captured in an environment and represented as a map of the environment. Often, such maps can be used by vehicles navigating within the environment, although the maps can be used for a variety of purposes. When using the maps for navigating, however, differences between localization determined using the map and other methods may cause safety critical issues.


A spark plug has an elongated body of substantially circular cross-section with a center axis. A wedge shaped center electrode extends from one end of the body and a wedge shaped ground electrode is arranged in close proximity to the center electrode. Each of the electrodes includes an elongated knife edge. The knife edges extend radially with respect to the center axis but lie in different parallel planes that are perpendicular to the axis. The two knife edges of the electrodes are spaced apart from each other and extend perpendicular to each other.

The present invention is directed toward a spark plug for use in an internal combustion engine and more particularly, toward an improved spark plug that utilizes a novel arrangement of wedge shaped electrodes and that has a longer life and creates a more consistent spark.
A typical spark plug includes a center electrode and a ground electrode. The two electrodes are spaced apart from each other. When electricity passes across the space between the two electrodes, a spark is created. This spark may be used to ignite a fuel mixture contained within the internal combustion engine to which the spark plug is attached.
While the shapes of the center electrode and ground electrode may vary, typically, the tips of each of these electrodes are axially aligned along the axis of the main body of the spark plug. Different electrode shapes and configurations are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,495,948 to Garrett, III.
Spark plugs have been proposed in the past that utilize a wedge or knife shaped electrode for either or both the center electrode or the ground electrode. U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,490,364 and 1,526,054 to Curran, for example, disclose wedge-shaped electrodes that are axially aligned and parallel to each other and to the axis of the plug body but radially offset therefrom. U.S. Pat. No. 1,192,003 to Schmidt discloses two wedge-shaped electrodes parallel to each other at an angle to the axis of the spark plug and U.S. Pat. No. 1,607,534 to Hantsch discloses two wedged shaped electrodes arranged parallel to each other and which cross the axis of the spark plug body but with each electrode extending radially to the axis of the plug.
Although it is believed that these spark plugs with wedge shaped electrodes are better than standard spark plug designs, it is not believed that they are optimal. None of these patented spark plugs nor other known spark plugs appears to create a consistent spark that moves in the proper manner so as to provide a spark plug with a longer life while providing better performance and increased fuel mileage.

Spark plug with perpendicular knife edge electrodes


In the method according to the invention for producing a pneumatic tire for heavy load, it is important that the following vulcanizing conditions are satisfied, the temperature for vulcanizing the tread region is 140° C. or lower, a vulcanization calorie given to the bead regions is a calorie corresponding to a time of 25 to 40 minutes in terms of the vulcanization calorie at a vulcanizing temperature of 140° C., and the ratio of a vulcanization calorie given to the front surface of the tread region to the vulcanization calorie given to the bead regions is 0.6 or more and less than 1.0, these vulcanization calories being each in terms of the vulcanization calorie at the vulcanizing temperature of 140° C.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for producing a pneumatic tire for heavy load, the method including a vulcanizing step of: putting, into a mold, an unvulcanized raw tire having a pair of bead regions, a side wall region extended from each of the bead regions outward along the tire diameter direction, and a tread region connected to an outside end in the tire diameter direction of each of the side wall regions, the tread region constituting a tread of the tire; and then heating and vulcanizing the raw tire while a bladder inside the raw tire is expanded to put and press the raw tire onto the inner surface of the mold.
Description of the Related Art
In pneumatic tires for heavy load, which are used in trucks, buses, vehicles for construction, and the like, their sites where trouble is caused are typically their tread region and bead regions. A method for improving these regions in endurance is, for example, a method of adding a reinforcing member to desired positions thereof, or a method of contriving the shape thereof. However, such a method may result in an undesired increase in the mass or in costs, or the like.
In order to prevent local overcure of a tire casing-region including an inner liner layer or a carcass layer to improve the tire in endurance, Patent Document 1 below describes a method for producing a pneumatic tire in which regarding respective highest reach-temperatures of individual positions in the thickness direction of a crown region of a tire while the region is being vulcanized, the difference between a maximum value and a minimum value of the temperatures is set to 10° C. or lower, and further regarding respective equivalent vulcanization degrees of the individual positions in the thickness direction of the tire crown region, the ratio of a maximum value of the degrees to a minimum value thereof is set to 1.6 or lower.

Pneumatic tire for heavy load, and method for producing the same


A method and apparatus for increasing the capacity of a multiple-input and/or multiple-output system. Each sub-stream of a primary data stream is stratified to produce a processed sub-stream whose strata can be separated out and decoded with an acceptable error rate. A sub-stream can be stratified by dividing it into a plurality of sub-stream-components that are processed to obtain strata, with each stratum representing one of the sub-stream-components. The strata are then combined to obtain the processed sub-stream. Stratifying allows a particular processed sub-stream's strata have different transmit features from each other, such as different bit rates, or different power levels, or both. This reduces the interference for some of the strata of each processed sub-stream since as stratum are separated out and decoded they are no longer interference for the other strata. Thus, allowing for a higher overall bit rate for the processed sub-streams.

This invention relates to wireless communication systems and, more particularly, to wireless communication systems using multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or multiple antennas at the receiver.
The error free maximum information rate at which a communication system may communicate data, i.e., the capacity of the communication system, is governed by Shannon's formula. This maximum information rate is referred to as the Shannon limit. Wireless communication systems that use multiple antennas at the transmitter and optionally multiple antennas at the receiver, so-called multiple-input and/or multiple-output systems, can achieve dramatically improved capacity compared to single antenna systems, i.e., single antenna to single antenna systems. In random scattering propagation environments increasing the number of antennas at the receiver or at the transmitter (or both) produces a larger Shannon limit, i.e. a larger error free maximum information rate.
In multiple-input systems, a primitive data stream—the bits to be transmitted—is divided into a plurality of sub-streams, each of which is processed and transmitted. Each processed sub-stream can be transmitted over a respective different transmit antenna. It is often preferred, however, to cycle the processed sub-streams over all of the antennas so that successive segments of each processed sub-stream are transmitted over different ones of the transmit antennas cyclically.
The signals emanating from each transmit antenna arrive at each receive antenna. Thus, the received signal at each of the receive antennas (regardless of whether there are one or many receive antennas, the latter being a multiple-output system) is a superposition of each of the transmitted signals as modified by the channel characteristics. Even though the transmitted signals interfere with each other in each receive antenna signal, the received signals can be processed to separate the transmitted signals from one another and each separated-out signal can then be decoded to recover the respective sub-streams.
In particular, each of the transmitted signals needs to be received with a signal-to-noise ratio that is high enough to allow it to be sufficiently separated from the others so that its respective sub-stream can thereafter be decoded with an acceptable error rate. To this end, different combined-weighted-(remaining)-received-signals of receive antenna signals can be formed, the weights used to form any particular combination being such as to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of a respective one of the transmitted signals. (See, for example, G. J. Foschini and M. J. Gans, "On Limits of Wireless Communications in a Fading Environment When Using Multiple Antennas," Wireless Personal Communications, 6 Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, pp. 311–335, incorporated herein by this reference.) Even so, in order to get a high enough signal-to-noise ratio, the transmitted signals still have to be transmitted at either 1) a relatively low bit rate, or 2) some of the signals have to be transmitted at a relatively high power level. In the former case, this would reduce the overall bit rate of the primary data stream, and in the latter case, it would increase the overall power level of the primary data stream.
One advantageous method of implementing a multiple-input and/or multiple-output system that increases the primary data stream's bit rate without having to increase the power level, and thus increases the capacity of the system, involves staggering the start of the transmission of signals that represent the sub-streams. Thus, in a first time interval just one signal, representing just one sub-stream, is transmitted. In a second time interval this signal continues to be transmitted and the transmission of another signal, representing another sub-stream is begun, and so forth until all of the signals representing all of the sub-streams are being transmitted.
Thereafter, the receive antenna signals are processed to decode so-called layers of one of the signals that represents a respective one of the sub-streams. A layer is a portion of such a signal representing a particular sub-stream, such that the layer can be decoded with reference to only the symbols in the layer. The symbols representing a block code code-word, for example, can constitute a layer.
In particular, as described in more detail below, the receive antenna signals received over several time intervals are weighted with sets of weights to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of one of the signals, representing a respective one of the sub-streams. The weighted receive antenna signals are combined and the resulting combined-weighted-received-signal is preprocessed to decode one layer of the signals. The decoded layer is re-encoded, reconstructed in the form that it was received by the receive antennas, and subtracted from the receive antenna signal, to produce the remaining receive antenna signals. The remaining receive antenna signals are then weighted with sets of weights to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio of another of the signals, representing another one of the sub-streams. These weighted remaining receive antenna signals are combined. The result is then preprocessed to decode one layer of the other signal. The decoded layer is re-encoded, reconstructed in the form that it was received by the receive antennas, and subtracted from the remaining receive antenna signal, and so on.
The just described decoding process takes advantage of the fact that during the first time interval only the signal representing one sub-stream is transmitted. Thus, there is no interference from signals representing the other sub-streams. As a result, during the first time interval the only transmitted signal has a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio. Assuming appropriate coding prior to transmission, this relatively high signal-to-noise ratio enables the first layer of this signal to be decoded with an acceptable error rate notwithstanding the presence in later time intervals of interference caused by layers of other signals. The decoded layer is then re-encoded and used to reconstruct the layer in the form that it was received by the receive antennas. The reconstructed first layer is then subtracted out of the receive antenna signals, eliminating it as source of interference for other layers.
The decoding of subsequent layers is carried out by subtracting from the receive antenna signals any already decoded and reconstructed layers, and treating the interference from the layers that have not been decoded as added noise. After a layer of a particular transmitted signal is decoded with an acceptable error rate it can then be re-encoded and subtracted from the remaining receive antenna signals—the receive antenna signals remaining after previously decoded layers have been subtracted from it. This process eliminates the decoded layer as source of interference for other layers. This process is repeated until all the layers of all of the signals are decoded. This approach allows for an increased bit rate because prior to separating out a particular layer the interference of other layers is removed for at least some of the particular layer. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,097,771 entitled "Wireless Communications System Having A Layered Space-Time Architecture Employing Multi-Element Antennas," hereby incorporated by reference.

Wireless communication system using multi-element antenna having a space-time architecture


In one embodiment, an ergonomic brush includes a handle grip with finger slots situated between thumb slots and a palm rest extending rearwardly from the finger slots. A bristle base may be adapted to the handle grip, where the bristle base includes a bristle field having a length extending in a direction substantially parallel to a user's hand when engaged in the finger slots.

Grooming brushes are used for hair grooming of people and animals. Typically such brushes are formed from a handle-based design in which a user grasps a handle with a closed fist and uses a brush portion to groom the subject.
Generally this configuration is not ergonomic in nature, and can cause considerable wrist and hand strain and fatigue. For example, when grooming a subject, the brush is typically pushed or pulled along a direction that is generally perpendicular to the handle axis. This alone can cause considerable strain and fatigue, especially where a user spends a good deal of time brushing. For example, groomers can spend considerable hours performing such grooming. As a result, many such users suffer from fatigue and chronic hand, wrist and arm pain.
Furthermore, while various shapes and sizes of brushes are available, many such brushes lack universality, as a relatively small brush may not be suitable for large subjects such as large pets, while relatively large brushes may not be suitable for other, e.g., smaller subjects. A need thus exists to overcome these deficiencies.