A rotary print drum in combination with a postage meter comprises at least one print wheel rotatably mounted on the print drum, a motor and a gear train for rotating the print wheel, an electronic circuit in a form of a printed circuit being fixed to one end of the drum in a plane perpendicular to the rotational axis of the print drum, and detecting device operatively connecting the gear train and the electronic circuit for controlling the print position of the print wheel.

Postage meters that include rotary print drums for printing fixed and variable postage data on mail are already know. Particular mention may be made to French Patent Applications FR-A-89 16250 and FR-A-90 08752 filed in the name of the applicant.
For this type of meter, maximum overall postage meter compactness is sought, together with simplified electromechancial coupling between the various members making up the print head in the meter.
To facilitate understanding the problems posed by this type of meter, a prior art postage meter is described below with reference too FIGS. 1 and 2.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a print head 10. This print head 10 includes a print roller 12 secured to the end 14 of a shaft which can be mechanically coupled to a rotary drive device 16 in the meter. Inside the drum 12 there are print wheels 18 which have print elements 20 on their peripheries, which print elements correspond, for example, to all ten digits The print wheel 18 can rotate about its axis, as indicated by arrow F. Naturally, the drum includes as many wheels as there are graphical elements to be printed. The print wheel 18 is secured to a toothed wheel 22 so that it rotates therewith, which toothed wheel can be rotated by engagement with a rack 24 mounted at the end of a drive rod 26 which is in turn slidably mounted in the shaft 14 which is hollow. Each rod 26 associated with a wheel 18 is secured to a respective sliding ring 28 so that it moves in translation therewith. The ring 28 being displaced in translation enables the corresponding rack 24 to be controlled, whereby the print wheel 18 can be rotated to bring the suitable print element 20 to face a print window provided in the drum 12 and not shown in the FIGURE. The ring 28 may be displaced in translation by a slider 30 which co-operates with the ring 28 to move it in translation, but which leaves the ring free to rotate. A double rack 32 secured to the slider 30 co-operates with a toothed wheel 34 in turn secured to a knurled control wheel 36 for controlling the position of the print wheel 18. Adjusting the position of the control wheel 36 sets the position of the corresponding print element 20 so that it faces the print window. The other end of the double rack 32 makes it possible to rotate the wheel 38 of a position encoder bearing the overall reference 40. FIG. 1 also shows a printed circuit card 42 carrying the various electronic circuit components of the print head 10.
FIG. 2 is a plan view of the various rod-and-rack assemblies 24, 26 that are each associated with a respective position-control sliding ring 28.
The purpose of the position encoder 38 is to make sure that the position of the print wheel 18 actually does correspond to the position displayed by the control wheel 36.
Prior art print heads suffer from being bulky and complex due to the mechanical linkages between the control wheel 36, the position sensor 38, and the print wheel 18. These problems are proportional to the number of print wheels 18 required to print the values, dates, and other data, e.g. eleven wheels.
In prior embodiments, one rack is used for each print wheel. Each rack performs the following three functions:
A first end of the rack co-operates with the print wheel to define the digit or the symbol to be printed. A second end of the rack serves to position the rack, and therefore the corresponding print wheel, by means of a motor which receives instructions in electrical form. A middle portion co-operates with the position encoder to read back the effective position of the rack, and therefore of the print wheel.
The use of racks suffers from two types of drawback.
Firstly, the rack can only have reciprocating motion and cannot have continuous motion. As a result, if it is necessary to print a zero with a wheel, after that wheel has printed a 9, the associated rack must be displaced over its full stroke. This significantly increases the basic print time required to print one digit.
Secondly, since the position encoder is disposed along the rack, the revolving electronic circuitry must be disposed parallel to the shaft 14. If the quantity of electronic components increases, that length of the shaft 14 which serves only to support the printed circuit also increases. This leads to an increase in the overall length of the shaft.
An object of the present invention is to provide a postage meter having a rotary print drum that does not suffer from these problems, and that offers maximum integration of the print head.

Rotary print drum for a postage meter including revolving electronic circuits


A system and method for using continuous failure predictions for proactive failure management in distributed cluster systems includes a sampling subsystem configured to continuously monitor and collect operation states of different system components. An analysis subsystem is configured to build classification models to perform on-line failure predictions. A failure prevention subsystem is configured to take preventive actions on failing components based on failure warnings generated by the analysis subsystem.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to failure management in distributed systems and more particularly to systems and methods for using continuous failure predictions to provide proactive failure management for distributed cluster systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many emerging applications call for sophisticated real-time processing over dynamic data streams such as sensor data analysis and network traffic monitoring. In these applications, data streams from external sources flow into a data stream management system where they are processed by different continuous query (CQ) operators (e.g., join, union, aggregation). Distributed cluster systems have been developed to achieve scalable CQ processing. However, cluster systems are vulnerable to various software and hardware failures where any node failure may stall the query processing. For example, in a deployed cluster system consisting of several hundreds of processing nodes, the system log records 69 significant failure incidents during a one month period.
On the other hand, fault tolerance is of critical importance for CQ processing that requires continuous system operation. System administrators are often overwhelmed by the tasks of recovering the system from failures under time pressure. Thus, it is imperative to provide autonomic failure management for large-scale cluster systems to achieve fault-tolerant CQ processing.
Previous work on fault-tolerant cluster systems has been focused on developing specific failure management schemes. The Flux operator in Shah et al. "Highly-available, fault-tolerant, parallel dataflows". Proc. of SIGMOD, 2004, encapsulates coordination logic for fail-over and recovery into an opaque operator used to compose parallelized dataflows. Flux achieves highly available dataflow processing by allowing the processing of unaffected partitions to continue while recovering the operations of failed partitions. The Borealis project described in Abadi et al., "The Design of the Borealis Stream Processing Engine." Proc. of CIDR, 2005, also extensively addressed the problem of fault tolerant stream processing. Balazinska et al. in "Fault-Tolerance in the Borealis Distributed Stream Processing System." Proc. of SIGMOD, 2005, proposed a replication-based approach to fault tolerant distributed stream processing, which allows a user to trade availability for consistency.
Hwang et al. in "High Availability Algorithms for Distributed Stream Processing." Proc. of ICDE, 2005, studied various failure recovery approaches and quantitatively characterized their runtime overhead and recovery time tradeoffs. Hwang et al. in "A Cooperative, Self-Configuring High-Availability Solution for Stream Processing." Proc. of ICDE, 2007 also proposed a parallel backup and recovery approach that performs cooperative checkpointing and failure recovery for one query using a set of servers.
Failure prediction has been studied under different contexts. The SMART project described in Murray et al. G. F. "Comparison of machine learning methods for predicting failures in hard drives." Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2005, has studied different nonparametric statistical approaches to disk failure predictions. Since prediction errors for disk failure cause significant financial penalty, the focus of SMART is on selecting proper features to avoid false-alarms as much as possible. Software rejuvenation as described in Vaidyanathan et al. "Analysis and Implementation of Software Rejuvenation in Cluster Systems." Proc. of SIGMETRICS, 2004, is another proactive technique that periodically stops running software, clean its internal state, and restarts it to prevent unexpected failures due to software aging.
Cai et al. in "Utility-Driven Proactive Management of Availability in Enterprise-Scale Information Flows." Proc. of Middleware, 2006, proposes a utility-driven approach to augmenting the active-passive scheme with tunability between normal operation cost and recovery.

Systems and methods for predictive failure management

International Business Machines Corporation


A cutting mold for removing two opposite superfluous rigid circuit boards from a rigid-flexible circuit board. A first cutter is connected to a first moldboard. A first barricade is connected to the first moldboard. The maximum vertical distance from the first barricade to the first moldboard exceeds that from the first cutter to the first moldboard. A second moldboard is opposite the first moldboard. The first and second moldboards move with respect to each other. A second cutter is connected to the second moldboard and corresponds to the first cutter. A second barricade is connected to the second moldboard and detachably abuts the first barricade. The maximum vertical distance from the second barricade to the second moldboard exceeds that from the second cutter to the second moldboard. The first and second cutters cut the superfluous rigid circuit boards when the first and second moldboards move toward each other.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for forming a rigid-flexible circuit board, and more particularly to cutting molds for removing two opposite superfluous rigid circuit boards from a rigid-flexible circuit board.
2. Description of the Related Art
Providing flexibility, rigid-flexible circuit boards are widely employed in various electronic devices.
As to the manufacturing of a rigid-flexible circuit board, a flexible circuit board serves as a core and multilayer rigid circuit boards are laminated thereon. Top and bottom superfluous rigid circuit boards corresponding to a predetermined flexible circuit board exposure area or a predetermined flexible circuit board bending area are then removed using an outline processing technique.
As to removal of the superfluous rigid circuit boards using a mechanical outline processing technique, the flexible circuit board may be damaged because the depth by which the superfluous rigid circuit boards are cut cannot be exactly controlled. Moreover, if the flexible circuit board needs to undergo an electroless nickel and immersion gold process and a silver ink coating process, operation of the removal of the superfluous rigid circuit boards must be incorporated with additional processes, increasing complexity in removing the superfluous rigid circuit boards.
Hence, there is a need for cutting molds that exactly and easily remove two opposite superfluous rigid circuit boards corresponding to a flexible circuit board exposure area from a rigid-flexible circuit board.

Cutting mold for rigid-flexible circuit board and method for forming the same


A decoration plate includes a transparent substrate; an opaque ink layer provided on a portion of the transparent substrate surface, so that the transparent substrate has a plurality of transparent regions and opaque regions; a deep color transparent ink layer provided on the transparent regions of the transparent substrate; and a multicolor transparent ink layer provided on the deep color transparent ink layer, the transmittance of the multicolor transparent ink layer regarding light being larger than that of the deep color transparent ink layer. Via this arrangement, after the light is transmitted via the transparent regions of the decoration plate, the transparent regions will exhibit different colors.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a decoration plate, and in particular to a decoration plate having multicolor transparent inks.
2. Description of Related Art
Some symbols or patterns are often printed on a casing of an electronic product. Via these symbols or patterns, a user can be guided to understand how to operate the electronic product. For example, an arrow is printed on a button of an optical disk player, so that the user can be instructed to press the button thereby to play the optical disk. For another example, the vicinity of an insertion slot of a casing of a notebook computer will be indicated that such an insertion slot is suitable for which kind of electrical connector.
In order to make a user to recognize the symbols or patterns clearly even though the external light source is insufficient, the interior of the casing of the electronic product is provided with a light source module. The casing is made of a light-transmitting material and an opaque ink layer is coated on the surface of the casing. Then, the symbols or patterns are printed on the casing with transparent ink, so that the light emitted by the light source module can only be transmitted to the outside of the casing via the symbols or patterns. Taiwan Patent Publication No. 200632623 (published on Sep. 16, 2006) discloses a computer casing, in which a light source module is provided for allowing the emitted light to be transmitted to the outside of the computer casing. The light-transmitting mechanism of the casing not only makes the user easy to recognize the symbols or patterns on the casing, but also makes the external appearance of the electronic product more shining.
However, the light-transmitting mechanism of the conventional casing can only allow a monochromatic light to be transmitted. The symbols or patterns on the casing cannot exhibit different colors. Although a manufacturer attempts to provide several sets of light source modules of different colors in the casing thereby to generate multicolor lights, the multiple sets of light source modules may interfere with the arrangement of other electronic elements and increase the manufacture cost of the electronic product. Therefore, the above-mentioned measure can be limiting.
Consequently, because of the above limitation resulting from the technical design of prior art, the inventor strives via real world experience and academic research to develop the present invention, which can effectively improve the limitations described above.


A clamping device for a machine table comprises a clamping plate having a receptacle into which a draw-in bolt is insertable through an opening. A clamping mechanism immobilizes the draw-in bolt in the receptacle. A closure cap is movable inside the receptacle between a closed position and an operating position in which the closure cap is pushed into the receptacle by the draw-in bolt. The draw-in bolt is inserted into the receptacle and immobilized with the clamping mechanism. A centering surface is implemented on the end surface of the closure cap facing toward the outer side of the clamping device and/or on the end surface of the draw-in bolt facing toward the inner side of the clamping device. The centering surface pre-centers the draw-in bolt when it is inserted into the receptacle and its end surface thereby comes into contact with the end surface of the closure cap.

The machining of workpieces is often complex, and can encompass a plurality of chip-generating and non-chip-generating working steps on various processing machines in order to produce the finished component from a blank. In all production sequences, it is essential for the workpiece to occupy a defined location on the particular machine tool for each working step.
For this purpose, it is usual in practice first to clamp the workpiece that is to be machined onto a carrier plate, a clamping plate, or the like, and then to clamp the entire unit in place on the particular machine tool by way of several draw-in bolts that are mounted on the back side of the carrier plate and embodied as centering elements, by inserting the draw-in bolts into corresponding quick-release clamping units that are provided on the machine table. In production, the location of the quick-release clamping devices can therefore be regarded as a fixed machine parameter, so that it is necessary only to position the respective workpiece exactly on the carrier plate. The unit made up of the workpiece and carrier plate can then be actually clamped and reclamped on the machines very quickly and without difficulty, with no need for further positioning.
In conventional clamping devices of the kind cited initially, as known for example from DE 200 03 729 U1, the draw-in bolt is inserted into a receptacle of the clamping device which is embodied so that the inserted draw-in bolt is centered by its contact with the inner wall of the receptacle. Retention of the draw-in bolt in the receptacle is accomplished by means of gripping elements that are embodied as resilient clamping tongues.
From EP 1 264 657 A1 it is furthermore known to seal a receptacle of a clamping device in such a way that dirt particles cannot penetrate into it even when the draw-in bolt is removed. For that purpose, a plate-shaped closure cap is inserted into the receptacle and can be moved by a closing piston between two end positions. In its extended end position, in which its end surface facing toward the outer side of the clamping device terminates flush with the surface of the clamping device, the receptacle is protected from contamination. In the retracted end position, the draw-in bolt can be inserted into the receptacle.
With the known clamping devices, it is regarded as disadvantageous to some extent that the draw-in bolt must be inserted in accurately fitted fashion into the receptacle.


This invention relates to a helical intake port for an internal combustion engine comprising a straight passage, a swirl passage connected to the straight passage and formed in a spiral around the center of an intake valve, and a cylindrical throat connected to the swirl passage via an opening over the whole area of the swirl passage. The cross-sectional area S of the swirl passage is determined by the following equation: ##EQU1## where: .beta.=swirl angle from swirl start position,. .beta.0=whole swirl angle from swirl start position to swirl end position of swirl passage, PA1 S0=cross-sectional area of swirl passage at swirl start position.. As a result, swirl can be enhanced and a high flow coefficient of the intake port can be realized.

Helical intake ports having a spiral design are frequently used as intake ports in direct injection diesel engines. These helical intake ports set up a strong air swirl inside a cylinder, and promote the mixing of fuel and intake air.
Such a helical intake port is disclosed for example in Japanese Patent Tokkai Sho 59-12124 published by the Japanese Patent Office in 1984. FIG. 8 and FIG. 9 are respectively a vertical cross-sectional view and a plan view of this helical intake port. The helical intake port 10 in these figures comprises a straight passage 16, a swirl passage 13 having a spiral shape and connected to the straight passage 16, and a cylindrical throat 14 formed below the swirl passage 13. Intake air flowing in from the straight passage 16 is given a slewing motion by the swirl passage 13, and flows via the throat 14 from an intake valve 12 into a cylinder 17 while setting up a swirl flow. This prior art, by suitably designing the plan shape of the swirl passage of the intake port, enhances the swirl without reducing the flow coefficient of the intake port.
However, as the characteristics of air flow are determined not only by the plan shape of the swirl passage but also by the cross-sectional shape of same, it is difficult to set a swirl ratio to a desired value and to enhance the swirl and improve the flow coefficient of the intake port at the same time merely by specifying the plan shape of the swirl passage.

Helical intake port for an internal combustion engine


A low power inverter circuit includes first and second transistors that receive an input signal at their gate terminals. The first and second transistors are connected by way of their source terminals to third and fourth transistors, respectively. The third and fourth transistors are connected in parallel with fifth and sixth transistors, respectively. The third and fourth transistors are continuously switched on, and the fifth and sixth transistors are controlled in such a way to reduce short circuit current flowing through the first and second transistors when the input signal transitions from one state to another.

The present invention relates generally electronic circuits, and more specifically, to an inverter circuit.
Recent years have witnessed an increased demand for miniature and high-performance electronic devices. This demand has been primarily addressed with the evolution of integrated circuits (ICs) designed using very large scale integration (VLSI). Using VLSI, a single IC can have hundreds of thousands of transistors. This is achieved by miniaturizing transistors to sizes on the order of about 50 nanometer (nm) or less.
Although, reduced transistor size leads to increased processing power, it also can lead to increased power consumption. Power is classified as either static or dynamic. Static power consumption may be determined by calculating a product of a supply voltage provided to a transistor of the IC and a magnitude of direct current (DC) that includes both through current and leakage current, while dynamic power consumption, which includes capacitive power consumption, is determined by calculating a product of a load capacitance, a square of the supply voltage, and a toggle frequency.
Additionally, dynamic power consumption also includes power dissipation resulting from short circuits in the ICs when transistors in an inverter circuit switch state. For example, when an inverter circuit that includes p-channel metal oxide semiconductor (PMOS) and n-channel metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS) transistors switches state, both PMOS and NMOS transistors conduct current for a short duration of time. This simultaneous conduction of current results in a short-circuit DC current of considerable magnitude that flows through both the PMOS and NMOS transistors when an output is around one half of the supply voltage. The short-circuit DC current does not contribute to switching the capacitive loads and results in short-circuit power dissipation.
Various inverter circuits have been designed to reduce short-circuit power consumption. FIG. 1 is a schematic circuit diagram of one such conventional inverter circuit 100. The inverter circuit 100 includes first and second transistors 102 and 104, first and second capacitors 106 and 108, first and second diodes 110 and 112, and first and second resistors 114 and 116.
First terminals of the first and second resistors 114 and 116 receive an input voltage Vin. The first terminal of the first resistor 114 is connected to a first terminal of the first diode 110 and a second terminal of the first resistor 114 is connected to a second terminal of the first diode 110. The first terminal of the second resistor 116 is connected to a second terminal of the second diode 112 and a second terminal of the second resistor 116 is connected to a first terminal of the second diode 112. The second terminals of the first and second resistors 114 and 116 are connected to first terminals of the first and second capacitors 106 and 108, respectively, and second terminals of the first and second capacitors 106 and 108 are connected to ground.
A source of the first transistor 102 is connected to a supply voltage Vdd, and a gate of the first transistor 102 is connected to the first terminal of the first capacitor 106. A source of the second transistor 104 is connected to ground, a gate of the second transistor 104 is connected to the first terminal of the second capacitor 108, and a drain of the second transistor 104 is connected to a drain of the first transistor 102.
The first diode 110 and the first resistor 114 are connected in parallel between an input terminal of the inverter circuit 100 (node at which Vin is provided) and the gate of the first transistor 102, while the second diode 112 and the second resistor 116 are connected in parallel between the input terminal of the inverter circuit 100 and the gate of the second transistor 104. The first and second resistors 114 and 116 have a high resistance. Thus, the equivalent resistance of the first and second resistors 114 and 116 is reduced when either of the first and second diodes 110 and 112 is reverse-biased. This in turn increases a conductance for a conduction path between the input terminal of the inverter circuit 100 and the gates of the first and second transistors 102 and 104 when the diode is reverse-biased. However, when either of the first and second diodes 110 and 112 is forward-biased, the low resistance and high conductance for the conduction path between the input terminal of the inverter circuit 100 and the gates of the first and second transistors 102 and 104 remains undisturbed. Higher equivalent resistance when either of the first and second diodes 110 and 112 is reverse-biased slows the charging and discharging of the gates of the first and second transistors 102 and 104, which reduces short-circuit current and short-circuit power dissipation.
Although the inverter circuit 100 reduces short-circuit current and power dissipation, the magnitude of the dynamic current flowing through the inverter circuit 100 is high, which leads to an overall increase in dynamic power dissipation. Further, the slowing of the charging and discharging of the gates of the first and second transistors 102 and 104 leads to slow switching speed, which increases the transistor delay and degrades performance. Furthermore, the additional resistors and diodes, i.e., the first and second resistors 114 and 116 and the first and second diodes 110 and 112, increase on-chip area, which increases the overall cost of the IC.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an inverter circuit that has low short-circuit power consumption and fast switching, a small footprint, and overcomes the above-mentioned limitations of conventional inverter circuits.


A full-bridge converter circuit which implements an energy recovery circuit. The energy recovery circuit provides clamping of an output diode reverse voltage to a primary bank voltage of an inverter and is further configured to re-circulate excess absorbed energy to the inverter circuit.

The invention pertains to the art of switching circuits and is applicable to full-bridge DC/DC converters which have minimal drain voltage on the switches during a turn on. Switching circuits having the above attribute being commonly known as resonant or soft switching full-bridge converters.
It will be appreciated, however, that the invention has broader applications and may be advantageously employed in other environments and applications that wish to achieve minimization of energy loss.
Resonant or soft switching circuits are often employed due to their characteristics of reduction of power losses which allow for high efficiency switching and reduction of electromagnetic interference (EMI) generation. It is known, however, that even with such circuits switching losses due to the use of rectifier diodes are not substantially diminished. Further, the combination of the reverse-recovery process of the rectifier diodes with the leakage inductance of the transformer causes voltage overshoot and ringing that will lead to excessive dynamic losses or the failure of the rectifier diodes. The severity of this problem will tend to increase as the rectifier diode breakdown-voltage rating increases, since the diode reverse-recovery time increases with increasing voltage rating.
It is well known that diode recovery losses can be reduced by the insertion of an inductor in series with the power transformer primary. Another advantage of this inductor is to reduce the converter load value at which resonant transition occurs.
Various solutions to voltage overshoot have been proposed including the use of clamping circuits, and RC snubbers connected across the rectifier diodes. U.S. Pat. No. 5,198,969 is illustrative of such attempted solution. This patent includes clamp diodes connected to provide a path to the input supply to reduce switching losses and voltage stresses of rectifier diodes. This circuit acts to block the transmission of excessive energy from the primary side of the circuit to the secondary rectifier circuit through the use of the clamping diodes.
It has been found, however, that the above proposed solutions are relatively inefficient and/or complex, and while reducing voltage overshoot, some also may dissipate or otherwise remove energy from the circuit thereby reducing the efficiency of the circuit.
Therefore, it has been deemed desirable to find a circuit which will reduce the voltage overshoot in a resonant bridge converter, which will also recover energy otherwise lost in the process of eliminating the voltage overshoot.

Energy recovery circuit for use in a converter


An improved splash and spill-resistant container for holding fluids for animal consumption is disclosed. The container forms a cavity with a top access aperture which defines an inverted channel. A partition divides the cavity into first and second chambers. The partition curves downward from the periphery substantially to the floor of the container and is provided with a flow aperture, thereby allowing fluid communication between the first and second chambers. A valve is also provided in the second chamber to release air from the second chamber and to allow the container to be emptied. After filling the container with a volume of fluid, the container may be subjected to lateral jarring or inverted without spilling the fluid contained therein.

The consumption of water or other fluids is essential to the health, livelihood, and general well-being of all wild and domestic land animals. However, unlike their wild counterparts, house-hold pets and other confined animals are generally ill-equipped to seek out and obtain such fluids. Accordingly, such animals rely on humans to provide the same.
The general mode of providing animals with fluids is through containers such as a simple dog dish, an old bowl or the like. Of course, these dishes and bowls are often semi-spherical in shape and, although easily filled with fluid and accessed by an animal, are prone to allowing significant splashing and spillage when an animal or human caretender inadvertently comes into physical contact with the exterior of the bowl. This is especially true for some animals, such as large dog breeds, which may accidentally step on the perimeter of the bowl or kick the bowl, thereby causing it to flip over and spill the fluid contents on the ground. Even specially contoured one-piece pet bowls formed of molded plastic that are well-known in the art (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,772,476 to Van Ness et al.), suffer from similar splash and spillage problems.
During extended trips, animals require fluid nourishment to maintain comfort and well-being. This often results in a significant number of inconvenient stops being made to provide the animal with sufficient amounts of fluid. As can be appreciated, this extra stopping can substantially increase the required travel time. Furthermore, some animals, such as dogs employed in law enforcement operations, may spend many hours per day, several days per week in a vehicle, and will require a constant supply of fluids to remain healthy.
In the typical vehicle, such as a car, truck, boat, or plane, the only suitable location to place such a container is on the floor. As can be appreciated, the motion of the vehicle during operation creates significant jarring which will inevitably create waves or ripples in the fluid. These waves or ripples in turn will likely cause the fluid to splash or spill from any standard container. Furthermore, during emergency stopping or swerving, the container may flip over or invert, thus causing the entire contents to empty onto the floor of the vehicle, an obviously undesirable situation.
Previously, others have proposed a variety of containers for holding fluids for animal consumption in an attempt to overcome this problem. A basic example of such a container is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,152,576 to Faurot. The container disclosed in the '576 patent is provided with a flat frusto-conical wall extending partially into the cavity of the container to prevent water from spilling if the container is tilted. However, this proposed design has several shortcomings.
As can be appreciated from viewing the container, the amount of fluid that can be held is extremely limited. If the container is filled beyond the aperture in the frusto-conical wall, the fluid will easily spill if the container is tipped or inverted. Further, even if the amount of fluid is limited as shown, nothing prevents the fluid from splashing out of the container if significant lateral jarring occurs.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,076,435 to Seymour discloses a container with an exchange system that allows fluid held in a reservoir to continuously refill into a chamber after an animal drinks from the container. Although this design attempts to solve the problem of splashing created by lateral jarring and tilting of the container, it is apparent that fluid held within the reservoir easily spills out onto the floor if the container is inverted or tipped beyond a specified angle. Therefore, at best, this design can be said to only minimize spillage under certain limited conditions.
Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,504 to Carrico discloses a container having an internal dish for holding fluid, the dish being in fluid communication with the surrounding housing. While the housing includes an inverted channel for catching fluid upon the inversion of the container, the entire volume of fluid in the container must be caught. This limits the effectiveness of this design to prevent inadvertent spills and the volume of fluid which may be held.
Thus, a need is identified for an improved splash and spill-resistant container for holding fluids for animal consumption that may be subjected to significant lateral jarring without fluid splashing, that may be inverted without spilling the fluid contents, and that is of simple, yet durable, construction.

Splash and spill-resistant container for animal use


A human identification apparatus, which can judge for identification of human images even in temporally-distant frames or frames shot with different cameras, judges whether or not persons represented by human images respectively included in different image sequences are the same person, and includes: a walking posture detecting unit which detects first and second walking sequences, each sequence being an image sequence indicating a walking state of respective first and second persons respectively included in the different image sequences; and a walking state estimating unit which estimates a transition state of a walking posture in the periodic walking movement of the first person at a time or in a position different from a time or a position of the walking sequence of the first person; and a judging unit which verifies whether or not the estimated transition state of the walking posture of the first person matches the transition state of the walking posture of the second person, and judges that the first person and the second person are the same person in the case where the transition states match with each other.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a human identification apparatus which judges whether or not a human image included in one image sequence and a human image included in another image sequence represent the same person, and an apparatus which searches for or tracks a person.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In order to search for or track a specific person in an image sequence obtained by a surveillance camera, it is required to identify the specific person, namely, to judge whether or not a person that appears in one image or image sequence is as same as a person that appears in another image or image sequence.
One of the conventional methods for judging a person for identification with the view to searching for or tracking a person represented by a human image in an image sequence is to correspond human image areas in the neighboring frames (for example pp. 3 and 6 and FIGS. 2 and 9, in the Japanese Laid-Open Application No. 2003-346159).
FIGS. 1A through 1C are diagrams for describing the searching/tracking method described in the above-mentioned Application No. 2003-346159. FIGS. 1A and 1B shows temporally consecutive frame images which are obtained by shooting a person. The frame image A10 shown in FIG. 1A is an image obtained by shooting a person A11 who moves toward right. A rectangle A12 is a circumscribed rectangle including head and body of the person which are detected, using motion vectors, as areas with small movement (i.e. steady human area) in the whole body. Similarly, in a frame image A20 shown in FIG. 1B, a circumscribed rectangle A22 of the steady human area detected from a person A21 is presented in a dashed line. In a frame image A30 shown in FIG. 1C, the steady human areas of the circumscribed rectangles A12 and A22 obtained respectively from the frame images A10 and A20 are displayed at the same time in such a way that they overlap with each other. According to the conventional method, the person A11 and the person A21 are identified as the same person based on how the circumscribed rectangles A12 and A22 overlap as well as a continuity of respective motion vectors.
However, the conventional method, in which a person is searched in positions that are close between the frames, has a problem that, in the case where a detection of the person once fails in a certain frame, it becomes impossible to identify a human image in a frame prior to the failed frame with a human image in a frame following the failed frame, so as to track the person.
With the same method, it is conceivable to identify a human image in one frame with a human image in another frame, using colors and image patterns. Other problems, however, are that a positional change increases due to a movement of a person in the case of using temporally distant frames, and that changes of a direction in which the person stands with respect to a camera, a posing of the person and lighting conditions render it difficult to correspond the human image in one frame with the human image in another frame, even though the persons are the same person.
Therefore, in the case where plural persons appear in an image, when a person to be searched for or tracked is hidden behind another person or an object, or when a normal detection cannot be temporarily carried out in a frame due to changes in the lighting conditions, a problem is that it is no longer possible to continue the search or tracking.

Human identification apparatus and human searching/tracking apparatus

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A device for stimulating the skin of an individual by an applicator which has a head containing solenoid-operated plungers. The solenoids' windings are duty-cycle operated by associated oscillator/driver circuits to cause their plungers to repeatedly impact the skin with relatively small force impulses so that the skin as distinguished from muscles is affected. By repeated minute stimulation of the skin in the vicinity of pain, a hypnotic type of effect that can alleviate pain symptoms has been found to occur. The solenoids are operated in particular modes which are other than one in which all solenoids are simultaneously energized and de-energized in unison.

Numerous devices for the non-invasive therapeutic treatment of the human body have been proposed. Many of these are of the class that may be generally referred to as massaging devices or vibrators which act through the skin on subcutaneous body structure, for example muscles and joints, with the objective of promoting comfort, relaxation, and/or relief for the individual. This general technical field also contains devices that are specifically for stimulating the skin.
Examples of known devices are represented by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,479,253; 3,968,789; 4,085,738; 4,777,943; and 4,788,968 which developed in preliminary novelty searching conducted in connection with the present invention.
The present invention relates to a new and unique device for therapeutic treatment of the human body which performs in a manner unlike any other of which the inventor is aware. The invention involves the discovery that it is possible to obtain some form of pain relief by the stimulation of the skin using particular methodologies. While reasons for this effect are presently not fully known to the inventor, it is the inventor's belief that these particular methodologies induce a physiological response that masks at least to some extent the pain for which relief is sought. And although the inventor's experimental testing to date has involved only a limited number of subjects, the results obtained suggest that the general population can in many cases obtain a benefit from the invention.
In a general way, the methodologies involving principles of the invention comprise the non-invasive stimulation of a zone of the skin by repetitively impacting it with the rounded tip ends of small solenoid-operated plungers that are operated in a pattern which is other than the simultaneous energization and de-energization of all of the plungers. Rather, the plungers are selectively energized and de-energized according to certain patterns, which will be subsequently described in detail. By subjecting a treatment zone to such procedures for a certain limited amount of time, the inventor has found that an individual may obtain a certain amount of relief during, and even for an extended time beyond termination of, the treatment. While it is believed that devices which embody the principles of the invention can be useful to many individuals who seek relief from certain types of discomfort or pain, such devices may be used for relaxation or skin stimulation purposes alone in the absence of underlying discomfort.
Devices embodying the principles of the invention are well suited for mass-production fabrication as so to enable them to be made available to the public at reasonable cost. The non-invasive character of the devices is calculated to promote their acceptance by consumers for personal use outside of a professional treatment environment although it is expected that treating professionals will find such devices to be beneficial for certain forms of patient treatment.
Principles of the invention relating to its constructional as well as its methodological aspects will be seen by the reader in the ensuing detailed description of a presently preferred embodiment. The disclosure is accompanied by drawings which illustrate a presently preferred embodiment according to the best mode contemplated at this time for carrying out the invention. In the drawing figures like reference numerals are used to designate like parts.


A method is provided for performing plasma immersion ion implantation with a highly uniform seasoning film on the interior of a reactor chamber having a ceiling and a cylindrical side wall and a wafer support pedestal facing the ceiling. The method includes providing a gas distribution ring with plural gas injection orifices on a periphery of a wafer support pedestal, the orifices facing radially outwardly from the wafer support pedestal. Silicon-containing gas is introduced through the gas distribution orifices of the ring to establish a radially outward flow pattern of the silicon-containing gas. The reactor includes pairs of conduit ports in the ceiling adjacent the side wall at opposing sides thereof and respective external conduits generally spanning the diameter of the chamber and coupled to respective pairs of the ports. The method further includes injecting oxygen gas through the conduit ports into the chamber to establish an axially downward flow pattern of oxygen gas in the chamber. RF power is coupled into the interior of each of the conduits to generate a toroidal plasma current of SixOy species passing through the chamber to deposit a seasoning layer of a SixOy material on surfaces within the chamber, while leaving the pedestal without a wafer so as to expose a wafer support surface of the pedestal.

Plasma immersion ion implantation of a semiconductor wafer is typically used to form P—N junctions in the wafer surface. The plasma immersion ion implantation (P3i) process is faster or more productive than other implantation processes. In order to attain a requisite implantation or junction depth, ion energy at the wafer surface must relatively high, which can be accomplished by applying a sufficiently high RF bias power to the wafer, or to an electrode within the wafer support pedestal. The P3i reactor chamber is typically constructed of aluminum components whose surfaces are anodized to provide some protection and from plasma in the chamber. One problem is that the high ion energy of the plasma during ion implantation produces ion bombardment of the metallic chamber components, removing metal particles that vaporize into the plasma to spread throughout the chamber and deposit on the wafer. The high ion energy is attained by coupling RF bias power to the wafer at a sufficient level to create a plasma bias voltage on the order of tens or hundreds of kilovolts. Such metal contamination of the wafer can produce defects in the devices formed on the wafer surface.

Plasma immersion ion implantation with highly uniform chamber seasoning process for a toroidal source reactor


The present invention provides a submount which includes a semiconductor element and which can be easily connected to an IC on a main substrate. The submount in one embodiment of the present invention includes: a substrate; electrodes; the semiconductor element; Au wires; and gold bumps. The electrodes, the semiconductor element, the Au wires, and the gold bumps, are encapsulated on the substrate by a resin. The gold bumps are formed on the electrodes and the Au wires by ball bonding and are cut by dicing such that side surfaces of the gold bumps are exposed. The exposed surfaces function as side surface electrodes of the submount.

Conventionally, in some semiconductor modules in which submounts are packaged, electrodes are formed not only on an element mounting surface of the submount but also on a side surface portion of the submount.
Examples of conventional techniques include a module like one shown in FIG. 26. This module 109 includes a main substrate 110, an IC 111 on the main substrate 110, and a submount 100 on the main substrate 110. The submount 100 includes a semiconductor element 104 on an element mounting surface.
In the module shown in FIG. 26, a through-hole electrode and an element mounting electrode are formed as an electrode 102 in the submount 100. An electrical connection between the IC 111 and the semiconductor element 104 is achieved by connecting the IC 111 and the electrode 102 by an AU wire 112.
However, in the module shown in FIG. 26, the electrode 102 is formed over two surfaces of a substrate 101 and an electrode area is large. Accordingly, a parasitic capacitance is large. Furthermore, the module shown in FIG. 26 also includes a through-hole land portion and inevitably has a large pitch, so that there is a problem that a high-density submount cannot be manufactured.

Submount, encapsulated semiconductor element, and methods of manufacturing the same


An air bag open structure of an automobile includes an air bag door defined by a tear seam formed in an instrument panel. A chute is formed for mounting an air bag attached inside of the instrument panel and a hinge with one end secured between the instrument panel and chute and the other end inserted between the air bag door and door reinforcement plate, thus enabling sliding so that an air bag door package may be optimized.

Generally, a passenger air bag refers to an air bag used for the safety of a passenger riding in a seat next to a driver, i.e., front passenger seat. The passenger air bag is an auxiliary safety system that prevents a passenger from directly contacting an instrument panel, windshield, etc. in the knees, head, chest, etc. when a vehicle collides.
Such a passenger air bag is allowed to deploy through an air bag door furnished in an instrument panel. A tear seam is often formed inside an instrument panel cover by a laser process so that the portion surrounded by the tear seam may function as an air bag door while not being recognized from the outside of the instrument panel, thereby improving interior aesthetics of the front passenger compartment.
However, the air bag is directly related to safety of the passenger, so smooth opening action of the air bag door must be secured upon deployment of the air bag. Therefore, its design requires that a passenger not be injured by the air bag door during deployment of the air bag.

Air bag door open structure of automobile


A clamp assembly for adjustably mounting a video monitor or CPU to a supporting table which is tiltable out of a horizontal plane includes a pair of main clamp members which may be slid onto the table to hook around and extend between the front and rear edges of the table and a pair of angular cross clamp members threadably and adjustably attached between the main clamp members. The cross clamp members are adapted to be initially slid apart from one another a distance sufficient to allow a monitor to be placed therebetween and over the main clamp members. The cross clamp members are then slid toward one another and into engagement with the front and rear edges above the monitor base and tightened in position to hold the monitor against inadvertent sliding movement as a result of tilting of the table. The entire clamping assembly may be mounted and utilized without cutting, drilling, or in any other way disturbing the integrity of the table top.

The present invention pertains to a clamp for securing a video monitor to a table top and, more particularly, to a clamp assembly for securely attaching a video monitor to a table which may be adjustably tilted out of a horizontal plane.
It is known to provide video display monitors with supporting bases with respect to which the monitor is universally adjustable to position the screen for the convenience of the user. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,605,188 and 4,640,485 are generally representative of the many types of universally adjustable monitor supports in the prior art which provide horizontal rotational, vertical tilting, and vertical adjustable positioning of the monitor with respect to the supporting base. Because of the universal adjustability of the monitor in these units, they are intended to be placed on a horizontal table where the base tends to remain unmovably positioned.
There has been a trend, however, to provide desks and tables used to support computer terminals, display monitors and other related equipment with supporting top surfaces which are vertically adjustable and tiltable with respect to the horizontal. In particular, table tops or desk tops used to support a video monitor are provided with vertical and tilting adjustments to readily position the monitor screen in a position which is most suitable for the user, to facilitate ease of viewing, reduce glare, or to allow the monitor to be periodically repositioned as needed or desired. If the video monitor is placed on a table which is tiltable, means must be provided to secure the monitor base to the table so it will not inadvertently slide off of the supporting surface if the tilt angle becomes too extreme.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,773 discloses a computer terminal stand which includes a monitor-supporting table top which is tiltable to an inclined position and includes an adjustable clamping mechanism to hold the monitor on the table top when inclined. The clamping mechanism is adjustable to accommodate varying sizes of monitor bases and to adjust the position of the monitor on the table top. However, the clamping mechanism requires the table top to be provided with elongate through slots which present serious surface discontinuities in the table and severely limit the adaptability of the table surface for other uses.
It would be desirable, therefore, to have an adjustable monitor clamp to hold a video monitor on a tiltable table top which does not require cutting slots or drilling holes in the table. Such a clamp should be simple to use so that mounting and adjustment of the position of the monitor may be quickly and easily accomplished.


A method for reliably communicating unreliable protocol packets by encapsulating one or more unreliable protocol packets in a packet constructed according to a predefined format. The method further employs an acknowledgement mechanism whereby a receiver of packets acknowledges reception by responding with a packet containing information pertaining to received packets. A sender retransmits packets for which no acknowledgement was received within a predefined period of time.

Real-time transport protocol (RTP) as described in RFC 3550 standard, published by the Internet Society on July 2003 is a widely used protocol for transmitting real-time multimedia over internet protocol (IP) networks. Applications usually run RTP on top of a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the network carrier protocol but RTP is designed to ride on top of any other transport layer protocol and is not inextricably linked to UDP. The UDP does not require al establishment of a connection between the sender and the receiver and is considered to be an unreliable protocol in that it cannot ensure that all the transmitted packets will arrive at all, arrive undamaged or arrive in the correct order. Such an unreliable protocol may be unsuitable for applications that require network transport reliability, for example security recording applications.
Another problem associated with the RTP is poor network utilization due to its large overhead. For example, a typical 74-Byte RTP packet may include 54 bytes of headers and only 20 bytes of voice packets
Yet another problem associated with RTP regarding network utilization is the packet rate typically produced by this protocol when carrying real time data. For example, communicating a packet every 20 milliseconds (a typical rate for voice over IP applications) will yield a packet rate of 50 packets a second.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements shown in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements may be exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals may be repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.

Method, system and apparatus for reliably transmitting packets of an unreliable protocol


In a transceiver which is configured in particular for transmitting optical data, there is provided a device for reconstructing data from a received data signal (RX), having a clock-signal recovery unit (3) for recovering a clock signal belonging to the transmitted data from the received data signal, and having a data reconstruction unit (2) for reconstructing the transmitted data from the received data signal using the recovered clock signal (fCLK), and for emitting a data stream (DATA) which is synchronised with the recovered clock signal. A detector unit (9) detects an error state in the received data signal (RX) which prevents the data from being reconstructed reliably, switching means having a digital phase-locked lock (13) being provided to enable a signal having a clock rate which corresponds to the mean value of the clock signal (fCLK) previously recovered by the clock-signal recovery unit (3) to be fed, as a reference signal, to a phase-locked loop of the clock-signal recovery unit (3) in this event in place of the received data signal, thus ensuring that the phase-locked loop of the clock-signal recovery unit (3) will continue to oscillate properly even in this event.

In digital hard-wired transmission systems, digital data in the form of square-wave or trapezoidal pulses is fed into a transmission cable, usually a copper cable or a fibre-optic cable, and is received by a receiver at the other end of the cable. When this is done, the data signal becomes attenuated in respect of amplitude and distorted in respect of phase angle and group transit time as a result of being transmitted, in which case it may also have high-frequency and low-frequency interference superimposed on it. The distorted incoming signal at the receiver must therefore be amplified and freed of distortion in the receiver before any reconstruction or recovery is possible of the data which was transmitted in the form of the data signal. For this purpose, known receivers comprise an amplifier at the input end, a distortion remover (equalizer) connected downstream of the amplifier, a clock-signal recovery unit for regenerating or recovering the clock signal belonging to the data transmitted and a data reconstruction unit for reconstructing the data originally transmitted, a data stream synchronised with the regenerated or recovered clock signal being produced by the data reconstruction unit. The clock-signal recovery and data reconstruction units dealt with above are usually combined into a circuit which is referred to as a clock and data recovery (CDR) unit.
What has predominantly been used to date for clock-signal recovery and data reconstruction has been a CDR unit produced in mixed-signal circuit technology which thus has both analog and digital circuit components, it being the analog data signal which has previously been equalized or filtered which is fed to this CDR unit. In the CDR unit, this data signal is assessed for its phase, for example, by an analog phase detector based on switched-capacitor circuit technology, to enable the clock signal of the transmitted data to be derived therefrom with the help of a suitable phase-locked loop. This principle is based on over-sampling of the received data signal and thus results in stringent demands being made on the analog circuitry. What is more, the entire data signal is needed for assessment on this principle, and the amplitude of the data signal also has to be stable.
In CDR circuits of purely digital design, the received data signal is first digitised with the help of a comparator, with the CDR circuit which follows the comparator assessing only the edges of the digitised data signal, to enable the clock signal of the transmitted data to be regenerated with the help of a digital phase-locked loop. However, CDR circuits of purely digital design often cause relatively extreme abrupt phase shifts within the CDR circuit, as a result of which the jitter requirements laid down by the particular data transmission standard may, under certain circumstances, not be satisfied.
A further approach to a solution is shown diagrammatically in FIG. 2.
What is shown in this case is a CDR circuit 1 of digital design for recovering a clock signal and regenerating data from a received data signal RX. The digital CDR unit 1 regenerates the clock signal of the data originally transmitted using a digital phase-locked loop to which the digitised data signal RX is fed as a reference signal, thus enabling the data originally transmitted DATA to be reconstructed from the received data signal RX by using the clock signal which has been regenerated in this way.
Provided in transceivers is not only a receiving section having a CDR unit of the kind described above but also a transmitting section for transmitting data at a given clock frequency. Associated with this transmitting section is a unit 17 referred to as a clock synthesizer unit which derives the transmission clock signal fTX for the transmission of data as a function of the clock signal regenerated by the CDR unit 1. In a similar way to the CDR unit, this CSU unit generally comprises a phase-locked loop to which the clock signal recovered by the CDR unit 1, or a clock signal fCLK derived therefrom, is fed as a reference clock signal. Due to the demanding requirements which the CSU unit 17 is called upon to meet in respect of intrinsic jitter, there is provided in the known solution shown in FIG. 2 a further phase-locked loop (PLL) 3 to attenuate jitter, which loop conditions the clock signal recovered by the CDR unit 1 and frees it of jitter before the de-jittered clock signal fCLK is fed to the CSU unit 17 for generating the transmission clock signal fTX. The phase-locked loop 3 may be designed using mixed-signal circuit technology.
In the example shown in FIG. 2, there is also a multiplexer 16 provided by means of which an external reference clock signal fTXEXT can be selected as a reference clock signal for the CSU unit 17 in place of the clock signal fCLK emitted by the phase-locked loop 3. The external clock signal fTXEXT may, for example, be a clock signal which, although it originates from the clock signal recovered by the CDR unit 1, has been produced externally.
The disadvantage of the solution shown in FIG. 2 lies in the fact that a total of three phase-locked loops are required, which means that implementation is relatively costly and complicated and the area and power required are relatively large. Also, the sensitivity of the circuit shown in FIG. 2 to noise and internal and external sources of interference is relatively great due to the lack of insulation between the individual phase-locked loops.
The demands made on the clock-signal recovery and data reconstruction that arise from the data transmission standard which is implemented in the given case are generally high. In this way, the clock-signal recovery has to proceed reliably even with data strings in which there are long sequences of zeroes or in which there is no change of edge for a long period (so-called NRZ (non-return-to-zero) data). The jitter tolerance and bit error rate (BER) laid down by the particular data transmission standard have to be observed. With regard to the clock-signal generation carried out by the CSU unit, stringent requirements have to be met in respect of jitter suppression or low intrinsic jitter. Generally speaking, the clock-signal recovery and data reconstruction should work for both scrambled data and unscrambled data.
Particularly demanding requirements have to be met by the stability of the clock signal or frequency in the event of the received data signal, i.e. the incoming data stream, not being present at all or not being of a sufficiently high level or there not being a sufficiently large number of transmissions (the so-called "loss-of-signal" state), which means that reliable recovery of the clock signal or reconstruction of the data by analysing the received data signal is prevented in the CDR unit. What in particular has to be ensured in this case is that the phase-locked loop contained in the CDR unit continues to run even if this loss-of-signal error state occurs.

Device for reconstructing data from a received data signal and corresponding transceiver


An aircraft stowage bin assembly includes shear fittings configured to route a content load from the bucket of the bin assembly to the airframe in the event of a forward load condition, such as a crash or severe turbulence. When the forward inertial load factor on the stowage bin is greater than about 1 g, the shear fittings create an efficient load path from the bucket to the airframe which bypasses the large metallic or composite endframes required by the designs of many conventional overhead stowage bins. As a result, significant reductions in overall bulk and weight, as well as lower manufacturing costs, can be realized.

1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to stowage bins and, more particularly, to overhead stowage bins in vehicle passenger cabins.
2. Background
Modern passenger airplanes often include overhead stowage bins in the passenger cabin for storage of carry-on luggage and other items. Such bins are often mounted with numerous mountings located along the ceiling and sidewalls of the passenger cabin. These mountings are typically designed to support a predetermined amount of weight within the bins during normal flight conditions. In addition, the mountings are designed to keep the bins securely fastened to the airframe in the event of a crash or severe turbulence.
For example, current FAA regulations require that each baggage compartment have a means to protect occupants from injury by the contents of the compartment when the ultimate forward inertial load factor exceeds 9 g. To satisfy this requirement, conventional overhead stowage bins are often designed to bear their content load into large endframes during a forward load condition, such as a crash. These large endframes, in turn, typically route the loads to connecting panels attached to the airframe.
Such conventional designs are usually effective for preventing bins from detaching from their mountings and falling completely or allowing items to fall on passengers' heads during a forward load condition, such as a crash. On the other hand, these conventional designs also present a number of drawbacks. For example, conventional overhead stowage bins are often bulky and somewhat heavy. In addition, conventional overhead stowage bins can be rather costly to manufacture and assemble. These drawbacks are becoming increasingly significant, as aircraft designers strive to develop more and more efficient aircraft designs.


The present invention relates to chemokine-binding heterocyclic compound salts, methods of use thereof, and methods for preparing the same.

The chemotactic cytokines, or chemokines, are a family of proteins, approximately 8-10 kDa in size that function, at least in part by modulating a complex and overlapping set of biological activities important for the movement of lymphoid cells and extravasation and tissue infiltration of leukocytes in response to inciting agents (see, for example: P. Ponath, Exp. Opin. Invest. Drugs, 7:1-18, 1998). The cellular receptors for these proteins are classified based on the chemokine natural ligand. Receptors of the β-chemokines are designated with the prefix "CCR" whereas the receptors of the α-chemokine are designated with the prefix "CXCR". The natural chemokine ligand for the CXCR4 receptor is stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1).
The inhibition of the binding of SDF-1 to CXCR4 by specific small-molecule inhibitors has been shown, in a model, to reduce the severity of the pathogenesis of collagen II-induced arthritis (P. Matthys, S. Hatse, K. Vermiere, A. Wuyts, G. Bridger, G. W. Henson, E. De Clercq, A. Billiau and D. Schols, J. Immunol. 107: 4686-4692, 2001). This model, which is used as a study model for the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis in humans, shows that SDF-1 plays a central role in the pathogenesis of murine collagen induced arthritis. Similarly, the use of small-molecule CXCR4 inhibitors has been shown, in a murine model, to reduce a number of pathological parameters related to asthmatic-type inflammation in an allergin-induced inflammation (N. W. Lukacs, A. Berlin, D. Schols, R. T. Skerlj, G. J. Bridger, Am. J. Pathology, 160 (4): 1353-1360, 2002).
Two specific chemokine receptors, CXCR4 and CCR5, have been implicated in the etiology of infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The T cell-line tropic (T-tropic) viral phenotype of HIV requires, for infection, an association with the CXCR4 receptor, which is expressed in the surface of certain cells of the immune system (Carroll et al., Science, 276: 274-276, 1997). Specifically, an interaction between HIV and the CXCR4 receptor is required for membrane fusion, a necessary step in the infection of the host immune cell.
The heterocyclic compounds disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,131, U.S. Pat. No. 5,698,546 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,817,807 selectively bind to the CXCR4 receptor, inhibiting the binding of the natural SDF-1 ligand. Such binding may show anti-inflammatory effects. The binding also competitively prevents the binding of the T-tropic HIV with the receptor, and thus imparts a preventative effect against HIV infection.
The compound of Formula I, (S)-(N′-(1H-benzimidazol-2-ylmethyl)-N′-5,6,7,8-tetrahydroquinolin-8-yl-1,4-butanediamine, is disclosed and claimed along with salts, pro-drug forms, and stereoisomeric forms thereof in WO 03055876, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Preferably among the pharmaceutically acceptable salts described in WO 03055876 and the only salt form prepared therein is the hydrobromide salt. The compound of the Formula I is intended to be used as an orally dosed pharmaceutical agent in the treatment of HIV infections, and the present salts of Formula I suffer from problems associated with hygroscopicity.

Citation of the above documents is not intended as an admission that any of the foregoing is pertinent prior art. All statements as to the date or representation as to the contents of these documents is based on the information available to the applicants and does not constitute any admission as to the correctness of the dates or contents of these documents. Further, all documents referred to throughout this application are incorporated in their entirety by reference herein.

Chemokine-binding heterocyclic compound salts, and methods of use thereof


A protective coating for use on a silicon-containing substrate, and deposition methods therefor. The coating has a barium-strontium-aluminosilicate (BSAS) composition that is less susceptible to degradation by volatilization and in corrosive environments as a result of having at least an outer surface region that consists essentially of one or more stoichiometric crystalline phases of BSAS and is substantially free of a nonstoichiometric second crystalline phase of BSAS that contains a substoichiometric amount of silica. The coating can be produced by carrying out deposition and heat treatment steps that result in the entire coating or just the outer surface region of the coating consisting essentially of the stoichiometric celsian phase.

This invention relates to coating systems suitable for protecting components exposed to high-temperature environments, such as the hot gas flow path through a gas turbine engine. More particularly, this invention is directed to a coating composition that exhibits improved high temperature stability when used to protect a silicon-containing substrate.
Higher operating temperatures for gas turbine engines are continuously sought in order to increase their efficiency. While nickel, cobalt and iron-base superalloys have found wide use for components throughout gas turbine engines, alternative materials have been proposed. In particular, silicon-based non-oxide ceramics, most notably with silicon carbide (SiC) as a matrix and/or as a reinforcing material, are candidates for high temperature applications, such as combustor liners, vanes, shrouds, airfoils, and other hot section components of gas turbine engines. Components in many of these applications are in contact with highly corrosive and oxidative environments. It has been determined that Si-based ceramics lose mass and recede at high temperatures in water-containing environments because of the formation of volatile silicon hydroxide (Si(OH)4). The recession rate due to volatilization or corrosion can be sufficiently high to require an external coating with high resistance to such environments.
Stability is a critical requirement of a coating system for a Si-based material in high temperature environments containing water vapors. Other important properties for the coating material include low thermal conductivity, a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) compatible with the Si-based ceramic material, low permeability to oxidants, and chemical compatibility with the Si-based material and a silica scale that forms from oxidation. As such, protective coatings for gas turbine engine components formed of Si-based materials have been termed environmental barrier coatings (EBC).
Barium-strontium-aluminosilicates (BSAS; (Ba1-xSrx)O—Al2O3—SiO2) and other alkaline earth aluminosilicates have been proposed as protective coatings for Si-based materials in view of their excellent environmental protection properties and low thermal conductivity. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,254,935, 6,352,790, 6,365,288, 6,387,456, and 6,410,148 to Eaton et al. disclose the use of BSAS and alkaline earth aluminosilicates as outer protective coatings for Si-based substrates. Of these, all but U.S. Pat. No. 6,352,790 disclose stoichiometric BSAS (molar ratio: 0.75BaO.0.25SrO.Al2O3.2SiO2; molar percent: 18.75BaO.6.25SrO.25Al2O3.50SiO2) as the preferred alkaline earth aluminosilicate composition, with layers of silicon and mullite (3Al2O3.2SiO2) employed as bond coats. The BSAS coatings are typically produced by air plasma spraying (APS) followed by heat treatment to contain at least 50% of the celsian crystallographic structure corresponding to stoichiometric BSAS. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,254,935 and 6,365,288 further teach that the coating contains a crystalline structure of at least 80% by volume composed of crystalline celsian and hexacelsian phases, which differ crystallographically but have the same stoichiometric BSAS chemistry.
Notwithstanding the above-noted advances, further improvements in coating life are required. In particular, longer exposures at temperatures sustained in the combustion environment of a gas turbine engine (e.g., above 2300° F. (about 1260° C.) combined with high pressure steam and high gas velocities) have resulted in the volatilization of existing BSAS materials, causing coating recession that ultimately leads to degradation of the environmental protective properties of the coating. In order for Si-based materials to be suitable for more demanding aircraft engine applications such as vanes, blades and combustors, coatings will be required that exhibit lower recession rates.

Environmental barrier coating for silicon-containing substrates and process therefor


A multi-level, coplanar copper damascene interconnect structure on an integrated circuit chip includes a first planar interconnect layer on an integrated circuit substrate and having plural line conductors separated by a dielectric material having a relatively low dielectric constant and a relatively low elastic modulus. A second planar interconnect layer on the first planar interconnect layer comprises a dielectric film having an elastic modulus higher than in the first planar interconnect layer and conductive vias therethrough. The vias are selectively in contact with the line conductors. A third planar interconnect layer on the second planar interconnect layer has plural line conductors separated by the dielectric material and selectively in contact with the vias.

This invention relates to a multi-level, coplanar interconnect structure on an integrated circuit and, more particularly, to a hybrid dielectric structure for improving stiffness of back end of the line structures.
Continued improvement in integrated circuit density is due, in part, to advances in interconnection technology. IC manufacturing generally includes front end of the line (FEOL) and back end of the line (BEOL) processes. The FEOL processes relate to formation of transistors and capacitors and the like along with polysilicon gate layers. BEOL processes include steps to form metal interconnects and associated dielectrics. Conventional interconnect structures used aluminum for conductors. The aluminum was deposited as a film and then patterned to form interconnects. The dielectric insulation material was then added and planarized.
More recently, processes using copper interconnects have been developed. One such process uses damascene copper electroplating for chip interconnections. This process initially forms a planar insulation layer. The insulation layer is etched to form trenches or vias which are then filled with metal and polished to planarize. In a dual damascene process two patterns are combined into one.
The transition from aluminum to copper interconnects has resulted in reduction in resistance of interconnects. To reduce RC noise, dielectric materials having low dielectric constants ( also referred to as xe2x80x9clow kxe2x80x9d) are now being integrated into BEOL structures. However, low k dielectric materials are not generally structural in nature. They can not support applied loads encountered during wire bonding or ball bonding without adversely affecting the electrical reliability of the device. However, these changes must be addressed as the industry changes from quartz which has a high elastic modulus to low modulus materials used as dielectrics.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems discussed above, in a novel and simple manner.
In accordance with the invention, a hybrid dielectric interconnect structure using low k dielectric materials utilizes low modulus dielectric materials at the line level where noise is most likely, and higher elastic modulus dielectric materials which are structural in nature at the via levels.
Broadly, there is disclosed herein a multi-level, coplanar interconnect structure on an integrated circuit chip including a planar line layer having plural interconnect conductors separated by a dielectric material having a relatively low dielectric constant and a relatively low elastic modulus. A planar via layer comprises a dielectric film having an elastic modulus higher than in the line layer and conductive vias therethrough. One of the line and via layer is on an integrated circuit substrate and defines a first layer and the other of the line and via layer is on the first layer so that the vias are selectively in contact with the line layer conductors.
It is a feature of the invention that the dielectric film has a relatively low dielectric constant.
It is another feature of the invention that the dielectric material has a dielectric constant less than about 3.0.
It is another feature of the invention that the dielectric material comprises a polyarylene ether material.
It is still another feature of the invention that the dielectric material comprises an organic or an inorganic material. The dielectric film comprises an inorganic thin film.
It is yet another feature of the invention that the dielectric film comprises SiCOH film.
There is disclosed in accordance with another aspect of the invention, a multi-level, coplanar copper damascene interconnect structure on an integrated circuit chip including a first planar interconnect layer on an integrated circuit substrate and having plural line conductors separated by a dielectric material having a relatively low dielectric constant and a relatively low elastic modulus. A second planar interconnect layer on the first planar interconnect layer comprises a dielectric film having an elastic modulus higher than in the first planar interconnect layer and conductive vias therethrough. The vias are selectively in contact with the line conductors. A third planar interconnect layer on the second planar interconnect layer has plural line conductors separated by the dielectric material and selectively in contact with the vias.
There is disclosed in accordance with a further aspect of the invention a multi-level, coplanar interconnect structure on an integrated circuit chip including a planar line layer having plural interconnect conductors separated by an organic or inorganic dielectric material having a relatively low dielectric constant. A planar via layer comprises an inorganic dielectric film having a relatively low dielectric constant and conductive vias therethrough. One of the line and via layer is on an integrated circuit substrate and defines a first layer and the other of the line and via layer is on the first layer so that the vias are selectively in contact with the line layer conductors.
Further features and advantages of the invention will be readily apparent from the specification and from the drawings.

Hybrid dielectric structure for improving the stiffness of back end of the line structures

International Business Machines Corporation


A laminated core for a motor includes a plurality of laminations each of which are disposed in a non-spaced relation to an adjacent lamination and each of which have a disc-like configuration and wherein the plurality of laminations are each dimensioned and configured to provide for a flow of a cooling fluid traveling in a radial direction to a rotational axis of the motor. A method of cooling a motor is also presented.

1. Field of the Invention
The subject matter described herein relates generally to motors and, more particularly, to devices and methods for cooling rotor and stator cores.
2. Related Art
Presently, a known method of cooling a motor includes ventilating a rotor and/or a stator core using spacers. In general, a core may comprise laminations and the spacers may be mounted between each lamination. The spacers may be configured as I-beams, blocks or packets where the I-beams and the blocks simply function to space the laminations and allow for the flow of cooling air between the laminations. Spacer packets may include a central bore that communicates with an aperture of each lamination that it is disposed between and thus may provide for a flow of cooling air transversely through the laminations.
One disadvantage to the above methods is that each requires fixing of the spacers between laminations thereby substantially increasing fabrication costs. Accordingly, to date, no suitable device or method for cooling a motor is available.

Apparatus and method for cooling rotor and stator motor cores


Described are a device and a method for blow molding containers, whereby the device contains a plurality of blow-molding stations, each provided with at least one blow mold, whereby these blow-molding stations are arranged on a carrier, such as a blowing wheel. The blow-molding stations are supplied with an operating medium by means of a tempering device. To simplify the design and optimize the control, it is proposed to arrange the tempering device on the carrier such that the tempering device runs along with the carrier.

Blow-moulding machines/stretch blow-moulding machines are frequently provided with a transport means, usually in the form of a blowing wheel that incorporates a multiplicity of blow-moulding stations. Each blow-moulding station contains mould carriers, mould carrier shells and/or moulds that usually accommodate preforms and that usually hold these preforms at the neck while the heated preforms are, by means of the injection of compressed air and usually also by means of the insertion of a stretching rod, enlarged, stretched and adapted to the inner wall of the moulds in order to form the desired final shape. This process, however, requires exact temperature control with precise heating and, where necessary, precisely such cooling. In the case of solutions of the hitherto existing type, the mould carrier, the mould carrier shell and/or the moulds of a stretch blow-moulding machine are tempered centrally depending on the process requirements. This is brought about by means of a heating and/or cooling module that is arranged outside of the blowing wheel. By means of this heating and/or cooling module, an operating medium (oil, water, other mixtures) is tempered and conducted from the central tempering module and on to the rotating blowing wheel by means of a rotary distributor. The rotary distributor has a multiplicity of connection points, from which individual lines (inlets and outlets of the operating media) are led to the individual mould carriers, mould carrier shells and/or moulds (also for neck cooling). The known development, however, requires high assembly costs for the distribution hoses and hose couplings, quality and inspection costs, complexity costs of the hoses/hose packages and, in particular, a high energy expenditure for the tempering due to the temperature losses, particularly during the relatively long transport from the tempering device to the blow-moulding station. The complexity costs are high, because different hose packages with different lengths have to be designed, purchased and assembled for each partition of the blowing wheel. This also applies to the spare part and service business. Because the hoses have to sustain high pressures, high-grade hoses in sufficient lengths must also be installed here.
The preforms, which are heated in an oven, are brought into a blow-moulding machine where they are stretched and blown, by means of compressed air, into containers. The preforms have a precisely adjusted temperature profile, in order to make it possible to carry out the stretch blow moulding process optimally. However, between the removal from the oven and the insertion into the blow-moulding station in the form of the placement into the blow mould, there exists a transfer section that is not especially well controlled on the part of the parameters for the temperature of the preform. Depending on the ambient temperatures (which can fluctuate greatly during the course of a day), the preform cools off in the transfer section differently and possibly no longer has the optimal temperature (distribution) for the stretch blow moulding process. After the preform is stretch blow moulded into a container, the finished container remains in the mould. The process of moulding the container from a preform requires only a short time, the longer time of the entire process being accompanied by simultaneous energy removal in the form of heat for the stabilization of the container in the mould.

Device and method for blow moulding containers


The present disclosure relates to an apparatus and a method for controlling sound output. The apparatus includes a sound processor configured to amplify a sound signal to a certain level to output an output signal to a speaker. An analyzer is configured to monitor whether an output level of the output signal output from the sound processor exceeds a maximum output level of the speaker between the sound processor and the speaker, and to convert the output signal into a signal of a frequency domain to analyze an energy amount for each frequency when the output level of the output signal exceeds the maximum output level of the speaker. A controller is configured to control a volume for the output signal of the corresponding frequency band when a frequency band having the energy amount exceeding the threshold value is detected from the analyzer.

Generally, vehicle sound, such as a warning sound, a guidance voice, and the like is output through internal or external speaker signals output from a built-in amplifier of a cluster. The signals output through the speaker are prevented from being output at a certain level or higher through a process of advance tuning the signal having a certain level.
However, if the sound simultaneously generated in multi-channels is output through the speaker, it is possible to exceed the output level limit of the speaker, or an interference between the sounds simultaneously generated in the multi-channels may occur, generating a distorted output through the speaker, thereby causing discomfort to a driver.
In addition, although a warning sound or alarm has a main frequency which is simple and fixed, when the warning sound or alarm is combined with a guidance voice it is possible to temporarily exceed the output range of the speaker because the combined sound consists of various frequency bands.

Apparatus and method for controlling sound output