In order to measure a surface profile of a sample, an imprint of the surface profile to be examined is produced in a transfer material. The sample contains processed semiconductor material and is in particular a patterned semiconductor wafer or part of a patterned semiconductor wafer. The transfer material is deformable and curable under suitable ambient conditions. The transfer material may be a thermoplastic material or a material which is deformable as desired after application on a substrate and cures in one case by means of irradiation with photons having a suitable wavelength or alternatively heating. The transfer material may be configured in such a way that the imprint produced is the same size as or alternatively of smaller size than the surface profile. The imprint produced is subsequently measured by known methods.

One embodiment of the present invention relates to a method and also an apparatus for measuring a surface profile of a sample which contains processed semiconductor material, that is, a semiconductor wafer or a part of a semiconductor wafer.
In the production of semiconductor components such as, for example, DRAM memory modules ("Dynamic Random Access Memory"), logic circuits, optoelectronic components or MEMS ("Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems"), the associated integrated circuits are firstly processed at the wafer level. After the fabrication steps have ended, the wafer is singulated into chips each containing the corresponding circuits and they are packaged in suitable housings in order to produce the semiconductor components.
In order to produce DRAM memory modules, the wafer undergoes for example a multiplicity of patterning steps in the course of which, inter alia, layers are deposited and, in particular, depressions are etched into the substrate surface.
FIG. 7A illustrates an exemplary cross-sectional view through a trench capacitor associated with a DRAM memory cell after the so-called recess 2 etching step has been carried out.
In FIG. 7A, an Si3N4 layer 10 is deposited on the surface of a silicon wafer 1. Capacitor trenches 11 are etched into the resulting surface 3, at the edge of which capacitor trenches, in each case after the formation of a bottom capacitor electrode (not shown) a capacitor dielectric (not shown) and a top capacitor electrode 15, an SiO2 spacer 12 is respectively formed, which acts as an insulation collar in the finished storage capacitor. The resulting trench is filled with a polysilicon filling 13 and etched back in the recess 2 etching step for preparing the contact regions for connecting the storage capacitor to the selection transistor, thus resulting in the depression 14 having the depth R2 with the trench width d as illustrated in FIG. 7A.
Metrology methods are of particular significance for further development of existing processes and products. They are used, for example after carrying out the recess 2 etching step, to check whether the etched depression has the predefined depth and width and whether the bottom has been etched flat or has bulges. Furthermore, contaminants that occur, for example regions removed incompletely during etching, can be demonstrated by means of metrology methods. The insights obtained by means of the metrology methods serve on the one hand for monitoring the individual process steps in order to ensure that the processed structures satisfy the necessary requirements, and on the other hand for process optimization. For example, on the basis of the insights obtained, the etching parameters are altered for wafers that are subsequently to be processed.
Metrology methods that are customary at the present time include in particular atomic force microscopy and other scanning probe methods and physical defect analysis, including scanning electron microscopy or FIB methods ("Focused Ion Beam"). Although the methods of physical defect analysis do indeed yield an actual image or profile of the structures produced, they have the disadvantages. For example, the wafer has to be destroyed for carrying out examination methods of this type, as a result of which practical applicability is restricted.
Examples of further customary measurement methods are IRSE (Spectroscopic Ellipsometry using InfraRed beams) and scattering methods (Spectroscopic Scatterometry or Specular Spectroscopic Scatterometry). Although the IRSE methods enable the depth to be determined in vertical structures, the measurement of profiles is not possible. Scattering methods enable profiles to be reliably reconstructed as long as the structures retain their periodic arrangement and they have a simple construction.
When using the measurement methods mentioned, moreover, the problem also occurs that the patterned zones contain different types of materials with different properties. Thus, when examining the trenches illustrated in FIG. 7A, the respective properties of the insulator layers 10, 12 and of the polysilicon fillings 13, 15 influence the measurement result and also have to be taken into account in the modeling—when using scattering methods for example.
In order to increase the storage capacity of DRAM memory cells, it is necessary to introduce ever smaller feature sizes and for example to etch depressions ever deeper. This means that in FIG. 7A by way of example, the trench width d becomes smaller and smaller, and the depth R2 and the aspect ratio, that is to say the ratio of trench depth to trench width, greatly increases.
The construction of capacitor trenches, by way of example, also increases in complexity since structures are formed on one side within the trenches.
This is illustrated by way of example in FIG. 7B. In FIG. 7B, a structure 16 made of SiO2, for example, is formed on one side within a capacitor trench 11 partly filled with a polysilicon material 13. The width d of the capacitor trench 11 is 90 nm for example, and the width of the structure 16 is 50 nm, so that the lower trench region has a width b of 40 nm. The depth R of the trench 11 is 380 nm, for example.
If the metrology methods that are customary at the present time are applied to the structures of this type, then various problems occur. For example, it becomes difficult, on account of the evaluation algorithms of the atomic force microscope, to measure trenches having a width d of less than 70 nm. Furthermore, the tip form of the probe and also the scanning mechanism used corrupt the measurement result. Moreover, it is impossible for such a narrow gap as that illustrated in FIG. 7B to be scanned using atomic force microscope probes that are customary at the present time.
A particular problem arises if, for example, a structure as illustrated in FIG. 7C is to be measured. In FIG. 7C, a one-sided structure 16, for example made Of SiO2, is formed in an upper part of a trench 11 formed in a semiconductor substrate 1 in such a way that the resulting trench diameter in a lower trench part is larger than in an upper trench part. As a consequence it is impossible to measure the lower trench part of this structure using an atomic force microscope, for example, since the part lying below the structure 16 is not accessible to the probe of the atomic force microscope.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,905 describes a lithographic method for transferring a structure, in the case of which a shaped piece with nanostructures in its surface region is impressed into a resist layer on a substrate. The pattern defined on the shaped piece is transferred into the resist layer by exerting pressure and heating the resist layer to a temperature above the glass transition temperature for a predetermined time duration and then allowing it to cool down. The structure of the shaped piece is transferred into the substrate surface by means of a suitable aftertreatment using, by way of example, reactive ion etching and, if appropriate, a subsequent deposition method followed by lift-off.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,334,960 B1 describes a further lithographic method for transferring a structure from a shaped piece to a semiconductor wafer, in the case of which the semiconductor wafer is covered with a polymer transfer layer and a polymerizable liquid. The shaped piece is brought into contact with the polymerizable liquid, and the polymerizable liquid is cured by radiating in UV light.

Method and apparatus for measuring a surface profile of a sample


Various embodiments are disclosed for modifying stereoscopic images. One embodiment is a method implemented in an image processing device for modifying stereoscopic images. The method comprises retrieving, by an image processing device, a stereoscopic image having at least a first view image and a second view image and retrieving an orientation selection relating to the stereoscopic image, the orientation selection comprising a selection other than one of: a horizontal flip selection and a 180 degree rotation selection. The method further comprises calculating a depth map according to at least part of the stereoscopic image, rotating the first view image based on the orientation selection to obtain a rotated first view image, and generating a new second view image according to the depth map and the rotated first view image.

Stereoscopic systems are designed to duplicate real-world experiences by providing each eye with a unique version of the image. By displaying a separate image for each eye, a stereoscopic effect is achieved. For example, objects in a stereoscopic image may appear to be in front of or behind the screen. To view a stereoscopic image, the display system may include a corresponding pair of stereoscopic glasses that ensures that the left eye only sees the image meant for the left eye, and so on for the right eye. In this regard, stereoscopic images create the illusion of depth to individuals by providing a view image for each eye. A number of different technologies exist that are designed to accomplish this, and each technology has its own benefits, drawbacks, and costs.
As stereoscopic media content gains increasing popularity, more devices are becoming available for capturing and editing stereoscopic images. Individuals commonly edit images by performing such operations as flips (in both the horizontal and vertical directions) and rotations. However, editing a stereoscopic image is not always a matter of simply applying these operations directly to the left and right view images of the original image as ghost images and other depth inconsistency problems may arise.

Systems and methods for modifying stereoscopic images


Provided is a method of fabricating a nanoimprint mold which can form sub-100 nm fine pattern structures. The method includes forming patterns on a first substrate using an E-beam lithography (EBL) process, and transferring the patterns formed on the first substrate to a second substrate using a nanoimprint lithography (NIL) process to complete an NIL mold. Accordingly, the method can easily fabricate the nanoimprint mold at low costs on a quartz or glass substrate, which is not suitable for an EBL process to produce sub-100 nm patterns, by utilizing the advantages of the EBL process with a resolution of tens of nanometers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to nanoimprint technology, and more particularly, to a method of fabricating a nanoimprint mold which is essential to nanoimprint technology.
2. Description of the Related Art
Representative nanolithographic techniques for creating nanostructures with dimensions of less than 100 nm include electron beam (E-beam) lithography (EBL), focused ion beam lithography (FIBL), nanoimprint lithography (NIL), and deep UV (DUV) lithography. Recently, next-generation lithographic techniques such as extreme UV (EUV) lithography, X-ray lithography, hologram lithography, and laser interference lithography (LIL) have been developed.
EBL or FIBL with a resolution of several nanometers (nm) has disadvantages in that accelerated electrons or ions are greatly affected by the conductivity or structure of a substrate, and throughput is low due to raster or vector scanning.
DUV or EUV lithography which is mainly used in a semiconductor fabrication process and can generate wafer-scale patterns over a large area in a single step has disadvantages in that manufacturing equipment is expensive, costs of a photomask are high, and it is difficult to use a flexible substrate or material which is affected by a developer used for pattern formation after exposure.
X-ray lithography which is considered as next generation lithography can provide a diffraction limited resolution of several nanometers, which is higher than that of optical lithography and similar to that of the EBL or FIBL. However, the X-ray lithography is not suitable for forming patterns over a large area because it uses a very large synchrotron as an X-ray source and it is difficult to increase the size of the X-ray source.
LIL which is often used in forming repetitive patterns such as gratings can be easily applied to a large area, is rarely affected by the characteristics of a substrate, and can be achieved at low cost. Despite the advantages, the LIL cannot be widely used because it is difficult to form various patterns and requires strict overlay accuracy while performing a process of forming multi-layers.
Imprint lithography for forming patterns using a mold is largely divided into a thermal method and a UV curing method. The imprint lithography can be applied to a general semiconductor substrate, such as a silicon substrate, a plastic substrate requiring a low temperature process, and also to a non-conductive glass or quartz substrate.
Recently developed nanoimprint lithography has become an attractive alternative to hot embossing lithography because of its easy control of pressure or temperature, and particularly, UV nanoimprint lithography can produce patterns even at room temperature and under normal pressure.
However, the UV nanoimprint lithography requires a transparent substrate or mold which is generally formed of quartz. It is difficult to form sub-100 nm fine patterns over a large area of the quartz mold or substrate, thereby increasing manufacturing costs.

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute


An antistatic composition that is excellent in thermo stability, is free from the problem of bleeding-out, exhibits its effect independently of humidity, has immediate effectiveness, and also exhibits excellent and persistent antistatic properties, and a method for producing the composition are provided. The antistatic composition comprises a predetermined alkali metal salt or alkaline earth metal salt, and resin.

In recent years, problems concerning electrostatic have been paid attention to. Such problems include the charging of the surface of a molding of plastic, glass, or the like, which causes contamination of the surface by, for example, dust, or failure or breaking-down of ICs and LSIs due to voltage with high electrostatic, or malfunction of electronic equipment due to electromagnetic noises. In view of this, it has become important to impart antistatic properties to resin.
Known methods for imparting antistatic properties to resin include coating of an antistatic agent such as a surface active agent on the resin surface, and mixing of an antistatic agent into resin. The method for coating an antistatic agent on the resin surface, however, has the problem of lacking in practical usability as an antistatic resin with persistency because antistatic properties decrease significantly after a long period. On the other hand, the problem with the method for mixing an antistatic agent into resin is that because of poor compatibility between antistatic agents and resin, the antistatic agent bleeds out on the surface of the molding, thus decreasing an antistatic effect. In addition, such problems exist that because of the humidity dependent properties of antistatic agents such as surface active agents, their antistatic effect may be deactivated under low humidity, or it may require at least 1 to 3 days to exhibit their antistatic effect after forming the resin, thus causing a delayed action.
In addition, a method for mixing carbon black or carbon fiber into resin is proposed. This method, however, has such problems that a transparent molding cannot be obtained and that the choice of color for a molding is limited.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 64-9258 and 2-255852, aiming to overcome the problems of poor compatibility between antistatic agents and resin and of their poor dispersivility in vinyl chloride resin, disclose antistatic agents that utilize perchlorate such as ammonium perchlorate and lithium perchlorate. In addition, an antistatic composition that contains polyamide resin, polyether esteramide resin, aliphatic polyester, polylactic resin, thermoplastic elastomer and unvulcanized rubber, and alkali metal salt or alkaline earth metal salt is proposed (International Publication No. WO 01/79354A1). The above perchlorate, however, has the problem of impairing the thermo stability of vinyl chloride. In addition, sufficient antistatic properties may not be obtained depending on the kind of metal salt used for the antistatic composition. Furthermore, there are such drawbacks in utilizing perchlorate that when wrapping metal with the obtained film or sheet, the metal surface may corrode, rust, or be contaminated. In addition, when alkali metal salt is dissolved in polymerizable monomer, this polymerizable monomer is heated at the time of dissolution. This starts the polymerization of the monomer and thus may not realize a uniform surface coat layer. On the other hand, when alkali metal salt such as lithium perchlorate is dissolved in alcohol or an ethers solvent, the alkali metal salt gives off heat so intensely when dissolved that it may be impossible to control the heating. This presents the problem of not being applicable industrially.
As a method for imparting electric resistivity to polyolefin resin, a method for adding hydrophilic resin is proposed (by, e.g., Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Nos. 4-198308 and 7-126446). This method, however, requires the hydrophilic resin to be added at more than 10 percent by weight of the polyolefin resin in order for the resin to exhibit practically sufficient antistatic properties. This presents the problem of impairing the physical properties of the substrate resin; for example, the strength of a molding decreases. In addition, when humidity is low, moisture on the resin surface decreases and so does antistatic properties resulting from moisture, presenting the problem of significantly impairing antistatic properties.
In addition, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 9-227743 discloses a transparent antistatic composition in which vinyl chloride resin, plasticizer, and lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide are blended. However, the blended amount of the lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide is large with respect to the vinyl chloride resin, and this deteriorates thermo stability; when heated at 120° C. for 30 minutes, the composition becomes blackish brown, thus presenting the problem of losing transparency and antistatic properties.

Anti-static composition and method for production thereof


A new and distinct cultivar of Rose plant named ‘Evera 122’, characterized by its upright and rounded plant habit; dark green-colored leaflets; freely branching growth habit; freely flowering habit; large double pink-colored flowers; flowers held upright on strong and erect peduncles; and good postproduction longevity.

The present Invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Rose plant, botanically known as Rosa hybrida, commercially used as a potted Rose, and hereinafter referred to by the name 'Evera 122'.
The new Rose is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in Fåborg, Denmark. The objective of the breeding program was to develop new potted Rose varieties with novel and attractive flower colors, disease resistance and excellent postproduction longevity.
The new cultivar originated from a cross-pollination made by the Inventor on Jun. 1, 2003 of a proprietary Rose selection identified as code number 01-0127, not patented, as the female, or seed, parent with an unnamed Rose selection, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent. The cultivar Evera 122 was discovered and selected by the Inventor in on Aug. 20, 2004 as a single flowering plant within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination in a controlled environment in Fåborg, Denmark.
Asexual reproduction of the new Rose by cuttings at Fåborg, Denmark since Feb. 1, 2005, has shown that the unique features of this new Rose are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations of asexual reproduction.


In an electronic device 1 comprising a battery 200 and a piezoelectric actuator A, a power source voltage before drive control is started is maintained by a sample holding circuit 102, a reference voltage is set by a reference voltage generating circuit 103 on the basis of the power source voltage, and a control circuit 106 stops driving when the power source voltage falls below a drive stop voltage as compared by a second comparison circuit 105, and begins driving the piezoelectric actuator A again when the power source voltage exceeds the reference voltage as compared by a first comparison circuit 104. Therefore, the device can be more easily reduced in size by using a small power source, and the driving time can be markedly reduced using an intermittent driving procedure that corresponds to the conditions of the battery voltage.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a drive control apparatus, an electronic device, a drive control method for an electronic device, a drive control program for an electronic device, and a recording medium on which this program is recorded.
2. Description of Related Art
In conventional practice, in the field of portable electronic devices (for example, electronic timepieces, cameras, portable phones, and the like), it is common to appropriately select a combination of a power source and a load so that the voltage of the power source does not fall below the minimum power source voltage during the drive period. In this case, in order to allow for the device to be reduced in size and for the driving to be stable, it is preferable to select a power source with the smallest possible size and the least possible internal resistance, wherein the power source voltage is not likely to decrease, and it is also preferable to select a load with excellent drive efficiency.
Various piezoelectric actuators that utilize the piezoelectric effects of a piezoelectric element have been developed as loads with excellent drive efficiency, and have been utilized as drive devices. These piezoelectric elements have excellent responsiveness and conversion efficiency of electrical energy to mechanical energy, and therefore are suitable to be utilized in compact electronic devices.
Some of these such piezoelectric actuators have a vibrating body with a piezoelectric element as a primary structural element; for example, some are configured from a plate-shaped reinforcing plate having a protrusion at one end that comes into contact with the object to be driven, and also have piezoelectric elements provided on both sides of the reinforcing plate, and drive electrodes provided to the top surfaces of these piezoelectric elements. The piezoelectric elements apply a specific alternating-current voltage to the drive electrodes on the vibrating body, the vibrating body is excited by longitudinal vibration extending in the longitudinal direction thereof, and curved vibration that oscillates in a direction orthogonal to the longitudinal direction of the longitudinal vibration is induced, whereby the protrusion of the vibrating body rotates so as to describe an elliptical orbit. The piezoelectric actuator thereby achieves highly efficient driving with a small and thin configuration.
Drive methods have been proposed for when such a piezoelectric actuator as described above is used as a drive device (for example, see Literature; Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 11-356068).
The aforementioned literature discloses intermittent driving wherein the drive signal applied to the piezoelectric actuator is in a burst wave pattern so as to repeat driving, stopping, and driving again. As a result of such intermittent driving, the drive voltage is recovered while driving has stopped, and therefore the piezoelectric actuator can be driven in a stable manner even if the drive voltage is somewhat reduced.
However, in the drive method in the aforementioned literature, the driving and stopping time must be set in advance for when the piezoelectric actuator is driven intermittently, and therefore the power source state, temperature, and other such conditions are assumed to be the worst and must be set with some leeway, leading to problems in which the entire intermittent driving time is extended. Specifically, this is because the drive time and the stopping time must be set so that the drive voltage does not fall below the minimum drive voltage during driving, and so that the drive voltage is recovered to a specific voltage when driving is started again after stopping. Also, if a power source with a large capacity is selected in order to prevent the drive time from extending, it will not necessarily be possible to reduce the size of the power source and the device, and for the same reasons, problems are encountered wherein limitations are imposed on the use of a power source with large internal resistance wherein the drive voltage can be easily reduced.
Such problems are not limited to situations wherein a piezoelectric actuator is used as a load, and also similarly occur when a motor or another such drive device is used.

Drive control apparatus, electronic apparatus, method of controlling drive of electronic apparatus, drive control program, and recording medium


A furniture leg foot includes (a) a body adapted for attachment to a lower portion of a furniture leg, the body having a longitudinal axis and being made from a first material; and (b) one or more resilient inserts disposed within the body, the one or more resilient inserts being made from a resilient material which is softer than the first material.

Items of furniture are very often supported above the floor by a plurality of support legs, with a foot attached at the lowermost end of each such support leg. Typically, each foot is made from a rubber, plastic or similar material designed to minimize damage to the floor and to minimize the propensity of the item of furniture to skid along the floor.
Most such feet comprise a foot pad having a lower planar surface surrounded by a foot pad perimeter. To minimize damage caused to the floor and to minimize the propensity of the item of furniture to skid along the floor, it is important that the lower foot pad surface be disposed flat against the floor, rather than having only an edge disposed in contact with the floor. When an item of furniture is supported solely by the edge of the foot pad on one of its support leg feet, the pressure forces created against the floor along that edge can cause damage to the floor. Moreover, where an item of furniture is supported solely by an edge on one of its feet, the lack of surface contact between the floor and that foot pad allow the foot to be easily skidded along the floor.
Manufacturing furniture such that the foot pads of the feet supporting the furniture are always disposed flat against the floor is not easily accomplished. This is especially the case where the legs are downwardly disposed at an angle with respect to the vertical, such as in many tables and chairs. In such items of furniture, manufacturers find it difficult to assure that the foot pads on each of the furniture legs rests flat against the floor, because in the manufacturing process it is difficult to assure that the angle of the support legs does not vary from item to item.
The problems associated with trying to ensure that the foot pads of furniture support feet are disposed flat against a floor is a considerable problem where the item of furniture is a chair having sled-type legs. Such sled legs have a downwardly directed portion and a laterally directed, lowermost portion. The downwardly directed portion is attached to the laterally directed, lowermost portion at an elbow. The laterally directed, lowermost portion is disposed horizontally proximate to a floor surface. Feet for each sled leg usually comprises a pair of feet, one attached at the elbow of the sled leg and one attached to the terminal of the laterally directed, lowermost portion. Typically, such sled legs are splayed outwardly from the seating surface towards the floor. Such disposition of the sled legs makes it exceedingly difficult to provide feet for the sled legs which consistently are disposed flat against the surface of the floor.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved furniture leg foot which minimizes the above-described problems in the prior art.


A fluid treatment device includes an AC power source connected to first, second and third conductors. A electromagnetic field generating device is positioned adjacent to a fluid conduit, electrically connected to the first and third conductors to form a first circuit. A second electromagnetic field generating device is positioned adjacent to a second fluid conduit, electrically connected to the second and third electrical conductors to form a second circuit. A circuit element in the first circuit initiates a high frequency electromagnetic field at said first electromagnetic field generating device during a first half of the AC wave form in the first circuit, and a circuit element in the second circuit initiates a high frequency electromagnetic field at said first electromagnetic field generating device during a second half of the AC wave form in the second circuit.

The present invention relates to devices for treating fluids, such as water, and more particularly, to fluid treatment devices which are powered to provide electrical and magnetic fields in the fluid.
Fluid treatment with DC-powered solenoid coils has been used for many years. Such an arrangement is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,938,875. The DC power can be provided by a DC source (battery) or a rectified AC source. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,702,600; 6,063,287 and 6,146,526 have modified the AC method by using only a rectified half-wave to generate the DC power (without a smoothing power capacitor) and letting the coils ring with the current closed off for the second half wave. During the no-current period, the coils will ring at their resonant frequency (which can be modified by the addition of a small amount of capacitance) and emit a high frequency field into the fluid to be treated. In the '600 patent, a diode is used to rectify the wave and in the '287 patent, a triode is used to rectify the wave.
Use of a rectified (half wave) AC current for providing the DC power is inefficient, decreases the life of the transformer used in such circuits, and results in an unfavorable power factor.
While the first half wave is used in an almost purely inductive load in the coils, creating electromagnetic fields in the fluid, the second half wave is not used at all. This creates an inefficient and unbalanced load on the transformer.
Since only half of the wave is used, the transformer continually runs at magnetic saturation rather than operating in its design region. Operating a transformer at saturation will result in increase eddy current losses and hysteresis losses. The combination of excess heat generation and operating at magnetic saturation significantly reduces efficiency and negatively affects transformer life.
While the '600 and '287 patents further describe using a full wave rectifier to power the coils, such an arrangement also has problems. With full wave rectification, the coil ring is limited by the other half of the AC cycle. Devices built using this design will have a weak and truncated ring.
It would be an advance in the art if a fluid treatment device were provided that addressed the above described problems.

Full wave rectified power water treatment device


A process for making dehydrated potato products from potato flakes so that they can be sulfite-free by mixing the potato flakes with a sufficient amount of water to increase their moisture content to a predetermined level, lowering the temperature of the moistened potato flakes to a temperature and for a period of time sufficient for retrogradation of free soluble starch contained in the potato flakes, reducing the size of the potato flakes in a manner to minimize breakage of potato cell walls, and drying the resulting potato product. The dehydrated potato product can be reconstituted without using a boiling liquid to make a dough for french fries or to make a mashed potato product.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process for making dehydrated potato products from potato flakes that can be reconstituted to make a dough for french fries, or to make mashed potatoes, without using a boiling liquid.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, two types of dehydrated potato products have been used to make instant french fries or instant mashed potatoes by reconstitution in liquid. These are potato granules and potato flakes, both of which absorb water readily and are produced commercially in large amounts. Because the processes by which these products are made are quite different, their properties tend to be quite different, whether they are made from freshly harvested potatoes, or from potatoes that have been in storage for many months. As a rule, potato flakes tend to have a lower density, are reconstituted in cold or warm liquid, and cannot tolerate boiling liquid reconstitution or whipping. Potato granules, on the other hand, tend to have a higher density, must be reconstituted in boiling liquid rather than in cold or warm liquid, and can withstand whipping without creating poor texture or pastiness. Thus, whether potato granules or potato flakes are preferred for a particular application depends upon the specific circumstances and the environment in which they will be used.
One of the major differences between the processes for making flake and granules is the absence of a starch retrogradation step in the flake process. Starch retrogradation is required in the granule process to attain proper granulation. However, starch retrogradation also tends to cause the granules not to rehydrate fully in cold water. Another significant difference between these two processes is that sulfites must be added during the processing of potato granules, but do not have to be added during the processing of potato flakes. This is important in those countries, like Japan, that do not want to buy food products that have sulfites in them.
Because potato flakes advantageously can be reconstituted in cold water, but their density is too low to be economical for many applications, many processes have attempted to increase the bulk density of potato flakes. Unfortunately, the result prior to the present invention has been the loss of some of the desirable characteristics of the potato flakes. For example, reducing the size of dry potato flakes until their density is comparable to that of potato granules causes the potato cell walls to rupture, leading to the release of large quantities of free starch. This causes pastiness in the reconstituted mash, even with the use of improvers. Processing the broken flakes for retrogradation of the free starch changes the flavor of the reconstituted mash and, as noted above, alters their rehydration characteristics by reducing their water uptake and their ability to reconstitute in cold liquid.
Accordingly, the need exists for a dehydrated potato product which is made from potato flakes so that it can be sulfite-free, and which can be reconstituted to make a dough for french fries or to make mashed potatoes without using a boiling liquid.

Process for making dehydrated potato products


A sterile drape with integrated sterile adaptor, a telerobotic surgical system, and method of use are provided for draping portions of a telerobotic surgical system to maintain a sterile barrier between the sterile surgical field and the non-sterile robotic system while also providing an interface for transferring mechanical and electrical energy and signals.

In robotically-assisted or telerobotic surgery, the surgeon typically operates a master controller to remotely control the motion of surgical instruments at the surgical site from a location that may be remote from the patient (e.g., across the operating room, in a different room or a completely different building from the patient). The master controller usually includes one or more hand input devices, such as joysticks, exoskeletal gloves or the like, which are coupled to the surgical instruments with servo motors for articulating the instruments at the surgical site. The servo motors are typically part of an electromechanical device or surgical manipulator ("the slave") that supports and controls the surgical instruments that have been introduced directly into an open surgical site or through trocar sleeves into a body cavity, such as the patient's abdomen. During the operation, the surgical manipulator provides mechanical articulation and control of a variety of surgical instruments, such as tissue graspers, needle drivers, electrosurgical cautery probes, etc., that each perform various functions for the surgeon, e.g., holding or driving a needle, grasping a blood vessel, or dissecting, cauterizing or coagulating tissue.
This new method of performing telerobotic surgery through remote manipulation has, of course, created many new challenges. One such challenge results from the fact that a portion of the electromechanical surgical manipulator will be in direct contact with the surgical instruments, and will also be positioned adjacent the operation site. Accordingly, the surgical manipulator may become contaminated during surgery and is typically disposed of or sterilized between operations. From a cost perspective, it would be preferable to sterilize the device. However, the servo motors, sensors, encoders, and electrical connections that are necessary to robotically control the motors typically cannot be sterilized using conventional methods, e.g., steam, heat and pressure, or chemicals, because the system parts would be damaged or destroyed in the sterilization process.
A sterile drape has been previously used to cover the surgical manipulator and has included holes through which an adaptor (for example a wrist unit adaptor or a cannula adaptor) would enter the sterile field. However, this disadvantageously requires detachment and sterilization of the adaptors after each procedure and also causes a greater likelihood of contamination through the holes in the drape.
Yet another challenge with telerobotic surgery systems is that a surgeon will typically employ a large number of different surgical instruments/tools during a procedure. Since the number of manipulator arms are limited due to space constraints and cost, many of these surgical instruments will be attached and detached from the same manipulator arm a number of times during an operation. In laparoscopic procedures, for example, the number of entry ports into the patient's abdomen is generally limited during the operation because of space constraints as well as a desire to avoid unnecessary incisions in the patient. Thus, a number of different surgical instruments will typically be introduced through the same trocar sleeve during the operation. Likewise, in open surgery, there is typically not enough room around the surgical site to position more than one or two surgical manipulators, and so the surgeon's assistant will be compelled to frequently remove instruments from the manipulator arm and exchange them with other surgical tools.
What is needed, therefore, are improved telerobotic systems and methods for remotely controlling surgical instruments at a surgical site on a patient. In particular, these systems and methods should be configured to minimize the need for sterilization to improve cost efficiency while also protecting the system and the surgical patient. In addition, these systems and methods should be designed to minimize instrument exchange time and difficulty during the surgical procedure 316. Accordingly, a sterile adaptor and a system for robotic surgery having improved efficiency and cost-effectiveness is highly desirable.

Robotic surgical system with sterile surgical adaptor


A pneumatic oxygen conserving device for efficiently dispensing oxygen or other gas used during respiratory therapy such that only the first part of the patient""s breath contains the oxygen or other therapeutic gas. A gas delivery device is used which is triggered when the patient begins to inhale. A tail of gas flow is delivered to the patient after the initial inhalation timed period to prevent pulsing of gas delivery to the patient. In this manner gas is only delivered to the patient during the first portion of inhalation preventing gas from being delivered which will only fill the air passageways to the patient""s lungs. By efficiently using the oxygen, cylinder bottles of oxygen used when a patient is mobile will last longer and be smaller and easier to transport. By pneumatically delivering the gas to the patient no batteries or electronics are used.

I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to respiratory gas delivery devices, which are responsive to a patient""s breathing cycle and more particularly for providing oxygen to a patient only during the first portion of inhalation, such that oxygen is delivered to the patient only when it will be admitted to the lungs and not when it will remain in the patient""s air passageways only to be exhaled.
II. Description of the Related Art
Patients with lung diseases frequently need oxygen delivered to their lungs as part of their therapy.
A continuous flow of oxygen to the patient is easily applied such that when the patient inhales there is oxygen available in a mask or cannula. However a continuous flow is not needed, particularly while the patient is exhaling.
Patient mobility is affected by the size of the oxygen bottles, their weight and how long they will last while the patient is carrying their oxygen supply with them. An oxygen economizing device can be used to make the oxygen in the bottle last longer and also reduce the size and weight of the bottle that needs to be transported with the patient for greater mobility.
Some oxygen economizers use electronic sensors and controls to deliver oxygen. This requires batteries, which must be constantly replaced and electronic controls, which may fail.
Some oxygen economizers use dual lumen cannulas, with one lumen for delivery of oxygen to the patient and one lumen for sensing breathing pressures. Dual lumen cannulas cost more and are not as comfortable for the patient.
Oxygen delivery devices have been developed wherein oxygen is supplied to the patient starting when the patient begins to inhale and ending when the patient begins to exhale, thus conserving oxygen. However, this too wastes oxygen as the patient only benefits from the first part of the oxygen inhaled, which goes to the patient""s lungs. The remainder of the inhaled oxygen remains in the air passageways to the lungs and is immediately exhaled, thus wasting oxygen.
At least one oxygen economizer uses a series of pulses of oxygen during the inhalation cycle. The pulse of oxygen is delivered and then a check is made to see if the patient is still inhaling. If he is then another pulse is delivered. This method is irritating for the patient and wastes oxygen as the airways of the patient as well as the lungs receive oxygen.
A device is needed which will provide oxygen during initial inhalation and then reduce or eliminate the amount of oxygen delivered thereafter rather than deliver gas as a series of pulses. The oxygen delivery device should provide either a fixed or adjustable volume of oxygen for a fixed time at a fixed or adjustable flow rate such that patients having different breathing patterns can be treated. The oxygen delivery device should be pneumatic, avoiding batteries and other problems associated with electronic devices. The oxygen delivery device should also be used with a comfortable single lumen cannula.
The invention provides for a diaphragm to detect the commencement of inhalation and a timed application of oxygen such that the first portion of the inhalation in the breathing cycle receives oxygen and the balance of the inhalation cycle receives little or no oxygen.
The invention comprises a breath sensing portion with a sensing diaphragm for detecting a drop in pressure when a patient starts inhaling. The diaphragm moves to reduce the pressure in a gas delivery timer portion wherein a delivery diaphragm is displaced from a gas delivery seat for an adjustable amount of time to provide oxygen to a patient during the first portion of inhalation. The volume and flow rate of oxygen delivered to the patient is regulated by a variable flow rate portion in combination with the gas delivery timer portion. When oxygen begins flowing to the patient, oxygen entering the sensing chamber pushes the sensing diaphragm over a seat leading to the gas delivery timer portion. Oxygen entering the gas delivery timer portion builds up pressure and moves a diaphragm over a seat, cutting off the oxygen supply to the patient after the initial portion of inhalation. In this manner oxygen is delivered to the patient""s lungs and not to his airways, which will be immediately expelled on exhaling.
If oxygen is only delivered during early inspiration, there will be a negative pressure in the cannula again at the end of the gas delivery. It is not desirable to deliver a second pulse, which would likely be only wasted. The invention avoids this phenomenon by providing a low flow xe2x80x9ctail volumexe2x80x9d from a reservoir which creates enough back pressure in the cannula to block out any continued patient effort.
It is an object of the invention to use oxygen efficiently during respiratory therapy.
It is an object of the invention to provide oxygen to a patient only during initial inspiration to avoid filling the airway of the patient with oxygen.
It is an object of the invention to use a pneumatic control device to deliver oxygen to the patient.
It is an object of the invention to provide a selectable preset volume of oxygen to the patient during each breath.
It is an object of the invention to extend the duration of use of each bottle of oxygen.
It is an object of the invention to reduce the size of the bottle of oxygen that a patient needs to transport when mobile.
It is an object of the invention to reduce the weight of the bottle of oxygen that a patient needs to transport when mobile.
It is an object of the invention to avoid multiple pulses of oxygen flowing to the patient.
It is an object of the invention to use a lumen single cannula with the pneumatic oxygen conserving device.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawing.


A system and method leverages understanding of complex dribbling video clips by representing a video sequence with a single Dribble Energy Image (DEI) that is informative for dribbling styles recognition. To overcome the shortage of labelled data, a dataset of soccer video clips employs Mask-RCNN to segment out dribbling players and OpenPose to obtain joints information of dribbling players. To solve issues caused by camera motions in highlight soccer videos, the system registers a video sequence to generate a single image representation DEI and dribbling styles classification.

Broadcast sports are one of the most watched and studied forms of videos in the World. Game analysis is performed in real time by professional commentators and which are often recorded for coaching purposes. Human analysis requires the review of thousands of hours of footage over the course of a season and requires tasks that are impractical to be performed by human observers.
Computer vision has been employed in sports analysis for broadcasting usage and commercial application. Techniques connected with player identification, action recognition and score prediction are critical scenarios in baseball, soccer, ice hockey, etc. Using soccer, or European football, in Europe, five top football leagues, Premier League, La Liga, Championnat de France de football Ligue 1, Bundesliga and Lega Serie A, organize the highest-level soccer games every year and attract soccer players around the world to participate. Among those, Premier League is the most profitable league, which achieved a revenue of 5297 million pounds in 2016-2017. The booming business value in soccer drives deeper analysis targeting on players, coaches, tactics, etc., to obtain precise and elaborate statistics of every soccer player and match.
Investigating dribbling skills in soccer games is beneficial to both clubs, in a competition, to train their players, and for defenders to know how to improve defending skills. For example, top players, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Neymar Jr., are well-known as icons for their smart dribbling skills, which help them evade and dribble through defenders and score in soccer games. Soccer fans are constantly amazed by adept dribbling skills and are curious to understand and analyze their styles when they watch top-class soccer games such as the World Cup, UEFA European Champions, and the like.
With reference to FIG. 1, typically, soccer games are recorded with cameras distributed around the soccer field recording player movements far from camera view and in small scale. These kinds of videos can be utilized by coaches and players to study tactics of different soccer teams according to the positions of players. There are also highlight videos captured in close-view to players where the camera is moving to track players who are controlling the ball and performing various tasks that may require significant skills. These videos illustrate expert skills in soccer games and they are shared by fans around the world. However, in soccer video analysis, the main challenge is the lack of labelled data in both overview videos and highlight videos. Even if highlight videos are captured, another issue is the camera calibration in tracking and capturing players who are performing smart movements. Players move at a super-fast speed and cameras also are trying to catch up with players, causing camera motion. A sequence of frames with both temporal and spatial information will be affected and thus can provide little information without image registration. The fact is that a massive amount of data is available to that does not have corresponding camera parameters for calibration.
Computer vision already plays a key role in sport analysis ranging from basketball, soccer, baseball and ice hockey based on large amounts of streaming data. They produce statistics of events in a game by either having humans analyze videos captured by cameras or captured semantic data.
Research is increasingly focused on soccer video analysis including video summarization, event classification and action recognition. Efros et al. recognized actions at a distance in soccer matches by introducing a motion descriptor based on optical flow in a spatiotemporal volume for each human figure. Baccouche et al. proposed an approach for 4-classes action classification in soccer videos using a recurrent neural network. Tsunoda et ad. proposed a hierarchical-LSTMs to conduct action recognition involving "Dribble", "Shoot" and "Pass" actions in fustal and their dataset was collected by 14 calibrated and synchronized cameras distributed in a futsal field. Cioppa et al. proposed a bottom-up approach to interpret soccer games captured by the main camera stream. Their method extracted features from soccer videos and corresponding features with semantic meanings for better events understanding in soccer games. Jiang et al. employed the CNN for feature extractions and combined RNN to emphasize temporal information to detect events in soccer videos. Theagarajan et al. conducted soccer analysis for identifying players who has the ball in soccer matches by using convolutional neural network and GAN for data augmentation.
Part of the problem in the prior art concerns recognizing players as a first step. The problem can be considered as the combination of person identification and digit recognition in the context of sports broadcast videos. Traditional approaches before the dominance of deep learning usually involved an optical character recognition (OCR) system then classification of numbers based on segmentation results. Sari et al. introduced a complete OCR system to segment images in HSV color space with heavy pre-processing and post-processing. Ye et al. combined tracking information of frames and an OCR system to predict jersey number based on voting. Lu et al. takes the person localizations of deformable part model (DPM) detector then performs OCR and classification with matching templates. These OCR-based methods have limited flexibility and robustness dealing with larger datasets. Switching to deep learning approaches, Gerke designs a neural network for jersey number recognition on small number-centered jersey images. A recent work from Li et al. embed Spatial Transformer Network (STN) modules into a CNN architecture to localize jersey number more precisely and trains the network with additional manually-labeled transformation quadrangles in a semi-supervised fashion.
Some works take the sports field into consideration. De-lannay et al. formulates ground plane occupancy maps from multi-views detection to perform localization, followed by an OCR system and multi-class support vector machine (SVM). Gerke et al. considers the player recognition problem as a classifier fusion of players' positional features and jersey number convolutional neural network (CNN) ones. These works put strong assumptions on the hidden pattern of player's movement and mapping of real-world and image coordinates of players. These assumptions are neither well-constructed nor universal applicable.
The jersey number recognition problem can be formulated as person re-identification (ReID) as well. Some approaches favor performing player identification directly. Lu et al. uses handcrafted combination of features to create a player representation model, then builds a L1-regularized logistic regression classifier for classification, and a conditional random field (CRF) graphical model to predict unlabeled videos. Lu et al. introduces homography estimation and a weakly-supervised learning to reduce the labor of manual annotation via auxiliary text log information of game matches. Senocak et al. tackles the player identification problem by constructing a fused feature of multi-scale features extracted from whole body image and pooled features from body parts.
Similarly, Poignant et al. describes a video OCR system for text recognition combing audio information to perform person identification. Goodfellow et al. addresses number sequences recognition in constrained natural images with deep neural networks. Jaderberg et al. uses a complete text recognition system for natural scene images with heavily-engineered framework. STNs are used for natural scene text detection and recognition. Busta et al. modify a region proposal network (RPN) with rotation capability for better text localization. The above-mentioned literature addresses the issue of scene text being in irregular shapes which is also common but more complicated in jersey recognition problem. Jersey numbers are often distorted by player pose deformations and fast motion blur. Li et al. adopts STN modules in the hope of improving localization and rectifying number distortion. However, the success of STN is built upon the fact of there being only one jersey number per image in their dataset. it is not applicable for complex scenes with more people.
As for R-CNN based approaches, with the successes of R-CNNs, object detection and classification are unified with high practicality. Mask R-CNN and Faster R-CNN are built upon RPNs with pre-defined anchors to generate region proposals, then the features are pooled and fed into regression and classification heads. Vanilla RPN has 3 scales and 3 ratios for each anchor. Ma et al. extended the anchor design with a rotation parameter for better text proposal alignment. Cai et al. introduced a multi-stage Cascade R-CNN to address the issue of degraded detection performance when increasing intersection-over-union (IoU) threshold.
The main concern of recognition problem in nature scenes is: how to get robust region proposals.
Thus, there is a need for system and method that are able to take this massive amount of data and corresponding camera parameters for calibration to allow for player style analysis. There is a further need for and system and method to recognize dribbling styles of a player who is controlling the ball and performing smart dribbling actions. There is still a further need for a system and method for fine-grained dribbling styles classification from video clips with different resolutions.
There is also a further need for automation of analysis in which tasks such as player detection, tracking, identification, as well as generation of game synopses, is automated using computer vision algorithms to gather comprehensive sports match information without ever having to watch a minute of game video.
There is yet a further need for a system that automatically generates visual analytics from sports videos to help coaches and recruiters identify the most promising talent.

Athlete style recognition system and method

The Regents of the University of California


A manipulatable filtering system for use in a wellbore servicing system is disclosed. The system includes a first wellbore servicing system component configured to communicate a fluid via a first fluid conduit and a second wellbore servicing system component comprising a second fluid conduit. A filter system having an input conduit is in fluid communication with the first fluid conduit. The filtering system includes a plurality of input flow paths, each in fluid communication with the input conduit. The system further includes a plurality of filter housings, each in fluid communication with one of the plurality of input flow paths. A filter is disposed within each of the filter housings. A plurality of output flow paths are in fluid communication with the filter housings and an output conduit is in fluid communication with each of the output flow paths and the second fluid conduit.

Various types of wellbore fluids are used in operations related to the drilling, completion, and production of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Examples of such operations include drilling a wellbore to penetrate a subterranean formation, fracturing a subterranean formation, perforating a subterranean formation, acidizing of a subterranean formation, or otherwise modifying the permeability of a subterranean formation. Other examples of such operations include placing of a chemical plug to isolate zones or complement an isolating operation. The fluids employed in one or more of such operations include drilling fluids, completion fluids, work over fluids, packer fluids, fracturing fluids, conformance or permeability control fluids, the like, and combinations thereof. One or more of the fluids may comprise (e.g., be formed by mixing) two or more fluid components, for example, a dry bulk material (e.g., a powder), a liquid, and/or one or more additives. Transporting, conveying, storing, or otherwise providing such components (e.g., a dry bulk, a liquid, an additive, etc.) to wellbore servicing equipment (e.g., a mixer) may lead to the introduction of trash or debris into the mixture. The presence of trash or debris within such a mixture can lead to decreased system performance (e.g., via a fluid flow reduction or restriction) and/or damage to one or more wellbore servicing tools (e.g., a mixer). As such, devices, systems, and methods for detecting and/or removing trash and debris from a wellbore servicing fluid and/or the components thereof are needed.


A positioning device that detects a position of a mobile body with a radio navigation positioning unit includes: first and second autonomous sensors obtaining behavioral information on the mobile body; a position detecting unit obtaining an estimated position and an estimated direction by updating a detection result based on the behavioral information from the first autonomous sensor; a map data positioning unit that refers to a map data storage unit based on the estimated position and obtains a map data linked position at a predetermined distance away from a link; a direction detecting unit obtaining a cumulative estimated direction by updating the detection result based on the behavioral information from the second autonomous sensor; and a most probable position estimating unit estimating the position of the mobile body from the estimated positions and directions using the Kalman filter.

In some navigation systems, the current position of a vehicle can be accurately estimated by updating a previous position of the vehicle, which is detected using radio signals from global positioning system (GPS) satellites, based on the travel distance and the direction of the vehicle obtained by a speed sensor and a gyro sensor.
However, in a situation where radio signals from GPS satellites cannot be received, the position estimated by autonomous navigation deviates from the actual position and the accuracy of the estimated position decreases gradually as time passes. To cope with this problem, various methods for correcting a vehicle position estimated by autonomous navigation have been proposed.
For example, in a map matching method, a position estimated by autonomous navigation is corrected by using map data of a navigation system. According to a map matching method, positions of a vehicle estimated by autonomous navigation are mapped onto positions in map data, which are represented by nodes (e.g. intersections) and links (e.g. roads) connecting the nodes, so that the estimated traveling path of the vehicle matches actual roads.
However, generally, map data are not accurate enough to obtain satisfactory results by a map matching method. A method disclosed in patent document 1 tries to solve this problem. In the disclosed method, the position and direction of a vehicle estimated by autonomous navigation are corrected by selecting from map data a road having a position and a direction closest to the estimated position and direction and by mapping the estimated position and direction onto those of the selected road.    [Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-213979

Positioning device, and navigation system


Mobile flood wall preferably comprising of plastic, characterized by support elements (1 through 5) as plates of a fitting thickness, each in the form of an equilateral triangle with one of the three equal outer sides as the base and wall elements (11 through 19) as rectangular plates of a fitting thickness lying on and connected to the water-side outer side of the equilateral support elements and therefore sloped at an angle of 60°, which forms the wall with the land side surface, wherein the water pressure on the wall elements is diverted by the support elements into the ground, and causes the surface structures of the base of the support elements to be pressed into and anchored in the ground, for sealing the ground against water and for the stability and the nondisplaceability of the flood wall.

Floods have always required protective measures in the form of man-made structures where flooding of the threatened areas would lead to danger to humans and animals.
However, unusually extremely high water levels have occurred in increasing numbers for the past few years.
Among other things, changes in the climate, the regulation and narrowing of river beds, the use of water meadows as drainage zones for growing crops and the increasingly extensive surface sealing of the landscape have contributed to this serious development.
Therefore, an increasing need for additional and more effective measures can be seen, which can halt and prevent flooding in private and public areas in the long term and also in the short term.
The traditional protection and raising of river banks are masonry or heaped-up dike and river bank forms of a corresponding weight, consistency and slope angle as a permanent and immobile protection against floods.
These are usually built on the banks of rivers in municipal areas in terms of height and shape such that according to empirical values, they can prevent flooding of the river bank areas in the range of floods that occur and do not interfere with the visibility conditions at normal water levels.
Centuries-old town and city centers have developed and expanded as trade routes on the banks of rivers and the building of structures in the area of the banks must be correspondingly adapted aesthetically and functionally. In many areas, a steady increase in the height of the structures protecting river banks would unacceptably damage the quality of the built-up environment.
Mobile systems that can be deployed and also dismantled in a short time for supplementing the permanent structures built are therefore meaningful and necessary for the protection of public and private river bank areas from extreme flood levels occurring at an increased frequency.
Dams built up from sand bags and films or prepared foundations for supports, on which, for example, Europallets, supplemented by films, form protective walls that can be erected and dismantled in a short time, have been known.
Also known are Aqua Stop flood walls made of aluminum as supports, which are bolted on existing concrete foundations and then form a protective wall with walls arranged in between, which are made of horizontal dam girders and corresponding seals.
These prior-art devices for protection against floods are frequently characterized by the high weight of their component parts, which requires great effort in terms of manpower and machinery for the erection of longer sections in a short time.
Mobile systems, which require prefabricated foundations, cannot be used, in turn, in a flexible manner due to the fact that they are characteristically bound to a site and compromise the quality and the functionality of the areas requiring protection during periods without flood.


The patent discloses novel 2,2-disubstituted 1,2-dihydro-3H-indol-3-one derivatives and their preparation thereof.

2,2-disubstituted 1,2-dihydro-3H-indol-3-one (trivially known as pseudo indoxyl) is one of the important structural units present in many natural products and biologically active small molecules1. Apart from their use as intermediates in the synthesis of natural products, in recent years, the indol-3-one derivatives have also found important applications in the areas of fluorescence dyeing and in solar cell applications.
Rearrangement of 2,3-dihydroxyindolines and 3H-indol-3-ols (acid-, base-, or thermal-induced) is one of the earlier methods reported for the preparation of indoxyl derivatives. The oxidative rearrangements of 2,3-disubstituted indoles or the tetrahydrocarbolines is one of more popular methods used in the synthesis of the indoxyl class of natural products. The addition of Grignard reagents to 2-arylindolone followed by the acid catalysed pinacol rearrangement, as well as the addition of carbon cantered nucleophiles to spiro[furan/pyran-2,2′-indolin]-3′-ones are some of the methods which offer the provision to vary the substituents at the C(2) position.
The CuI catalyzed intramolecular amination, an interrupted Ugi reaction comprising of an internal attack of the electron rich aromatic ring on an electrophilic nitrilium ion, the gold-mediated cycloisomerization of 2-alkynyl aryl azides, the Mannich/Henry reaction of cyclic α-carbonyl ketimines and the reaction of amino acids with arynes are some of the other methods that have been developed recently for synthesis of 2,2-disubstituted indolin-3-ones.
In 1979, Ardakani and Smalley in M. A. Ardakani and R. K. Smalley, Tetrahedron Lett., 1979, 20, 4769; reported the base induced intramolecular cyclization of αazidophenyl sec-alkyl ketones leading to 2,2-disubstituted indolin-3-ones trivially known as the Smalley cyclization (eq. 1, Scheme 1). This reaction has served as the key step in the total synthesis of lapidilectineB. The substrates that are generally used for the Smalley Rearrangement require free fabricated α-azidophenyl sec-alkyl ketones.
WO 2012081893 A2 discloses the marked derivatives 3-indole rinon, the following formula 1 or 2, or his or her salt:

R1 is hydrogen, C1-6 alkoxy, C1-4 alkyl, substituted or unsubstituted C2-6 alkenyl, oxy, benzyloxy or C1-4 alkoxy, and phenyl; R2 is C1-6 alkyl; R3 and R4 are each independently hydrogen, C1-6 alkyl, C1-4 alkyl, substituted or unsubstituted C2-6 alkenyl, C2-6 alkynyl, benzyl, or C3-6 cycloalkyl methyl; R5 is a substituted or unsubstituted C1-6 alkyl, C1-4 alkyl, C2-6 alkenyl or C3-6 cycloalkyl methyl.
Regiodivergent Annulation of Alkynyl Indoles To Construct Spiro-pseudoindoxyl and Tetrahydro-β-carbolines by Yong-Qiang Zhang et. al in Org. Lett., 2011, 13 (13), pp 3458-3461 reports Regiodivergent annulations of 3-phenoxy alkynyl indoles have been developed and tuned by protective groups through gold catalysis. With electron-donating protective groups, the substrate followed a C3-selective annulation and gave structurally interesting tetrahydro-β-carboline derivatives possessing potential bioactivity. Using electron-withdrawing protective groups, the substrate underwent a C2-selective annulation and afforded the structurally useful spiro-pseudoindoxyl found in natural indole alkaloids. Notably, an interesting and unusual 1,2-migration of the phenoxy group was found in the C3-selective process.
However, the reported methods adopted multistep sequences with harsh reaction conditions in some particular cases.
The present inventors have recently documented one pot SNAr-click reaction of fluoronitrobenzenes with azide nucleophile for synthesis of 1,4 substituted triazoles. It is further reported that if there is no dipolarophile to trap the azide, these intermediate azide are reduced further to anilines. With the current interest to provide a more feasible, cost effective process for the synthesis of natural products having the indolin-3-one core, the invention is directed to provide a process using one-pot [Cu]-catalysed SNAr and the Smalley rearrangement of α-halophenyl sec-alkyl ketones.

Council of Scientific & Industrial Research


An improved surgical stapler is disclosed which is particularly suitable for use in laparoscopic procedures. The stapler includes a handle and an elongated shaft and nontraumatic jaws at its distal end which are adapted to close staples. This improved stapler further includes a cutter which is adapted to cut items grasped by the jaws. The jaws are actuated independently of the stapling mechanism. This substantially improves the versatility of this device. A suctioning tube suitable for hydro dissection is also provided at the tip of the apparatus. This device permits surgeons to dissect, hydro dissect, staple and subsequently selectively cut without removing the instrument.

The use of surgical staplers in place of sutures is now commonplace. There are a variety of different types of staplers which are employed for various types of operations. For laparoscopic procedures, uniquely designed apparatus are required.
In a laparoscopic procedure, the instruments must fit through a cylindrical cannula into the body cavity. They must be elongated and generally conform to the shape of the cannula and therefore must be generally cylindrical. Such surgical staplers exist.
Due to the nature of laparoscopic procedures, it is undesirable to repeatedly insert and remove instruments from the cannula. The surgeon cannot directly view the organ or area of operation. Therefore, the surgeon must locate and relocate vessels and other body parts which are the subject of operative procedures. When a cystic duct, for example, is sutured and cut, the cystic duct must be separated or dissected from surrounding tissue. The dissecting apparatus or probe must then be removed and the stapler inserted. The duct is then stapled at two locations. Then the stapler must be removed and a cutting device inserted to cut between the two staples. This is particularly time consuming, requiring that the probe be removed, the stapler be removed and the cutter be inserted and each time the bile duct be relocated.
Other operative procedures require gross dissection of tissue such as the mesentery from surrounding nerves and vessels prior to cutting and/or stapling. This frequently requires different probes and a hydro dissection tube. This is basically a suction/irrigation tube which is attached to a source of water under pressure. Again, this procedure requires repeated insertion and removal of various instruments.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a laparoscopic device which will dissect, staple and/or cut.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a stapling device that can be readily used for dissection.
It is further an object of the present invention to provide a laparoscopic stapler which will permit the stapler to independently grasp body parts irrespective of the stapling operation.
Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide for a surgical stapler which will grasp a body part and permit the cutter to be selectively operated to cut the body part when grasped by the stapler. This provides an apparatus which can grasp a body part, staple it, and hold it while it is being cut. Further, the present invention permits this to occur in any sequence.
It is also the object of this invention to enable suctioning and irrigating through a separate channel which can also be used in hydro dissection.
The objects and advantages of the present invention will be further appreciated in light of the following detailed description and drawings in which:

Automatic stapler for laparoscopic procedure with selective cutter, nontraumatic jaws and suction irrigator


In order to facilitate the transfer and utilization of a tank of ink in a printing facility, an ink tank/pump system includes a plurality of ink tanks each adapted to accommodate a pump for supplying a press with ink from the tank. The system also includes a transfer cart having a generally flat, horizontal surface to support at least one of the ink tanks thereon. The transfer cart is adapted to move from one point to another, e.g., from an ink tank storage location to a press location. The system still further includes a receiver cart having a generally flat, horizontal surface to support at least one of the ink tanks thereon. With this arrangement, the tank supporting surfaces of the transfer and receiver carts are alignable, which accommodates slidably moving the ink tanks therebetween, and the ink tanks may include a splash resistant lip.

For purposes of operating a press room, especially of the flexo/gravure type, there are various different types of equipment that are typically required. It is known, however, that a steady supply of ink is always needed and, thus, the supply must regularly be brought from a storage location to the press room on an ongoing basis. Due to the significant requirement for this material, there has been recognition of the need for improvements in the delivery and utilization system therefor.
More specifically, it is known to be important to have ink available to a press at all times. It is likewise essential to see that downtime during replenishment of the supply of ink to a press is minimized to the extent possible. Otherwise, the press room will experience a degree of inefficiency that is unacceptable in modern practice.
If at all possible, it would be advantageous to be able to have a virtually continuous ink supply available in a press room. For instance, it would be highly desirable to have duplicate ink tanks, each having its own pump, present on each line in a press room such that, as soon as one ink tank is depleted it can either be refilled from a bulk supply source such as a five gallon bucket or the like or, alternatively, the other tank can immediately be connected to the line in order to reduce or eliminate downtime. In this manner, a full ink tank/pump could then be brought to the line immediately following the switch over to replace the depleted ink tank/pump.
Furthermore, it is essential to have another tank available during changeover from one color of ink to another. It is not possible in such case to simply add ink to a tank that was just used for a different color of ink. In order to avoid downtime, it would be desirable to have a tank of the new, changeover color available immediately.
In addition, it would desirable to be able to prevent the ink from splashing out of the tank such as during transport from the ink room to the press. This would be especially critical in the event that each ink tank was set up with its own pump in a "ready" condition in a storage location before delivery to the line in the press room. Otherwise, the ink would be likely to spill or from the tank and, thereby, cause a potential hazard for the health and safety of workers in and around the press room.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the foregoing problems and achieving one or more of the resulting objects.


A method for providing position determination assisting data comprises repetitions of establishing (210) of a cell relation configuration for a user equipment and performing (212) of a high-precision position determination for the user equipment. Results of the determinations belonging to the same cell relation configuration are clustered (214) in separate clustered results. An area definition is associated (220) with the clustered results by enclosing (221) the clustered results by a polygon, shrinking (222) the polygon by moving corners towards a contraction point and defining (223) the area definition as a shrunk polygon comprising a predetermined fraction of the clustered results. The contraction point is selected to be situated within the clustered results. The method also comprises creating (230) of position determination assisting data comprising a relation between the cell relation configurations and the associated area definitions. An arrangement for providing position determination assisting data is also presented.

The possibility to determine the position of a mobile device has enabled application developers and wireless network operators to provide location based, and location aware, services. Examples of those are guiding systems, shopping assistance, friend finder, presence services, community and communication services and other information services giving the mobile user information about their surroundings.
In addition to the commercial services, the governments in several countries have put requirements on the network operators to be able to determine the position of an emergency call. For instance, the governmental requirements in the USA (FCC E911) state that it must be possible to determine the position of a certain percentage of all emergency calls. The requirements make no difference between indoor and outdoor environment.
In outdoor environments, the position estimation can be done using e.g. the global positioning system, i.e. GPS (Global Positioning System), or methods based thereon, such as Assisted-GPS (A-GPS). However, this requires that the user equipment has to be provided with additional functionalities concerning e.g. reception of radio signals.
Position estimation can also be performed using the wireless network itself. Methods using the wireless network can be grouped in different groups. A first group comprises methods that are based on the identification of the radio cell to which a mobile terminal is attached, e.g. by using Cell-ID. In its simplest form, a user equipment (UE) is known to be situated within the coverage area of a certain base station if the user equipment is communicating with the wireless network through that base station. This can be improved by also taking information from so-called neighbor lists into account. However, the accuracy is even then not very impressive.
Another group of position estimation methods are based on measurements of signal propagation times or quantities related thereto. Timing Advance (TA) in LTE systems and Round Trip Time (RTT) in WCDMA systems are examples of such methods. Briefly, the travel time of radio waves from the Radio Base Station (RBS) to the UE and back is measured. The round trip time measurement alone defines a circle, or if the inaccuracy is accounted for, a circular strip around the RBS, within which the UE is located. By combining such information with propagation times to neighboring RBS's enabling trilatheration calculations, the accuracy can be improved somewhat. However, this possibility does only occur in a limited part of the cells, typically less than 25%. The signal propagation time measurements can also be combined with Cell-ID information, which typically restricts the area in which the UE can be situated to the sector of the circular strip being situated within the cell. As for other terrestrial positioning methods, like observed time difference of arrival (OTDOA), these suffer from a too low detection performance to provide good enough performance, at least in the basic configuration.
A more promising approach is provided by so called fingerprinting positioning, see e.g. "Adaptive enhanced cell-ID fingerprinting localization by clustering of precise position measurement", in IEEE Trans. Vehicular Tech., vol. 56, no. 5, 2007, pp. 3199-3209 by T. Wigren. Fingerprinting positioning algorithms operate by creating a radio fingerprint for each point of a fine coordinate grid that covers the Radio Access Network (RAN). The fingerprint may e.g. consist of detectable cell ID's, quantized path loss or signal strength measurements, quantized RTT or TA, quantized noise rise, radio connection information like the radio access bearer (RAB) and/or quantized time.
When providing position determination assisting data in a cellular communications network necessary for adaptive enhanced cell ID (AECID) positioning, a cell relation configuration is established for a user equipment, for which a tag is created, and a high-precision position determination is performed for the same user equipment. This is repeated a plurality of times. A second step is to collect all high precision positioning measurements that have the same tag in separate high precision measurement clusters. In a third step, a polygon that represents the geographical extension of a cluster is computed, for each stored high precision position measurement cluster. The details of this algorithm are disclosed in the published international patent applications WO 2007/043915, WO 2008/118052 and WO 2008/069712. The area of the polygon is typically minimized, which in turn maximizes the accuracy when used. The probability that the terminal is within the polygon, i.e. the confidence, is precisely known as it is set as a constraint in the algorithm. The typical approach to this is to create a polygon that is known to enclose all clustered measurements of the tag to be treated. A contraction point is selected within that polygon and the polygon is shrunk according to different algorithms towards that contraction point, under the constraint that a certain fraction of all clustered measurements are maintained within the polygon, until a minimum area of the polygon is obtained.
When a positioning is to be performed, a fingerprint is detected and compared with stored relations between fingerprints and position. In such a way, an area within which the UE with a certain certainty is situated can be achieved.
However, it has been found that the present routines for the fingerprinting technology do not operate optimally in certain cases. It has been found that the polygon shrinking procedures in some occasions find local minima of the area instead of a more global minimum.
There is hence a need for methods and apparatuses further improving the positioning accuracies by finding improved polygon shrinking routines or alternatives to the polygon shrinking routines.

Methods and arrangements for fingerprinting positioning


A valve, such as a throttle valve plate, which is suitable for use with a throttle assembly, and is able to withstand a backpressure test. The throttle valve plate includes a flat plate, and a plastic material overmolded onto a portion of the valve plate. The plate includes at least one rib, and may include a plurality of ribs, allowing for a thinner and lighter weight plate which is manufactured at a lower cost. The valve may also be a two-piece valve plate having an overlap portion. The two pieces of the valve plate overlap at the portion of the valve plate which interfaces with the shaft of the throttle assembly. The remaining portion of the plate surface includes at least one ribbed feature, and may include a plurality of ribbed features which reduce material usage and therefore reduce weight and cost, but also provide the required strength and rigidity.

Throttle assemblies are generally known and are typically used to control the flow of air into an engine. Most throttle assemblies typically have a valve which is mounted to a shaft, where the shaft is rotated (by an actuator) to change the position of the valve and therefore control the flow of air into the engine. These types of valves must withstand exposure to certain pressures and temperatures. These valves also must pass a "backfire" test, where the valve is exposed to a sudden burst of pressure from the engine. In order to pass this test, the valve must have a minimum structural robustness and rigidity. The required flat plate thickness also adds inertia loading to the actuator componentry, impacting performance and durability of the throttle assembly.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a valve for a throttle assembly, that is able to withstand a backfire test, is also lightweight, and may be manufactured with minimal or no increased cost.


The present disclosure provides for an ambiguous keyboard comprising at least two switches for performing keyboard actions, at least one of the two switches being a swipe-switch. The swipe switch can alter at least one characteristic selected from a group including: a) a function of at least one switch of the at least two switches of the ambiguous keyboard; and b) a mode of a second swipe-switch of the ambiguous keyboard.

We distinguish two types of controls: swipe controls and switches. Non-limiting examples of swipe controls include variable capacitors and resistors which change their capacitance, respectively resistance as a knob is turned. Another non-limiting example of a swipe control is a computer mouse: as the mouse is moved a cursor on the screen moves. In swipe controls, a physical motion along some path is transformed into the continuous adjustment of some property or signal. A switch, by contrast, transforms a physical action into a binary state change or signal. A non-limiting example of a switch is the familiar electric switch for turning a light on and off. These types of controls are of an increasing importance in today's world, and there can be implementation and design issues concerning them.

Keyboard comprising swipe-switches performing keyboard actions


An integral recording head, for use in a linear tape drive system, includes a circumferentially grooved roller guide assembly and a recording head actuator assembly. The circumferential groove feature is incorporated on the surfaces of the roller guide assembly, and provides a substantial frictional contact force that acts to reduce the lateral motion, and further attenuates high frequency lateral disturbances of the magnetic tape. The reduced high frequency content of the lateral disturbances significantly improves the ability of the actuator to achieve a desired track following control. The grooved roller guide assembly is formed integrally of two solid cylindrical contact surfaces separated by a circumferential slot that accommodates the recording head actuator assembly.

Magnetic media represent a common form of digital data storage for computer systems. Among the magnetic storage systems, linear tape drive systems are in use in many enterprise applications for data management. Magnetic media are also currently used in hard disk drive systems. Hard drive systems typically have a larger storage capability than linear tape drive systems owing to their higher areal density, linear density, and track density. Areal density is a physical measure of storage systems that relates the number of data bits per unit surface area of magnetic storage media. Similarly, linear density is a measure of the number of data bits per unit length of data tracks, and track density is the number of data tracks that can be packed into a given form of magnetic media. In general, a larger density value corresponds to a higher storage capacity for a magnetic storage system.
In one conventional tape design, the roller guide assembly employs a smooth surface with which the magnetic tape is in contact during a read write operation. The smooth roller surface does not allow for a sufficient frictional contact force to be developed thereon. The insufficient frictional contact force causes the magnetic tape to develop a significant lateral motion during a read write operation.
Yet another problem with the conventional design of linear tape drive systems is the large spacing between the rollers, which causes the magnetic tape to be unsupported over a large span. The unconstrained magnetic tape between the rollers tends to develop lateral motion that generates a high frequency lateral disturbance, as the magnetic tape leaves the rollers and the supply reels, that can propagate to the recording head.
The performance of conventional linear tape drive systems is further inhibited by placing the actuator containing the recording head distally from the rollers. As a result, any lateral disturbance in the magnetic tape will propagate to the recording head. Typically, the actuator that houses the recording head is designed to perform track following by closed-loop servo control. The track following servo control commands the actuator to move in the lateral direction so as to follow a target data track on the magnetic tape.
As the magnetic tape experiences high frequency lateral disturbances, the track following servo control may not be able to maintain the desired track following performance within its frequency bandwidth. The resulting error due to the inability of the actuator to follow a target data track, herein also referred to as a track following error, thus imposes a performance limitation on the track width of the magnetic tape (in a conventional design) in that it cannot be smaller than the track following error. This limitation thus dictates the track density of the conventional design of linear tape drive systems.
In view of the unresolved problems with the conventional designs of the linear tape drive, there is a need for an improved design that can effectively address the forgoing problems. Preferably, the improved design should be able to reduce substantially high frequency lateral disturbances of the magnetic tape. Moreover, the improved design should also be able to significantly reduce the track following error. By successfully resolving the forgoing concerns, an improved design should enable linear tape drive systems to achieve a higher track density, and hence a larger storage capacity.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Tape roller guide with integral recording head

International Business Machines Corporation


An inflation device is disclosed for inflation of a balloon of a balloon catheter. A housing defines a fluid-receiving reservoir in fluid communication with the balloon and an interior space for completely receiving a pressure gauge which accesses the fluid for measurement of the pressure within the system.. The reservoir has a piston and threaded plunger extending from a proximal opening in the reservoir. The threaded plunger is selectively engaged by a biased rotatable arm on the housing. The piston and plunger are part of a syringe received within the reservoir, and the housing defines an aperture for visual readout of the level of liquid in the reservoir.. The pressure gauge contains a Bourdon tube and further contains a gauge fluid in communication with the tube. The means for isolating the inflation fluid from the gauge is an expandable bladder disposed in the neck between the gauge and the inflation fluid so that the bladder expands upon increased fluid pressure within the closed system to create a pressure readout.. The housing defines an aperture for visual readout of a timer in the form of an LCD display with a frontally-illuminated screen. The timer has a manual activation lever and the housing includes an aperture allowing manual activation of the lever.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to devices for inflating balloons or the like, particularly medical devices for inflating the balloons of catheters.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many catheters currently in use in the vascular system have balloons located at their distal end. Angioplasty catheters, for example, have such balloons which are inflated within a plaque-containing stenosis to reform the stenosis to conform to the artery wall.
Angioplasty procedures can be painful to the patient if inflation lasts a long time so separate stopwatches which require separate handling are now frequently used in conjunction with the catheter to measure the length of inflation.
Special devices for inflating the balloon with a liquid such as saline or contrast media are also well known in the art. Originally, syringes were used for this purpose, and more sophisticated syringe-containing inflation devices have recently developed.
In order to control the amount of liquid (usually contrast media) injected into the balloon and obtain optimum inflation without balloon rupture, it has been found advisable to control the pressure input to the balloon. Devices which limit the amount of pressure in the inflation are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,795,431 and 4,865,587, both issued to Walling. Devices containing apparently removable pressure gauges external to the housing are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,743,230, 4,723,938, 4,758,223, and 4,919,121 issued to Nordquest, Goodin, Rydell and Rydell. However, it is highly desirable to include the pressure gauge in one, disposable unit with the inflation device, for convenience of the user, and avoid lengthy set-up procedures and the ordering of multiple devices.
Typical pressure gauges currently used with inflation devices are gauges based on Bourdon tubes. A Bourdon tube, somewhat flexible, and empty of liquid in the absence of a pressure reading, accesses a fluid-containing neck in the gauge which in turn accesses the channel in the inflation device delivering contrast media to the catheter. Upon pressure buildup, contrast media fills the neck and the tube, and compressing the air in the tube to change the tube's position so that a lever attached at the far end adjusts the position of the pressure gauge pointer. In the process, the contrast media in contact with the gauge, in particular the lead in the solder, becomes discolored and may well be toxic, such that a rupture in the balloon which leaks contrast media into the vasculature is potentially dangerous.
Using an externally-located, reusable (rather than disposable) pressure gauge and attempting to solve a different problem, i.e, the necessity of resterilizing an inflation device before re-use because the contrast media has come in contact with an external unsterilized pressure gauge, Reilly, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,370,982, discloses a multi-barrel inflation device attached to an external pressure gauge in which pressure measurement is based on axial movement of a barrel relative to the housing rather than direct pressure of the inflation fluid on the pressure gauge. It thus isolates the inflation fluid from the pressure gauge. The device, however, is complex, having a number of moving parts and an external pressure gauge, and thus may be expensive and cumbersome to manufacture and requires assembly with the pressure gauge before use.
According to Reilly in the Background of the Invention section of U.S. Pat. No. 4,370,982, it was previously known to interpose a T-fitting between the syringe of the inflation device and the catheter by interposing a gauge using a "separate pressure sensing member or disposable diaphragm positioned between the delivery end of the syringe and the balloon. One end of the diaphragm is contacted by the media fluid entering the balloon. While not admitting that this disclosure is enabling, it appears clear that a separate, disposable diaphragm (i.e. a disk) would have been used to separate the gauge from the fluid. In addition, the use of both a separate, nondisposable pressure gauge and the separate disposable diaphragm would have required special parts and special assembly of the device prior to use.
It thus would be desirable to provide a single-unit, already assembled, inflation device which avoids inflation fluid contamination by the pressure gauge. It would further be desirable to provide an inflation device which can be conveniently handled with a timer such as a stopwatch.

Inflation/deflation syringe with threaded plunger