A transceiver assembly is provided for use in a Doppler-based traffic radar system for determining the speed of at least one target. The transceiver assembly includes a cover for receiving therein at least some of the component parts of the transceiver assembly. In other words, the cover is positioned over the component parts of the transceiver assembly which are enclosed by a cap removably attached to the cover. A conical antenna horn and turnstile waveguide cavities are formed from a unitary material. The circuitry associated with the transceiver assembly is modularized such that the circuitry may be removed from the transceiver assembly, or more specifically separated from the microwave components of the transceiver assembly, for testing.

The present invention relates generally to a transceiver assembly for use in a Doppler-based traffic radar system and, more particularly to a low visibility transceiver assembly having a reduced overall size or footprint.
Law enforcement officers have utilized Doppler-based traffic radar systems to monitor vehicle speeds and enforce traffic speed limit laws for many years. Throughout this period of time, numerous improvements in both the underlying technology and in the specific application of new processing techniques for the traffic radar systems themselves have afforded law enforcement officers greater flexibility and improved reliability in carrying out their duties. One such improvement evident in most traffic radar systems presently being marketed includes the capability to more accurately and reliably monitor the speed of certain vehicles while the patrol vehicle is either in a stationary or a moving mode of operation. In fact, present traffic radar systems can now accurately monitor the speed of vehicles approaching the moving patrol vehicle in an opposite lane, monitor the speeds of a group of target vehicles simultaneously and determine the fastest vehicle within the group, and even monitor the speed of a vehicle traveling in the same direction as the patrol vehicle independent of whether the vehicle is approaching or receding from the patrol vehicle, i.e., going faster or slower than the patrol vehicle. Importantly, each of these new or improved capabilities provide the law enforcement officer with a more complete picture of the traffic environment and thus, a more flexible and reliable basis for making more informed decisions.
Despite all the improvements in both the underlying technology utilized in these traffic radar systems and the radar systems themselves, only nominal attention has been given to improving the transceiver assemblies which form an important part of the overall radar system. Almost all transceiver assemblies utilized in the industry include a housing which receives microwave components (e.g., a turnstile and antenna horn) and circuitry (e.g., power supplies and pre-amplifiers) through a front or forward facing opening. Most commonly, a lens attached to the antenna horn for forming a radar wave into a beam extends through the front opening of the housing forming a seal between the lens and the housing. Other transceiver assemblies utilized in the industry include an additional cap which is placed over the portion of the lens extending from the housing. The cap is attached to the housing forming a seal between itself and either the lens or the housing. Examples of traffic radar systems which utilize these types of transceiver assemblies include the K-55, and the PYTHON, PYTHON Series II, and PYTHON Series II FS radar systems manufactured by MPH Industries, Inc., the assignee of the present invention. Other radar systems such as the EAGLE Series radar systems manufactured by Kustom Signals, Inc. and the STALKER Dual SL and STALKER DSR manufactured by Applied Concepts, Inc., among others, offer similar products.
In operation, transceiver assemblies are typically visibly mounted in a front and/or a rear windshield area of the patrol vehicle, e.g., to a dashboard or suspended from a headliner or window frame. Depending on the overall size or footprint, and placement of the transceiver assembly, the law enforcement officer""s line of sight could be obstructed and/or the visibility of the transceiver assembly could provide advanced warning of the presence of the officer and more importantly, the radar system itself. As indicated above and despite these known limitations of present state of the art transceiver assemblies, very little effort has been devoted to improving the transceiver assembly by reducing its overall size or footprint and visibility, or otherwise.
Recently issued U.S. Pat. No. 6,008,750 to Cottle et al., assigned to Decatur Electronics, Inc., addresses the limitations created by the overall size of transceiver assemblies in the industry and describes a transceiver assembly having a reduced footprint. The transceiver assembly in the Cottle et al. patent utilizes an off-the-shelf patch antenna which is positioned within a square housing having a forward facing opening covered by a square cap. The off-the-shelf patch antenna was selected for its reduced size, and more specifically its minimal depth, compared to the industry standard conical horn antennas which are typically on the order of three inches in length causing the overall size or footprint of a transceiver assembly to be quite large. The Cottle et al. patent further suggests that a reduction of this standard length horn antenna below one and three quarter inches is not practical due to the physical and operational limitations of conical horn antennas and turnstiles used therewith.
Accordingly, a need is clearly identified for a radar system and more specifically, a transceiver assembly utilizing a conical horn antenna having a reduced overall size or footprint which provides increased flexibility in its placement within the patrol vehicle thereby limiting obstructions to the law enforcement officer""s line of sight, and reduced visibility from outside of the patrol vehicle. Preferably, the radar system and transceiver assembly would significantly reduce, if not eliminate, the above limitations of present transceiver assemblies in an aesthetically appealing assembly.
A novel and improved transceiver assembly is provided for use in a Doppler-based traffic radar system for determining the speed of at least one target. The transceiver assembly includes a cover for receiving therein component parts of the assembly including at least one of an oscillator, a turnstile, a conical antenna horn and a lens, a mixer, and circuitry. In other words, the cover is positioned over at least some of the component parts of the transceiver assembly which are enclosed by a cap removably attached to the cover.
In accordance with an important aspect of the present invention, the cover is specifically designed to allow a radar wave to pass there through substantially unaffected. In other words, at least a portion of the cover is transparent electrically, i.e., only nominal losses due to attenuation are incurred as a result of passing through the cover. In order to minimize these losses, the material selected for the cover, and the thickness and shape of at least a portion of the cover through which the transmitted waves travel may be specifically selected. Advantageously, this allows the overall shape of the cover to be selected for purely aesthetic reasons, if desired. In addition to selecting a material, and thickness and shape of at least a portion of the cover, the color of the cover may be further selected to reduce the visibility of the cover, and necessarily the transceiver assembly when mounted in a patrol vehicle.
In accordance with another important aspect of the present invention, the transceiver assembly has an overall size or footprint which is smaller than previously thought possible in the industry. Advantageously, this smaller overall footprint provides several advantages including flexible placement of the transceiver assembly within the patrol vehicle in locations which heretofore may have been considered too small to accommodate the transceiver assembly (e.g., behind the rear-view mirror) thereby limiting obstructions to the law enforcement officer""s line of sight, and reduced visibility from outside of the patrol vehicle.
The ability to reduce the overall footprint of the transceiver assembly is attributable in the present invention to the selection and design of the component parts of the assembly. For example, the conical antenna horn and turnstile may be formed from a unitary material. In addition to limiting the size of the assembly, forming the antenna horn and turnstile from a unitary material also lowers the number of component parts requiring assembly and thus, manufacturing expenses. Further, the length of the conical antenna horn which is a significant component of the overall size of the assembly, may be limited in some embodiments to no more than one and three-quarter inches in length. Of course, variations of the length of the antenna horn and taper angle are possible in accordance with the broad teachings of the present invention.
In addition to reducing the overall size or footprint of the transceiver assembly in order to provide the above-noted advantages, the circuitry associated with the transceiver assembly may be modularized such that the circuitry may be tested apart from the transceiver assembly. More specifically, the circuitry may be separated from the microwave components of the transceiver assembly for testing. In this manner, the circuitry may be independently tested prior to assembly within the transceiver assembly or during troubleshooting if a failure were to occur.
In accordance with the broadest teachings of the present invention, the transceiver assembly may be used in a Doppler-based traffic radar system. These radar systems are well known in the industry and generally include a processing unit coupled to one or more transceiver assemblies for determining and displaying a speed of at least one target. As indicated above, examples of these traffic radar systems include the PYTHON Series, SPEEDGUN PLUS, and DS 3 radar systems manufactured by MPH Industries, Inc., the assignee of the present invention. The details of at least some of these radar systems are set out in U.S. Pat. No. 6,008,752, for example, and incorporated herein by reference. Other radar systems mentioned above such as the EAGLE Series systems manufactured by Kustom Signals, Inc. or the STALKER Series systems manufactured by Applied Concepts, Inc. are also available. The details of these radar systems are set out in U.S. Pat Nos. 5,504,488, 5,528,246, 5,570,093 and 6,198,42 which are each incorporated herein by reference.
Still other objects of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in this art from the following description wherein there is shown and described a preferred embodiment of this invention, simply by way of illustration of one of the modes best suited to carry out the invention. As it will be realized, the invention is capable of other different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various, obvious aspects all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and descriptions will be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.

Transceiver assembly used in a Doppler-based traffic radar system


A process for producing a resorcinol-formalin resin containing no salts, having a moderate flowability when transformed into an aqueous solution, and having a reduced content of resorcinol monomer and a reduced content of resorcinol-formalin resin of resorcinol pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies, the whole steps including an one-stage reaction and liquid-liquid distribution being conducted in the same reactor, which comprises adding resorcinol, an inorganic salt, and an organic solvent having a solubility parameter of 7.0 to 12.5 to a water solvent, stirring the mixture to give a two-phase system containing no remaining solid matter, adding an acid catalyst, adding formalin dropwise into the reaction system to cause a liquid-liquid heterogeneous reaction to proceed, removing the aqueous layer, adding an organic solvent and water to the reaction product layer, the amount of the water being half of the amount of the organic solvent, stirring the resulting mixture, allowing it to stand, and then removing the aqueous layer to obtain the resorcinol-formalin resin.

Hitherto, since resorcinol-formalin resins have been used for adhesives, plywood, glued laminated timber, surface coating agents, and the like owing to their fast curing rate and, in particular, they are used as tire adhesives and rubber horse adhesives owing to their excellent adhesiveness to rubber and fiber (see, for example, JP-B-48-12185, JP-A-4-148920, JP-A-6-100850, and JP-A-2000-178849).
In the case that a resorcinol-formalin resin is used as an adhesive, it is required that the resorcinol-formalin resin has a sufficient flowability and, when a solvent coexists, the resin is homogeneously dissolved therein. When the flowability is focused on, it is empirically known that a sufficient flowability is obtained by reducing the composition ratio of resorcinol pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies among the constitutive components of a polycondensate. It has been considered that the resorcinol pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies contain a high ratio of three-dimensional structures and hence the flowability is lost. Moreover, it is also possible to dilute the resin by an organic solvent in order to impart the flowability but the use of the organic solvent is not preferable since the use may possibly result in deteriorated working environment and lowering of adhesiveness. There is a method of dispersing the resin in water by the action of an anionic surfactant without using the organic solvent (see, for example, JP-A-57-167342) but there still remains an anxiety of long-term stability of the resulting water dispersion system.
As mentioned above, it is known that a sufficient flowability is obtained in the case that the solvent is water by lowering the composition ratio of resorcinol pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies among the constitutive components of the polyconcensate. However, the case that the reaction conditions are set mild so as to reduce the composition ratio of resorcinol pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies only results in the shift of the molecular weight distribution of the product to a low-molecular-weight side and usually, the concentration of unreacted resorcinol (resorcinol monoclear body) increases. When the concentration of resorcinol increases, there is a possibility that resorcinol is sublimated at the use as an adhesive to deteriorate working environment and further to lower adhesiveness, so that the case is not preferred. When 0.6 mol of formaldehyde is reacted with 1 mol of resorcinol, about 33% by weight of unreacted resorcinol is contained after the completion of the reaction and when 0.8 mol of formaldehyde is reacted, about 20% by weight of unreacted resorcinol is contained. Therefore, in order to reduce the amount of unreacted resorcinol to 15% by weight, it has been reported that resorcinol is removed by sublimation under reduced pressure of 0.05 mmHg at 130° C. so as to reduce the content of unreacted resorcinol (see, for example, JP-B-54-932). Moreover, it has been reported that the content of unreacted resorcinol is reduced to 5.5% by using methyl isobutyl ketone as a solvent and water as an extracting agent by means of a continuous extractor (see, for example, JP-B-49-14550). However, these processes are industrially disadvantageous since vacuum distillation is required after the completion of the reaction or a long-time operation is required using the continuous extractor.
To the contrary, when severer reaction conditions are adopted in order to lower the concentration of unreacted resorcinol, resorcinol polynuclear bodies of pentanuclear or higher nuclear bodies are formed in a large amount and hence the case is not preferred. Since the reaction is conducted in an aqueous system, it may be possible to use a method of adding a high concentration of a salt after the completion of the reaction to lower the solubility of the polymeric components and removing them after their precipitation. However, this method requires further incorporation of the salting-out step and hence is disadvantageous. In addition, there is a fear of lowered adhesiveness owing to the remaining inorganic salt or corrosion of substrate to be adhered attributable to the inorganic salt, so that the method is not practiced. A means for achieving no increase in the composition ratio of heptanuclear or higher nuclear bodies even in a one-stage reaction without incorporating the salting-out step is disclosed (see, for example, JP-2003-277308). It is a method of coexisting a large amount of a salt in the reaction system in order to reduce the solubility of the resorcinol polynuclear bodies. In this method, since the resorcinol polynuclear bodies precipitated from the aqueous phase form a gummy matter, even resorcinol, resorcinol binuclear bodies, and resorcinol trinuclear bodies are incorporated into the gummy matter and, as a result, a decrease in the reaction rate is invited, which results in a lengthened reaction time. In the industrial production, the formation of a gummy matter in a long-term reaction induces discontinuation of stirring, choking of liquid transferring system, and the like, so that it is difficult to adopt the method.

Process for producing resorcinol-formalin resin


The object of the invention is a method for installing and servicing an apparatus module recovering the kinetic energy of water; and the apparatus module itself. The apparatus module with wave energy recovering units is descended into the sea bottom and is kept steady at the sea bottom by the help of its own mass and the mass of the water filled into a plurality of soft and hard compartments and valve compartments in the body of the apparatus module. Correspondingly the apparatus module is lifted into the surface of the water and made floating by the help of air that is blown to the plurality of soft and hard compartments and the valve compartments in order to replace the water.

The present invention relates to a method for installing and servicing an apparatus recovering the kinetic energy of water and an apparatus for recovering the kinetic energy of water.
The apparatus according to the invention is suited very well for instance for an apparatus for recovering wave energy or tidal energy of seawater. The recovered energy is further converted for instance to electric energy and/or fresh water. In the following only the apparatus for recovering wave energy is dealt with a more precise way.
In the wave energy recovery solutions according to the prior art each recovery unit is usually situated separately on its own base on the bottom of the water basin, such as the bottom of sea. The base for each recovery unit has been made ready on the sea bottom before the installation of the recovery unit. The manufacture of that kind of the base at the sea bottom is slow, requires a lot of preparations, contains a lot of expensive diving labor, and needs a lot of various fixtures. In addition in order to install the recovery unit onto the said base heavy vessel and crane fixtures are required. However, that kind of heavy fixtures is usually not easily available for just the time it is needed. For that reason the prior art solutions suffer from extensive installation costs and a slow installation work. In addition one problem is the inconvenience involved with the maintenance or servicing. The maintenance work requires also a lot of preparation work and heavy vessel and crane fixtures in order to lift the recovery unit onto the surface of the water and to perform the service needed. Also after the service works the same heavy fixtures are needed again. This is slow and makes the service works very expensive.

Method for installing and servicing an apparatus recovering the kinetic energy of water, and an apparatus recovering the kinetic energy of water


A foldable music pedal has a stand, a base assembly and a pedal. The stand has a cross bar, a seat and a moving element. The cross bar is defined opposite to the seat. The seat has an inserting recess. The moving element is retractably mounted through the cross bar. The base assembly has a casing base and an inserting base. The casing base is connected pivotally to the seat. The inserting base is movably inserted through the casing base and inserted into the inserting recess of the seat of the stand, and has a connecting end and a bolt. The connecting end of the inserting base extends out of the casing base opposite to the stand. The bolt detachably connects to the casing base and the inserting base. The pedal has two ends respectively connected pivotally to the connecting end of the inserting base and the moving element.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music pedal, and more particularly to a foldable music pedal with a foldable base assembly to improve the convenience of carrying or storing the music pedal.
2. Description of Related Art
With reference to FIGS. 6 to 8, a conventional foldable music pedal has a stand (61), a tripod, a base assembly (62) and a pedal (63). The stand (61) connects to the base assembly (62), the pedal (63) and a musical instrument such as a hi-hat cymbal, and has a mounting frame (610), a supporting frame (613) and a tripod. The mounting frame (610) has a cross bar and two posts. The cross bar is mounted on and between the posts. Each post has a connecting end, a connecting mount (611) and a connecting hole (612). The connecting mount (611) protrudes from the connecting end of the post. The connecting hole (612) is formed through the connecting mount (611). The supporting frame (613) is mounted on the cross bar of the mounting frame (610), may be a tube, and has a shaft (614), a chain (615) and a protruding end. The shaft (614) is moveably inserted in the supporting frame (613) and has a connecting end. The connecting end is extended through the cross bar of the mounting frame (610). The chain (615) is connected to the connecting end of the shaft (614). The protruding end protrudes from the tube and may connect to the hi-hat cymbal. The tripod is mounted on the stand (61) and provides a supporting effect.
The base assembly (62) has a supporting base (620), two bars (621) and a heel mount (623). Each bar (621) has a proximal end and a distal end. The proximal end of the bar (621) is fixed on the supporting base (620). The distal end of the bar (621) is extended toward the stand (61) and has a connecting rod (622) perpendicularly protruding from the distal end of the bar (621) and mounted retractably in the connecting hole (612) of the mounting frame (610). The heel mount (623) is mounted on the supporting base (620). The pedal (63) has two ends respectively connected pivotally to the heel mount (623) and the chain (615), and is activated to pull the chain (615) and drive the shaft (614).
When the distal ends of the bars (621) are pressed to move out from the connecting holes (612) of the mounting frame (610), the base assembly (62) and the pedal (63) can be folded toward the stand (61) and may be bound on the stand (61) by a rope.
However, even if the base assembly (62) and the pedal (63) are folded and bound on the stand (61), the base assembly (62) and the pedal (63) still move or swing easily and cannot be held steadily on the stand (61) because the pedal (63) is only connected to the stand (61) by the chain (615).
To overcome the shortcomings, the present invention tends to provide a foldable music pedal to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.


A filter assembly for removing particulate contaminants and chemical contaminants from an incoming dirty air stream for a fuel cell. The filter assembly also includes a noise suppression element that reduces sound waves or noise emanating from any equipment, such as a compressor. The filter assembly can include a particulate filter portion for removing physical or particulate contaminants, a chemical filter portion for removing chemical contaminants, or can have both portions.

Practical and efficient generation of electrical energy has been sought since the discovery of electricity. Fuel cells are becoming a viable alternative to hydroelectric, fossil fuel and nuclear energy. Fuel cells efficiently convert a fuel's chemical energy directly to electrical energy. They chemically combine a fuel and oxidant without burning, thereby eliminating many inefficiencies and most pollution of traditional combustion power systems.
There are five main known types of fuel cells: alkaline fuel cells (AFCs), proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMs or PEMFCs), phosphoric acid fuel cells (PAFCs), molten carbonate fuel cells (MCFCs), and solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs).
A fuel cell operates in principle much like a battery. In general, a fuel cell consists of two electrodes (an anode and a cathode) sandwiched around an electrolyte. For example, for a PEM fuel cell, hydrogen and oxygen are passed over the anode and cathode electrodes respectively in a manner that generates a voltage between the electrodes, creating electricity and heat, and producing water as the primary byproduct. The hydrogen fuel is supplied to the anode of the fuel cell. Oxygen enters the fuel cell at the cathode. The oxygen can be supplied in purified form or can come directly from atmospheric air.
All of the known fuel cell configurations discussed above have a common need for oxygen as an integral ingredient for performing the cell's chemical process. For most commercial applications it is desirable for such oxygen to be supplied directly from the atmospheric air. However, it is accepted that in today's world, all atmospheric air has some degree of contaminants present in it, both particulate contaminants such as loose debris, insects, tree blossoms, dust, tree pollen, smog, and smoke particulates, and chemical contaminants such as volatile organic compounds (such as aromatic hydrocarbons, methane, butane, propane and other hydrocarbons) as well as ammonia, oxides of nitrogen, ozone, smog, oxides of sulfur, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, etc.
Since efficient fuel cell operation depends on a delicately balanced chemical reaction, contaminants in the air used by the cell can have a significant adverse effect on the cell's operation and, depending on their nature, can even cause the fuel cell to discontinue operation. It is important therefore, that the fuel cell system include a filtration system that is designed to eliminate harmful contaminants and one that enables the fuel cell to be used in a wide range of use environments.
To obtain the amount of oxygen necessary for a fuel cell to produce the desired energy output, it has been found desirable to pass the oxygen-containing air through air movement equipment such as a compressor or fan located within the airflow stream supplied to the fuel cell or other equipment. Unfortunately, typical compressors produce significant undesirable and annoying noise levels. It is desirable to reduce the noise produced by and/or transmitted through the compressor and back into the environment. The present invention addresses the above-identified needs and desires for an efficient and quiet system for use in a wide variety of applications, including fuel cell systems.
What is desired, therefore, is a power generator, such as a fuel cell, that functions within environments having a wide range of contaminants.

Filter assemblies and systems for intake air for fuel cells


A stand, rotatable through approximately 180 degrees, supports a display device in such a way that whilst the height of the display device above a supporting surface is variable, a full range of viewing angles is also available at any height.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a display device, more particularly to a display device with a rotatable stand.
2. Description of Related Art
A stand is usually provided to support a monitor. In order to adjust a visual angle of the monitor, the stand should be designed to be rotatable relative to the monitor. However, the height of the monitor cannot generally be adjusted. Therefore, there is room for improvement in the art.

Display device with variable height and angles of view by virtue of rotatable stand

HONG FU JIN PRECISION INDUSTRY (ShenZhen) CO., LTD.


A product comprising a peptide that comprises a motif selected from a group consisting of isoDGR, NGR and DGR, wherein the peptide cyclized by joining the N- and C-termini of its main chain and wherein the cyclic peptide is joined to albumin.

Albumin is emerging as a versatile drug carrier in a number of applications in cancer nanomedicine. We coupled albumin with a peptide containing the isoDGR motif, a ligand of integrins expressed in tumor vessels, to enhance its tumor homing properties. To this aim, we designed various head-to-tail-cyclized isoDGR peptides and analyzed their integrin binding properties. We have identified a peptide (c(CGisoDGRG)) (SEQ ID NO:1) that, after coupling to human serum albumin, has a very good selectivity for αvβ3 and αvβ5, two integrins overexpressed in the tumor vasculature. In vitro and in vivo studies showed that isoDGR-tagged albumin binds to endothelial cells, inhibits their adhesion properties, homes in on tumor vessels and inhibits tumor growth, with no evidence of toxicity. Furthermore, coupling c(CGisoDGRG) (SEQ ID NO:1) to albumin/paclitaxel nanoparticles improved their cytotoxic activity against αvβ3-positive endothelial cells, but not against αvβ3-negative cells. These results suggest that isoDGR-tagged albumin is a new vascular targeting agent. Because of its good selectivity for tumor vessels and its inherent anticancer activity isoDGR-tagged albumin might be exploited as a carrier for the preparation of a wide range of tumor vasculature-selective drugs and nanoparticles for cancer therapy and diagnosis.


The invention provides methods for identifying antibody preparations that can form a pair of antibodies that optimally detect a target antigen, for example, in a sandwich immunoassay. These methods provide high affinity and epitope-specific antibodies.

Today's medical diagnostics have a significant role in the health care system. A recent study indicates demand for in vitro diagnostics in the United States alone is over $9 billion and will grow over seven percent annually through 2005 (Freedonia, 2001). Scientists are constantly trying to develop new methodologies and technologies for monitoring the overall health and disease conditions of patients.
For example, C-reactive protein (CRP) is an acute phase reactant that is measured in order to assess the upper respiratory differential (URD) of patients. The concentration of CRP increases several-fold in response to different types of tissue damage and inflammation (Crockson et al, 1966). CRP is considered to be a prototypic acute phase reactant, synthesized in the liver as part of a coordinated response by hepatocytes to tissue injury or inflammation. Also, results from the 1997 Physicians Health Study have sparked interest in the utility of C-reactive protein (CRP) as being a significant disease indicator, particularly for males aged 40-84 (Luhr and Modi, 2000; Ridker et al, 1997). A rapid and accurate method for measuring CRP is needed to distinguish between allergic responses and viral and bacterial infections, and thereby to avoid unnecessary prescription of antibiotics.
In another example, high levels of immunoglobulin E (IgE) are observed when a person suffers from an allergic reaction. IgE is one of the five classes of immunoglobulins produced by humans (others being, IgA, IgD, IgG and IgM), and the main function of these immunoglobulins is to protect against invading parasites. The antigen-specific IgE interacts with mast cells and eosinophils in its role of protecting the host against the invading parasites (Sutton and Gould, 1993). However, in addition to this beneficial role, the same antibody-cell combination is also responsible for allergic or immediate hypersensitivity reactions such as hay fever, asthma, hives and anaphylaxis. IgE levels increase in serum during these events (Heinrich et al, 1999). IgE-mediated allergies are a significant health problem because of the high prevalence, potential severity, and chronicity of the reaction. Apart from the pollution related allergies, it is estimated that up to 8% of children and 2% of adults have allergic reactions to food (Burks and Sampson, 1993; Jansen et al, 1994). Respiratory diseases and allergies are also growing health concerns in most polluted areas, and it is important for the patient or physician to know whether the respiratory symptoms are caused by a pathogen or by IgE-mediated allergic reaction. Accordingly, immunoassays are needed that quickly and accurately detect the amount of circulating IgE in a patient.
Several immunological methods are commonly used for determining the antigen-antibody interactions. The most common are the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), immunoprecipitation, equilibrium dialysis, sedimentation and biosensor (Biacore). Generally, the affinity of an antibody-antigen interaction can range widely from about 104 to about 1010 M−1. The variability in antigen-antibody affinities is largely determined by imperfect matching of the selected antibody with an antigenic epitope of the target antigen. Moreover, antibody-antigen interactions in the lower portion of the affinity range often do not provide enough sensitivity for accurately measuring the amount of target antigen present in certain types of assays.
Selection of an appropriate antigen and antibody is therefore one of the key factors in developing an accurate and sensitive immunoassay for an analyte or disease marker. The efficacy of an immunoassay depends upon specific recognition of the antigen by antibody and the affinity of an antibody for an antigen is a crucial factor that determines how well the particular antibody preparation will perform in different types of immunoassays (Steward and Lew, 1985). For example, a high affinity antibody is needed in sandwich immunoassay format such as an ELISA. In contrast, the same antibody may not be the best type in a competitive format such as an enzyme immunoassay (EIA). Antibodies of moderate affinity are preferable for use in both EIA and affinity chromatography, because they allow the antigen to be dissociated more easily after formation of antibody-antigen complex.
For example, the IgE analyte is itself an "antibody-like" molecule that could be used in either an EIA or an ELISA format. However, EIA and ELISA (or sandwich) assays often permit detection of an antigen-antibody complex at only one time point; generally such assays cannot be monitored continuously. While EIA is a simpler procedure that requires only one antibody to specifically recognize at Fc or Fab portions of IgE antigen, detection with two antibodies as in the ELISA or sandwich assay provides a more sensitive and accurate assay.
Sandwich assays like the ELISA involve forming a complex between the antigen and two different antibodies where the antibodies recognize the antigen at two different sites. The presence of an antigen is only recorded as present after both antibodies have bound.
While the sandwich assay format is often useful, not all sandwich assays perform optimally. For example, the ELISA method requires one of the antibody preparations to have a detection label such as an enzyme tag. Other detection methods suitable for sandwich assays include calorimetric, fluorometric, chemiluminescent, radiometric, and related methods. Detection labels or tag employed in such methods may sterically interfere with antigen-antibody binding. ELISA results may also differ when solid-phase and solution-phase assays are performed, possibly because the kinetics of such reactions differ (Nygren et al, 1987; Azimzadeh et al, 1992). Moreover, when two antibodies are involved in immune complex formation, suboptimal binding or cross-reactivity by one antibody can undermine the accuracy of the entire immunoassay.
Antigen-antibody affinities can be measured in a single assay under a single set of experimental conditions. However, a single assay will provide very little information about the binding site, the cross-reactivity of the antibody with other antigens and how well two antibodies work together to interact with the target antigen. Accordingly, new methods for effectively selecting the best pairs of antibody preparations for immunoassays are needed.


An assessment system includes interim tests administered at predetermined intervals. Each assessment is designed to test specific concepts, and includes multiple-choice test items, each having an item stem, a correct answer, and several distractors. Preferably at least two of the distractors are directed to disparate cognitive levels. Any distractors selected are automatically correlated for each student, in order to determine a presence of a possible problem in a particular concept. Then an individual focus can be applied to correcting any problems. Any distractors selected by any of the students are automatically correlated for the teacher, to determine the presence of a possible problem for a number of students, for applying focus to improving the understanding of some or all of a class for any problem identified by the correlation. A benchmark assessment is also administered that has a format substantially identical to that of an upcoming high-stakes test.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to student assessment systems and methods, and, more particularly, to systems and methods for designing and creating such assessments.
2. Description of Related Art
Instruments created to examine a student's knowledge of a particular discipline typically include a series of questions to be answered or problems to be solved. Tests have evolved from individually authored, unitarily presented documents into standardized, multiauthor documents delivered over wide geographic ranges and on which multivariate statistics can be amassed. As the importance of test results has increased, for myriad educational and political reasons, so has the field of test creation experienced a concomitant drive towards more sophisticated scientific platforms, necessitating increased levels of automation in every element of the process.
With the "No Child Left Behind" initiative, school districts are increasingly focusing on individual students' performance on a specific subset of content standards measure on an accountability test. The consequences are high if adequate yearly progress is not demonstrated. However, adequate yearly progress is defined on total test performance, not performance on individual content standards.
Educators do not want assessment content to narrow the curriculum. Teachers want to teach more than what is tested in the accountability arena. Content standards tend to be hierarchical; students often need to learn the foundational skills before moving on to more complex skills. Other standards are recursive and cumulative, but it may be that only the more complex skills are being monitored. It would be beneficial to track what is taught and what is learned on the path to proficiency.
Traditional multiple-choice test items are developed to have one correct answer and three or four incorrect answers that are equally attractive to the test taker who does not know the correct answer. These wrong answers usually reflect wrong answers that students would make if they were asked to answer the question without seeing the incorrect answers. However, these wrong answers must be equally viable and therefore equally attractive wrong answers. Consequently, these wrong answers often reflect the same level of breakdown in student understanding. For example, in the content area of reading, if the question asks what the main idea of the passage is, the wrong answers are likely to each be an important detail or aspect of the passage.
When creating an item, the incorrect options, or distractors, have previously been less important in writing and editing an item than the correct answer has been. Distractors are generally structured to reflect typical student errors, but, in general, information about those errors and what they reveal about student cognition has not been collected and analyzed. This is probably due to the focus on measuring student achievement as opposed to indicating the limitations of student understanding.
It is also typical that, in a traditional multiple-choice test question, each of the distractors would be at one level of understanding depending upon the difficulty target of the question.


Provided is a means for mitigating strict constraints between a virtual polyhedron inscribed in a rotor and a virtual polyhedron inscribed in a stator of a spherical stepping motor and a spherical AC servo motor and drastically increasing the degree of freedom in design. The above problem is solved by disposing permanent magnets at points of division of the sides of the virtual polyhedron inscribed in the rotor and electromagnets at points of division of the sides of the virtual polyhedron inscribed in the stator. A multiple pole spherical stepping motor and a multiple pole spherical AC servo motor include a rotor with permanent magnets disposed at the vertexes of a virtual polyhedron inscribed in a sphere and at points of division of arcs corresponding to the sides connecting the vertexes, and a stator with electromagnets disposed at the vertexes of a virtual polyhedron inscribed in a sphere containing the sphere of the rotor and at points of division of arcs corresponding to the sides connecting the vertexes.

Patent Document 1 describes a three-dimensional motor according to an invention by the present inventor. The three-dimensional motor is provided with a stator with windings disposed about axes in three directions orthogonal to one another for producing respective rotating fields such that a composite rotating field of an arbitrary direction can be produced; and a rotor supported within the stator such that the rotor can be rotated in an arbitrary direction and rotated by the rotating fields of the stator. The three-dimensional motor may provide a three-dimensional synchronous motor when a permanent magnet is used for the rotor, a three-dimensional induction motor when a material allowing induction current flow is used for the rotor, or a three-dimensional reluctance motor when a magnetic material with salient poles is used for the rotor.
Patent Document 2 describes a spherical stepping motor according to an invention by the present inventor. The spherical stepping motor includes a rotor with permanent magnets disposed at the vertexes and the center of each face of a polyhedron inscribed in the rotor, and a stator with electromagnets disposed at the vertexes and the center of each face of a polyhedron inscribed in the stator, the number of corners of a polygon of the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor and the number of corners of a polygon of the polyhedron inscribed in the stator being coprime. The combination of the permanent magnets of the rotor and the electromagnets of the stator may be selected from a configuration in which the electromagnets are disposed on the rotor side while the electromagnets are disposed on the stator side; a configuration in which a magnetic material is disposed on the rotor side while the electromagnets are disposed on the stator side; a configuration in which the permanent magnets are disposed on the rotor side while a hybrid configuration of the permanent magnets and the electromagnets is disposed on the stator side; or a configuration in which a hybrid configuration of the permanent magnets and the electromagnets is disposed on the rotor side while a hybrid configuration of the permanent magnets and the electromagnets is disposed on the stator side.
Patent Document 3 describes a spherical stepping motor and a spherical AC servo motor according to an invention by the present inventor. The spherical stepping motor includes a rotor with permanent magnets disposed at the vertexes, the center of the sides, and the center of each face of a polyhedron inscribed in the rotor, and a stator with electromagnets disposed at the vertexes and the center of each face of a polyhedron inscribed in the stator, the number of corners of a polygon of the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor and the number of corners of a polygon of the polyhedron inscribed in the stator being coprime. A spherical AC servo motor may be configured by adopting a Halbach array for the permanent magnets of the rotor and supplying a sine wave current to the electromagnets.
Non-patent Document 1 describes a spherical synchronous motor with a configuration similar to the configuration of the three-dimensional motor described in Patent Document 1.
Non-patent Documents 2 and 3 describe spherical induction motors. The spherical induction motors described in these documents rotate with the same principle as that for the three-dimensional motor described in Patent Document 1. The spherical induction motor described in Non-patent Document 2 differs from the three-dimensional motor described in Patent Document 1 in that the windings in Non-patent Document 2 are multipolarized.
Non-patent Document 4 describes a spherical reluctance motor. The spherical reluctance motor produces a rotating field by a total of 20 electromagnets circumferentially disposed in upper and lower two levels on a stator, and produces a rotating force by utilizing a change in reluctance with respect to salient poles circumferentially disposed in upper and lower two levels on a rotor.
Non-patent Document 5 describes a spherical stepping motor. The spherical stepping motor includes a stator with a total of 16 electromagnets; specifically, one at the center of a bottom surface, five on a circumference around the center, and further 10 on an outer circumference around the center. The spherical stepping motor also includes a rotor with a total of 24 permanent magnets; specifically, 4, 8, and 12 permanent magnets on respective circumferences around the center of the bottom surface. The rotor is rotated by attracting the magnets of the rotor by supplying a current to the electromagnets near where the rotor is desired to be moved.
Non-patent Document 6 describes a spherical stepping motor with a configuration different from that of the spherical stepping motor according to Non-patent Document 5. The spherical stepping motor according to Non-patent Document 6 includes a spherical rotor and stator which are each segmented along longitudes and latitudes. The rotor includes permanent magnets with N-poles and S-poles facing the surface alternately arranged in the segments. The stator includes electromagnets arranged in the corresponding segments. The rotor includes 4 stages of 12 poles for a total of 48-pole permanent magnets. The stator includes 6 stages of 16 poles per stage for a total of 96 electromagnets.
Patent Document 1: JP 6-85630 A
Patent Document 2: JP 2008-92758 A
Patent Document 3: JP 2009-77463 A
Non-patent Document 1: J. Wang; K. Mitchell; G. W. Jewell; D. Howe: Multi-Degree-of-Freedom Spherical permanent Magnet Motors, Proc. ICRA2001 pp. 1798-1805, 2001
Non-patent Document 2: Bruno Dehez; Damien Grenier; Benoit Raucent: Two-Degree-of Freedom Spherical Actuator for Omnimobile ROBOT. Proc. 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 2381-2386, 2002
Non-patent Document 3: A. Tanaka, M. Watada, S. Toril and D. Ebihara, "Proposal and Design of Multi-Degree-of-Freedom Spherical Actuator", Proc. of the 11th MAGDA Conference, pp. 169-172, 2002
Non-patent Document 4: K. M. Lee, H. Son, J. Joni: Concept Development and Design of a Spherical Wheel Motor (SWM). IEEE Transactions on Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Int. Conf. Robotics and Automation, pp. 3663-3668, 2005
Non-patent Document 5: David Stein; Gregory S. Chirikjian: Experiments in the Communication and Motion Planning of a Spherical Stepper Motor. ASME paper DETOO/MECH-14115, pp.1-7, 2000
Non-patent Document 6: K. Kahlen; R. W. De Doncker: Current regulators for multiple-phase permanent magnet spherical machines. Proc. 2000 IEEE Industrial Application, pp.2011-2015, 2000
In the three-dimensional motor according to Patent Document 1, when an opening portion is increased for increasing the range of movement of the output axis, it may become impossible to dispose the windings for producing the rotating fields a bout the respective axes in the three orthogonal directions. This problem may be overcome by disposing the windings about the axes in the three directions inclined by approximately 10° from each plane in a three-dimensional space. However, in this case, the rotating field about a vertical axis may become the strongest, with the rotating field decreasing and becoming more unstable with increasing angle of inclination of the rotation axis of the output axis. Further, because the rotor is rotated by tracking the rotating field, it is difficult to keep the rotor stationary in the three-dimensional space. In addition, the three-dimensional motor needs to maintain the magnetic flux in a state close to a sine wave distribution when current flows through the windings, and this need needs to be somehow addressed.
In the spherical synchronous motor according to Non-patent Document 2, the winding in the output axis direction among the windings for producing the rotating fields about the respective axes in the three orthogonal directions is lacking for providing the output axis. Thus, as the rotation axis is inclined from the central axis in the opening, the rotating force sharply declines and becomes unstable. Further, the spherical synchronous motor is difficult to keep stationary, as in the case of the three-dimensional motor according to Patent Document 1. In addition, because the spherical induction motor is multipolarized, the produced torque may be smaller than that of the three-dimensional motor according to Patent Document 1.
In the spherical induction motor according to Non-patent Document 3, a large part of the winding is lacking due to the provision of an opening, so that it is difficult to uniformly compose rotating fields in a direction greatly inclined from the opening central axis. In the spherical induction motors according to Non-patent Documents 2 and 3, slipping is caused because they are both induction motors, so that positioning of the rotor is difficult.
In the spherical reluctance motor according to Non-patent Document 4, the rotation axis of the rotor as it rotates can be inclined only within the range of ±5° for structural reasons.
In the spherical stepping motor according to Non-patent Document 5, both the electromagnets and the permanent magnets of the rotor are disposed on circumferences about the center of the bottom surface. Thus, while rotation about the center of the bottom surface can be made by regularly determining the electromagnets through which current is to be passed, it is very difficult to determine the electromagnets for rotating the rotor in other directions. The more the center of the bottom surface of the rotor is displaced from the center of the bottom surface of the stator, the more difficult it becomes to rotate the rotor. This is due to the structure in which both the electromagnets and the permanent magnets are disposed concentrically about the center of the bottom surface.
In the spherical stepping motor according to Non-patent Document 6, when the rotor is rotated about the vertical axis, the rotation can be controlled in the same way as for a stepping motor with a 12-pole rotor and a 16-pole stator on a planar surface. However, when the axis is inclined, the control becomes suddenly difficult. This is due to the fact that it is very difficult to determine the currents to be supplied to the 96 electromagnets by a parallel computation process using a DSP board.
In all of the motors according to Patent Document 1 and Non-patent Documents 2 to 6, control of the rotation about the opening central axis may be considered an extension of conventional motor control technology. However, as the direction of the axis is displaced from the opening central axis, control becomes increasingly difficult or impossible. This is due to the fact that the motor structure does not have spherical symmetry.
The above problems may be overcome by the spherical stepping motor described in Patent Document 2. In the spherical stepping motor, strong drive force can be obtained even when the direction of the rotation axis of the rotor is displaced from the opening center of the stator, rotation control is easy, and large drive force can be obtained by increasing the lines of magnetic force that flow into and out of the magnetic path between the permanent magnets of the rotor and the electromagnets of the stator.
However, in the spherical stepping motor according to Patent Document 2, when the permanent magnets are arranged on the rotor, the permanent magnets disposed at the vertexes of the polyhedron have the same polarity. Thus, even when the magnetic path is formed by reversing the polarity of the permanent magnet disposed at the center of each face of the polyhedron, the magnetic path is concentrated at the permanent magnet positioned at the center of each face of the polyhedron. As a result, magnetic saturation may be caused and the output may be limited.
The above problem may be overcome by the spherical stepping motor and the spherical AC servo motor described in Patent Document 3. By adopting a polyhedron such that the number of the corners of each face is an even number (regular hexahedron or truncated octahedron) as the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor, the permanent magnets disposed on the rotor can be arranged such that all of the N-poles and S-poles are adjacent to one another. Thus, the spherical stepping motor and the spherical AC servo motor can be configured such that magnetic saturation can be avoided.
However, in the spherical stepping motor and the spherical AC servo motor according to Patent Document 3, because the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor is limited to the polyhedron such that the number of corners of each face is an even number, the structure of the rotor is strictly limited. Further, in Patent Documents 2 and 3, the number of corners of the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor and the number of corners of the polyhedron inscribed in the stator need to be coprime. Thus, the rotor and the stator are strictly limited structurally. Further, the rotation axis of the rotor and the rotation axis of the stator need to be aligned before the rotor is rotated, so that the corresponding structure and control need to be added.
In view of the above problems, an object of the present invention is to provide means such that the selection of the polyhedron inscribed in the rotor and the stator can be made more freely, so that the degree of freedom in designing the spherical stepping motor and the spherical AC servo motor can be significantly increased.

Multiple pole spherical stepping motor and multiple pole spherical AC servo motor

National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology


The present invention addresses the problem of describing an arbitrary object (up to user-defined limits) given a set of triangles with vertex normals describing the object. A novel method of successively merging traingles into larger and larger patches to compute a set of "as-few-as-possible" Bezier patches is presented. This method is not only applicable to arbitrary objects, but also aims at producing as few patches as possible depending on the geometry of the input object. Also presented are methods to enforce C.sup.0 - and C.sup.1 -continuity between a pair of patches B.sub.L (s,t) and B.sub.R (s,t), placed arbitrarily. The methods perturb the appropnate control points to achieve geometric continuities. For C.sup.0 -continuity the area of the hole between the patches is minimized by formulating the area as a series of linear programs, where the continuity has to be enforced across the adjacent boundary curves B.sub.L (1,t) and B.sub.R (0,t). Similarly, to enforce C.sup.1 -continuity the hole-area in tangential space is minimized.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a completely automated method for converting a polygonal representation to a compact, high-quality surface representation using Bezier patches.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a growing interest in the graphics, vision, and manufacturing communities to be able to digitize the shape and external appearance of objects for the purpose of transmission, display, and numerically controlled fabrication. This would have applications in product design, fast prototyping, reverse engineering, and digitizing shapes for the visual simulation, animation, and entertainment industries. Current advancement in laser range scanners now offers a promising methodology for fully-automated model acquisition of arbitrary objects. Several million points scanned on an arbitrary object can be converted easily into an irregular mesh of polygons. These polygons have to then be converted into a parametric surface representation, which is a more compact and manipulable form. This last step is referred to as the problem of surface reconstruction, and has been noted by CAD/CAGD as one of the top ten problems to be solved. Prior art on surface reconstruction method have generally been constrained by the enforced assumption that objects be well-behaved in the sense that they have no creases or sharp edges. Also, prior art surface representation construction methods are generally only semi-automated, i.e., require user intervention. Therefore, an improved system and method is desired for converting a polygonal representation to a compact, high quality surface representation using Bezier patches.

System and method for parametric surface representation from polygonal descriptions of arbitrary objects


A safe two-wheeled self-balancing vehicle includes two power wheels, a motion sensor, a control circuit, a chassis structure, a direction control input device, and a power source. The power wheels are installed at two sides of the chassis structure. The motion sensor is connected to the control circuit and fixed to the chassis structure opposite thereto. The direction control input device is connected to the control circuit. The control circuit drives the power wheels. A protection wheel support is disposed at a front side or both the front side and a rear side of the chassis structure. A floating protection wheel is installed at a front end of the protection wheel support. The protection wheel support is connected with the chassis structure or a structure of the protection wheel support, which enables the floating protection wheel to move freely in a vertical direction with respect to the chassis structure.

Two-wheeled self-balancing vehicles using the inverted pendulum control principle have been widely used. The original representative product of this vehicle is Segway, and the technical solution is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 6,302,230. Because it requires only two power and support wheels, this vehicle has the advantages of flexible operation and small structure and volume. Due to safety problems, this vehicle actually cannot become a means of transportation. Judging from a large number of actual use experiences, the current out-of-control situations of the two-wheeled self-balancing vehicle are mainly falling forward and backward, especially falling forward, such as sudden falling caused by insufficient power during obstacle climb-over, insufficient maintaining power at a high speed and during uphill driving, and sudden system crashes, and final tumble caused by large-amplitude swinging due to the intrinsic attribute of a control system during barrier breakthrough, crash-stop, or application of an external force. These situations are usually very dangerous and a driver completely fails to control.
Chinese invention patent application publication No. CN104960607A, "Novel Free Sensor Controlled Vehicle" discloses a scheme of adding an auxiliary wheel. The auxiliary wheel and the auxiliary wheel bending arm are installed at the front side of the main body of the vehicle, and when a risk of tumbling occurs, the auxiliary wheel bending arm extends out forwards, so as to attempt to stabilize the vehicle body. The main disadvantage of this scheme include: 1, the auxiliary wheel is usually too late to extend out at the tumbling moment of the vehicle body; 2, when the vehicle body is inclined or going uphill or there is an obstacle, the auxiliary arm bending arm cannot extend out when blocked by the ground; and 3, when the vehicle goes downhill, the auxiliary wheel loses function.
There is also a scheme of fixedly installing an auxiliary wheel. However, this scheme actually changes the self-balancing control state. Even if it is possible to drive on a flat road, there will be control problems when going uphill and downhill or facing an obstacle.

JIANGSU TALLPIC INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGY LTD.


A brake operation portion that allows a manual brake operation is included in a vehicle cabin, the brake operation portion includes a grip portion, and an elbow rest member is provided at, in the vehicle rear side of the grip portion, a position on which an elbow of a driver can abut in a state in which the driver grips the grip portion so as to be capable of operating the grip portion. Thus, even a physically disabled driver may freely perform a driving operation and easily manually perform a delicate brake operation.

A vehicle including an operation lever that allows a manual brake operation has been conventionally known. For example, see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-120590 ("Patent Literature 1").
In the vehicle in Patent Literature 1, even a driver with a lower limb disability can perform a manual brake operation, and thus various brake operation mechanisms such as the technique of Patent Literature 1 have been developed.
In the brake operation mechanism for manually performing a brake operation as described above, a driver uses both of his or her upper arm and forearm during the brake operation to perform the operation using his or her shoulder as a pivot; accordingly, in a scene in which a fine brake operation state is held, it is difficult to hold a pushing amount of the arm constant, and there is a concern that a delicate brake operation cannot be performed.
In addition, for example, in a configuration in which a steering operation, an acceleration operation, a shift change operation, and the like are also manually performed, in the case where it is difficult to manually perform a delicate brake operation as described above, these operations such as the steering operation are also negatively affected, and there is also a concern that a physically disabled driver is restricted from freely performing a manual driving operation.
On the other hand, when a driver such as a healthy person performs a brake operation with his or her foot using a foot brake, the driver performs a delicate brake operation by causing a heel of the foot to be grounded on a floor and depressing a brake pedal using the heel as a pivot.
In order to solve the above problem, the inventors of the present disclosure have focused on a difference between the manual brake operation and the brake operation using the foot brake described above and have conducted earnest studies for a structure that allows a driver to easily manually perform a delicate brake operation.


Provided is a thin film battery, including: a base substrate; a cathode current collector pattern and an anode current collector pattern being formed on the base substrate to be electrically separated from each other; a cathode pattern being formed on the cathode current collector pattern; an electrolyte pattern being formed on the cathode pattern; and an anode pattern being formed on the electrolyte pattern. At least one pattern of the cathode current collector pattern and the anode current collector pattern may include a non-noble metal based alloy.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a battery field, and more particularly, to a lithium based thin film battery having an excellent manufacturing efficiency and an enhanced battery property.
2. Description of the Related Art
A current collector corresponds to a metal conductor connecting a cathode or an anode of a thin film battery to an external circuit or a load. A material to form the current collector may use a single metal, for example, gold (Au), platinum (Pt), copper (Cu), ruthenium (Ru), chrome (Cr), and the like, or may use a conductive oxide such as indium tin oxide (ITO). In general, a single noble metal such as Pt, Au, and the like may be used for a cathode current collector. Nickel (Ni), molybdenum (Mo), Cu, and the like may be used for an anode current collector.
Pt or Au shows a relatively stable thermal and chemical stability in a crystal growth temperature range of a cathode and thus, may be generally used for the cathode current collector. Cu, Ni, and the like have no reaction with lithium (Li) and thus, may be generally used for the anode current collector. Even though a noble metal such as Pt or Au has a relatively stable thermal and chemical stability in a growth temperature range of a thin film battery, the noble metal is relatively expensive. In addition, a magnetic metal such as Ni has a thickness constraint of a target and a relatively low deposition rate during a deposition process. Accordingly, a replacement cycle may become short, which may result in decreasing an operation rate of a sputtering equipment. Cu may be more easily oxidized in an atmosphere having a high temperature and a relatively large amount of humidity.
When a cathode current collector including a single kind of noble metal is used, a barrier layer may need to be used to prevent a material of a substrate attachment layer from being diffused to a cathode during a heat treatment process. Accordingly, a process efficiency may decrease. In addition, in an economical aspect, the noble metal may have a supply-and-demand issue due to a fluctuation in prices.

Thin film battery having improved efficiency of collecting electric current


A method for sending a secure message in a telecommunications system using public encryption keys. A sending transceiver encrypts the message c using the sender's own public encryption key Ex to generate Ex(c), and, transmits the encrypted message Ex(c) to a receiving transceiver. The receiving transceiver then encrypts the encrypted message Ex(c) using the encryption key Ey of the intended receiver of the message to generate the message Ey(Ex(c)), and, transmits the message Ey(Ex(c)) back to the sending transceiver. The sending transceiver then decrypts the message Ey(Ex(c)) using sender's private decryption key to generate Dx(Ey(Ex(c)))=Ey(c), and, transmits the message Ey(c) back to the receiving transceiver. The receiving transceiver then either decrypts the message using its own decryption key Dy, if it is the intended receiver of the message, to generate Dy(Ey(c))=c, or, forwards the message on to the intended receiver of the message, if it is not the intended receiver of the message, where the intended receiver decrypts the message using its own decryption key Dy.

Advances in telecommunications systems technology have resulted in a variety of telecommunications systems and services being available for use. These systems include cellular telephone networks, personal communications systems, various paging systems, and various wireline and wireless data networks. Cellular telephone networks currently in use in the United States include the AMPS analog system, the digital IS-136 time division multiplexed (TDMA) system, and the digital IS-95 digital code division multiplexed (CDMA) system. In Europe the Global Services for Mobile (GSM) digital system is most widely used. These cellular systems operate in the 800-900 Mhz range. Personal communications systems (PCS) are also currently being deployed in the United States. Many PCS systems are being developed for the 1800-1900 MHz range, with each based on one of the major cellular standards.
In each of the above mentioned telecommunications systems, it may often be desirable for the operators of the system to provide secure communications to users of the system. This may include sending a secure message between two mobile stations operating in the system. In many cases the message may be a text message of finite length, such as a text message.
In analog systems, such as AMPS, it is very difficult to provide security for communications. The analog nature of the signals carrying the communication between two users does not permit easy or efficient encryption. In fact, in standard AMPS, no encryption is used and communications sent between a mobile station and base station may be monitored and intercepted. Anyone having a receiver capable of tuning to the frequencies used for the communication channels may intercept a message at anytime, without being detected. The possibility of interception has been one negative factor connected with analog systems such as AMPS. Because of this potential for interception, AMPS type systems have not been favored for certain business or governmental uses, where sending a secure message is a requirement.
The newer digital systems such as GSM, IS-136, and IS-95 have been developed so as to include encryption services for communications privacy. The digital nature of the speech or data signals carrying the communications between two users in these digital systems allows the signals to be processed through an encryption device to produce a communications signal that appears to be random or pseudorandom in nature, until it is decrypted at an authorized receiver. When it is desired to send a secure message in such a system, the encryption feature of the system can be used to encrypt the message. As an example, the short message service (SMS) feature specified in these standards could be used to send a text message that is encrypted according to the system encryption algorithm.
In the GSM, IS-136, and IS-95 systems, the encryption is performed on message transmissions between each user and the system by using a secret key value, "private key", where the key is known only to the system and the user communicating with the system. The system standards under consideration for PCS networks may also include encryption services that are based on the encryption techniques specified in the digital standard from which a particular PCS standard is derived, i.e., GSM, IS-136, or IS-95.
In GSM the system operator controls the security process by issuing a subscriber identity module(SIM) to each system user. The SIM is a plug-in chip or card that must be inserted into a mobile station that a user intends to make or receive calls through. The SIM contains a 128 bit number called the Ki that is unique for each user. The Ki is used for both authentication and deriving an encryption key. In GSM a challenge and response procedure is used to authenticate each user and generate encryption bits from Ki for the user. The challenge and response procedure may be executed at the discretion of the home system.
When a GSM mobile is operating in its home system, after the user has identified himself by sending in his international mobile system identity/temporary mobile system identities(IMSI/TMSI), a 128-bit random number(RAND) is generated in the system and combined with the mobile user's Ki to generate a 32-bit response (SRES). The system then transmits RAND to the mobile which, in turn, computes its own SRES value from the mobile user's Ki, and transmits this RAND back to the system. If the two SRES values match, the mobile is determined to be authentic. Encryption bits for communications between the mobile and systems are generated in both the mobile and network by algorithms using RAND and Ki to produce an encryption key "Kc". Kc is then used at both ends to provide secure communications. When a GSM mobile is roaming, the RAND, SRES and Kc values are transferred to a visited system upon registration of the user in the visited system or, upon a special request from a visited system. The Ki value is never available other then in the home system and the user's SIM.
The IS-136 and IS-95 authentication and encryption procedures are identical to each other and, similar to the GSM authentication and encryption procedures. In IS-136 and IS-95 systems a challenge response method is also utilized. The IS-136 and IS-95 method utilizes a security key called the "A-key". The 64-bit A-key for each mobile is determined by the system operators. The A-key for each mobile is stored in the home system of the mobile's owner and in the mobile itself. The A-key may be initially communicated to the mobile owner in a secure manner, such as the United States mail. The owner can then enter the A-key into the mobile via the keypad. Alternately, the A-key may be programmed into the mobile station at the factory or place of service. The A-key is used to generate shared secret data(SSD) in both of the mobile and the home system from a predetermined algorithm. SSD for each mobile may be periodically derived and updated from the A-key of that particular mobile by use of an over the air protocol that can only be initiated by the home system operator.
In IS-136 and IS-95 authentication and encryption, a 32-bit global challenge is generated and broadcast at predetermined intervals within systems in the service area of the mobile. When a mobile attempts system registration/call setup access in the home system, the current global challenge response is used to compute, in the mobile, an 18-bit authentication response from the mobile's SSD. An access request message, including the authentication response and a call count value for the mobile, is then sent to the home system from the mobile. Upon receiving the access request the home system will compute its own response value using the global challenge and the mobile's SSD. If the mobile is verified as authentic, by comparison of the authentication responses, the mobile's SSD and other relevant data, including the call count value, the mobile is registered.
When a mobile attempts system registration/call setup access in a visited system, the current global challenge response is used to compute, in the mobile, the 18-bit authentication response from the mobile's SSD. An access request message is then sent to the visited system from the mobile. For initial registration accesses in a visited system, the access request message includes the authentication response computed in the mobile. The authentication response and global challenge are then sent to the home system of the mobile, where the home system will compute its own response value using the global challenge and the mobile's SSD. If the mobile is verified as authentic, by comparing the authentication responses, the mobile's SSD and other relevant data, including the call count value, is then sent to the visited system and the mobile is registered. When a call involving the mobile is setup, a current authentication response value and call count are sent to the system from the mobile along with the call setup information. Upon receiving the call setup information, the visited system retrieves the stored SSD and call count values for the requesting mobile. The visited system then computes an authentication response value to verify that the the received SSD value and the current global challenge produce the the same response as that produced in the mobile. If the authentication responses and call counts match, the mobile is allowed call access. If communications security is desired, an encryption key is produced in both the mobile and system by using the global challenge and the mobile's SSD as input to generate encryption key bits.
Further background for such techniques as those used in GSM and, the IS-136 and IS-95 systems may be found in the article "Techniques for Privacy and Authentication in Personal Communications Systems" by Dan Brown in IEEE Personal Communications, dated August 1995, at pages 6-10.
While the above described private key procedures used in the GSM, IS-136 and IS-95 systems provide communications security, none of these procedures is entirely immune to interception and eavesdropping. All of the procedures require that a user's A-key or Ki value be known both in the mobile station and home system. They also require that the user's SSD or Kc value be known at both ends of the communications link, i.e., in the system and in the mobile. Each of these values could potentially be corrupted and become known to a potential interceptor . An individual knowing the Ki or A-key of a user, or an individual who intercepts the Kc or SSD of the user in intersystem communications, could potentially intercept and eavesdrop on communications that were intended to be secure and private. Additionally, since each user's keys are available at a base station with which they are communicating, encrypted communications involving two mobile stations connected through a base station of a system could be breached at the base station.
Public key encryption methods are methods in which a user is assigned a encryption key that is public, i.e., may be known and revealed publicly, but is also assigned a private decryption key that is known only to the user. Only an intended receiving user's decryption key can decrypt a encrypted message meant for the intended receiving user, i.e., decrypt a message encrypted using the intended receiving user's encryption key. In a public key encryption telecommunication system, the user would be allowed to keep the decryption key to himself, away from base stations or the system. Since the key necessary for decrypting a message is known only to the receiving user, public key encryption methods could provide more secure communications than are obtainable with the current encryption techniques being, used in, for example, GSM, IS-136, or IS-95.
In a cellular system using conventional public key encryption, if a mobile station X were to send a encrypted message to mobile station Y, mobile station X is required to know both the public encryption key for mobile station Y and, the algorithm that must be used with the encryption key of mobile station Y. It would also be required that Mobile X be capable of performing the encryption of the message using mobile station Y's encryption key and algorithm. These requirements of conventional public key encryption may present some difficulties or not be quite optimal for use in cellular systems in certain situations.
One difficulty in using public key encryption techniques is that the calculations involved in encryption and decryption may require much more in the way of computational resources then is required by private key systems. In a mobile station such computational resources may be limited. The requirements on resources may be even greater if two mobile station users desire to exchange a message securely, with each user using a different encryption/decryption algorithm. This could be the case, for example, when a roaming mobile station enters a system in which the system operator has implemented his own unique algorithm that is different from the roaming mobile station's home system's algorithm. In this case, each particular mobile station would be required to be capable of performing encryption with the other user's algorithm and, decryption with that particular mobile station user's algorithm. Such a requirement could be difficult to meet, for example, if the algorithm used for encryption required more computational resources then were available in the mobile station performing the encryption. Also, the code and data for performing particular algorithms would have to be stored in each mobile station or transmitted to the mobile station prior to commencement of encryption, creating further demands on mobile station computational resources.
Another potential difficulty in using public key encryption techniques in a cellular system involves the requirement that the sending mobile station should know the encryption key of the receiving mobile station in order to assure that the message is only available to the sending or receiving mobile stations. In certain public key encryption techniques the encryption keys may each be very large, possibly a sequence of numbers, and it may be difficult to store encryption keys for all potential receiving mobile stations in a single mobile station. It may also be difficult to transmit the key of a receiving mobile station to a sending mobile station on an as needed basis, for example during call setup, if the key is very large.

Method for sending a secure message in a telecommunications system


The disclosure includes a method that receives a real-time image of a road from a camera sensor communicatively coupled to an onboard computer of a vehicle. The method includes dividing the real-time image into superpixels. The method includes merging the superpixels to form superpixel regions. The method includes generating prior maps from a dataset of road scene images. The method includes drawing a set of bounding boxes where each bounding box surrounds one of the superpixel regions. The method includes comparing the bounding boxes in the set of bounding boxes to a road prior map to identify a road region in the real-time image. The method includes pruning bounding boxes from the set of bounding boxes to reduce the set to remaining bounding boxes. The method may include using a categorization module that identifies the presence of a road scene object in the remaining bounding boxes.

The specification relates to detecting roadway objects in real-time images.
Some drivers would like to take journeys that are easy and devoid of stress-inducing situations. For example, drivers would like to be able to avoid roads that have construction zones, a high volume of pedestrians, sudden vehicle traffic, or road-side barriers. Object detection systems that are currently available may perform object detection; however, these object detection systems require high-end vision based systems that use computationally expensive algorithms. For example, the object detection systems use three-dimensional images that have large file sizes, may only be used in places where geo-reference information is available, and perform feature extraction on the entire three-dimensional images. As a result, the object detection systems are not commercially feasible for operation in a vehicle.

Detecting roadway objects in real-time images


A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that in an embodiment apply a latch behavior to a first and second netlist, where the latch behavior exhibits transparent behavior. Flush enabling conditions are applied to the first netlist and a second netlist. For each latch in a first scan chain in the first netlist, a corresponding latch in the second netlist is found. Cones of logic are then extracted from the latches under the constraints enabling the flush operation, and the cones of logic are compared for functional equivalence. If all the cones are functionally equivalent, then the flush reset states of the netlists are functionally equivalent. If at least one of the cones is not functionally equivalent, then the flush reset states of the two netlists are not equivalent.

The typical design methodology for integrated circuit designs—such as very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuits and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)—is conventionally divided into the following three stages. First, a design capture step is performed using, for example, a high-level language synthesis package. Next, design verification is made on the resulting design. This includes simulations, timing analysis, and automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) tools. Finally, there is layout and eventual tape out of the device. The device is then tested, and the process may need to be reiterated one or more times until the desired design criteria are satisfied.
The design capture step typically involves the specification of a logic circuit by a designer. A hardware description language ("HDL") provides the designer with a mechanism for describing the operation of the desired logic circuit in a technology-independent manner.
Automated software tools available from companies such as Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys take an HDL description of the integrated circuit (sometimes referred to as a behavioral or register-transfer-level description) and map it into an equivalent netlist composed of the standard cells from a selected standard cell library. This process is commonly known as "synthesis."
A netlist is a data structure representation of the electronic logic system that comprises a set of modules, each of which comprises a data structure that specifies sub-components and their interconnection. The netlist describes the way standard cells and blocks are interconnected. Netlists are typically available in Verilog, EDIF (Electronic Design Interchange Format), or VHDL (Very High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Design Language) formats. Other software tools available from companies such as Cadence or Synopsys take a netlist comprised of standard cells and create a physical layout of the chip by placing the cells relative to each other to minimize timing delays or wire lengths, and then create electrical connections (or routing) between the cells to physically complete the desired circuit. Once a netlist has been generated from the logic design, silicon compilers, also called place and route tools, convert the netlist into a semiconductor circuit layout. The semiconductor circuit layout specifies the physical implementation of the circuit in silicon or other semiconductor materials.
Design verification involves verifying that the logic definition is correct, that the circuit implements the function expected by the designers, and that the many optimizations and transformations introduced during the design process do not alter the intended logical function of the design. Design verification may involve timing analysis and simulation tools. The data representation in the logic design database may be reformatted as needed prior to use by the timing analysis and simulation tools. The design undergoes design verification analysis in order to detect flaws in the design. The design is also analyzed using simulation tools to assess the functionality of the design. If errors are found or the resulting functionality is unacceptable, the designer modifies the design as needed. These design iterations help to ensure that the design satisfies its requirements.
Other verification methods include generating large numbers of test programs, either manually or with the help of various random and specific test generators, and running those test programs on a simulator that models the device operation. Formal verification (property checking) may also be used to prove correct behavior for selected aspects of the design. Formal verification is a technique that models a logic circuit as a state transition system using specifications for components in the system. For performance and productivity reasons, the simulations and formal checks are typically applied at the highest level (most abstract) model available, often a high level description of the design written in register transfer level VHDL or Verilog.
Historically, gate-level simulation on the final implementation netlist was used to check for functional errors that may have been introduced during the optimization and transformation process. Two models can theoretically be proven equivalent by exhaustive simulation. However, to achieve complete coverage by simulation, the results of 2(n+m) simulation stimuli need to be checked, where n and m represent the number of circuit inputs and registers, respectively. Given the large number of circuit inputs and registers, this approach is not feasible, even for small designs. Practically, one would compromise the verification coverage by simulating only a small fraction of the possible simulation patterns.
Equivalence-checking is a formal verification technique used to check that two representations (or models) of an integrated circuit design are functionally equivalent. In an embodiment, special data structures and techniques such as Binary Decision Diagrams (BDD) and propositional satisfiability (SAT) are used to symbolically represent the state transitions of the designs and implicitly enumerate all possible stimuli. The two models to be compared can be at the same or on quite different levels of abstraction. For example, the first model could be represented at the register-transfer-level (for example, VHDL or Verilog) as a high-level design view defining the desired system functionality. The second model might be a gate or transistor-level representation of the actual circuit implementation. A proof of model equivalence implicitly validates any results from functional simulation computed on either model for both models. In a typical case, the high-level design view is extensively simulated to check the intended function of a system. Successful equivalence checks of the high-level view with the low-level implementation automatically extend the validity of the system simulation to the implementation.
Equivalence-checking tools commonly used in industry generally perform "combinational equivalence checking," which means they actually compare only the combinational logic between matched primary inputs, primary outputs, and internal memory elements (registers). Each primary output and internal register is treated as a comparison point that terminates a cone of combinational logic, and each internal register and primary input are treated as an input point that sources the cones of logic feeding one or more comparison points. First, a correspondence is established that maps all comparison points and input points in the reference design (model 1) to comparison points and input points in the revised design (model 2), and the logic function of each comparison point is extracted so that they may be compared for functional equivalence. If such a correspondence can be established for all comparison points, and if the formal analysis proves that all comparison points are functionally equivalent for all possible assignments of binary values to the input points, then it follows that the two models are functionally equivalent. Equivalence checking tools are commonly used to ensure that each new revision of a design remains functionally equivalent to the original high-level description.
It should be noted that although combinational equivalence-checking can definitively prove that two models are functionally equivalent, it cannot definitively prove non-equivalence due to the automatic treatment of internal registers as both comparison points and input points, which was done to reduce the sequential equivalency checking problem into a combinational one. It is quite possible for the equivalence check to report a difference in the combinational function at a comparison point that does not actually result in a difference in the sequential behavior as observed at the primary outputs of the design. Inserting cut-points to partition the designs at the internal registers introduces independent variables that can potentially result in "false negatives." In practice, however, the types of transformations made during a design process typically do not alter the combinational function of internal registers, so the tools are widely applicable.
One common situation where equivalence checking will report false-negatives is when one model is missing function that is present in the other model. For example, the design process may include a step that automatically inserts scan structures for manufacturing tests. In such cases, since the revised model has the additional test logic function which the original model does not, it is necessary to constrain the equivalence check such that the functional differences are masked, for example by asserting one or more signals (usually primary inputs) to values that disable the test logic function. Although the test logic that was inserted is not verified, the remaining logic is.
Another situation where false-negatives can and do arise is when scan chain connections between registers are reordered, which may be done to minimize overall wire length in a design based on new placement information. Since the scan connection and the associated test logic are part of the combinational logic cone of the comparison points resulting from internal registers, any changes to those connections will change the function of the combinational logic. In general, however, the exact order of the scan chain connections is relevant only to the ATPG (automatic test pattern generation) tools that must create the patterns for manufacturing test—the order does not affect the non-test function of the design. One solution, then, is to constrain the equivalence check, as previously described above, such that differences due to the test logic function are masked, for example by asserting scan clocks or scan enable signals to inactive values. The remaining logic function not directly associated with the test logic function is then verified.
This solution can leave a significant exposure for some design processes employing an LSSD (level sensitive scan design) style. In LSSD, registers are implemented as pairs of latches, usually called L1 and L2, which have three distinct clocks, usually called A, B and C. The A and C clocks are the enables of the L1 latch, which is dual ported. The A clock loads the scan data input and the C clock loads the functional data input. The B clock is the enable for the L2 latch and loads the data that is the output from the L1 latch. During normal (functional) operation, the A clock is held inactive, and the C and B clocks are pulsed in a non-overlapping manner to give the desired function of a register. During scan operation, however, the C clock is held inactive, and the A and B clocks are pulsed in a non-overlapping manner to scan the desired test pattern sequence through the LSSD registers in the scan chain.
It is also possible to assert both the A and B clocks active simultaneously while the C clock is held inactive, which enables both the L1 and L2 latches in the LSSD register to "flush" the scan in value immediately to the output. In such a situation, the LSSD register is acting like a combinational buffer, allowing a value at the primary scan input of the design to propagate through the entire scan chain. This feature of LSSD-based scan chains is often used to initialize the internal registers of the design to their reset state during power-on reset of the hardware. For example, if the primary scan input is asserted to logic 0 during the LSSD flush operation, that logic 0 will propagate to all LSSD registers in the scan chain to effectively reset them all to zero. If a particular LSSD register needs to be reset to a logic 1 instead, inverters can be inserted into the scan chain before and after that register to achieve the desired logic 1 value during flush operation.
When scan logic does not exist in the original model, but has been inserted into the revised model either manually or by an automated test-logic insertion process, the desired reset state values for the registers are typically specified either in a separate file or as initial value attributes in the HDL for the original model. As the test-logic insertion process converts flip-flops into LSSD registers and connects them into one or more scan chains, it must also add inverters or other logic as needed to produce the desired reset state during a flush scan operation. The previously discussed approach of constraining the equivalence check to mask out the test logic function will not guarantee that the revised model exhibits the desired reset state under flush scan operation.
Similarly, reordering the scan chains in a process where LSSD flush operation is used to set the power-on reset state is still possible, but care must be taken to ensure that the effective reset state is not altered. Since a proper power-on reset condition is critical to proper operation of the hardware, it is imperative that the reset values are validated. The previously discussed approach of constraining the equivalence check to mask out the scan logic will obviously not guarantee that the reset values remain consistent.
Thus, without a better way to handle scan chains, combinational equivalence checking cannot be used to validate the flush reset state, requiring the development of an otherwise unnecessary simulation environment for flush reset verification, which increases the cost and the development time of integrated circuits.

Equivalence checking of scan path flush operations

International Business Machines Corporation