Image compression and expansion with a high compression ratio includes encoding one block of data of an image, when data within the block are all equal, with a single representative value as gradation information and bit map data as resolution information representing that all the data within the block are equal. When there are variations in the data of the block and differences between the representative values in one block and those in an adjacent block are small, the difference values and flag bits, indicating that the gradation information represents the difference values, are used as the gradation information. When there are variations in the data of the block and differences between the representative values in the block and those in the adjacent block are large, absolute values of the representative values expressed in terms of bits smaller in number than the number of bits of the representative values and flag bits, indicating that the gradation information represents the absolute values, are used as the gradation information. Thus, coding compression of the image information is carried out with bit map data indicative of distribution of pixels of each group.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods for compressing and expanding multiple gradation image for use in a printer, a copying machine or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, office machines such as printers and copiers have become increasingly prevalent not only in various types of offices but also in personal use. Further, such apparatuses are required to be capable of handling a high quality of image or color image. The color image, in particular, which is enormous in its data quantity, has inevitably required an increased memory capacity and an associated disadvantageous price increase. Realization of a low price requires image data to be compressed while keeping its high quality so that the memory capacity necessary for storage of the image can be decreased.
Conventional methods for compressing information on a gradation image include a technique called block coding, which will be explained by referring to FIGS. 1 to 5.
FIG. 1 shows an enlargement of a part of an image. In FIG. 1, reference numeral 2 denotes a pixel which is a minimum unit of the image. It is assumed that one pixel 2 is represented by 8 bit data and handles 256 gradations having values of 0 to 255. A block 3 is a 4.times.4 array of adjacent pixels 2 (a total of 16 pixels), and processing is carried out on a block basis.
FIG. 2 shows an actual example of the block 3, and FIG. 3 shows a procedure of subjecting the block 3 to the block coding.
First of all, an average value of the values of the pixels in the block 3 to be subjected to the block coding is calculated, and the average value is used as an in-block average value m (step 1). The in-block average value m in the block 3 as shown in FIG. 2 is 122 when the values of the pixels are rounded off to the nearest integer.
Next, the in-block average value is compared with the values of the pixels in the block 3 so that the pixels having values less than the in-block average value are represented by "0", while the pixels not less than the in-block average value are represented by "1" to thereby form a pixel array pattern (step 2). The pixel array pattern corresponding to the block 3 of FIG. 2 is shown in FIG. 4.
An average value a0 of the values of the pixels belonging to a group of the pixel represented by "0" in the pixel array pattern as well as an average value a1 of the values of the pixels belonging to a group of the pixel represented by "1" therein are calculated to be used as block representative values respectively (step 3). In the case of the block 3 of FIG. 2, the block representative values a0 and a1 are 34 (22h) and 162 (A2h) respectively. A final block code 1 for the block 3 is made up of the two representative values, each consisting of 8 bit data, and a single pixel array pattern (bit map) of 16 bits as shown in FIG. 5A, which details are shown in FIG. 5B.
The expanding operation of restoring or reconstructing the block code 1 to actual image data will be explained in connection with FIG. 6. The block representative value a0 contained in the block code 1 of FIGS. 5A or 5B is applied to the pixels represented by "0" in the pixel array pattern; whereas the block representative value a1 contained in the block code 1 is applied to the pixels represented by "1" in the pixel array pattern. This operation is carried out for all the pixels of one block. An expanded image corresponding to the block code 1 of FIGS. 5A or 5B is shown in FIG. 7.
In general, when one pixel comprises q bits and the number of pixels in one block is denoted by N, the quantity of data in one block of an original image is (q.times.N) bits and the quantity of image data after subjecting the data to block coding is (2q+N) bits corresponding to a sum of the N bits of the pixel array pattern and (2.times.q) bits of block representative values. Accordingly, a compression ratio is qN/(2q+N), which becomes 4 in the case where the number q of bits of one pixel is 8 and the number of pixels of one block is 16 in the example of FIG. 5B.
When images are roughly separated into two types, the images are divided into such artificial images as made up of characters or graphics and such natural images as photographs or paintings. The artificial image includes a uniform portion in which most data have values equal to the values of in-block data. When the gradation varies, an amount of the variation is large. On the other hand, in the natural images, a variation in gradation between adjacent pixels always takes place but is small in most cases.
Meanwhile, in the prior art block coding, a compressed code for one block is represented always by two representative values and a single bit map, so that, even when the data in one block are all equal, that is, in the case of the artificial images, similar coding compression is carried out. Thus, even a block which can be sufficiently represented by a single representative value has two representative values, and even for an image having a small gradation variation the representative values are subjected to similar coding, which disadvantageously results in a law compression efficiency.

Method for compressing image signal and method for expanding the compressed image signal


The present invention is directed to the formation of phenol alkylation polymers which release negligible phenol and formaldehyde emissions. The phenol aralkylation polymers of the present invention are derived from a phenolic monomer, at least one styrene derivative and an aryl diolefin. In addition to the phenolic monomer, styrene derivative and aryl diolefin, other reactants may be introduced to produce a product with particular properties.

It is well-established that substituted phenols such as butyl, amyl, and phenyl phenol react with formaldehyde to form modifiers for oil and alkyd varnishes. These modifiers have been used for many years. Phenolics are used to upgrade corrosion properties, improve adhesion, and improve substrate wetting. They can be "cooked" with various drying oils or simply cold blended with oils or alkyds to produce spar varnishes and metal primers. Although phenolics having some excellent performance properties, such as excellent adhesion and good corrosion properties, other properties are not so desirable. Phenolics have a relatively high viscosity which excludes their use in very low V.O.C. applications. Furthermore, phenolics turn dark in color upon aging which limits their use in some primer and most topcoat systems because of color bleed-through. For instance, the use of phenolics in exterior metal paints is limited to primers since the phenolics in such coatings darken (bleed through) with time, changing the color of light topcoats. Even when it is the primer that contains a phenolic, topcoats must be dark in color in order to not show bleed-through. Typically primers are red or gray. It is believed that darkening upon aging is caused by the formation of quinone methides in the phenolic polymer.
Phenolics having lower solution viscosities are desired in order to reduce solution viscosities in spar varnishes, bridge paints, porch and deck enamels, and government specification paints.
Phenolics are generally used in conjunction with oils or alkyds for exterior primers. Due to environmental pressures and the commercialization of new polymer systems such as urethanes, these types of phenolics represent a shrinking market.
There has been very little change in the basic chemistry of the phenolic resins since their introduction over 70 years ago. Generally, phenolic resins for oils and alkyds are novolak polymers based on substituted phenols. Originally, they were based on p-phenyl-phenol. This monomer offered a preferred combination of oil solubility, color retention and corrosion resistance. ##STR1##

Phenolic polymers made by aralkylation reactions


A method of routing calls of an automatic call distributor system that includes receiving a first workflow, comprising a desired behavior, associated with a first agent of a plurality of agents and receiving at least one request from a respective user for connection with one of the agents. The method also includes monitoring system information and executing the first workflow after the first agent becomes available for connection with one of the requests. The method includes selecting a first request of the at least one request, wherein the first request is selected based on the first agent's desired behavior and the monitored system information, and connecting the first request to the first agent. The method may also include receiving a notification that the first agent is available for connection with one of the respective users, and executing the first workflow after receiving the notification that the first agent is available.

Automatic call distributors (ACDs) are specialized systems designed to match incoming requests for service, for example a telephone call or an e-mail, with a resource that is able to provide that service, for example a human contact center agent. ACDs generally perform one or more of the following functions: (i) recognize and answer incoming calls; (ii) review database(s) for instructions on what to do with a particular call; (iii) using these instructions, identify an appropriate agent and queue the call, often times providing a prerecorded message; and (iv) connect the call to an agent as soon as the agent is available.
The term automatic call distributor comes from distributing the incoming calls in a logical pattern to a group of agents. That pattern may be uniform (to distribute the work uniformly), or it may be top-down (the same agents in the same order get the calls and are kept busy, the ones on the top typically being kept busier than the ones on the bottom), or it may be specialty routing, where calls are routed to agents who are most likely able to help the caller the most. ACDs typically offer a varying degree of customization to system configuration that enable the manager of the ACD system to control how calls are allocated to agents.
Skill-based routing is an ACD feature that provides for the selection of an appropriate agent for handling a particular call. With this feature, agents are registered with their skills set as resources for handling calls. The caller may indicate the skill that she requires for a particular transaction, and the system may either find the appropriate resource or queue the caller until the resource with the requested skill becomes available.

Method and system for automatic call distribution based on customized logic relating to agent behavior


A feeding device includes a tool holder, a cutter, a feeding mechanism and a mounting seat. The cutter is positioned on the tool holder. The mounting seat has at least one guiding portion. The tool holder is slidably engaged with the at least one guiding portion. The feeding mechanism includes at least two drivers. Each driver includes a forcer and a stator. The forcers are mounted in the mounting seat, the stators are fixedly positioned on the tool holder. Interactions between alternating magnetic fields produced by the forcers and magnetic fields produced by the stators drive the tool holder and the cutter to backwards and forwards under precise control along the guiding portion.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to feeding devices, and particularly, to a feeding device which can machine a curved surface, and a machine tool using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the manufacturing field, a cutter of the machine tool is driven to move by a feeding device of the machine tool, and also driven to rotate at high speed by a main shaft of the machine tool at the same time for machining a curved surface of a workpiece. However, after completing machining a first position of the workpiece, the feeding device needs to be driven to lift, and move a certain distance to a second position of the workpiece. This consumes more time, and the machining efficiency is decreased. In addition, sometimes only one driver is positioned in the feeding device for driving the cutter. However, if the driver is designed to supply great force and pressure, the size of the driver needs to be unduly larger, such that the feeding device requires more setup space.
Therefore, there is room for improvement within the art.

Feeding device and machine tool using the same


Various implementations described herein refer to an integrated circuit having a row of bitcells that are chained together in series to operate as a ring oscillator. Each bitcell in the row of bitcells has multiple transistors that are independent of additional transistors to form the ring oscillator. The multiple transistors of each bitcell in the row of bitcells are arranged to function as an inverter.

This section is intended to provide information relevant to understanding various technologies described herein. As the section's title implies, this is a discussion of related art that should in no way imply that it is prior art. Generally, related art may or may not be considered prior art. It should therefore be understood that any statement in this section should be read in this light, and not as any admission of prior art.
Generally, low leakage memories are an important feature for some Internet-of-Things (IoT) and embedded applications. This need leads to Ultra-Low-Leakage (ULL) memory bitcells that are offered by foundries in various related technologies. To minimize leakage, some conventional bitcell transistors use high threshold voltage devices, which can cause significant limitations to speed performance. As such, for IoT and embedded designs, memory paths can limit speed performance and thus drive use of leakier high-speed transistors in logic to partly compensate for slow memories.

Ring oscillator based bitcell delay monitor


Disclosed are a walkie-talkie and a walkie-talkie information transmission method. The walkie-talkie includes: an interconnection communication module, configured to establish short-range communication with an interconnection terminal; a radio frequency module, configured to establish radio frequency communication with another walkie-talkie; an internal communication interface; and a processor connected to the interconnection communication module and the radio frequency module through the internal communication interface; the processor is configured to: receive, through the interconnection communication module, a first signal sent by the interconnection terminal towards the other walkie-talkie, process the first signal to obtain a second signal, and send the second signal to the other walkie-talkie through the radio frequency module; or receive, through the radio frequency module, a third signal sent by the other walkie-talkie towards the interconnection terminal, process the third signal to obtain a fourth signal, and send the fourth signal to the interconnection terminal through the interconnection communication module.

Walkie-talkies are two-way mobile communication tools which can talk to each other without the support of any radio communication network and extra charges. The walkie-talkies are more applicable to relatively fixed application scenarios in which frequent talks between each other are required. Communication parameters such as a communication frequency, channel and volume of a traditional walkie-talkie may be configured through buttons of the walkie-talkie. After the walkie-talkie is configured with a certain communication channel or frequency, the walkie-talkie can talk to other walkie-talkies with the same communication channel or frequency by pressing a push to talk (PTT) button.
At present, with coverage of mobile communication network signals, users generally implement information interactions at a remote distance by using mobile terminals such as mobile phones. However, in the first aspect, communication with the mobile phones or the like requires a certain amount of communication fees to be paid to a mobile communication network operator. In the second aspect, in some sparsely populated countries or regions, a mobile communication network coverage rate is generally insufficient, so that the mobile phones are no longer suitable for providing the users with communication services in areas without the coverage of mobile communication network signals. In the third aspect, considering that the mobile phones are only applicable to two users and conventionally, one-to-one normal radio communication (between the calling party and the called party) can be performed after the calling party dials and the called party chooses to be connected, for some outdoor sports enthusiasts and extreme sports enthusiasts who like going to some areas for sports or entertainment in groups, one-to-many cluster communication in the state of instant responses to instant calls is required, and the one-to-one communication with only the mobile phones will bring great inconvenience.

Walkie-talkie device, electronic apparatus, walkie-talkie information transmission method, and information transmission method


With the objective of providing a cooling fan and a cooling fan assembly in which the cooling efficiency is high, and which has been lightened, the invention has been composed by a cooling fan 1, a casing 2 composed from a casing main body 3 and a lid part 4 in which a circular aperture 42 is formed, a fan motor 5 arranged within this casing 2, a circuit board 8 and the like. A plurality of radiator plates 32 are arranged in a standing formation in the outer peripheral part 312 of the casing main body 3. The fan motor 5 includes a rotor 7 in which seven fan blades 72 are arranged as projecting toward the outer peripheral direction, and a stator 6 fixed in a base plate 31. The outermost diameter b of the large diameter part 722 of the fan blades 72 is set so that it is larger than the inner periphery of the aperture 42, and the outer diameter c of the inner diameter part 723 of the fan blades 72 is set as smaller than the inner diameter of the aperture 42. Due to this composition, in accordance with a cooling fan and cooling fan assembly of the present invention, the cooling effect is improved, because it is possible to improve the force of the air current without thickening the thickness of the cooling fan, in conjunction with it being possible to prevent the extraction of the rotor from the aperture.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cooling fan and a cooling fan assembly which are used for cooling an object.
2. Description of Related Art
Cooling fans are widely utilized to cool the air surrounding electrical circuits in electronic apparatuses. For example, cooling fans are used in personal computers to cool the CPU and other electrical/electronic components.
This type of cooling fan has a casing that includes a casing main body with a side radiator and a lid with an aperture formed therein. A fan motor includes a rotor provided with a plurality of fan blades and a stator and is disposed in the casing. Also, an object to be cooled is joined to a base surface of the casing main body and the aperture and radiator form a circulating air flow conduit when the fan motor is driven. As a result, heat generated from the object to be cooled is dispersed and the object is cooled.
Conventional cooling fans exist in which the fan motor is arranged on the side of the lid. However, there are problems with this cooling fan in that the force of the air current is small and therefore the cooling effect is low. Also, conventional cooling fans are noisy and they typically have a casing main body that is thick.
Further, in another conventional cooling fan, the fan motor is arranged on the casing main body and a distal end of a rotational axle of the rotor is installed in the casing main body by perforating the base plate of the casing main body and using a ball bearing or washer. In this type of cooling fan, the cooling effect is diminished because the force of the air current is small and, thus, the cooling effect is low. This type of cooling fan is noisy and its casing main body is thick. Moreover, it has holes for installing the rotational axle of the rotor on the outer side base surface of the casing main body. Because the rotor is installed in the casing main body, an assembly process is required to turn the cooling fan over which reduces productivity of manufacturing.


An image processing device for correcting atmospheric turbulence in a first input image included in a video includes: a determination unit which determines an atmospheric turbulence intensity which indicates an intensity of the atmospheric turbulence; and a correction unit which corrects the atmospheric turbulence in the first input image, according to the atmospheric turbulence intensity determined by the determination unit, wherein the atmospheric turbulence intensity determined by the determination unit has a value that increases with an increase in a ratio of a total number of pixels each having a difference in pixel value between the first input image and a frame temporally preceding the first input image to a total number of edge pixels included in the first input image or the frame temporally preceding, the difference being a predetermined threshold or more.

Conventionally, a monitoring system is known which captures images of a certain space using a camera device such as a monitoring camera, to monitor the space. At this time, atmospheric turbulence may occur in a captured image. Atmospheric turbulence is a phenomenon which occurs due to a change in characteristics of light transmitting media. Specifically, atmospheric turbulence is a phenomenon (Schlieren phenomenon) that occurs due to a change in a refractive index of a medium (air or water) which transmits light from a subject.
Atmospheric turbulence is so-called heat shimmer that occurs due to a difference in air density made by a temperature difference in the air when an image is captured outside on a hot day, for example. In addition, atmospheric turbulence occurs also when an image is captured underwater.
If a monitoring system detects, for instance, abnormalities from a captured video, the system may incorrectly detect atmospheric turbulence in an image as abnormalities, which is not preferable. In view of this, Patent Literatures 1 and 2, for instance, disclose an image processing device which can correct atmospheric turbulence in an image.

Image processing device, monitoring camera, and image processing method

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


In an apparatus for ejecting droplets having nozzles that eject droplets, liquid containing chambers each connected at one longitudinal end thereof with a corresponding nozzle, and an actuator that changes a volume of each of the liquid containing chamber, an ejection pulse signal and an additional pulse signal each increasing the volume of the liquid containing chamber are sequentially applied in accordance with a one-dot printing instruction. When the volume of the liquid containing chamber decreases upon completion of the application of the ejection pulse signal, liquid becomes protruding from the nozzle. The additional pulse signal is then applied to pull a tail portion of the liquid back toward the liquid containing chamber, thereby ejecting a fine droplet. A time interval between a completion of the application of the ejection pulse signal and a start of the application of the additional pulse signal are set at defined times.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for ejecting droplets capable of ejecting minute droplets, an actuator controller used in the apparatus, and a method for controlling the actuator.
2. Description of Related Art
A printing head in an inkjet printer includes therein an ink tank and pressure chambers. Each pressure chamber is supplied with ink from the ink tank. An actuator is arranged to correspond to each pressure chamber. When the actuator is driven to change a volume of a pressure chamber, ink in the pressure chamber is pressurized to be ejected through a nozzle connected with the pressure chamber. Particularly in order to eject minute droplets for high-resolution printing, there is known a technique, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,350,003, in which an ejection pulse signal and an additional pulse signal accompanying the ejection pulse signal are sequentially applied to an actuator in accordance with a one-dot printing instruction.
According to the above technique, an application of the ejection pulse signal to the actuator increases the volume of a pressure chamber and ink is supplied to the pressure chamber from an ink tank. Then, when the application of the ejection pulse signal to the actuator completes, the volume of the pressure chamber decreases and ink protrudes from a nozzle. When the ink protruding from the nozzle is still connected with the nozzle and an ink droplet is going to be ejected, the additional pulse signal is applied to the actuator. Then, the volume of the pressure chamber again increases and a tail portion of the ink protruding from the nozzle is pulled back toward the pressure chamber, so that a part of the ink protruding from the nozzle other than the tail portion becomes apart from the nozzle to be ejected as an ink droplet. Like this, since the tail portion of the ink protruding from the nozzle to be ejected is pulled back toward the pressure chamber, an actually ejected ink droplet can be small in volume. Given that a time required for a pressure wave to propagate in one way longitudinally through the pressure chamber is T, a pulse width of the ejection pulse signal is set to be T, a pulse width of the additional pulse signal to be 0.2 T to 0.6 T, and a time interval between a completion of an application of the ejection pulse signal and a start of an application of the additional pulse signal to be 0.3 T to 0.7 T.
However, when each pulse signal is applied in accordance with the pulse width and the application timing as described above, an ejection speed of a droplet becomes relatively low. A low ejection speed of a droplet causes an unstable ejection to thereby deteriorate printing quality.

Apparatus for ejecting droplets, actuator controller used in the apparatus, and method for controlling the actuator


The invention provides a novel rinsing fluid which can convert an easily wettable resist pattern surface having a contact angle of 40° or below into one having a contact angle of 70° or above to inhibit pattern collapse effectively and thereby give high-quality products. The rinsing fluid consists of a solution containing at least one fluorine compound soluble in water or alcoholic solvents which is selected from among compounds represented by the general formula (I),

Along with the trend in recent years in the semiconductor devices toward compact size and high integration, development works were practiced for the use of light sources for the fine working including ultraviolet lights such as the g-line and i-line, excimer laser beams such as KrF and ArF and the like as well as photoresist compositions suitable thereto such as, for example, chemical-amplification photoresist compositions while many of the problems on the lithographic technology in this direction are now on the way of solution.
Meanwhile, one of the problems is pattern falling during formation of a fine resist pattern or, in particular, pattern of a high aspect ratio by the lithographic technology. This pattern falling is a phenomenon encountered in the parallel formation of a large number of patterns on a substrate that adjacent patterns are brought near as if leaning each other eventually leading to breaking or exfoliation of the pattern at the base part. If such pattern falling occurs, desirable products can no longer be obtained resulting in a decrease of the product yield and reliability of the products.
Meanwhile, the reason for this pattern falling has already been elucidated [Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 32 (1993), p. 6059-p. 6064] and is understood to be caused by the surface tension of the rinse solution acting in the course of drying of the rinse solution during the rinse treatment of the resist pattern after development.
Accordingly, no forces to cause pattern falling are produced when the resist pattern is kept immersed in the rinse solution or, namely, during the rinse treatment after development but, in the course of the drying step to remove the rinse solution, forces due to the surface tension of the rinse solution act between the resist patterns leading to resist falling.
Theoretically, therefore, pattern falling could be prevented by using a rinse solution having a small surface tension or, namely, exhibiting a large contact angle so that it was the attempt heretofore to prevent pattern falling by the admixture of the rinse solution with an additive compound capable of decreasing the surface tension or increasing the contact angle.
For example, proposals were made for a rinse solution with addition of isopropyl alcohol (JP6-163391A), a method in which the contact angle between the resist surface after development and the rinse solution is adjusted to be in the range of 60 to 120 degrees by using a mixture pf isopropyl alcohol and water or isopropyl alcohol and a fluorinated ethylene compound as the rinse solution (JP5-2993363A), a method of using a rinse solution having a surface tension adjusted in the range of 30 to 50 dynes/cm by the addition of an alcohol, a ketone or a carboxylic acid for a resist by using a novolac resin or a hydroxypolystyrene resin as the base material of the resist composition (JP7-140674A), a method of adding a fluorine-containing surfactant to at least one of the developer solution and the rinse solution (JP7-142349A), a method comprising a step of rinse with water and a step of drying after replacement with a water-immiscible liquid having a small surface tension and having a larger specific gravity than water such as, for example, a perfluoroalkyl polyether while the resist is kept immersed in water (JP7-226358A), a rinse agent composition containing a nitrogen-containing compound having a molecular weight of 45 to 10000 and having a hydrocarbon group with 1 to 20 carbon atoms and an amino group, imino group or an ammonium group in the molecule (JP11-295902A), a method of using a composition containing a fluorinated carboxylic acid, fluorinated sulfonic acid or a salt thereof as the developer solution (JP2002-323773A), a method of treatment of the developed substrate with an organic treatment agent containing a hydrofluoroether after a rinse treatment (JP2003-178943A and JP2003-178944A) and elsewhere.
With each of these rinse solutions or the rinse treatment methods, however, it is not possible to completely prevent pattern falling and, in addition, a risk of decrease is caused in the properties or, in particular, the precision of the pattern formed thereby so that they are not always satisfactory for industrialization.
On the other hand, the fluorine-containing surfactant used nowadays is perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS). This substance has a serious problem in handling because it is a "designated chemical substance" within Japan and also is an objective of the Significant novel utilization rules (SNUR) in the United States as an ecological influences-related rule. To say in particular, since the substances under the SNUR regulations may bring about an unreasonable risk to damage the health or environment necessitating wearing of protectors in the working place and education and training of employees with information on the toxicity and so on with a further regulation on the discarding treatment. It is accordingly desired to obtain a fluorine-based surfactant capable of exhibiting equivalent effects as in the use of the perfluorooctane sulfonic acid and containing a fluorine-based surfactant with good handleableness and without environmental problems to replace the perfluorooctane sulfonic acid.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Abstract: those represented by the general formula (II),

Abstract: and those represented by the general formula: Rf′—COOH: wherein R1 and R2 are each optionally substituted C1-5 alkyl whose hydrogen atoms are partially or wholly replaced by fluorine, or R1 and R2 together with the SO2 groups to which they are bonded and the nitrogen atom may form a five- or six-membered ring; Rf is optionally substituted C1-5 alkyl whose hydrogen atoms are partially or wholly replaced by fluorine; m and n are each an integer of 2 or 3; and Rf′ is at least partially fluorinated alkyl having 8 to 20 carbon atoms.


A first memory request including a first virtual address is received. An entry in memory is accessed. The entry is selected using information associated with the first memory request, and includes at least a portion of a second virtual address (first data) and at least a portion of a third virtual address (second data). The difference between the first data and the second data is compared with differences between a corresponding portion of the first virtual address and the first data and the second data respectively. When a result of the comparison is true, then a fourth virtual address is determined by adding the difference between the first data and the second data to the first virtual address, and then data at the fourth virtual address is prefetched into the cache.

A primary factor in the utility of a computer system is the speed at which the computer system can execute an application. It is important to have data available when it is needed, to prevent the computer system from idling or stalling while it waits for data to be accessed from memory.
A widely used solution to reduce memory access latency and prevent stalling in a processor is to implement a hierarchy of caches in the computer system. In essence, one or more caches are situated between the main memory and the processor. The cache closest to the processor is usually referred to as the level one (L1) or lowest level cache, the next cache is usually referred to as the level two (L2) or higher level cache, and so on, with the cache that is closest to the main memory referred to as the highest level cache. The caches store recently used data based on the assumption that information might be needed again. By storing data in a hierarchical manner, the caches can reduce latency and prevent stalling by providing the data more rapidly than if the data had to be retrieved from, for example, the main memory.
Latency can be further reduced by prefetching information into the caches from slower memory. In essence, prefetching involves making a prediction of the data that may be needed by an application, and then fetching that data from, for example, the main memory into any one of the caches, or from one cache into another cache that is closer to the processor (e.g., from the L2 cache to the L1 cache). The predicting, fetching, and storing described above are performed opportunistically, e.g., before the data is actually requested by the application.
Conventional prefetching attempts to find a pattern in a stream of requests for data from memory based on the physical addresses associated with those requests. If a pattern can be found, then that pattern can be used to anticipate subsequent requests for information, so that information can be prefetched. For example, if the prefetcher determines that data has been requested from physical addresses 2, 4, and 6 in the L2 cache because of cache misses in the L1 cache (e.g., a pattern of every other physical address, corresponding to every other cache line), then the prefetcher can anticipate that the cache line at physical address 8 might also be needed and can prefetch that cache line. The difference between addresses in the pattern may be referred to as the stride.
A problem with conventional prefetching occurs because contemporary applications generally utilize virtual addresses instead of physical addresses. The virtual addresses are mapped to physical addresses, which conventionally can then be used to identify a pattern as described above. The size of a contemporary physical memory page is four (4) kilobytes (KB). In such an implementation, the virtual-to-physical mapping changes every 4 KB of physical address space. Thus, a first virtual address in a stream of memory requests may map to a first physical memory page, and a second virtual address in the stream may map to a second physical memory page. This is problematic because it is difficult to prefetch past the first page. This, in turn, can limit the length of the stride.


A system and method for locating a referenced resource within a broadcasting environment. The method includes storing translation information into a receiver memory, identifying a location of additional translation information for the referenced resource based on the translation information stored in the receiver memory corresponding to that referenced resource, receiving the additional translation information from a transport stream identified by the transport information stored in the receiver memory for the referenced source, and locating the referenced resource based on the additional translation information received.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for locating a resource within a broadcasting environment. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for enabling resources of one event, program, or transport stream within a broadcasting environment to be shared with resources of another event, program, or transport stream.
2. Description of the Conventional Art
A Digital Television (DTV) receiver receives data from multiple broadcasting entities. For instance, FIG. 1 illustrates a DTV receiver 11 that receives data from plural terrestrial broadcast stations 12, a cable system 13, a satellite system 14 and an Internet system 15.
Data is generally communicated to the receiver in the form of one or more transport streams. For instance, a feed from a terrestrial broadcast station 12 generally includes a single transport stream. However, a satellite or cable feed may contain a hundred or more transport streams.
FIG. 2 illustrates the content and structure of a conventional transport stream 21. As shown in FIG. 2, a conventional transport stream 21 generally includes a combination of one or more virtual channels 22, a single virtual channel 22 being capable of broadcasting a program. For instance, when broadcasting video programs, the virtual channel combines a video stream with one or more audio streams to provide multiple language capabilities, and one or more data streams to provide information which can be used to enhance the video program. Similarly, pure data programs can be broadcast having only data streams, each data stream representing a large number of data items to enable access by the receiver to tens of thousands of data items simultaneously.
A virtual channel 22 can therefore be described in terms of its component elementary streams 23 or its component events (not shown). Each elementary stream 23 within a virtual channel 22 includes one particular type of information, such as video information, audio information, or data. By contrast, unlike elementary streams 23, events generally include multiple types of information, such as a combination of video, audio and data. An event generally defines a portion of a program. For instance, an event might be a TV show. Events are often defined by criteria such as their duration.
The elementary streams 23 and events forming the virtual channels 22 may include data such as the HTML (xe2x80x9cHyperText Mark-up Languagexe2x80x9d) pages 24 shown in FIG. 2.
Moreover, the resources communicated to a DTV receiver potentially include virtual channels 22, elementary streams 23, events and/or individual data items 24.
It is sometimes useful to share the resources of related broadcasts that are received by a DTV receiver. For instance, using resources from within one channel or transport stream to supplement another channel or transport stream provides great flexibility for enhancing the viewing experience of the DTV viewer.
Conventionally, various schemes have been proposed for sharing the resources of related broadcasts without relying on bidirectional communication. However, as described in greater detail below, the conventional art fails to provide an efficient system for enabling resources to be shared between programs of separate channels within one or more transport streams, or even between events within separate programs.
Some conventional proposals for sharing the resources of related broadcasts are based on broadcasts which include embedded references to resources, which references are based on the absolute address of those resources or on some other fixed criteria for identifying the resources. Those proposals are therefore susceptible to some of the same problems experienced by direct addressing schemes applied to computer systems.
First, direct addressing schemes tend to be relatively inflexible with respect to relocation of resources since a change in the location of a resource frustrates fixed references to that resource previously embedded in other programs. For instance, if a resource is relocated, URLs embedded in programs under direct addressing schemes specify references to an outdated address for the resource.
Second, direct addressing schemes tend to be relatively inflexible with respect to replication of resources. Since each replicated copy of a resource requires an independent and unique address to avoid errors in a direct addressing scheme, an embedded reference to a fixed address cannot be used to achieve a hyperlink to any of the replicated copies. Therefore, the most convenient copy of a resource may not be available based on the fixed reference information embedded in the program.
The first and second problems are both evident when a single program is rebroadcast by multiple local affiliate stations or cable stations. Specifically, as demonstrated by FIG. 3, programs broadcast from a network broadcasting server 31 includes embedded references to resources of a local affiliate station addressed by call-sign (e.g., WXAB) or by channel (e.g., channel 17) of that local affiliate station. The program is retransmitted by local affiliates 32, WXAB and WXCD, and received by corresponding receivers 33, DTV#l and DTV#2, respectively. The receiver 33 DTV#1 corresponding to local affiliate WXAB has access to the transmit stream and channel specified in the embedded reference, and the receiver DTV#2 corresponding to local affiliate WXCD is without access to the transmit stream and channel specified in the embedded reference.
A third problem with conventional proposals resembling a direct addressing scheme is illustrated by FIG. 4. FIG. 4 demonstrates the difficulties experienced by an operator attempting to understand the reference specified by a reference embedded using the direct addressing scheme correspond to an actual address of a resource, it is difficult for an operator viewing those embedded references to recognize the underlying resource being referenced. Furthermore, due to the lack of meaningful pneumonic, typographical errors and the like are easily missed by an operator.
As an alternative to the proposals involving schemes resembling direct addressing, proposals have been offered for schemes based on embedded references to pneumonics corresponding to resources. These proposals more closely resemble conventional indirect addressing processes.
One such proposal provides specifications for TV and unidirectional HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) schemes. In each specification, embedded references are used to describe resources to be shared. However, neither specification provides an identifier for locating the source of a resource described by an embedded reference. Rather, the proposal for the HTTP scheme seems to require the receiver to look at the header of every data item received from every channel to identify a match for an embedded URL, a slow and resource intensive task. Additionally, the teachings of each of these specifications are limited to channels, neither suggesting the use of references to other resources such as elementary streams, events and/or data.
Another conventional proposal that resembles an indirect addressing scheme involves embedding references to groups of interlinked Web pages into a TV broadcast, and mapping the embedded references into references that are meaningful in the context of DTV. More specifically, this proposal involves the use of translation information transmitted along with the TV broadcast for translating embedded references having an Internet format (e.g., xe2x80x9chttp:xe2x80x9d URLs) into a format that is meaningful in the context of DTV broadcasting (e.g., xe2x80x9cdtvxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9catscxe2x80x9d URLs), so as to identify the location of corresponding resources within the TV broadcast. Such URL mappings could also be used more generally to translate URLs with arbitrary logical names for resources into URLs with direct addresses.
In order to locate the transport stream carrying an appropriate mapping table for translating an embedded URL, this proposal seems to require the entire mapping tables to be cached into memory by the DTV receivers. As such, the memory requirements and associated price of a conventional receiver adopting this proposed scheme would increase.
To compound this problem, conventional URL mappings used in this way require unnecessarily large mapping tables containing a great deal of redundant information. In most cases, all that is actually necessary is a mapping of the host name in the http URL to a corresponding event and elementary stream, not the full blown mapping described above. Furthermore, the mapping of the protocol can be inferred, and often the file path does not need to be mapped at all.
Moreover, the conventional art fails to provide an efficient system for enabling resources to be shared between programs of separate channels within one or more transport streams.
The present invention is directed to system that substantially obviates one or more of the problems experienced due to the above and other limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
Other and further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be set forth in the description that follows, and in part will become apparent from the detailed description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention includes a system and method for enabling a referenced resource to be located within a broadcasting environment, where the method includes storing translation information into a receiver memory, identifying a location of additional translation information for the referenced resource based on the translation information stored in the receiver memory corresponding to that referenced resource, receiving the additional translation information from a transport stream identified by the transport information stored in the receiver memory for the referenced source, and locating the referenced resource based on the additional translation information received.
The process of storing the translation information in the receiver memory may involve storing less than all of the translation information communicated to the receiver, where the translation information stored in the receiver memory identifies a transport stream for the referenced resource. In addition, locating the referenced resource may include receiving further translating information from a channel identified by the additional translation information, and locating the referenced resource based on the further translation information received.
The system for enabling a referenced resource to be located within a broadcasting environment includes componentry capable of performing the above-mentioned tasks. A system and method for enabling a referenced resource to be located within a broadcasting environment, where the method includes storing translation information into a receiver memory, identifying a location of additional translation information for the referenced resource based on the translation information stored in the receiver memory corresponding to that referenced resource, receiving the additional translation information from a transport stream identified by the transport information stored in the receiver memory for the referenced source, and locating the referenced resource based on the additional translation information received.
The process of storing the translation information in the receiver memory may involve storing less than all of the translation information communicated to the receiver, where the translation information stored in the receiver memory identifies a transport stream for the referenced resource. In addition, locating the referenced resource may include receiving further translating information from a channel identified by the additional translation information, and locating the referenced resource based on the further translation information received.
The system for enabling a referenced resource to be located within a broadcasting environment includes componentry capable of performing the above-mentioned tasks.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed. Thus, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of example only. Various changes and modifications that are within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description. In fact, other objects, features and characteristics of the present invention; methods, operation, and functions of the related elements of the structure; combinations of parts; and economies of manufacture will surely become apparent from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments and accompanying drawings, all of which form a part of this specification, wherein like reference numerals designate corresponding parts in various figures.

Method and system for locating a resource within a broadcasting environment


A pump assembly for a gas discharge laser comprises a first pump (P.sub.1) hich has a relatively high suction capacity and relatively short service life and a second pump (P.sub.2) which has a relatively low suction capacity and relatively longer service life.

Gas discharge lasers or gas lasers of the most diverse kind are known, such as CO.sub.2 lasers, N.sub.2 lasers, and excimer lasers. The laser active medium (i.e. a medium with so-called population inversion) in those cases is generated by gas discharge. It is likewise known to employ lasers of the above kind in pulsed or continuous wave (cw) operation.
EP 0 374 287 A1 discloses a vacuum system for a gas discharge laser, comprising a pump assembly which consists of two pumps. Its purpose, however, is to purify the laser gas and reduce the requirement for make-up gas.
The gas discharge always is effected with a certain gas mixture. In the case of the CO.sub.2 laser, for instance, the gas discharge chamber essentially contains carbon dioxide. Chemical reactions take place in the plasma produced by the gas discharge, whereby the working gas of the laser is "consumed". Chemical reactions also may take place at the walls of the gas discharge chamber. Finally, also contaminations in the gas (e.g. caused by desorption from the walls) may lead to chemical reactions with the working gas of the laser, whereby the working gas is consumed and/or undesirable reaction products are formed which may impair the laser performance. Reaction products also may deposit as contaminants on the optical component parts of the laser.
Prior to the entry of the laser working gases (i.e CO.sub.2, N.sub.2, or precious gases and halogens, for example) into the gas discharge chamber of the laser, the latter must be evacuated before laser operation begins. That requires some kind of arrangement of pumps. However, the need for a pump assembly exists not only before the lasing starts but continues to exist during operation of the laser. It is known in the art to make up the laser gas continuously during operation of the laser because of the "consumption" of the working gas of the laser and the undesirable contaminations mentioned above. This means that normally fresh working gas is introduced continuously (or batchwise) into the laser cavity. For instance, a CO.sub.2 laser typically receives up to some 100 liters of fresh laser-gasmix per hour. A corresponding quantity of gas must be pumped off constantly in view of the fact that the gas pressure in the gas discharge chamber, at the same time, must be kept substantially constant.
Hydrocarbons (oil) are a particularly undesirable contamination in the gas of the gas discharge chamber of the laser. It is especially in the gas discharge that the hydrocarbons react and reaction products accumulate on the optical members of the laser resonator, in particular the mirrors, whereby the laser performance is reduced.
Rotary vane pumps, with oil lubrication, are known in the art as pump assemblies for gas discharge lasers, especially CO.sub.2 lasers. Their rotary vane is sealed by oil with respect to the pump wall so as to increase the pumping capacity and prolong the service life of the pump. The service life of the pump is understood to be the length of time for which a pump typically can run between two maintenance intervals. In other words the service life is the typical maintenance-free working period of a pump. The service life and the pumping performance of a rotary vane pump lubricated with oil are relatively high. Yet the pump lubricating oil can get into the gas discharge chamber of the laser where it may have the disadvantageous effects described above. Oil traps can be provided between the pump and the cavity in order to prevent hydrocarbons from penetrating into the gas discharge chamber, they may be embodied by a zeolite screen or a cooling trap which may operate with liquid nitrogen, for instance. Such measures, however, are costly and require intensive maintenance, and that is not desirable when lasers are put to industrial use.
It is likewise known, in principle, to operate rotary vane pumps without oil. Such pumps then are referred to as "operating dry". Dry-operating rotary vane pumps do have the advantage of not involving any hydrocarbons which may enter into the gas discharge chamber of the laser, because of the operation without oil. However, they suffer the disadvantage of having a relatively shorter service life. On the other hand, the reduction in suction performance of a pump operating dry, as compared to a rotary vane pump with oil lubrication, is rather small.
As already mentioned, undesirable gases must be removed entirely from the discharge chamber before starting a gas discharge laser. This evacuation of the chamber or cavity requires a relatively great suction capacity if unpracticably long pumping times are to be avoided. On the other hand, stationary operation of the laser requires only a relatively small suction capacity to pump off quantities of gas in correspondence with the make-up gas supplied. Oil-free diaphragm pumps are sufficient to meet this demand for minor suction performance.

WB Laser Wegmann-Baasel Laser und elektrooptische Gerate GmbH


A method and apparatus for transmitting optical pulses in a dispersion-managed optical transmission system comprises determining the pulse width of optical pulses in a optical transmission channel in accordance with the path-average dispersion (PAD) experienced by that channel.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to lightwave communications systems and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for transmitting optical pulses having variable pulse widths.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of fiber optic communications, it has been known for some time to increase the capacity of an optical communications link by propagating wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical signals along optical fibers. Specifically, a WDM signal is composed of a plurality of distinct wavelengths of light, each such wavelength carrying a respective optical information signal, also known as an information channel. The number of wavelengths (i.e., information channels) in a WDM signal is a system parameter and usually ranges from 2 to over 100 (in the case of "dense" WDM, or DWDM).
Chromatic dispersion can be a limiting factor in such optical transmission systems. Chromatic dispersion is the tendency of a pulse of light propagating through an optical fiber to broaden due to the phenomenon that different wavelengths of light pass through the fiber at different speeds. While such dispersion is useful for suppressing non-linear effects, such as four-wave mixing and self-phase modulation, too much dispersion easily causes intersymbol interference. Normally, dispersion in the transmission fiber is reduced by periodic use of a dispersion compensation device in the various network elements of the optical transmission system. However, a single dispersion compensation device in each network element typically cannot provide the same average dispersion for all optical signals of a WDM transmission system (i.e., the extent of average dispersion for optical signals having different wavelengths varies). This may force a designer of optical transmission systems to employ multiple dispersion compensation devices, both inline, and at the end terminal. The use of multiple dispersion compensation devices results in increased system complexity and additional cost.

Method and apparatus for optimization of dispersion-managed return-to-zero transmission by employing optical pulses having variable widths


An adjuvant composition containing at least an alkanolamide surfactant and optionally other surfactants or pesticides or formulation aids. The surfactant preferably is reacted with a fatty acid. The process preferably takes places without the use of alkoxylation.

In order to enhance or modify the chemical and/or physical characteristics of certain pesticides, certain materials are added to form a mixture for spraying. Generally referred to as adjuvants, these materials have no pesticidal activity of their own. Since spray application can be critical to the performance of the agricultural chemical, adjuvants are added to reduce application problems such as chemical stability, incompatibility, solubility, suspension, foaming, drift, evaporation, volatilization, phytotoxicity, surface tension, droplet size and coverage. They can, depending on their type, enhance wetting, spreading, sticking, emulsifying, dispersing and biological activity. Adjuvants include wetting agents, crop oil concentrates, spreaders, stickers, buffering agents, foaming and anti-foaming agents, dispersing agents and drift control agents.
Over 200 EPA-registered pesticides have specific recommendations on their labels for adjuvant use. These are recommended for one of two reasons. The first reason is to enhance biological activity of the pesticide. The second reason would be to reduce, minimize or eliminate spray application problems as noted previously. There are several different types of adjuvants recommended. To achieve consistent, effective results from them, the user must first select the desired type of adjuvant and then the appropriate product within that specific type for use with a particular pesticide and then use that product at recommended rates.
Many pesticide labels require or recommend the use of a "spreader-sticker" with the use of the pesticide. The American Society of Testing and Materials defines spray adjuvant terminology in their document E1519-94a which is incorporated by reference in its entirety. This organization has defined a spreader as "a material which increases the area that a droplet of a given spray mixture will cover on a target." A sticker is defined as "a material that assists the spray deposit to adhere or stick to the target and may be measured in terms of resistance to time, wind, water, mechanical action, or chemical action." A spreader-sticker is defined as "a material that has the properties of both a spreader and a sticker".
Historically, many materials have been used as stickers in pesticide-based spray mixtures. A polymer of Beta-pinene is currently marketed by Helena Chemical Company and by Miller. A latex-based resin has been marketed by United Agri-Products and others. Several resins have been used as sticking agents. Free fatty acids have been also been used as stickers. U.S. Pat. No. 5,543,384 describes a method of making a sticker-extender for pesticides comprising a first mixture containing an anhydride, an acid and turpentine mixed with a second mixture containing an isomeric alcohol and at least one amino alcohol. All of these products are essentially hydrophobic film-formers and require the use of emulsifiers or co-surfactants to disperse them in water for the initial application. The surfactants used for emulsifying or dispersing the stickers are generally what is relied upon for the spreader functionality of these products.
Historically, these products have not provided significant spreading if they do indeed actually enhance sticking, or they do not provide significant sticking if they do indeed actually enhance spreading. It would be advantageous to combine both of these functions effectively into one single product. This would provide ease of use for the consumer.
The beta-pinene based products have historically caused mixing problems with some pesticides. Specifically, dry flowable or wettable powder formulations, can interact with beta-pinene emulsions and cause severe tank mixing problems. Beta-pinene, latex, and free fatty acids can also leave undesirable films in spray tanks which cause clean-out problems for pesticide applicators.
Latex-based stickers have provided excellent sticking capabilities, but have formed water-impermeable films on plant surfaces. This film does not allow contact between pest and pesticide, which is essential for contact pesticides.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,178,795; 5,393,791 and 5,580,567 are all issued to Johnnie R. Roberts which are all incorporated herein. These patents describe a homogenous non-aqueous adjuvant composition comprising a spray oil and surfactant blend with an acidic pH of less than about 7. In addition, these patents require an oil or its equivalent. However, contrary to the Roberts' patents, the applicants have found that the novel spreader-sticker surfactant combination works without an oil or its equivalent being required and best in the basic range having a pH of greater than about 7 and preferably at least about 8. The adjuvants described in all three Roberts patents are excluded from this invention and the claimed invention.
Alkanolamide surfactants have not been used frequently in agriculture. These surfactants have been used for a number of years as thickeners in the personal care industry. Alkanolamides have also been widely used as foam stabilizers in the laundry and detergent industry.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,911 which is incorporated by reference in its entirety, describes a method for enhancing the efficacy of agricultural chemical with alkoxylated fatty acid amides. The fatty acid acids correspond to R.sup.1. The fatty acid amides must be alkoxylated with ethoxy {(CH.sub.2 R.sup.2 or 3 CHO) having R.sup.2 or 3 as hydrogen} or isopropoxy {(CH.sub.2 or 3 CHO) having R.sup.2 or 3 as methyl}. We have found an agricultural product that is not alkoxylated and a method of making an agricultural product without alkoxylation being required.
It is the object of this invention to provide an effective sticker in combination with an effective spreader in a single phase adjuvant composition or in a single phase pesticide composition. These formulations do not leave residues in spray tanks which give applicators clean-out problems. Alkanolamide spreader stickers have not caused any mixing problems with dry pesticide tank mixes.

Alkanolamide spreader-sticker surfactant combination


Provided is a process for preparation of dialkyl carbonates, comprising the step of performing oxidative carbonylation of an alcohol in liquid phase in the presence of CO and O2, to form dialkyl carbonate in a catalyst system comprising a metal halide as catalyst and at least one nitrogen-containing compound selected from the group consisting of imidazole derivatives (excluding unsubstituted imidazole), benzoimidazole derivatives, pyridazine derivatives, carbazole, acridine and non-cyclic amines as auxiliary catalyst. The process of the invention, by using above catalyst system, can increase the conversion ratio of alcohol and the selectivity of the oxidative carbonylation reaction, thus increasing the total yield of dialkyl carbonate. In addition, the process of the invention has the advantages of reducing the required amount of the catalyst and causing less corrosion to the reactor.

Dimethyl carbonate is an extremely versatile product which finds use as an organic solvent or a reactant (a substitute for phosgene) in the synthesis of other alkyl or aryl carbonates, which are useful as synthetic lubricants, solvents, plasticizers and monomers for organic glasses, and in reactions of methylation and carbonylation for preparing isocyanates, polyurethanes and polycarbonates. Dimethyl carbonate also has other applications. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,331,386 discloses the use of dimethyl carbonate or other organic carbonates, or a mixture of organic carbonate and ether (especially methyl t-butyl ether) as an anti-explosive additive for gasoline or fuels heavier than gasoline.
Conventionally, dimethyl carbonate is synthesized by phosgenation of methanol (phosgene route). However, since phosgene is a toxic chemical and causes corrosion to the reactor, the phosgene route has been gradually replaced by oxidative carbonylation of methanol (oxidative carbonylation route) in recent years. Compared with the phosgene route, the oxidative carbonylation route has advantages of easy acquirement of starting materials, simple synthetic procedures, less environmental pollution and lower production cost.
Oxidative carbonylation of methanol can be performed in a vapor phase or a liquid phase, issued in the patents by Ube Industries, Ltd, Japan and Enichem, respectively. One representative example of gas-phase oxidative carbonylation of methanol is the process disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,162,563 issued to Ube Industries, Ltd, Japan., which comprises bringing carbon monoxide into contact with an ester of nitrous acid in a vapor phase in the presence of a solid catalyst, for example, PdCl2 combined with copper.
Oxidative carbonylation of methanol can also be performed in a liquid phase. Various catalysts or catalyst systems have been proposed for use in liquid-phase oxidative carbonylation of methanol. For example, EP0460732 issued to Enichem Industries, Ltd. discloses a copper catalyst such as cuprous chloride (CuCl). U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,218,391 and 4,318,862 disclose catalyst comprising a salt of a metal belonging to the Groups IB, IIB and VIIIB of the Periodic Table, preferably the salts of monovalent copper (for example CuCl and CuBr). In the processes of these patents, in order to increase reaction rate, it is necessary to use high concentrations of cuprous chloride; however, such high concentrations of cuprous chloride may cause corrosion to the reactor. To resolve this issue, Enichem used a reactor with a glass liner on its inner wall. However, the presence of glass liner would enlarge the reactor, which was undesirable from the viewpoint of space utilization.
Chinese Patent No. CN1197792 discloses a two-component catalyst system comprising cuprous chloride as catalyst and one inorganic salt such as MgCl2, CaCl2, ZnCl2, KCl etc. as catalyst promoter. Japanese Patent No. 54-24827 discloses a similar two-component catalyst system including cuprous halide as catalyst and a halide of alkali metal or alkaline earth metal as catalyst promoter. Although these two-component catalyst systems can increase the solubility of CuCl in the reaction medium, they still have the problem of causing corrosion to the reactor.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,846,468 discloses catalyst consisting of cuprous chloride complexed with an organic ligand selected from the group consisting of pyridine, dipyridyl, imidazole, phenanthroline, alkyl or aryl phosphines, dimethylsulfoxide, dimethylformamide, quinuclidine, CH3CN, C6H5CN, malonitrile, succinonitrile and adiponitrile. In Rivetti et al., J. Organometallic Chem, 174, 221-226 (1979), a metal complex is also used as catalyst, wherein the catalyst consisting of Pd complexed with an organic and reports that Pd complexed with a tertiary amine would increase the yield of dimethyl carbonate, while Pd complexed with an alkyl phosphine would inhibit all carbonylation of methanol. U.S. Pat. No. 4,113,762 discloses a copper-containing catalyst comprising a complex formed between cuprous chloride and vanadium trichloride, chromium trichloride, iron trichloride, cobalt-II-chloride, aluminum trichloride, or silicon tetrachloride. U.S. Pat. No. 3,980,690 discloses catalyst consisting of a complex of copper chloride and poly-4-vinylpyridine.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,114,762 discloses adding cobalt- or palladium-containing salts and bromide salts into iron or copper oxidants containing the same anion. U.S. Pat. No. 3,227,740 discloses using mercury halides or carboxylates as catalysts. U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,477 discloses a process for preparation of dialkyl carbonate by using cupric chloride (CuCl2) or cupric bromide (CuBr2) as catalysts. U.S. Pat. No. 4,370,275 discloses catalyst comprising as the essential components, copper and/or copper ions, one or more anions selected from oxide anion, hydroxide anion and carbonate anion, halide ions, and one or more nitrogen bases. In case that a typical catalyst containing Cu(II)O, Cu(II)Cl2 and pyridine HCl was used, the methanol was converted into dialkyl carbonate to the extent of 7.7%.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,761,467 discloses catalyst system containing Cu(OMe)Cl as catalyst and a pyridine compound (for example, pyridine, 2,2′-diprimidyl, 4-methyoxypyridine, 2-(methylthio)pyridine, 4-(morpholino)pyridine, 4-(N-methylpiperazine) pyridine, 2-pyridyl-2′-pyrimidiyl, pentachloro-pyridine) as a ligand of the catalyst. U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,541 discloses a process for preparation of dialkyl carbonate by using a copper catalyst (for example, Cu(OMe)Cl and Cu(OMe)Br) and a co-solvent selected from cyclic ureas (for example dimethylethylene urea and/or dimethylpropylene urea). Chinese Patent No. 1333086A discloses a cuprous chloride complex as catalyst and nitrogen-containing compounds (such as pyridine, imidazole aminopyridine, polypyridine, 4-phenylpyridine, N-methyl-pyrrolidone) or nitrogen-containing polymer (such as polyethylene pyridine, polyethylene pyrrolidone) as a ligand of the catalyst. The previous processes using any of the above catalysts are still not satisfactory because of low yield and/or the problem of corrosion to the reactor due to using large amount of catalysts.

Process for preparation of dialkyl carbonate

China Petrochemical Development Corporation


An all-in-one bath mixer assembly has a water-flow controlling apparatus, a water-draining apparatus, an overflow pipe, a pulling rope, and a water plug apparatus. The water-flow controlling apparatus has a base, a cover, a controlling rod, and a swinging rod. The cover and the controlling rod are mounted on the base; the swinging rod is mounted around the controlling rod. The water-draining apparatus is mounted on the water-flow controlling apparatus and connects with the controlling rod. The overflow pipe is connected with the water-flow controlling apparatus. The pulling rope is fixed in the water-flow controlling apparatus and is connected with the swinging rod. The water plug apparatus is connected with the overflow pipe and the pulling rope. The water-flow controlling apparatus, the water-draining apparatus and the water plug apparatus are combined together as a single apparatus and provide multiple functions for easy and quick use and installation.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bathroom facility and more particularly to an all-in-one bath mixer pop-up waste and overflow assembly.
2. Description of Related Art
A conventional bathtub facility used in a bathtub usually has a faucet and a water plug. The faucet provides water controlling function and can control selection of hot or cold water coming out. The water plug blocks a drain of the bathtub to keep hot water stored inside of the bathtub. In addition, the bathtub further has an overflow outlet arranged in the bathtub. The overflow outlet is used for draining superfluous water from the bathtub. The faucet, the water plug and the overflow outlet usually are installed separately and are disposed around the bathtub, such that assembling, installing and operating these facilities are difficult and time-consuming.
To overcome the shortcomings of the conventional bathtub facility, the present invention provides an all-in-one bath mixer assembly to mitigate or obviate the aforementioned problems.

All-in-one bath mixer pop-up waste and overflow assembly


A circuit for horizontal deflection in television picture display devices is described, in which a capacitor for correcting the tangential error by means of an S-shaped distortion of the deflection current is arranged in series with the horizontal deflection coil. This capacitor includes a series arrangement of two sub-capacitors (4, 5) of corresponding capacitance, at least the capacitor (5) which is not directly connected to the horizontal deflection coil (1) having a dielectric which is dependent on the direct voltage, and the junction point (6) of these two capacitors (4, 5) conveys a variable direct voltage.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a circuit for horizontal deflection in television picture display devices, including a capacitor arranged in series with the horizontal deflection coil for correcting the tangential error by means of an S-shaped distortion of the deflection current, and to a picture display device including such a circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is known that the geometry of display tubes gives rise to a non-linear distortion of the scanning raster proximate to the beginning and the end of the horizontal scanning line. To correct this non-linearity, a capacitor is normally arranged in series with the horizontal deflection coils. This S correction capacitor used for correcting the tangential error is charged during a part of the horizontal deflection interval and is discharged during another part so that the horizontal deflection current is S-shape modified and the deflection is performed linearly.
In order to achieve a desired extent of S formation at different values, i.e. deflection frequencies, it is known (for example, from DE 34 19 930, corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,516,169) to connect a further capacitor optionally in series or in parallel with this S correction capacitor. Moreover, it is known from EP 0 146 345, corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,533,855, that an improvement of the S correction in display tubes having very large deflection angles or complex display screen shapes can be achieved by temporarily adding a further capacitor during the horizontal or vertical deflection. A drawback thereof is that a circuit should be additionally provided for connecting and disconnecting the further capacitor.

Television picture display device and circuit for horizontal deflection in such a television picture display device


The present invention relates to a composition and method for the detection of a detectable product formed from a compound of the present invention in the body of an individual. The detectable product may include a halide or a benzenetriol-based or benzenetetrol-based product of a dehalogenation reaction in the presence of FROS. In many embodiments, an indigo-like product formed from an indigogenic compound of the present invention may also be a detectable product for diagnostic purposes. This indigo-like product may have a higher residence time in tissues where it is formed, thus providing a detectable product localized to sites of high FROS. An indigogenic compound containing one or more radioactive isotopes is further provided for therapeutic purposes.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to compositions and methods for detecting elevated levels of oxidative species and/or free radicals in the body of an individual, which may be characteristic of inflammation and/or disease.
2. Related Art
The presence of elevated levels of free radicals and/or oxidative species (FROS) in the body of an individual may be an indicator of abnormal conditions or physiology that may be associated with injury, inflammation and/or disease. These reactive FROS can be detrimental and cause damage to cells and tissues, including genetic mutations, which may ultimately contribute to aging and disease. Immunological and inflammatory responses also generate FROS, which is partly utilized to fight infection. Thus, measuring the FROS load in the body of an individual, as well as specific sites of FROS generation, may provide useful information for diagnosis and treatment of an individual and serve as an indicator of inflammation and/or disease. Currently, C-reactive protein (CRP) is one approach used for measuring the level of inflammation in the body.
There is a need in the art for the development of new and improved techniques and compositions for the measurement and/or localization of high levels of FROS in the body of an individual, which may be associated with disease and/or inflammation.

Halogenated phenols for diagnostics, antioxidant protection and drug delivery


An oral care instrument, which can maintain a sufficient support strength of a long neck, leaves little residue of a medicant after using, has a low contamination risk from nozzle tip, allows smooth spouting of a medical solution from the beginning, prevents excessive supply of gelatinous or creamy oral-care composition in the case of flowing the composition in a supply channel inside the same, and contributes to the maintenance of the durability of a manufacturing mold. In the aforesaid oral care instrument, which comprises a handle (2), a head (3) and a neck (4), a channel (11) for supplying oral-care composition running within the neck (4) to a nozzle (10) of the head (3) via the handle (2), is formed; and the head (3) is connected in a detachable manner to the neck (4).

As an oral care instrument of this type, there is conventionally proposed an oral care instrument which includes washing solution supply means, and a long washing solution discharge tube attached to the washing solution supply means (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-167088). In this oral care instrument disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-167088, an elastic nozzle is provided at a distal end of the washing solution discharge tube, and the washing solution supply means is composed of a washing solution container having a pumping function. In addition, every time a pressing portion (button) provided on the washing solution container is pressed, the washing solution is ejected from a discharge orifice opened to a projecting end of the elastic nozzle provided at the distal end of the washing solution discharge tube through a discharge flow path in the washing solution discharge tube. Further, there is also proposed another oral care instrument which also includes washing solution supply means, and a washing solution discharge tube attached to the washing solution supply means (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-132099). The oral care instrument disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-132099 further includes a cleaning member, and a washing solution ejecting portion. The cleaning member is provided at a distal end of the washing solution discharge tube so as to be projected in the direction perpendicular to the axial direction of the washing solution discharge tube. The washing solution ejecting portion has a washing solution discharge orifice which communicates with a discharge flow path of the washing solution discharge tube, is opened to the external side with respect to a position in the vicinity of the base of the cleaning member, and ejects washing solution toward the projection of the cleaning member from the middle portion to the distal end thereof.
According to the oral care instrument disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2007-167088, the washing solution can be accurately ejected toward an interdental portion with less washing solution scattered, and food debris can be surely removed from the interdental portion with the washing solution for washing. According to the oral care instrument disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-132099, after dental plaque which cannot be removed with water flow only is removed with the cleaning member, the washing solution can be effectively supplied to deep portions through the cleaning member. This makes it possible to effectively sterilize and suppress inflammation of a tissue by supplying drug solution containing an antimicrobial agent, an anti-inflammatory agent, or the like to embrasures, gingival marginal portions, periodontal pockets, or the like.
However, in these conventional oral care instruments, components from the washing solution discharge tube to the nozzle portion ejecting the washing solution are integrally formed. Further, since the washing solution discharge tube is required to have strength enough to support forces received from the elastic nozzle or the cleaning member when used by a user, the washing solution discharge tube is required to have a certain size in diameter. Moreover, if the thickness of the washing solution discharge tube is decreased in consideration of the material cost, an internal space thereof is made larger to some extent. If the internal space is made larger as described above, there arise a problem that the drug solution is hard to be ejected at the start of use, and a problem that the amount of remaining drug after use is large and the risk of being contaminated from the distal end of the nozzle is increased. On the other hand, if the internal space is made too small, durability of a produced mold is made worse, and the following problem is caused. The problem is that when the gel or cream oral composition flows through the internal space of the washing solution discharge tube as a supply path, the oral composition transmitted to the supply path does not stop immediately even when the transmitting operation is stopped and thus an excess amount of the oral composition are ejected and wasted.


An apparatus and method for improving the execution speed of macro instructions which have an operand located in memory, and where the destination of the result is in memory. The apparatus includes an ALU Store which monitors micro instructions generated by a translator. When a macro instruction is fetched which has an operand located in memory, and the result is to be stored in the same location in memory, the translator generates a LOAD micro instruction followed immediately by an operation micro instruction which contains STORE indicia, such as a STORE suffix. The ALU Store latches the address created by the LOAD micro instruction, and uses this latched address in the following operation store micro instruction.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of instruction execution in computer systems, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for improving the performance of executing macro instructions having a result whose destination is in memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
A microprocessor is an integrated circuit that contains the entire central processing unit (CPU) of a computer on a single chip. It is the heart and brain inside every personal computer.
FIG. 1 illustrates the three major parts of a CPU 100. The register set 102 stores intermediate data used during execution of macro instructions. The arithmetic logic unit (ALU) 104 performs the required micro operations, or micro instructions, for executing the macro instructions. The control unit 106 supervises the transfer of information among the registers and instructs the ALU as to which operation to perform.
The CPU 100 is shown connected to a memory 108 via a bus 110. The memory 108 provides storage for programs to be executed on the CPU 100, as well as for the raw data that needs to be processed and the results of the processing. Also shown connected to the CPU 100 via the bus 110 is I/O control 112. The I/O control provides the physical interface between a user and the CPU 100.
The CPU 100 performs a variety of functions dictated by the type of macro instructions that are incorporated into the computer. Such macro instructions may include: data transfer instructions for moving data, addresses, and other operands into register or memory locations; arithmetic instructions (e.g., add, subtract, multiply, divide); branch instructions for controlling the sequence of instruction execution within the CPU 100; logic instructions (e.g., and, or, not, xor); and shift and rotate instructions. These instructions provide a language interface between a programmer and the CPU 100. They allow the programmer to command the CPU 100 to perform particular tasks, in a specified order. The type of instructions that may be executed on a particular CPU is termed the instruction set.
For convenience, instruction sets typically allow a programmer to define operations for execution on the CPU 100 at a higher level than is actually performed within the CPU 100. The instructions used by a programmer are thus called macro instructions. The macro instructions are retrieved by the CPU 100 from the memory 108, and are decoded by the control unit 106 into a sequence of micro instructions. The sequence of micro instructions are then provided to the ALU 104 for execution. The result of the execution may then be placed in either the register set 102, or may be stored in the memory 108.
One example of a macro instruction that may be written by a programmer is ADD [Mem],AX. This instruction tells the CPU 100 to take the data in a register AX 114 (within the register set 102), add the data to a value at memory location Mem 116 (within the memory 108), and store the result in the memory location Mem 116. While the instruction ADD [Mem],AX may be written as a single macro instruction by a programmer, the instruction must be decoded by the control unit 106 into a sequence of micro instructions for execution by the ALU 104. A micro instruction sequence that performs the operation requested by the macro instruction ADD [Mem],AX is shown below:
LOAD [Mem] PA1 ADD [Mem],AX PA1 STORE [Mem]
The above micro instruction sequence first loads the data that is stored in the memory 108, at location Mem 116, into a temporary register (not shown) within the register set 102 of the CPU 100. One skilled in the art is aware that the ALU 104 can operate only on data within the register set 102, and cannot perform direct operations on data outside of the CPU 100. The data in register AX 114 is then added to the data in the temporary register. The result of the addition is then transferred, or stored, back into the memory 108 at location Mem 116.
If it is assumed that each micro instruction within the CPU 100 requires a minimum of one clock cycle to execute, then from the above it should be clear that the CPU 100 would require at least three clock cycles to execute the ADD [Mem],AX instruction. In many processors that are manufactured today, more than three clock cycles would be required to execute the illustrative macro instruction because one or more of the micro instructions require more than one clock cycle to execute. As the number of micro instructions required to perform a macro instruction increase, and as the number of clock cycles required to perform each micro instruction increases, the time required to execute the macro instruction on the CPU 100 is increases.
The above illustration provides a general overview of the difference between macro instructions which are written by a programmer, and micro instructions which are executed within a microprocessor. More specifically, it is shown that a single macro instruction which has as one of its operands a location in memory generates a sequence of micro instructions which are executed within the microprocessor. Memory must first be accessed to load an operand, the operation must be performed, and memory must be accessed a second time to store the result. One skilled in the art should readily appreciate that this sequence of micro instructions is applicable, not just to an ADD instruction, but to many instructions that have an operand whose location is in memory, and where the destination of the result is also at the location in memory.

Combining ALU and memory storage micro instructions by using an address latch to maintain an address calculated by a first micro instruction


A tower adapter is provided, the tower adapter includes a cylindrical portion extending in a longitudinal direction of the adapter, and a first lateral portion extending perpendicularly to the cylindrical portion at a first end thereof and having a plurality of first through-holes. The ratio of a maximum longitudinal extension and a maximum lateral extension of the adapter is smaller than or equal to 1.

This invention relates generally to a tower adapter, a method of producing a tower foundation and a tower foundation. In particular but not limited thereto, the present invention relates to a tower adapter for a wind turbine tower, a method for producing a foundation of a wind turbine tower, and a foundation of a wind turbine tower.
Several technical installations require a tower or a mast to which the installation is mounted. Non-limiting examples of such installations are wind turbines, antenna towers used in broadcasting or mobile telecommunication, pylons used in bridge work, or power poles. Typically, the tower is made of steel and must be connected to a foundation made of reinforced concrete. In these cases, the typical technical solution is to provide a flange with through-holes at the bottom of the tower. Anchor bolts are inserted into the through-holes and are fastened with nuts. Typically, the anchor bolts are connected to an anchor ring embedded in the foundation. Normally, the concrete surface of the foundation is relatively rough so that a grout joint is formed on which the flange is placed.
However, the bottom part of the tower has to be placed on the grout joint before the grout has finally cured. Therefore, a certain curing time of the grout joint has to be awaited after installing the bottom section of the tower until further sections of the tower can be installed. Typically, the curing of the grout takes at least 24 hours but may take even longer according to the conditions at the construction site. During this curing time of the grout joint, no further work can be done on the particular tower construction site. For example, the bottom section of a wind turbine tower is relatively large, typically about 10 m to 20 m long, and accordingly also relatively heavy. Therefore, the bottom section has to be transported in a horizontal position, e.g. to comply with the maximum headroom of bridges. Furthermore, two mobile cranes have to be used for lifting such a bottom section in a vertical position and placing it on the grout joint. However, after placing the bottom section on the grout joint the two mobile cranes are of no particular use until the grout joint has finally cured and further tower sections can be installed. Since mobile cranes are very expensive, it is economically detrimental if they are idle for longer times. Since the construction sites of wind turbines are often remote, it is also often economically detrimental to relocate the mobile cranes for the curing time of the grout joint.

Tower adapter, method of producing a tower foundation and tower foundation


A bicycle support mechanism includes a shaft that is connectable to a frame of a bicycle. The shaft is in the form of a hollow tube and includes a top end and a bottom end. A support arm is telescopically deployable downward from the bottom end of the shaft. A friction wheel is rotatably supported by the shaft. The friction wheel extends from the top end of the shaft such that the friction wheel and is arranged to be in frictional contact with a bicycle wheel.

Two wheel vehicles such as bicycles can be equipped with a support stand to keep the vehicle upright when not in motion. There are situations, while riding a two wheeled vehicle, where the rider needs to use his/her legs to keep the vehicle upright, for example when stopped at a traffic light, when about to stop, when going very slow, etc. Therefore, use of two wheeled vehicles may be limited to people with the ability to use their legs to support the vehicle at very slow to no-speed conditions.
Further, the need to support a two wheel vehicle when moving slowly or stopped can pose a danger of a rider falling if a foot or feet are stuck in place. For example, a shoe lace can get tangled on a peddle shaft or a foot can get stuck in a toe clip, causing the rider along with the bicycle to fall to the ground. Physical limitations can also make it difficult or impossible to operate a kick stand.


A respiration moistener (1) has an inlet (3), into which incoming gas (2) to be moistened can be fed. Vapor (21) is mixed with the incoming gas (2) in a mixing chamber (4). Moistened outgoing gas (5) flows out of an outlet (6). In cases in which the temperature of the incoming gas (2) becomes so high that the temperature of the outgoing gas (5) is above a desired value, the internal desired value is adjusted. The outgoing gas (5) can then cool to the desired value on its way through the inspiration tube (7).

Such a device and such a process are known from DE 198 08 590 A1. The prior-art device is especially a respiration moistener. The prior-art respiration moistener has a breathing gas line with a gas inlet, into which the incoming gas to be moistened can be fed, and a gas outlet, from which the moistened breathing gas is removed. The device has, furthermore, an evaporating device, into which a liquid to be evaporated can be fed. The liquid fed is sent by a dispensing pump to an evaporator, which evaporates the liquid to be evaporated and which feeds the vapor generated into the breathing gas flowing in the breathing gas line. The evaporating device is connected to a control device, which sets the outlet temperature and the outlet moisture of the breathing gas flowing out of the gas outlet. The outlet temperature and the outlet moisture can be regulated independently from each other. The evaporating device may comprise, for example, a dispensing pump, which delivers a quantity of liquid proportional to the volume flow of the breathing gas through the breathing gas line to an evaporating unit. The outlet temperature of the outgoing gas can then be set independently from the fed quantity of liquid by regulating the temperature of the evaporating unit such that the vapor generated by the evaporator reaches a certain temperature and a mixture of breathing gas and vapor, which mixture has the desired outlet temperature, is obtained.
It should however be borne in mind, in this context, that the temperature of the vapor cannot be below the boiling point of the liquid. In addition, there are hygienic specifications, which require a vapor temperature above the boiling point of the liquid. This may cause the development of an excessively high outlet temperature at the gas outlet of the device when the inlet temperature assumes excessively high values. This may happen, for example, when the breathing gas is fed to the gas inlet of the respiration moistener by means of a fan or another pumping device.

Device and process for providing moistened breathing gas