An H bridge regulating system for driving an electric load includes a linear output stage and switch mode output stage connected to opposite ends of the load. The linear output stage has a linear mode amplifier and a feedback circuit, and its amplifier generates a first output signal tied to one end of the load. This output voltage is passed through a conditioning resistor to an inverting input of the linear mode amplifier. The switch mode output stage has a switch mode amplifier and a feedback circuit, and its amplifier generates a second output signal tied to the other end of the load. Its voltage signal is passed through a second conditioning resistor to an inverting input of the switch mode amplifier. Other feedback circuit elements are also provided to create three distinct regions of operations for each of the amplifiers. Due to this novel arrangement for an H bridge circuit, and this novel method of operation involving three distinct regions of operation for the linear mode and switch mode output stages, very high power-saving energy efficiencies are achieved. In addition, H bridge systems for three terminal electrical devices such as three-phase electric motors are disclosed.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to H-bridge systems and methods for driving electric loads, and more particularly to high-efficiency H-bridge regulating circuits and methods for driving an electric load such as a thermoelectric cooler (TEC) by using a linear amplifier to drive one end of the load and a switching amplifier to drive the other end of the load.
2. Discussion
In virtually every modern fiber-optic network, there are lasers and TECs. The TECs are required since the laser outputs are highly sensitive to temperature fluctuations. Therefore, at every point in the network where there is a laser beam generating device, such as a laser diode, or where there is a component which has the possibility of undesirable thermal expansion that would adversely impact performance of the network, a thermoelectric cooler is typically employed. For example, in the typical fiber-optic cable system, there may be dozens of laser beams which are all focused together onto a single optical fiber. In addition, a single cable may have several optical fibers running in it. At the locations where these multiple beams come together and are focused into one or several optical fibers in a single cable, there typically is also one or more thermoelectric coolers. These TECs are used to stabilize the temperature of the laser diodes and of other temperature-sensitive components. In addition, the fiber-optic cables may run for a few kilometers, or dozens, hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Because of optical beam attenuation by the fiber, repeater optical amplifiers are used to reamplify the optical beam and send it on its way along the optical fiber cable. Each repeater amplifier includes at least one diode laser as an optical power source and typically utilizes at least one TEC.
In various optical fiber cable installations, there are typically multiple diode lasers which generate the laser beams. To ensure highly stable operation, the each of the laser diodes is rigorously temperature-controlled, typically by a closed-loop controller having a TEC which has a thermistor or other heat-sensing device mounted on it. Some systems rely on sensing the wavelength of the laser beam for sensing and stabilizing the laser diode temperature.
As is well-known, to operate the TECs for the purpose of stabilizing the temperature with any precision requires a power control circuit to regulate the direction and magnitude of the electric current applied across the TEC. The control portion of the overall circuit, not including the power amplifiers to which the TEC is connected, may be very small and draw very little power. But typical maximum power requirements for driving a TEC in applications such as stabilizing the temperature of diode lasers, depending on the size of the TEC, are 1 amp at 2 volts (which equals 2 watts), 2.5 amps at 2.5 volts (which equals 7.5 watts), or 3.5 amps at 3.5 volts (which equals 12.25 watts).
As is well-known, TECs are solid-state heat pumps. They are usually configured as relatively small flat box-like devices and operate when a DC current is passed through the Peltier elements in them. They typically are two-wire devices that have two flat ceramic plates (e.g., top and bottom sides) which serve as the heat sinks, with Peltier elements sandwiched therebetween. Typically, one plate or side is used as the temperature-stabilized side, on which a device, such as a laser diode, is mounted. That side is normally called the cold side, since heat from this side is usually being removed by the TEC. In some cases, like a cold start-up or where the set point is above the ambient temperature, heat may be pumped to this side by the TEC. A TEC transfers heat from one plate or side to the other, using the Peltier effect, with the direction of heat transfer being dependent upon the direction of the current. So, TECs can be used for heating or cooling and the magnitude of the current controls the amount of heat transfer.
Solid-state devices, like thermistors, mounted to one side of the TEC, provide a reliable indication of temperature and/or temperature variation on that side. The other plate or side to which heat is dumped (the heated plate) typically does not need to be controlledxe2x80x94often the heat is simply dumped into the environment. When using thermistors as a temperature feedback device, conventional power control circuits for TEC units can stabilize temperature on the cold side or plate of the TEC to about xc2x10.0001 degree C. relative stability to a set-point temperature. The relative stability of the temperature required is often xc2x10.1xc2x0 C. to xc2x11xc2x0 C. for the laser diodes used in fiber optic network applications. In some other cases, such as diode pumped lasers, the temperature stability required may be xc2x10.01xc2x0 C. or even xc2x10.001xc2x0 C. The size of TECs can be from 1 millimeter (mm) by 2 mm to 90 mm by 90 or more, with the height being from 2 mm to 6 mm or more. The size of the TECs often used in fiber-optic network applications typically varies from about 2 millimeters (mm) by 2 mm up to about 20 mm by 20 mm, with the height of the TECs typically being in the range of 2.5 mm to about 5 mm.
It is common today to use reasonably precise linear amplifiers to operate or drive TECs. Such linear mode TEC controllers are of low efficiency, often 20% to 40% efficient at most. The other 80% to 60% of the power applied to the linear amplifier drivers becomes waste heat which must be dumped to the ambient environment or otherwise removed. When many of these low efficiency TEC controllers are used in a single location, such as within a small enclosure, it is like having many multi-watt light bulbs burning inside that enclosure. This heat load in turn must be removed by appropriate types of heat removal systems, including fans, air-cooled or liquid-cooled heat sinks and/or air conditioning systems. These heat removal systems are an integral part of, and add significantly to the electric utility costs of operating, fiber-optic network equipment. Further, individual hot spots within such TEC-laden controller enclosures are another source of problems. The hot spots occur more often when the TECs are deployed in stacked configurations, since one TEC often transfers its heat to another TEC in the stack. Further, excess heat generally contributes to with long-term temperature stability problems. As is well known, the performance of the power supplies and/or control circuits can degrade due to excess heat over long periods of time, such as three to five or more years, which reduces fiber-optic network stability and/or performance.
Linear mode amplifiers have long been known to have the two major related drawbacks, namely low efficiency and the generation of unwanted heat, which, as noted, can induce long-term stability problems. But, linear mode amplifiers have long been recognized as having their benefits as well, including low cost due to a small number of required components, and very low noise production since they operate linearly.
Another benefit is that linear amplifiers take up less printed circuit board space, because they use a fewer number of components, and because the components used are typically smaller in size. For example, virtually all switch mode amplifiers have at least one big inductor and at least one big filter capacitor, while linear mode amplifiers normally do not. In the switching amplifiers, the filter capacitor is used to attenuate noise spikes generated by the switching actions of the output circuit, which generates large ripple currents in the output inductor. A well-known benefit of switch mode amplifiers is that they have high efficiency, which the linear amplifiers simply do not have since they typically are operated in their linear region.
In the telecommunications industry, network reliability is a very important characteristic which is much sought after. As more and more communications traffic and data flow across fiber-optic networks, the desire for long-term reliability has increased. Two of the main problems to be solved in this regard are: (a) the generation of heat through the operation of the laser diodes, the TECs and their associated lower efficiency controller/drivers; and (b) the larger power supply equipment needed to drive the TECs when using lower efficiency driving circuits and the larger heat removal equipment required to remove the excess heat that is produced by the driving circuits and this larger power supply equipment, and (c) the extra electrical energy consumed by the lower efficiency driving circuits, and the larger power supply equipment and larger heat removal equipment.
Therefore, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a highly efficient H bridge regulating system for driving an electric load, such as a TEC, to thereby reduce electrical power required for driving the load. It is a related object to reduce the amount of heat and energy associated with operating and controlling a TEC or other electric load using an H bridge circuit. A further related object is to improve the reliability of the amplifiers and controllers used in H bridge drive systems by reducing the amount of heat generated during operation of the amplifiers and controllers.
It is another object to provide an H bridge regulating system for driving a two-wire (i.e., two-terminal) electric load, such as a TEC, by way of a linear amplifier and a switch mode amplifier connected, directly and simultaneously, to the opposite ends of the two-wire load. It is a related object to provide an H bridge regulating system that includes a linear amplifier stage and switching amplifier stage, and to provide a method for monitoring the outputs of both the linear amplifier and the switch mode amplifier simultaneously and controlling the outputs of both amplifiers in part based on one or more monitored conditions. A related object is to provide low-cost feedback circuits for implementing such monitoring and control functions.
Yet another object of the present invention is reduce the overall energy requirements needed to drive electric loads by providing a highly-efficient H-bridge circuit and method for doing so. A related object is reduce the amount of heating, and therefore the amount of air-conditioning and/or heat removal, that must be provided in electrical controller enclosures due to waste heat being generated across drive circuit components, particularly the power amplifier components and their associated power supplies.
In light of the foregoing objects, and in order to solve one or more of the foregoing problems, there is provided, according to a first aspect of the present invention, a novel H bridge regulating system for efficiently driving an electric load connected thereto through two terminal ends. The H bridge system comprises: a linear output stage and a switched output stage connected respectively to first and second opposite ends of an electric load. The linear output stage has a linear mode amplifier and a feedback circuit, preferably implemented with hard-wired components, which may respectively be called the first amplifier and the first feedback circuit. The feedback circuit preferably has at least a first conditioning element, which may be a resistor (R2). The linear mode amplifier generates an output signal (V1) at its first output, which is delivered directly to the first end of the electric load. The linear mode amplifier preferably has inverting and non-inverting inputs. A first feedback signal indicative of a first condition, such as a first output voltage (V1), relating to a condition (such as voltage) at the first end of the load preferably passes through the first conditioning element (R2) of the first feedback circuit to the inverting input of the linear mode amplifier.
In similar fashion, the switch mode output stage has a switch mode amplifier and feedback circuit, preferably implemented with hard-wired components, which may respectively be called the second amplifier and the second feedback circuit. The second feedback circuit preferably also has at least a first conditioning element, which may be a resistor (R4). The switch mode amplifier generates an output signal (V2) at its output, which may be called the second output, which is delivered to the second terminal end of the electric load. The switch mode amplifier preferably has inverting and non-inverting inputs. A second feedback signal indicative of a second condition, such as a second output voltage (V2), relating to a condition (such as voltage) at the second end of the load preferably passes through the first conditioning element (R4) of the second feedback circuit to the inverting input of the switch mode amplifier. A reference input signal, such as a command voltage (Vin), is preferably supplied to a non-inverting input of the linear mode amplifier, and is also supplied through a summing junction to the inverting input of the switch mode amplifier. The outputs from the linear mode amplifier and the switch mode amplifier are simultaneously applied to the electric load. Also, the voltage difference between those two outputs (V1 and V2), which translates to the voltage across the load (VLoad=V1xe2x88x92V2), is dictated by the reference input signal (Vin). This voltage across the load typically is some desired fraction of the total voltage between the positive and negative voltage supply rails (that is Vps and xe2x88x92Vps), as determined by the magnitude of the input signal, and may be negative or positive.
In the preferred embodiment, there are preferably further elements which form part of the first and second feedback circuits. In the first feedback circuit, there is preferably a second element, which may be a resistor (R1), for helping set the gain of the first amplifier. This second element (R1) is preferably tied to the ground, that is to a point midway between the power supply voltages Vps and xe2x88x92Vps provided to the first amplifier. In the second feedback circuit, there is preferably a second element, which may be a resistor (R6), connected to and helping establish a second input voltage applied to the non-inverting input of the second amplifier. The other side of this second element (R6) is also preferably tied to ground, that is to a point midway between-the power supply voltages Vps and xe2x88x92Vps provided to the second amplifier. In the second feedback circuit, there is also preferably a third conditioning element, which may also be a resistor (R3), that connects the input command signal (Vin) to the inverting input of the second or switching amplifier. In the second feedback circuit, there is also preferably a fourth conditioning element, which may also be a resistor (R5), that connects the first output (V1) to the non-inverting input of the switch mode amplifier.
As will be further explained below, the H bridge regulating system described above can, when proper ratios exist between the feedback circuit components, implement the classic H bridge transfer function across the load. Further, this system as described herein is of higher efficiency than conventional high-efficiency H bridges which use two switch mode output stages. Further, as will be explained below, as the gain of the linear amplifier is made large, the linear output stage will consume less power, resulting in a H bridge circuit that is higher in efficiency than one using two switch mode output stages.
This new H bridge system is of lower cost because one of the two switch mode output stages in the conventional design is replaced by a lower cost linear output stage. Also, the new system fits into a smaller package because of the use of the linear output stage, which takes less space to implement than the switch mode output stage it replaces.
The first output, that is the output of the linear mode amplifier, has three separate states, represented by left, central and right regions on the graphs. This will be further described below with respect to graphs of signal waveforms presented in FIGS. 3 and 4. The first and second output stages may operate between two power supply voltages, namely a positive supply voltage (Vps), which may be called the positive rail, and a negative supply voltage (xe2x88x92Vps), which may be called the negative rail. FIG. 3 shows the novel output stage waveforms and methods of the present invention in such an environment. In certain conventional H bridge circuit installations, it is common to omit one of the power supplies, for example, the negative power supply, to save cost, and simply tie the negative rail connections of the two identical output stages to ground. FIG. 4 shows the novel output stage waveforms and methods of the present invention in such an environment. Since the circuits and methods of the present invention readily work in both of these environments, it is convenient to give easy-to-remember names to the three separate states or regions of the linear amplifier""s output as shown on the graphs. The left region can be called the xe2x80x9clinear stage saturated to negative railxe2x80x9d region, the central region can be called the xe2x80x9clinear stage at linearxe2x80x9d region, and the right region can be called the xe2x80x9clinear stage saturated to positive railxe2x80x9d region. For convenience, these left, central and right regions may sometimes be respectively also be called the xe2x80x9clinear saturated to groundxe2x80x9d region (especially for the FIG. 4 environment), the xe2x80x9clinear-linearxe2x80x9d region, and the xe2x80x9clinear saturated to positivexe2x80x9d region.
As shown in the graph of FIG. 3B, which illustrates the two power supplies environment, the first output, that is the output of the linear mode amplifier, is held at xe2x88x92Vps in the left region by saturating the lower half of the first amplifier, that is sinking the first output to the negative rail. As shown in the graph of FIG. 4A, which illustrates the one power supply environment with the negative rail being to ground, the output of the linear mode amplifier is held at ground potential, that is zero volts, in the left region by saturating the lower half of the first amplifier, that is sinking the first output to its negative rail, which is tied to ground. In the right region, as shown in both FIG. 3C and FIG. 4A, the output of the linear mode amplifier is held at the positive supply voltage or positive rail voltage in the right regionxe2x80x94hence its name the xe2x80x9clinear stage saturated to positive railxe2x80x9d region. This, of course, is accomplished by saturating the upper half of the first amplifier, which of course effectively ties the first output to the positive rail. In both environments, the central region on the graphs of FIGS. 3B and 4A, is called the xe2x80x9clinear stage at linearxe2x80x9d region, because the linear mode amplifier operates linearly when in this region. Typically, both the upper and lower halves of the first or linear amplifier are operating in their active, conducting but non-saturated portions of their transistor power curves.
As will be further explained, by making the gain K of the linear amplifier sufficiently high, the central or xe2x80x9clinear-linearxe2x80x9d region may be made quite small, such as less than one percent of the overall range of operation between the ground and positive rail. Thus, the average power efficiency of the linear output stage can be very high most of the time, since it generally will consume very little power most of time as it is saturated to either one of the power supply rails. In this regard, it is strongly preferred that, in the H bridge circuits of the present invention, linear amplifiers which have a low saturation voltage or a low saturation resistance be utilized, since they will consume less power when saturated. By operating the linear output stage in a saturated state 99% or more of the time, the H bridge circuits of the present invention achieve overall efficiencies higher than conventional H bridge circuits having two identical switch-mode output stages, even when they are of even the highest efficiency.
As will be further explained, it is the small size of the central region on the graph, relative to the overall size or range of H bridge output voltages on the graph, that helps make the efficiency of this new H bridge design even more efficient. Preferably, this central region represents less than about ten percent, and more preferably less than about five percent, and most preferably about one percent or less, of the total active range of operation comprised of the three regions together. Further, the central location of this central region on the graph is selected to minimize the voltage across the load when the H bridge circuit is in this region. Note that the power consumed by the linear mode amplifier in the xe2x80x9clinear-linearxe2x80x9d region is the product of the current times the voltage drop across that half of the linear mode amplifier that is conducting). The voltage across the load is very small in this region, for example less than 100 millivolts. Thus, the amount of current flowing through the load (such as a TEC) will also be very small, which yields very small power consumption. The power consumption is the product of the load current and the voltage drop (a) between the linear output and the positive power rail if the load current is positive (that is, if the current flows from the V1 end to the V2 end), or (b) between the linear output and the negative rail (which may, as noted above, be tied to ground in the one power supply environment). Thus, the linear amplifier generates very little waste heat, even in its active state. Accordingly, the linear amplifier stage of the present invention, in comparison to the usual arrangement of a conventional H bridge made of two linear amplifiers, requires (1) a much smaller heat sink, or (2) perhaps even no heat sink. Either way, this helps reduce the cost of constructing a commercially viable H bridge circuit based upon the present invention.
The foregoing objects and advantages of the H-bridge regulating system and method of the present invention, together with the structural characteristics and operational details thereof, which have been only briefly summarized in the foregoing passages. They will become more apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading the detailed description of the preferred embodiments which follows in this specification, together with the illustrations presented in the accompanying figures.

High-efficiency H-bridge circuit using switched and linear stages


A Start-Stop method and system for optimizing a selected set of parameters to provide an ideal balance between cabin thermal comfort and fuel economy performance is disclosed. The method and system include several parameters to manage how long and when the engine OFF time will occur. Such parameters include, but are not limited to, outside ambient temperature, cabin temperature, cabin humidity, engine coolant temperature, and evaporator thermistor temperature. A control logic monitors inputs such as cabin humidity and, under certain conditions, sends a request for the engine to be ON. Other factors influencing engine ON time include inputs from the wiper(s), the heated windshield, the heated back light, the HVAC blower, and the temperature control setting. The disclosed system has utility in both electronic automatic temperature control (EATC) systems as well as in manual temperature control (MTC) systems.

Increased motor vehicle fuel efficiency is a long-standing objective of automobile designers and producers. Various approaches to increasing fuel efficiency have been taken including improving vehicle aerodynamics, reducing vehicle weight and improving vehicle operating efficiency. This latter approach includes devoting greater attention to drive train engineering. It also includes focusing on the vast array of peripheral devices provided with the modern automobile to improve driver and passenger comfort and looking for ways to increase efficiency in the design, use and operation of such peripheral devices.
In the conventional motor vehicle, the climate control heating and cooling systems depend on the engine being on for a certain amount of time (ON time) in order to provide thermal comfort in the vehicle cabin. When not needed, the vehicle's engine is turned off. According to known technology, the vehicle ON and OFF times are not managed and are subject only to the random choices of the vehicle operator without consideration of fuel economy.
Accordingly, if the engine OFF time is not managed properly, the balance between optimized cabin thermal comfort and fuel economy will not be achieved. As is often the case, there is room for improvement in the art of controlling vehicle operation and control to achieve maximum passenger cabin comfort for the vehicle occupants while at the same time optimizing vehicle fuel economy.

Engine start-stop control strategy for optimization of cabin comfort and fuel economy


A structural member having an elongated front panel with lateral ends. Side panels extend generally perpendicularly from the front panel at the lateral ends. Each of the side panels has a generally Z-shaped portion therein with a flange at the end of each side panel having a portion thereof extending in the same direction and generally parallel to the front panel. Each of the flanges have another portion generally parallel to the adjacent side panel, so that adjacent cooperating structural members are nestable with each other at the Z-shaped portions thereof with the flanges of nested side panels cooperating to form an interlocking construction. Reinforcing members are provided at the top and bottom of a plurality of nested structural panels, along with top and bottom plates.

The present invention relates to building construction and more particularly to an improved structural panel for use in erecting buildings wherein the panels may be used in place of studs sheathing and finished siding.
The use of roll formed panels for building construction has been known for many years. Examples of various types of building constructional components are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,820,295; 3,969,866; 4,168,596 and application's prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,594,822, all incorporated herein by reference.
For a long time, there has been needed in the construction industry, a mechanism to fabricate large panels or walls in order to reduce the amount of labor necessary to construct a building. Labor costs in building construction has become one of most significant costs and prefabricated panels provide an extremely efficient mechanism for reducing the amount of labor required to construct a building. Accordingly, the present invention fulfills a need for a panel construction in the industry which can be made of various heights or longitudinal dimensions in order to assemble at the site, panels which may be anywhere from one to four stories high.
This is an improvement of my prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,117,602.


Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A user equipment (UE) may identify a bandwidth part (BWP) to switch to after identifying consistent uplink listen-before-talk (LBT) failures on a first BWP based on parameters indicated by a base station. For example, the base station may transmit a switching parameter to the UE that the UE then uses to switch to a second BWP based on identifying the consistent uplink LBT failures on the first BWP. Subsequently, after selecting the second BWP, the UE may attempt to use the second BWP for uplink transmissions (e.g., after performing a random access procedure). Additionally, the UE may indicate the consistent uplink LBT failures to a base station associated with the failed BWP based on a type of cell that is using that failed BWP.

Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include fourth generation (4G) systems such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) systems, or LTE-A Pro systems, and fifth generation (5G) systems which may be referred to as New Radio (NR) systems. These systems may employ technologies such as code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), frequency division multiple access (FDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), or discrete Fourier transform spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DFT-S-OFDM). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include one or more base stations or one or more network access nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
In some cases, a UE and a base station may communicate on resources of an unlicensed band (e.g., NR unlicensed (NR-U) frequency bands). For example, the resources of the unlicensed band may be shared among multiple UEs (e.g., and multiple base stations), such that a UE may contend for one or more of these shared resources to communicate with the base station (e.g., performing contention-based procedures, such as a contention based random access procedure). Accordingly, a UE may check whether a channel in the unlicensed band (e.g., a set of frequency resources) is clear prior to attempting to communicate with a base station. In some cases, this check of whether the channel is clear may include a listen-before-talk (LBT) procedure, where the UE listens to the channel to determine whether any on-going transmissions are occurring prior to transmitting an uplink message to the base station (e.g., whether the channel is occupied or not prior to transmitting).

Uplink listen-before-talk failure recovery


A carton for use in the shipping and display of a plurality of articles comprises a single-piece blank cut and scored to include a top panel, a right side panel, bottom panel and a left side panel foldably connected together to form a box-shaped configuration with an open front and an open back. The blank also includes four front flaps, one front flap being foldably connected to each of the panels so as to close the open front of the carton when folded. The blank further includes four back flaps, one back flap being foldably connected to each of the panels so as to close the open back of the carton when folded. Formed in the left side panel and in the front flap connected to the left side panel is a first perforated tear line. Formed in the right side panel and in the front flap connected to the right side panel is a second perforated tear line. First and second perforated tear lines enable the carton to be severed along the tear lines to covert the carton for display of the plurality of articles.

The present invention relates generally to cartons for use in shipping a plurality of articles and more particularly to carton for use in shipping a plurality of articles which can be converted to display the plurality of articles contained therewithin.
It is a well known practice to employ cartons to package, store and transport sales articles from the manufacturer to the place of sale, such as a retail store. Conventionally, cartons, also referred to as containers, are formed from a one-piece blank made of corrugated paperboard which is suitably cut, scored and folded to produce a generally rectangularly shaped box. Once the carton reaches the place of sale, the articles held therewithin are unpackaged from the carton and are typically placed on display shelves.
One drawback of such cartons is that a significant amount of labor is required to remove the articles from the carton and, in turn, place them on the display shelves.
Accordingly, it is well known in the art for cartons which can be utilized to ship the plurality of sales articles to be convertible into a display device at the place of sale, thereby eliminating the labor required in transferring the articles from the carton to the shelves of the place of sale. Such cartons normally comprise a separable upper section which is torn away from the lower section by a tear strip or perforated tear line formed through panels of the carton to expose the packaged articles for display.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,666 to Gullikson, there is disclosed a shipping and display carton with cut protection for contents. The shipping and display carton can be used for a plurality of plastic containers. The carton is formed from a flat blank that is folded into a slotted style container configuration with end flaps of sufficient size to effectively close the ends of the tubular configuration with a double thickness of corrugated board. A diagonal, perforated line is made in the underlying flaps and a diagonal cut designating line is marked on the overlying flaps. The cut designating line is also marked across the width of both the front panel and back panel joining the ends of the cut designating lines in the flaps. A small panel extends under the front panel cut designating line to protect the enclosed product. After the cut designating line has been cut, the carton is separated into two parts with the upper part discarded and the lower part serves as the display.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,058,206 to Morse et al there is disclosed a display carton and blank therefor. The display carton comprises a one-piece blank cut and scored to form vertically disposed front, back and side panels and horizontally disposed top and bottom panels. A vertically disposed separate partition is further disposed intermediate the side panels and is attached to the front, back and bottom panels by lock tabs engaging accommodating slots formed through the panels. A continuous tear line is formed in the front, back, side, and top panels to divide the carton into a removable upper section and a lower section adapted to retain a plurality of upstanding packages therein for display purposes.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,653,495 to Gray there is disclosed a shipping a display container in which the shipping container or carton has weakened portions which allow the container to divide into two display tray portions to display the plurality of articles therein.
Other patents of interest include U.S. Pat. No. 5,181,650 to Hollander et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,978,009 to Pany, U.S. Pat. No. 2,947,637 to Fobiano, U.S. Pat. No. 2,723,026 to Paige, U.S. Pat. No. 2,675,913 to Hanson, U.S. Pat. No. 2,420,773 to Dorfinan, U.S. Pat. No. 2,152,079 to Mott, U.S. Pat. No. 2,131,391 to Schraffenberger and U.S. Pat. No. 1,925,102 to Levkoff.

Shipping and display carton and blank therefor


A unitized vehicle rear body structure is disclosed that includes a vehicle floor and a structural support member. The structural support member is fixed to the vehicle floor and extends longitudinally within the vehicle rear body structure. The structural support member includes a generally U-shaped support element and an upper brace. The generally U-shaped support element has a lower wall portion and a pair of generally vertical side wall portions with laterally spaced apart upper edges and lower edges coupled to lateral sides of the lower wall portion. The upper brace is fixedly attached between the side wall portions. Further, the upper brace is spaced apart upwardly from the lower wall portion and spaced below the upper edges.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a unitized vehicle rear body structure. More specifically, the present invention relates to a unitized vehicle rear body structure having a longitudinally extending structural support member that is reinforced.
2. Background Information
Many vehicles utilize a conventional unitized (self-supporting) vehicle body that is built from hollow sheet metal components onto which body panels are welded. Generally, the structural configurations of these unitized vehicle bodies are continuously being improved for a variety of reasons. For instance, these unitized vehicle bodies have been extensively redesigned over the years to make the vehicles safer in order to protect passengers in the event of an accident.
One area of concern in a rear impact is the protecting the fuel tank. In order to prevent damage to the fuel tank as a result of a rear impact it is desirable to have a rigid vehicle support structure surrounding the fuel tank. However, it is also desirable to minimize the overall weight of the vehicle and provide a body structure that absorbs some of the energy of the impact. Therefore, it is desirable for a vehicle support structure to be simple to manufacture and provide strength and rigidity to protect passengers in the event of a rear impact.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved vehicle support structure. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.

Nissan Technical Center North America, Inc.


Disclosed is a mobile edge computing system that provides localized emergency responses and warning exclusively to UEs within a venue or area, and provides location-specific warning within the venue or area. The system includes a component that aggregates the S1-mme interface between the MME and a plurality of baseband units and provides read and write access to the S1-mme interface. The disclosed mobile edge computing system can issue cell-specific public warning system (PWS) messages that are customized for and transmitted exclusively to each individual cell within the venue.

This application is a Divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/629,837 filed on Jan. 9, 2020, which is the National Stage filing under 35 U.S.C. 371 of International Application No. PCT/US2018/050495 filed on Sep. 11, 2018, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/557,288 filed on Sep. 12, 2017, the contents of which are all hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Edge-based location-specific warning system for LTE networks


Methods and apparatus, in the context of speech recognition, for compensating in the cepstral domain for the effect of an interfering signal by using a reference signal.

Robustness in the presence of noise and, more generally, of interfering signals is a crucial issue normally addressed in connection with speech recognition, especially when performance in a real-world environment is concerned. In cases where the signal interfering with the speech is stationary and where its characteristics are known in advance, robustness issues can, to a certain extent, be addressed during the training of the system. Particularly, the acoustic model of the speech recognition system can be trained on a representative collection of noisy data ; this approach is known as "multi-style training" and has been shown to reduce the degradation of the recognition accuracy in the presence of noise.
However, in most applications, the signal corrupting the speech is neither known in advance nor stationary (for example, music or speech from competing speakers). Such cases typically cannot be handled by devising special training schemes, and they tend to require the use of on-line adaptive algorithms.
Particular needs have been recognized in connection with addressing the problem of separating a speech signal and an interfering signal (e.g. non stationary noise, music, competing speech) in the case where a recording of the interfering signal is available in a second channel. The signal contained in this second channel is called the reference signal. This occurs in a variety of contexts, such as:                when the speech signal is corrupted by the sound emitted by a radio or a CD player (the reference signal is recorded at the output of the radio or CD player),        in telephony applications where the speech prompt synthesized by the speech server interferes with the speech of the user (the reference signal is the recording of the prompt), or        when the speech signal is mixed with the speech of a competing speaker (the reference signal is recorded from the microphone of the competing speaker).
To date, various efforts have been made in the contexts just described, yet various shortcomings and disadvantages have been observed.
Conventionally, the problem of separating a desired signal and an interfering signal with a known reference signal is often addressed by using decorrelation filtering techniques (see Ehud Weinstein, Meir Feder and Alan V. Oppenheim, "Multi-channel signal separation by decorrelation", IEEE transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, volume 1, number 4, October 1993). The model underlying the conventional decorrelation filtering approach is illustrated in FIG. 1. Referring to FIG. 1, the cross-coupling effect between two channels is modeled with a 2×2 linear system, where:                the two input channels are: s1 the waveform of the desired signal, and s2 the waveform of the interfering signal; and        the two output channels are: o1 the observed waveform of the mixture of the desired and interfering signals, and o2 the observed waveform of the reference signal.
The transfer function within each channel (from s1 to o1, and from s2 to o2) is assumed to be an identity system. Besides, it is assumed that there is no leakage of the desired signal s1 into the reference sensor, i.e., the cross-coupling function from the input channel of s1 to the output channel of o2 is zero. Under theses assumptions, the linear system reduces to the cross-coupling between the input channel of s2 and the output channel of o1. In decorrelation filtering techniques, the linear system is estimated with an iterative algorithm so that, by performing inverse filtering, the reconstructed signals s1 and s2 in the input channels are statistically uncorrelated. It can be shown that under the above assumptions, the linear system can be identified unambiguously. Once the linear system is identified, it is used to cancel the interfering signal component in the observed mixture.
The decorrelation filtering approach does suffer from some limitations in the context of a speech recognition application, such as:                it performs in the waveform domain, on a sample basis, thus leading to a high computation rate,        it might take some time before the iterative decorrelation algorithm converges towards an accurate estimate of the linear system, and        the length of the decorrelating filter in the linear system is unknown and needs to be hypothesized a priori.
Another conventional approach, the Codeword-Dependent Cepstral Normalization (CDCN) approach, is a mono-channel technique which is used during speech recognition to compensate for the combined effect of stationary noise and channel mismatch. (See Alejandro Acero, "Acoustical and Environmental Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition", PhD thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213, September 1990.) CDCN does not operate in the waveform domain but, instead, in the cepstral domain, which is the domain where speech recognition is usually performed. A cepstra (see chapter 3 in L. Rabiner and B. H. Juang, Fundamentals of Speech Recognition, Prentice Hall Signal Processing Series, 1993) is a vector that is computed by the front end of a speech recognition system from the log-spectrum of a segment of speech waveform samples (usually this segment is about 100 ms long). The stream of cepstra corresponding to a speech utterance is typically computed from successive overlapping segments of the speech waveform samples (usually the shift between two adjacent segments is about 10 ms). In the CDCN framework, the cepstra of the noise is estimated by minimizing the difference between the cepstral space of the current utterance and the cepstral space of the clean speech ("clean speech" meaning non-noisy speech) characterized by a codebook of cepstral vectors. As the sources of mismatch are assumed to be stationary, the estimation is performed by averaging over the whole utterance.
Among the limitations of the mono-channel CDCN approach, though, is that non-stationary noise is not taken into account as accurately and effectively as may be possible. Particularly, a fundamental assumption of the mono-channel CDCN approach is that the noise is relatively stationary over periods of at least one or even a few seconds. The shorter the period during which the noise can be considered stationary, the more poorly conventional CDCN will perform. In the case of highly non-stationary noises, such as music, the mono-channel CDCN framework may even degrade the speech recognition accuracy instead of improving it.
Also included among conventional techniques are two-channel compensation techniques that operate in the cepstral domain (see Acero, supra). Such techniques can be characterized as follows:                one channel contains speech recorded in the environment matching the recognition system, and the other channel contains speech recorded in a mismatching environment (the usual source of mismatch is the use of a different microphone);        the two-channel data are used in a training scheme for the purpose of learning compensation vectors between the matching and the mismatching environments (the compensation vectors are looked up in a table during the recognition process); and        the source of mismatch in the second channel is assumed to be stationary: a predefined number of (SNR-dependent or codeword-dependent) compensation vectors are estimated by averaging over all the frames of the two-channel data; the problem of non-stationary noise is not addressed.
Accordingly, similar disadvantages are encountered as in the case of the other conventional techniques described.
Consequently, and in brief recapitulation, various needs have been recognized in connection with overcoming the shortcomings and disadvantages observed in connection with conventional techniques.

Multi-channel codebook dependent compensation


The invention concerns the use of 2E,4E-decadienoic acid-N-isobutylamide (trans-pellitorin) as flavorant, in particular as salivation inducing flavor substance, preferably in a foodstuff or nutrient, an oral hygienic preparation or a gourmet or snack preparation. Further, the invention concerns preparations, semi-finished preparations as well as fragrance, aroma and taste compositions, containing trans-pelletorin as well as a processes for the production of trans-pelletorin.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns the use of 2E,4E-decadienoic acid-N-isobutylamide (trans-pelletorin) as flavor substance, in particular as salivation inducing flavor substance, preferred in foodstuff, oral hygiene or gourmet food preparations. The invention further concerns preparations, semi-finished products as well as fragrances, flavors and taste compositions containing trans-pelletorin, as well as a process for the production of trans-pelletorin.
2. Description of the Related Art
Salivation inducing substances are employed for example in order to combat clinical dry mouth, to awake the appetite or to improve oral hygiene, wherein due to the elevated flow of saliva harmful substances or germs are rinsed from the oral cavity. In foodstuff preparations usually tasteful acidic substances are employed, for example citric acids, vinegar or malic acid (as found in unripe apples). Special substances exciting the salivary glands such as for example pilocarpin extracted from the jaborandi tree are employed in clinical dry mouth (Acta Med. Croatica 2000, 54, 65-67). Such high potent cholinergic parasympathomimetics generally have serious side effects and are in part very poisonous.
Among a long chain fatty acid alkyl amides, 2E,6Z,8E-decatrienoic acid-N-isobutylamide (spilanthol) has been described as strongly salivation inducing and tingly or prickly. Spilanthol is however at the same time above all spicy-hot and strongly numbing as well as an astringent (Lebensm.-Wiss. U.-Technol. 1992, 25, 417-421). Other, longer chain polyenoic acid-N-isobutylamides or polyyne acid-N-isobutylamide appear to be more strongly salivation inducing, but however exhibit in addition a bitter taste sensation (see above citation).

Use of trans-pellitorin as flavor substance


A semiconductor device structure, includes a PMOS device 200 and an NMOS device 300 disposed on a substrate 1,2, the PMOS device including a compressive layer 6 stressing an active region of the PMOS device, the NMOS device including a tensile layer 9 stressing an active region of the NMOS device, wherein the compressive layer includes a first dielectric material, the tensile layer includes a second dielectric material, and the PMOS and NMOS devices are FinFET devices 200, 300.

Double gate semiconductor device structures are promising candidates for future generation microelectronics devices, because of the ability to obtain near ideal sub-threshold slope, absence of body-effect, immunity to short-channel effect, and very high current driveability. One double gate device structure of technological relevance is the FinFET. The FinFET is particularly attractive because of the relative simplicity of manufacture compared to other double gate devices. The channel for the FinFET is a thin rectangular island of Si, commonly referred to as the Fin. The gate wraps around the Fin so that the channel is gated on both sides of the vertical portions of the Fin structure, providing gate control which is superior to planar single gate MOSFETs.
FinFETs are well known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,413,802, entitled "FinFET Transistor Structures Having a Double Gate Channel Extending Vertically from a Substrate and Methods of Manufacture" by Hu et al., filed Oct. 23, 2000, issued Jul. 2, 2002, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference. FinFETs having enhanced mobility are also known. See, for example, U.S. Patent Application No. 2002/0063292 A1, entitled "CMOS Fabrication Process Utilizing Special Transistor Orientation" by Armstrong et al., filed Nov. 29, 2000, published May 30, 2002, which is hereby incorporated in its entirety by reference. This prior art method is directed at improving nFET mobility and, therefor, only limited improvement in CMOS circuits can be attained. Thus, a need exists for a method to improve mobility for p-FinFETs and n-FinFETs which are situated on the same wafer.
However, the present inventors believe that improvements in utilizing stressing layers to enhance mobility are achievable.

International Business Machines Corporation


This disclosure provides a device and a method to protect building openings with plywood panels during storm. The device and method is also provided to protect inside of buildings when windows or doors are broken. The bracket of this disclosure is simple and easy to make, and it allows attachment of plywood panels without shaping to cover windows and other building openings of any shape.

Hurricanes and tropical storms generate high winds that can typically cause tremendous damage to buildings. Usually glass windows and doors are destroyed first by the wind and windborne debris. Once the glass is broken the inside of the building will be exposed to the destroying storm elements also.
There are various methods and devices to protect windows from the wind. One often used method is to nail plywood panels over the building openings. Usually plywood is attached over the opening and nailed or screwed on the frame of the opening. This method has various flaws. A major flaw is that if the frame is wooden the nails and screws leave ugly holes on the frames. Often times in modern business buildings the frames are not wood but of metal or other hard material. In such case the plywood panel has to be attached to this hard material, which is slow and there may not be enough time to cover hundreds and hundreds of metal framed business building windows. Also screws and nails leave ugly holes into the metal frames.
Yet another flaw in the method of attaching plywood covers by nailing or srewing onto window or door frames is the fact that when the window frame is not rectangular or when the opening locates in a vault or a curved depression the plywood may need to be shaped before it can be attached to the frame.
There are various methods that have been introduced to make installation of storm panels and shutters faster.
For example US Patent Application Publication US2007/0101667 discloses a storm panel bracket system that secures a storm panel inset within the frame of building openings. The bracket system includes one or more storm brackets and one or more resilient bumpers. The storm bracket includes an adjusting screw and adjustment nut. Turning the adjustment nut moves the nut along the adjusting screw. The movement of the nut moves a movable member of the storm bracket. The movable member holds a protecting storm panel and forces the panel against the frame of the window, providing a clamping action that holds the storm panel in place. The resilient bumpers are placed between the storm panel and the frame to provide a cushion for the frame and to enhance friction between the frame and the storm panel. The flaw in this approach is that the plywood has to be sized exactly to fit into the frame, otherwise the plywood panel cannot be attached to the bracket. Therefore, this method requires measurement of the frame sizes and custom work on the plywood panels to make them fitting.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,337,582 provides another similar type of protection system. Several anchor clips are attached to the window frame and the storm panel is supported by these clips. Again the flaw is that the plywood panel has to be cut to fit inside the frame. Moreover, the structure of the clips is such that most probably a large number of clips are needed to attach the panel properly.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,452 discloses a system were a horizontal bar is attached in front of a pair of window panels with anchor members that are attached to the window frame. In this system the window panels do not obviously need to be cut to same size as the frame. However, the flaw in this system is that the bar may not provide enough support to hold the panels on place during a storm. Further support could be provided by nailing or screwing the panels on place and in such case installing the bar would be just an extra step and slower the work.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,997,036 provides a corrugated hurricane panel attachment and a strengthening strap system. The flaw in this system is that the panel is not plywood but specially made corrugated polycarbonate storm shutter, which naturally increases the costs of the system. Also the shutter has to be measured to fit into the frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,074,408 discloses another system for corrugated polycarbonate plastic hurricane shutter panel. The corrugated polycarbonate plastic shutter panel is attached from its upper end and lower end within a U-shaped pocket of a aluminum bar which is attached on the window frames. The flaw in this system is the cost of the aluminum bars and the plastic shutter. Moreover, the shutters need necessarily be of such size that it fits within the frame.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,341,455 discloses a system where a high strength fabric covering the window is supported by brackets, a rod and a bar and stretched over the window to protect it from the winds.
Accordingly, there is a need for an easy, affordable and effective system to protect building openings, such as windows during storms and hurricanes. There is a need for a system that does not require specifically shaped panels or panels of any other material than simple plywood. There is also a need for a system where attaching hurricane or storm panels would not require multitude of nail or screw holes in the window frames.
This disclosure provides solution to the flaw of the prior art. Embodiments of this invention are illustrated in the accompanying drawings and will be described in more details below.

Bracket and a method to attach protective covers


Disclosure is a method for converting maltitol into crystalline powder by very simple procedures and in short time. To an aqueous solution of maltitol with 1-15% by weight of moisture content, seed crystals of maltitol are added and a shearing force is applied continuously at a temperature lower than the melting point of the seed crystals, thus obtaining a powdery crystalline maltitol.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing powdery crystalline maltitol.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Maltitol has been utilized as a sweetening agent in low-calorie foods, diet foods, low cariogenic foods and foods for diabetic patients since it will not be easily digested and absorbed in the human digestive canal and also not easily fermented by oral bacteria.
However, maltitol has been inconvenient in handling since its dried products are extremely hygroscopic, deliquescent and difficult to powder.
With a view to overcoming this problem, a number of techniques have been proposed for implementing the crystallization or powderization of maltitol.
More specifically, for example, a method was disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 2439/1988, in which seed crystals are added into a highly concentrated maltitol solution for crystallizing out anhydrous crystalline maltitol. This method characterized in that a high purity crystalline maltitol can be obtained, but it gives only low yield, showing low workability.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 11599/1990 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 180795/1986 proposed methods in which maltitol obtained by hydrogenation of maltose is submitted to chromatography for increasing purity and then crystalline maltitol is separated from the concentrated solution of this purified maltitol. The methods, however, are also problematic in regard to yield and workability.
A method was disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 268696/1986, wherein a mass consisting of maltitol syrup and crystals is made to flow through a gradient crystallizing-out zone the temperature of which has been lowered and the separated crystals are collected. A large-sized apparatus is required and payability is low.
According to Japanese Patent Publication No. 7349/1991, seed crystals are added to a highly concentrated maltitol solution at a high temperature, and after adjusting the moisture content to 2-15% by weight, the mixture is gradually cooled so as to solidify the maltitol, and the solid is roughly broken, as required, followed by drying, and thereafter powderized into desired particle sizes, thus making maltitol products as a commodity. In this method, an aqueous solution of 70% maltitol is concentrated to 4% of moisture content and, after powdery maltitol is added thereto, the mixture is cooled from 90.degree. C. to room temperature over about 20 hours for solidification. No description is given on application of shearing force for the solidification. In this method a long time is required for the solidifying and crystallizing processes and a large amount of energy is required for cutting and pulverizing the solid matter there obtained.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 47140/1989 disclosed a method, wherein a concentrated solution of hydrogenated maltose is placed in a tray and crystals are added and the mixture, after thoroughly kneaded, is kept hot for allowing crystallization to proceed and plasticity to appear, and thereafter the product is extruded through nozzles, followed by cooling, and cut into granular maltitol. This method also requires a long time for crystallization and a great amount of energy for cutting solidified maltitol.

Method for manufacturing powdery crystalline maltitol

Kabushiki Kaisha Ueno Seiyaku Oyo Kenkyuio


The invention broadly provides a ram incorporating a thermoplastic seal for sealing in the horizontal bore of a wellhead production blowout preventer to close off the vertical bore of the well, the ram being adapted to seal at its front end against either a polish rod of a rod string, or against an adjacent ram. The invention also extends to a BOP including a pair of such rams, wherein, each ram includes (a) a body component with front and rear portions and ends, (b) a seal component with front and rear portions and ends, (c) the body component having an arcuate longitudinal outer surface for conforming with the horizontal bore surface, and having a cut-out in its front portion which provides a seal support surface to support the seal component in both a vertical and horizontal direction, (d) the seal component having an arcuate longitudinal outer surface for conforming with the horizontal bore surface, and an inner surface which generally conforms to the seal support surface of the body component, the body component and seal components combining, in an assembled form, to form a full bore ram body, which when out of sealing engagement has the front end of the seal component protruding a horizontal distance d beyond the front end of the body component, (e) connectors for connecting the seal and body components while allowing the seal component, during sealing engagement, to be pressed against the seal support surface of the body component, and (f) the seal component providing a sealing surface formed of thermoplastic material around the arcuate outer surface for sealing against the horizontal bore. Thus, as the body component is advanced forwardly into a sealing engagement causing the front end of the seal component to contact either the adjacent ram or the polish rod to seal off the vertical bore, the seal component is pressed against the seal support surface of the body component such that the thermoplastic sealing surface is compressed outwardly to seal against the horizontal bore.

The invention provides a blowout preventer (hereinafter "BOP") with improved seal components for the rams.
One example of a prior art BOP is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,813 to Lam et al., issued Jun. 16, 1998. This type of BOP is commonly used in connection with pumping wells. With such wells, a sucker rod string is reciprocated or rotated to drive a downhole pump, which lifts the produced fluid to surface through a tubing string. The BOP is equipped with rams which can be advanced horizontally to seal around the vertical polish rod of the rod string, to prevent the upward escape of fluid. Alternatively, if the rod string is out of the well, the inner ends of the rams can be pressed together to cause closure of the wellhead assembly fluid passageway.
More particularly, the prior art BOP includes a cross-shaped housing forming a vertical bore and a pair of coaxial, horizontal ram bores intersecting the vertical bore from each side. The BOP is commonly positioned in the wellhead assembly between the tubing head and flow tee. In such an embodiment, the BOP vertical bore forms part of the wellhead assembly fluid passageway.
Within the BOP, a pair of rams is positioned in the horizontal ram bores. Means, such as screw jacks or hydraulic actuators, are provided at the outer ends of the ram bores, for advancing or retracting the rams into or out of the vertical bore, in order to close or open the vertical well bore.
Each ram comprises a generally cylindrical body. The body comprises a steel core having an outer full diameter portion and a reduced diameter inner portion. The ram core inner portion is covered with and bonded to a layer of an elastomer, typically nitrile rubber.
The cylindrical ram bores extend into the vertical bore and the bore surfaces combine at their intersection to form sealing areas. When the rams move into the vertical bore, the rubber surfaces of their inner portions seal against the sealing surfaces.
The rubber-coated inner face of each ram is formed to provide a semi-circular, vertically directed groove. Thus, when the polish rod of the rod string is present in the vertical bore, the ram ends encircle and press against it, to form a seal of the vertical bore. When the polish rod is not in the vertical bore, the ram ends compress together to form a solid block. In both cases, the circumferential seals of the ram side surfaces with the sealing areas and the end face seals combine to close the vertical bore and contain pressurized fluids seeking to pass therethrough.
One major problem associated with production BOP's is that the pressure acting from below on the closed rams may extrude the side rubber upwardly so that the circumferential seal with the sealing areas is lost. Another problem is that the end rubber bonded to the vertical end faces of the ram cores may tear loose from the core when high pressure is exerted from below. In severe conditions such as injecting chemicals to close off a well, the rubber degrades quickly, causing the seals to fail.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,813, the side surface of each ram core inner portion is formed to provide ribs extending outwardly therefrom and extending longitudinally thereof. The ribs are located so as to underlie those portions of the elastomer layer which seal against the sealing areas. The elastomer layer is thinned where it passes over the ribs, to preserve the cylindrical shape of the ram's inner portion. The ribs function to reinforce the elastomer layer against upward extrusion. Comparative pressure tests have shown that a ribbed ram was able to contain several times the pressure that a non-ribbed ram could contain, before the seal was lost.
In accordance with a preferred feature of U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,813, the vertical end face of the core inner portion is indented, for example with a plurality of spaced apart transverse grooves or dimples or a single cavity, so that the base of the elastomer layer projects into these indentations. As a result, increased face surface area is provided to bond with the elastomer. In addition, the elastomer external of the indentations must shear from the elastomer in the indentations, before failure occurs and the elastomer separates from the steel. In this way, the resistance to failure of the elastomer/steel bond at the ram end faces is improved.
The device of U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,813 improves the ability of the BOP ram to seal against the high pressure from below without losing the side seal, and better prevent against the rubber being torn loose from the ram.
Canadian Patent Application No. 2,260,655, published Aug. 2, 2000, and owned by Stream-Flo Industries Ltd., describes a ram type BOP for high temperature applications. The BOP incorporates a generally L-shaped seal element formed of a graphite or asbestos seal material, which is sandwiched between a bottom L-shaped steel retainer plate and a semi-cylindrically shaped steel top retainer plate. This design of BOP ram is well suited for brittle seal materials such as graphite and asbestos, which are used when steaming of the well may occur.
Other prior art BOPs using L-shaped seal elements or similar devices are described in the patent literature, but all utilize rubber-type sealing material sandwiched between steel body components, for instance, see U.S. Pat. No. 1,963,683 issued Jun. 19, 1934 to Shaffer; U.S. Pat. No. 3,023,994 issued Mar. 6, 1962 to Gibson; U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,212, issued Sep. 9, 1975 to Pugh et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,441 issued Nov. 22, 1983 to Van Winkle.
None of the above patents adequately provide BOPs for use in harsh chemical conditions. Rubber-type seal materials are subject to being degraded by the harsh conditions of some wellheads, for example where chemicals are injected. For instance, in wells in which heavy wax deposits accumulate in the annulus, outlet lines, and anywhere that the production fluid flows, a chemical inhibitor is introduced into the production fluid as a means to break down the deposits. While the inhibitor is effective in clearing the lines, it has the major disadvantage of acting as a dissolving agent on the O-ring seals, rubber ram inserts and any elastomeric materials found inside the wells, causing these seals to fail prematurely.
Thermoplastic materials having superior chemical resistance are available, but have different compressibility and elastic properties than elastomeric sealing materials such as nitrile rubbers. Thus, the prior art BOP devices are not generally amenable to simple substitution of thermoplastics for the rubber sealing components.
Some patent literature shows BOPs which make use of thermoplastic materials, but these simply provide U-shaped thermoplastic seal inserts in the front face of a complicated BOP ram design, see for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,398,729, issued Aug. 16, 1983 to Bishop et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,127,623 issued Jul. 7, 1992 to McDugle; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,208 issued Nov. 10, 1998 to Lee, Jr. These types of BOP devices achieve a seal only by force applied to the seal from the front face against the polish rod.
It is an objective of the invention to provide an improved BOP with seals which, when used in combination with the BOP housing, are able to withstand both high pressure from below, and the environment of harsh chemical, while maintaining the seals over an acceptable time frame.


A water-based ink including a colored microparticle dispersion having water and a microparticle containing a resin and a colorant, wherein the microparticle has a core part and a shell part to form a core-shell structure and the core part and the shell part are cross-linked with a cross-linking agent.

In recent years, widely employed as recording materials employed for printers, printing presses, markers and writing means, inking materials, and especially as ink-jet ink, are those comprised of an aqueous solution of water-soluble dyes as a main component, and those comprised of a minute pigment particle dispersion as a main component.
Ink employing water-soluble dyes results in brighter color reproduction, compared to pigment ink. However, when compared to pigment ink, bleeding tends to occur on recording paper sheets due to the fact that the ink is comprised of an aqueous dye solution, and water resistance is also inferior to pigment ink. Further, problems occur in which lightfastness is much lower than pigment ink. On the other hand, many efforts have been made to improve water resistance and lightfastness of pigment ink. However, it is hard to mention that problems of pigment ink have sufficiently been solved.
Contrary to this, water-based ink which is prepared by coloring water-dispersible resins with oil-soluble dyes or hydrophobic dyes to be usable as a water-based dispersion, namely water-based ink employing minute colored polymer particles as a recording material is expected to be one which is used in place of the aforesaid ink employing water-soluble dyes. Heretofore, investigations have been conducted regarding various aspects such as dyes, polymer compositions, a decrease in size of colored microparticles, or constitutions.
For example, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as JP-A) No. 54-58504 discloses ink which is prepared by dispersing a mixture consisting of a hydrophobic dye solution and minute vinyl polymer particles in the form of an oil-in-water type; JP-A Nos. 55-139471, 3-250069, and 54-58504 describe ink employing emulsion polymerization or dispersion polymerization particles colored with dyes; JP-A No. 2001-98194 discloses ink comprised of copolymer resins comprised of a hydrophilic polymerization chain portion and a hydrophobic polymerization chain portion; JP-A No. 2000-191968 discloses ink in which vinyl polymer polymerizable unsaturated acid monomers, a hydroxyl group containing monomers, and styrene macromers are employed; JP-A No. 9-1575098 discloses ink in which polyester resins containing cyclohexanedicarboxylic acid are employed; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,384,108 discloses minute particles which are formed by dissolving self-emulsification type polymers in solvents together with dyes and emulsifying the resulting mixture in a water phase.
However, all these minute particles are employed in ink, while mixed with various water-based organic solvents. As a result, when colored microparticles prepared by these methods are employed to prepare ink-jet ink, major problems occur due to insufficient solvent resistance.
On the other hand, in order to overcome the problems due to insufficient solvent resistance, surface crosslinked core/shell particles are disclosed (Patent Document 1). Herein, it is intended that the solvent resistance is enhanced through crosslinking of resins. However, mere surface crosslinking does not result in enhancement of solvent resistance as desired. In addition, problems occur in which, since polymerization is carried out in such a manner that dyes are dissolved in monomers, dyes exhibit a relatively large polymerization inhibiting action and particles tend to coagulate due to crosslinking among the particles when the particle surface is subjected to crosslinking to increase the molecular weight.
Further, polymer particles are described which are provided with a self-emulsification property by an ionic group and are crosslinked via a urethane bond (Patent Document 2). Herein, in the same manner as above, the molecular weight is increased through crosslinking and the solvent resistance of colored microparticles is enhanced. When crosslinking is effectively introduced, the solvent resistance is enhanced due to an increase in the molecular weight of resins. However, no description is made regarding more effective enhancement of the solvent resistance utilizing the core/shell structure.
As noted above, only by introducing crosslinking into the resins of colored microparticles or simply crosslinking the surface of core/shell particles, the resulting enhancement of solvent resistance is not as effective as desired. As a result, colored microparticles which satisfy all performance at a desired balance have not been prepared.

Water-based ink containing colored microparticle dispersion


An encoding system for determining position and position changes of a moving member has a sequence of encoder marks forming incremental patterns and at least one index pattern. Two subsequent incremental patterns are indicative of an incremental position-change of the moving member and the index pattern is indicative of a reference position of the moving member. A sensor arrangement views a section of the encoder-mark sequence, the length of which is greater than one position-change increment. An analyzer is arranged to analyze an encoder-mark pattern in the viewed section with regard to the incremental patterns and the index pattern and to generate, in response to a pattern match found, at least one of an incremental-position-change signal and an index signal.

Encoding systems for sensing relative movements usually have a row of equidistantly spaced encoder marks attached to a first member and a sensor arrangement attached to a second member which is movable with relation to the first one. When the encoding marks move past the sensor arrangement signals according to the detected marks are generated. By counting the signals, information regarding the position change between the two members (i.e. relative-position information) is obtained.
An example of such a system is a wheel with radial encoder marks mounted on a rotating axle, for example a pulley axle of a belt arrangement in an ink-jet printer. Each time a mark passes an (e.g. optical or magnetic) sensor, a signal is generated which indicates that the wheel has turned by one mark. Another example is a belt of an ink-jet printer equipped with a linear row of encoder marks. Each encoder signal indicates a belt advance of one mark. However, if all marks are identical, no absolute-position information is provided by such an encoder system.
In order to provide absolute-position information, it is known to equip an encoder with at least one index mark (or "reference mark"). Two types are known:
In double-channel (or multi-channel) encoders, the encoding marks and the reference mark are separately arranged and viewed by individual sensors (for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,645, FIG. 3).
In single-channel encoders, the different marks are arranged in one single encoder scale. Examples of such single-channel encoders are, for example, described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,786,803, 4,789,874, 5,206,645 and 5,411,340. In these single-channel encoders, the index mark is wider than the encoder marks, and in some of them one or more of the encoder marks are "hidden" by the index mark. The sensor generates different signals for the marks of different widths, which enables the two types of marks to be distinguished. According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,411,340, the virtual position of the hidden encoder mark is estimated.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


The object of the present invention is to provide Humulus lupulus-derived monoterpene glycosyltransferase and a method for producing a monoterpene glycoside by means of this enzyme.

Terpenoids, particularly those with a relatively small molecular weight such as monoterpenes (C10) and sesquiterpenes (C15) serve as major aroma components in plants and are widely used not only as flavors for food products and/or alcoholic beverages, but also even in industrial products including cosmetics and perfumes. It is known that monoterpenes typified by linalool are synthesized within plant cells and are partially accumulated as glycosides. For example, in the case of Arabidopsis thaliana of the family Brassicaceae, a glycoside of hydroxylated linalool has been reported (Non-patent Document 1). Not only in model plants, but also in industrially important crops such as Humulus lupulus of the family Cannabaceae (Non-patent Document 2), Camellia sinensis of the family Theaceae (Non-patent Documents 3 to 6) and Zingiber officinale of the family Zingiberaceae (Non-patent Document 7), monoterpene glycosides are known to be accumulated. Further, because of being widely reported in the plant kingdom (Non-patent Document 8), glycosides would be a common form for precursors of aroma components. From the standpoint of industrial application, studies have also been conducted to artificially control the volatilization of aroma components from terpene glycosides serving as aroma precursors through enzymatic or non-enzymatic cleavage of their sugar moieties (Non-patent Document 9).
However, although β-primeverosidase, an enzyme cleaving the sugar moiety from a monoterpene glycoside, has been previously isolated from Camellia sinensis (Non-patent Document 10), molecular mechanisms for causing sugar addition (i.e., glycosylation) in monoterpenes have not yet been identified. Based on comprehensive activity screening of UDP-sugar dependent glycosyltransferases (UGTs) in Arabidopsis thaliana, some UGT enzymes have been reported to react with monoterpenes in test tubes, but there is no mention of their physiological roles and the significance of their activity (Non-patent Document 11). In Citrus sinensis of the family Rutaceae, monoterpene glycosides are also accumulated, and hence attempts have been made to screen UGTs acting on monoterpenes, but such attempts have not succeeded in identifying any active UGT enzyme gene (Non-patent Document 12).
Humulus lupulus of the family Cannabaceae is a major raw material for beer, and is produced mainly in Europe (e.g., Germany, Czech Republic) and North America (e.g., Canada, USA). Among aroma components responsible for the aroma of beer, those derived from Humulus lupulus include monoterpenes typified by linalool. On the cone surface of Humulus lupulus, there are trichomes called lupulin which are specifically differentiated to accumulate aroma components therein. Many aroma components are considered to be accumulated within lupulin. On the other hand, there are reports showing that glycosides of terpenes (e.g., glycosides of linalool and geraniol) are accumulated as precursors of aroma components in Humulus lupulus and beer, although enzymes for their production have not yet been identified (Non-patent Documents 2, 10 and 13).    Patent Document 1: WO97/11184    Non-patent Document 1: Aharoni et al (2003) Plant Cell 15, 2866-2884    Non-patent Document 2: Kollmannsberger et al (2006) Mschr. Brauwissenschaft 59, 83-89    Non-patent Document 3: Guo et al (1994) Biosci. Biotech. Biochem. 58, 1532-1534    Non-patent Document 4: Nishikitani et al (1996) Biosci. Biotech. Biochem. 60, 929-931    Non-patent Document 5: Moon et al (1996) Biosci. Biotech. Biochem. 60, 1815-1819    Non-patent Document 6: Ma et al (2001) Phytochemisty 56, 819-825    Non-patent Document 7: Sekiwa et al (1999) Biosci. Biotech. Biochem. 63, 384-389    Non-patent Document 8: Winterhalter and Skouroumounis (1997) Adv. Biochem. Eng. Biotechnol. 55, 73-105    Non-patent Document 9: Herrmann (2007) Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 46, 5836-5863    Non-patent Document 10: Mizutani et al (2002) Plant Physiol. 130, 2164-2176    Non-patent Document 11: Caputi et al (2008) Chem. Eur. J. 14, 6656-6662    Non-patent Document 12: Fan et al (2010) Genome 53, 816-823    Non-patent Document 13: Nedjma, M., et al (2007) Congress Proceedings of European Brewery Convention 71, 1-13

Monoterpene glycosyltransferase originating from hop and method for using same

Abstract: The present invention provides Humulus lupulus-derived monoterpene glycosyltransferase and a method for producing a monoterpene glycoside by means of this enzyme. The present invention provides a transformant transformed with a gene for Humulus lupulus-derived monoterpene glycosyltransferase and a method for producing such a transformant.


Certain embodiments of the disclosure may include devices, systems, and methods for photographing and dimensioning objects in a photo booth. The devices may include multiple sets of components, and the multiple sets of components may be mounted in different locations of the booth as desired and as needed, for example, depending on the object to be photographed and dimensioned. The photo booth components and functions can be operated and managed via central processing and via user interface and can be in communication with remote computers.

As the need has grown for more detailed information about products, innovation has been slow in keeping up. Retrofitting cameras, scales, and structure to imaging devices has lacked in functionality and aesthetics. Contemporary devices that attempt to photograph products—in addition to weighing and dimensioning the products—have not been able to keep up with consumer demand for more functionality. These devices are also often clumsy in appearance and not well-integrated.
There is nothing currently in the industry that combines dimensioning and weighing in a photo booth. And in photo booths, there are no available products that can measure multiple dimensions of an object that do not require human interaction for moving the object, or require placing the object next to another object of known measurements or next to a grid-type measurement guide. This absence of availability for desired functionality is even more pronounced when photographing and dimensioning objects of varying sizes and shapes.


A substrate processing apparatus include a spin chuck capable of holding a semiconductor wafer in a horizontal position, a drive motor for driving the spin chuck for rotation, and a processing vessel accommodating the spin chuck and the drive motor 50 therein and capable of sealing a supercritical fluid, such as supercritical carbon dioxide, therein. The supercritical fluid flows along the upper and the lower surface of the semiconductor wafer at velocities relative to the upper and the lower surface of the semiconductor wafer as the spin chuck holding the semiconductor wafer in a horizontal position rotates to remove contaminants including particles and adhering to the semiconductor wafer from the semiconductor wafer.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a substrate processing apparatus and method for performing a designated process, such as a cleaning process, drying process, and an etching process, for processing a substrate, such as a semiconductor wafer or a glass substrate for a LCD (liquid crystal display), by using a pressurized fluid, such as a supercritical fluid.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, semiconductor device fabricating processes include processes for forming films, such as photoresist films, on semiconductor wafers and processes for removing the films from the wafers.
Use of large-diameter wafers and the reduction of minimum line width are the recent trend of semiconductor device fabricating technology to reduce the manufacturing cost of chips. The price of semiconductor memories, such as DRAMs, has sharply dropped in recent years, and semiconductor device manufacturers, principally of advanced countries, have been shifting to the manufacture of products having higher added values, such as system LSICs. There has been a trend for semiconductor device manufacturers to prefer small-scale multiple-product production to mass production with the change from the production semiconductor devices with low added values to the production of those with high added values. Problems relating to EHS (environment, health and safety) have become important problems to be tackled by the semiconductor device industry. Reduction of injurious industrial wastes and power consumption has become a problem of the utmost importance to be solved by the semiconductor device industry.
The required abilities of semiconductor device fabricating systems and processes have greatly been changing, reflecting such a recent trend of the semiconductor device industry. Semiconductor device fabricating systems are being changed from those of a batch processing system to those of a single-wafer processing system to cope with necessity for wider floor space resulting from the progressively increasing use of large-diameter wafers, to improve the throughput of small-scale multiple-product production systems and to raise device yield. The single-wafer processing system is capable of uniform processing and precision process control. The single-wafer processing system adopts process integration to exclude the effect of external disturbances. Research and development are being made actively for the development of processes to deal with new semiconductor device materials, such as copper and insulating materials having a low dielectric constant, as process technology of the next generation to cope with the progressive reduction of line width.
Although abilities as mentioned above have become important for cleaning apparatuses and resist coating/developing apparatuses, the development of processes that replace wet processes and the reduction of the necessary quantity of volatile organic substances and chemicals are significant problems from the viewpoint of EHS and the process technology of the next generation. Cleaning, drying and etching processes and apparatuses using a supercritical fluid, such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are particularly promising techniques among those recently developed to solve the foregoing problems. Process techniques using a supercritical fluid have become prevalently used in various industries, the effectiveness of supercritical fluids have become widely known. The earth has virtually inexhaustible carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is a low-cost industrial material and is a highly safe, harmless, inactive substance. Research and development activities, which have been made up to the present, emphasize the following advantages of supercritical fluids.
1) Properties of supercritical fluid characterized by a surface tension of zero, a density nearly equal to those of liquids and a viscosity nearly equal to those of gases are very effective in processing minute patterns.
2) The solubility of supercritical fluids in organic materials can be greatly increased by using a small amount of solvent with supercritical fluids, which is effective in removing photoresist films and cleaning off residuals.
3) A dissolved substance diffuses at a high diffusion rate and hence uniform processing can be achieved.
4) Supercritical fluids react scarcely with metals, and hence do not damage wiring materials and barrier metals.
5) Supercritical fluids can be discharged from a processing vessel in a gas before taking out a wafer from the processing vessel and hence a drying process is unnecessary.
A supercritical-fluid system using a supercritical fluid for substrate processing is disclosed in Japanese patent laid-open publication Nos. JP 11-87306A. This known supercritical-fluid system supplies a supercritical fluid into a processing vessel accommodating a wafer holding means holding a wafer and capable of rotating the wafer to process the wafer for cleaning, etching and drying. Another substrate processing system, using a supercritical fluid, disclosed in Japanese patent laid-open publication Nos. JP 2001-60575A has a heater embedded in a casing surrounding a processing vessel and heats the processing vessel to control the temperature of the supercritical fluid. Another substrate processing system disclosed in Japanese patent laid-open publication Nos. JP 2001-327936A has a processing vessel provided with a circulation pipe, a fluid is circulated through the circulation pipe by a pump and is heated in a supercritical state by an external heater.
The supercritical-fluid system disclosed in JP 11-87306A has a motor for rotating the substrate holding means, which is disposed outside the processing vessel. Since the high-pressure supercritical fluid is supplied into the processing vessel, the joint of the substrate holding means and the motor in the processing vessel must be provided with a special sealing device, which increases the size of the supercritical-fluid system. Since the wafer is subjected to a cleaning process by rotating the wafer in the processing vessel filled up with a supercritical fluid or a supercritical fluid containing a chemical, particles and organic contaminants adhering to the wafer cannot satisfactorily be removed.
The substrate processing systems disclosed in JP 2001-60575A and JP 2001-327936A have complicated construction because the heater is embedded in the casing surrounding the processing vessel or the pump and the external heater are combined with a circulation pipe disposed outside the processing vessel.

Substrate processing apparatus and substrate processing method


According to one or more aspects of the present disclosure, operations may include obtaining a token transaction request of a token transaction that includes a transfer of assignment of a crypto-token of a crypto-medium from a first entity to a second entity. The token transaction request may be a request to initiate the token transaction. The operations may further include generating a transaction signature in response to obtaining the token transaction request. The operations may include validating the token transaction using the digital signature and blocks of a private blockchain that includes a blockchain record of all transactions of the crypto-medium. In these or other embodiments, the operations may include generating a new block for the private blockchain, the new block including an update to the blockchain record that indicates the token transaction details. The generating of the new block may be triggered by the token transaction being validated.

Blockchains may be used to store records. In particular, blockchains may include a growing list of blocks of data that are linked using cryptography. For example, in some instances, each block may include a cryptographic hash of one or more previous blocks.
The subject matter claimed in the present disclosure is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one example technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.


A heat pump type heating and air conditioning system includes a gas furnace or other auxiliary heat source and a thermostat and controller associated with the heat pump and the auxiliary heat source for automatically energizing the heat pump if the auxiliary heat source is inoperative regardless of whether or not the automatic heating mode has been selected or the auxiliary heating mode has been selected by the user of the system. A method of operating a heat pump system with an auxiliary heating source to automatically change from operation of the heat pump to the auxiliary heating source depending on conditions such as outdoor temperature, and to automatically change back to operation of the heat pump if the auxiliary heating source is inoperable.

Heat pump systems for residential and commercial applications often include independent auxiliary heating sources to provide heat when the system load is greater than can be satisfied by operation of the heat pump alone. Heat pump systems are often provided with fossil fuel auxiliary heating sources or furnaces, although electric resistance grid heaters or other sources may also serve as auxiliary or backup heaters. Typically, heat pump systems with auxiliary heat sources are operated such that the fossil fuel or electric backup heater and the heat pump are not operated at the same time to avoid placing excess thermal stresses on the heat pump part of the system.
Moreover, conventional heat pump systems are usually manufactured and shipped to the end user with a controller, including a thermostat. If a fossil fuel or electric resistance heater is installed later, an additional control device and associated wiring must be provided to modify control of the system to allow the heat pump and the auxiliary heat source or furnace to work together. It is desirable to eliminate such an additional control device, the wiring associated therewith and the effort to install the device when a heat pump system is modified to include an auxiliary or backup heat source, such as a fossil fuel furnace, electric resistance heater or other source of auxiliary heat.
Moreover, in certain instances the auxiliary or backup source of heat may fail to operate properly. With conventional prior art systems, the heat pump is not called on to restart to provide whatever heat it is capable of providing. Thus, in such prior art systems there is complete failure to provide heat, even though the heat pump portion of the system is operable to provide at least enough heat to prevent substantial discomfort to the occupants of the space to be heated or prevent a more catastrophic event. It is to overcome deficiencies of prior art heat pump systems with auxiliary heat sources that the present invention has been developed.

Heat pump control system and method of operating to provide automatic backup heating modes