A continuous fastener element including: a coupling head; upper and lower leg portions; and a connecting portion wherein surfaces of the coupling head, the leg portions, and the connecting portion are each formed as a rough surface with a plurality of recesses. Furthermore, a head surface of the coupling head of the continuous fastener element is formed to have an average roughness Ra smaller than that of outer peripheral surfaces of the leg portions. Accordingly, gloss and luster of the continuous fastener element may be easily reduced or removed. Furthermore, when the slide fastener is formed, the resistance between the coupling heads of the left and right continuous fastener elements may be made small and the left and right element rows may smoothly engage with each other or disengage from each other.

In general, a continuous fastener element having a coil shape or a zigzag shape and used in a slide fastener is manufactured in a manner such that a thermoplastic synthetic resinous material is extruded to mold linear monofilament, the obtained monofilament is molded in a coil shape or a zigzag shape, and a part of the monofilament is pressed at a constant interval to mold a coupling head.
Further, for example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 7-63411 (Patent Document 1) or the specification of Japanese Patent No. 3698562 (Patent Document 2) discloses a method or a device for manufacturing a coil-shaped continuous fastener element by molding synthetic resinous monofilament.
The device disclosed in Patent Document 1 includes a supply roller which normally supplies a constant amount of synthetic resinous monofilament, a stamp-molding portion which has a pair of molding rollers stamp-molding a coupling head or the like on the monofilament supplied from the supply roller, and a coil-shaped element molding portion including mandrel which molds the stamp-molded monofilament into a coil-shaped continuous fastener element.
The supply roller in Patent Document 1 includes a supply pulley around which the monofilament is wound a number of times and supplies the monofilament to the stamp-molding portion, so that a constant amount of the monofilament may be normally supplied to the stamp-molding portion by the supply pulley.
For example, as shown in FIG. 8, a stamp-molding portion 50 includes a circular roller 51 and an annular roller 52 serving as the pair of molding rollers, and a recess-like tooth 54 is provided on an outer peripheral surface 53 of the circular roller 51 at a constant interval. Further, a protrusion-like tooth 56 is provided on an inner peripheral surface 55 of the annular roller 52 at a constant interval to correspond the position of the recess-like tooth 54 of the circular roller 51, whereby the stamp-molding process may be performed along with the circular roller 51. Furthermore, the circular roller 51 and the annular roller 52 are configured to revolve around a mandrel to be described later of the coil-shaped element molding portion while they rotate.
In the stamp-molding portion 50, the circular roller 51 and the annular roller 52 are rotated, and monofilament 57 supplied from the supply roller is guided to a gap between the outer peripheral surface 53 of the circular roller 51 and the inner peripheral surface 55 of the annular roller 52. Accordingly, the monofilament 57 is press-molded by the protrusion-like tooth 56 of the annular roller 52 and the recess-like tooth 54 of the circular roller 51, so that a coupling head or the like having a predetermined shape is formed on the monofilament 57.
The coil-shaped element molding portion includes a rod-like mandrel which is fixed to a mandrel holder, and the circular roller 51 and the annular roller 52 revolve around the mandrel while they rotate to wind the monofilament 57 having the coupling head molded thereon around the mandrel, so that the monofilament 57 is molded in a coil shape. Furthermore, a passage is provided in the mandrel in the longitudinal direction to allow a core thread to pass through.
Therefore, the monofilament 57 having the coupling head molded by the circular roller 51 and the annular roller 52 of the stamp-molding portion 50 is guided to the mandrel of the coil-shaped element molding portion, and the circular roller 51 and the annular roller 52 revolve around the mandrel, so that the monofilament 57 is wound around the mandrel to be molded in a coil shape. Also, the core thread is discharged from the front end of the mandrel through the passage provided inside the mandrel, so that the coil-shaped continuous fastener element having the core thread inserted therethrough is manufactured.
On the other hand, the device disclosed in Patent Document 2 includes a monofilament supply portion which supplies monofilament, a winding portion which has a mandrel and winds the monofilament around the mandrel to have a coil shape, and an element molding portion which molds a coupling head or the like to have a predetermined shape on the monofilament wound around the mandrel.
The monofilament supply portion includes a large spool around which the monofilament is wound, a flier which guides the monofilament unwound from the spool, and a guide roller which switches the carriage direction of the monofilament.
The winding portion includes a rotary body which has a monofilament guide hole, a rod-like mandrel, a core thread bobbin which supplies a core thread, and a core thread drawing body which draws out the core thread from the core thread bobbin. Further, a core thread guide groove is formed in the mandrel throughout the entire length thereof to guide the core thread in a sliding manner.
In the winding portion, the monofilament supplied from the monofilament supply portion is guided to the mandrel through the monofilament guide hole of the rotary body by rotating the rotary body, so that the monofilament is wound around the mandrel to mold the monofilament in a coil shape.
The element molding portion includes a pair of screws which is disposed with the mandrel of the winding portion interposed therebetween, upper and lower coupling head forming portions which are disposed with the mandrel interposed therebetween and form a coupling head on the monofilament molded in a coil shape, and an upper leg forming portion which bends a part of the monofilament formed as a continuous fastener element upper leg portion in a step shape.
Accordingly, the monofilament wound around the mandrel is carried forward in a coil shape with the rotation of the left and right screws. In accordance with the carriage, the coil-shaped monofilament first reaches the coupling head forming portion, and the coupling head forming portion press-molds the monofilament at a predetermined interval, so that a coupling head is formed on the monofilament.
Subsequently, the monofilament having the coupling head formed thereon is carried to the upper leg forming portion with the rotation of the left and right screws, and the monofilament is punched at a predetermined interval by the upper leg forming portion, so that a step portion is formed on a portion formed as the fastener element upper leg portion. Subsequently, the core thread discharged from the front end of the mandrel is inserted into the coil-shaped monofilament, so that a coil-shaped continuous fastener element is manufactured which has a step portion accommodating a sewing thread in the upper leg portion.
Incidentally, in the slide fastener having the coil-shaped continuous fastener element, a lubricating material is applied to the outer peripheral surface of the continuous fastener element in order to smoothly slide the slider along the element row or smoothly engage the left and right element rows with each other.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1-19888 (Patent Document 3) discloses a configuration in which minute grooves or recesses are formed on the entire outer peripheral surface (the surface) of the continuous fastener element when a lubricating material is applied to the outer peripheral surface of the continuous fastener element. Furthermore, Patent Document 3 discloses an example of a method of forming minute grooves or recesses on the outer peripheral surface of the continuous fastener element in a manner such that minute uneven portions are formed on an opening of a nozzle extruding monofilament, the surface of the monofilament is rubbed by an abrasive member with minute particles, or a sand blasting process of blasting minute particles is performed.
In this manner, when minute grooves or recesses are formed on the outer peripheral surface of the continuous fastener element, the lubricating material applied to the continuous fastener element may be buried in the grooves or recesses, so that the lubricating material may be properly attached to the continuous fastener element.
For this reason, for example, when the slide fastener having the continuous fastener element is cleaned, it is possible to prevent the lubricating material from being separated from the continuous fastener element even when an external force is exerted on the lubricating material applied to the continuous fastener element during the cleaning or the like or an external force is exerted on the lubricating material due to the contact between the coupling heads of the left and right continuous fastener elements or the contact between the continuous fastener element and the slider when the slide fastener is opened or closed. Therefore, even when the slide fastener is repeatedly cleaned or the slider is repeatedly opened or closed, it is possible to sustain the effect of the lubricating material and smoothly perform the sliding action of the slider or the engaging action of the element rows for a long period of time.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-160667 (Patent Document 4) discloses a configuration in which a plurality of independent fastener elements are fixed to a fastener tape by injection-molding even the fastener tape using, for example, a synthetic resin, wherein minute uneven portions are formed on the outer surface of each of the independent fastener elements, so that the outer peripheral surface is finished into a pearskin of which a ten-point average roughness is from 0.8 to 200 μm.
In Patent Document 4, the method of forming the uneven portions on the outer surfaces of the independent fastener elements is not particularly limited. However, for example, a method is disclosed in which uneven portions are formed on a cavity surface of a mold used for injection-molding to form minute uneven portions on the outer surfaces of the independent fastener elements.
Then, according to Patent Document 4, since the outer surface of the independent fastener element is finished into the pearskin, light is irregularly reflected from the pearskin surface. For this reason, the slide fastener having the fastener element is dyed in the same bath to decrease a difference in the brightness between the fastener element and the fastener tape, so that the fastener element and the fastener tape have the same color tone.
Furthermore, in Patent Document 4, the shape of the slide fastener is not particularly limited, and there is a description that a coil-shaped continuous fastener element molded from monofilament may be used as the fastener element in addition to the independent fastener element formed by the above-described injection molding.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 7-63411
Patent Document 2: Specification of Patent No. 3698562
Patent Document 3: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1-19888
Patent Document 4: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-160667

Method of manufacturing continuous fastener element


An apparatus and method for splitting and controlling optical powers provided by an input fiber and received by a plurality of output fibers comprises: (a) providing a first collimated beam from the input fiber using a first lens; (b) splitting the first collimated beam into a plurality of separated collimated beams having different directions using a collimated beam splitting device; (c) controlling area of each separated collimated beam by moving the collimated beam splitting device on a plane perpendicular to the first collimated beam; and (d) focusing the plurality of separated collimated beams using a second lens and coupling the focused beams into the plurality of output fibers, respectively.

Optical power splitter is a component widely-used in optical communication networks to provide a variety of applications such as optical signal routing and optical power allocation. With advance of agile optical networks, a variable optical power splitter (VOPS) becomes imperative to improve network scalability and flexibility. The VOPS can be regarded as the combination of an optical switch and a variable optical attenuator, and thus possesses the functions of both components. In long-haul and metropolitan networks, the VOPS can be employed as an optical switch to provide optical line protection of the networks or an optical coupler to provide optical signal performance monitoring. While in access networks such as passive optical networks, the VOPS can be deployed between optical line terminal and optical network units (ONUs) to distribute optical powers to each ONU dynamically by changing the power splitting ratio. Similarly, the VOPS can also be incorporated into an ONU to allocate optical powers among its connected end users according to their actual distance from the ONU.
A few schemes have been proposed to develop the VOPS, based on either waveguide or crystal technologies. The waveguide technologies employ a directional coupler as the key component. The variable power splitting ratio between the output ports of the coupler is achieved by changing the coupling length or separation of waveguides. However, the coupling length is dependent on the signal wavelength and therefore it is not suitable for broadband application. On the other hand, the separation of the waveguides requires precise mechanics and thus makes the VOPS rather costly.
The crystal-based VOPS can be based on solid-state crystal or liquid crystal. The solid-state crystal-based VOPS makes use of the electro-optic and/or acousto-optic effects of the crystals to achieve light modulation and power splitting. Similar to the aforementioned directional coupler, the resonance conditions in crystals rely on the signal wavelength therefore the VOPS can only be operated in a narrow wavelength range.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,740,288 discloses a variable polarization beam splitter made of a liquid crystal cell and a birefringence crystal. The liquid crystal cell functions as a polarization controller through which the signal power is allocated dynamically between two orthogonal states of polarization. The two orthogonal states of polarization are then split spatially by the birefringence crystal. In U.S. Pat. No. 7,113,279, a polarization diversity scheme is incorporated into a liquid-crystal-based VOPS. The power splitting ratio of the VOPS is no longer dependent on the state of the polarization of the input signal, at the expense of extra polarizing beam splitter and combiner. Moreover, the performance of liquid crystal is temperature dependent therefore the VOPS will suffer from the variation of ambient temperature. Additional temperature controller or stabilizer may be used. Nevertheless, they will increase the cost accordingly. Accordingly, low cost, temperature independent, broadband VOPSs are desired.
Corresponding reference characters indicate corresponding components throughout the several views of the drawings. Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention.


A memory cell (32C), including a first non-insulator (34C) and a second non-insulator (40C), different from the first non-insulator. The second non-insulator forms a junction (46C) with the first non-insulator. The cell further includes a first electrode (48C) which is connected to the first non-insulator and a second electrode (50C) which is connected to the second non-insulator. At least one of the first and second non-insulators is chosen from a group consisting of a solid electrolyte and a mixed ionic electronic conductor and has an ionic transference number less than 1 and greater than or equal to 0.5.

A number of different memory systems are known in the art. However, known technological and scaling limitations of the memories based on existing technologies, such as flash memories, generate problems for the microelectronics industry. The problems are compounded for the memory industries.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that to the extent any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with the definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.

TECHNION RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION


A shaving aid composition is provided that includes an organic polyhalogenic agent that both promotes post application foaming and increases lubricity. The shaving aid is optionally used to deliver one or more therapeutics to the skin of a subject and is therefore operable to prevent or treat a skin condition.

Shaving commonly results in irritation to the site of razor drag. This irritation is worsened by use of dull razor blades commonly causing a user to press the blade harder to the skin. Shaving creams are designed to provide a soothing affect by adding moisture to the shaved area and lubricate the interface between the blades and the skin.
Of the three types of shaving creams, lathering creams are the most common. The lathering properties of these shaving creams are formed by mixing 1 part stearic acid to 3 parts oil such as coconut oil. Fatty acid saponification is typically achieved by also combining sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide yielding glycerol and a soap. As much as 30% to 50% of the shaving cream composition may be soap.
The conventional shaving creams tend to have relatively high pH values that can produce skin irritation. The non-lathering shaving creams or gels are simple oil-water emulsions that provide lower pH due to the absence of metal hydroxides. The non-lathering properties, however, typically fail to provide the depth and appearance of the foaming creams which in turn decreases identifiability of yet to be shaved regions.
Finally, post foaming gels produce foam upon gentle agitation after or during application to the skin. Prior art post foaming gels are typically simple aqueous dispersions. The foaming action is due to vaporization of aliphatic hydrocarbons during application. Storage of these aliphatic hydrocarbon requiring post-foaming gels requires pressurization to prevent volatilizing the aliphatic hydrocarbons.
The use of volatile hydrocarbons to promote foaming in post-foaming gels and other shaving creams reduces the lubricity of the final product on the skin. In addition, these foaming aids are linked to global warming. Thus, there is a need for a foaming shaving cream that does not require hydrocarbons for foaming and provides improved lubricity.


An improved support pad apparatus for distribution of weight loads and enabling the worker greater stability and balanced footing upon an underlying generally level or sloped surface includes a base platform having a top surface and a bottom surface, and one or more cleat members attached to or integrally formed within the top surface, and one or more cross members disposed in spaced relation across and formed integrally within or attached to the top surface. Also provided are riser members detachably connected to and conforming to the shape of the cross members to give additional height and surface area to the sides of the cross members to enable improved and more stable footing for the worker. A resilient pad is attached to the bottom surface for conforming to the contours of the underlying surface and distributing weight loads. A cover platform with reinforcing support rib members is provided for overlaying the base platform to convert the base platform for use on level underlying surfaces.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the building construction and related trades and, more particularly, to an improved convertible support pad apparatus for ensuring the proper and safe distribution of weight loads and stable footing upon an underlying generally level or sloped working surface.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the building construction and related trades, it is important to provide the means for the construction worker to work safely and efficiently upon underlying sloped or generally level surfaces, such as, for example, inclined and flat roofs, and all types of terrain.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,104,575 B1 issued Jan. 31, 2012, to Bancroft, a support pad apparatus is provided for ensuring the proper distribution of weight loads comprising, for example, the gross weight of the construction worker, the worker's tools and/or equipment and construction materials, and stable and secure footing on a variety of surfaces, though usually while the worker is operating on moderately inclined and especially heavily sloped roof surfaces.
In the prior art, in addition to Bancroft, is U.S. Pat. No. 6,490,842 B2 issued Dec. 10, 2002 to Emmons, which is directed to a traction pad for use in roof-related repairs of a sloped roof. The device includes a traction pad for maneuvering on a roof and contains a base layer, a traction layer, and at least two traction cross members and two end members. The base and traction layers are preferably rectangular in shape. The bottom surface of the base layer engages the roof surface, with the traction layer attached to the top surface. At least two traction cross members are attached to the top surface across its length. The two end members are attached adjacent the ends of the two traction cross members. The top surface of the traction layer is typically covered with a paint containing sand to provide improved traction.
The Emmons invention has several drawbacks, as follows: the cross members, because their configuration is triangular, and more particularly because the shape of the apex of the triangle is too sharp, do not provide reliable footing when the traction pad is disposed upon underlying steep surfaces. Thus, the cross members are unsafe. Further, workers will most certainly find it uncomfortable and even painful to kneel down or sit upon the traction pad, particularly the apex of the cross members, when circumstances may require or compel them to do so. Also, the handle openings projecting from the top sides of the two end members, because they present a risk to the worker, who might trip or stumble over them, are inherently hazardous. The Emmons invention is also a relatively complicated apparatus requiring the assembly of at least seven separate components and twenty-five to thirty screws and bolts to secure all the connections.
Also a part of the prior art is U.S. App. Publication No. 2003/0037990 A1 directed to a pad providing protection, safety and stabilization to a worker on a sloped surface, which has the added benefit of protecting the sloped surface itself. The pad is flexible to effectively grip or attach itself to a sloped surface, and contains a multitude of indentations or footholds on the upper surface for engagement of the worker's shoes to provide stability.
The disadvantages of the prior art devices are numerous, as follows: none have the significant structural reinforcement that is embodied in the improved support pad apparatus of the present invention; and, none embodies the convertible or the several other important novel features of the present invention, all of which contribute to the improvement of the construction worker's footing and balance, when working on a variety of underlying surfaces. These include conventional sloped roofs, level surfaces or terrain, such as a flat roof, or surfaces consisting of exterior hardscape, sloped or level. Not until the conception and reduction to practice of the improved support pad apparatus herein has a device addressed these and so many other significant shortcomings prevalent in the prior art.


An image-forming lens set includes a first lens, a second lens, an aperture and a third lens arranged orderly from an objective side toward an image side in sequence. The first lens is made of plastic material and has a positive diopter and two opposite surfaces including a convex surface facing the image side. The second lens is made of plastic material and has a negative diopter and two opposite surfaces including a concave surface facing the image side. The third plastic lens is made of plastic material and has a positive diopter and two opposite surfaces including a convex surface facing the image side.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates image-forming lenses and more particularly, to an inexpensive image-forming lens set.
2. Description of the Related Art
Following fast development of multimedia technology, image-forming lenses have been intensively sued in a variety of mobile electronic products such as digital camera, mobile camera telephone, and etc., for picking up images. The cameras of these mobile electronic products commonly use a CCD (charge-coupled device) or a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) to obtain the image of the objective for storage or transmission to a remote side through a personal computer or cellular telephone.
Following the heavy demand for high-tech products, the quality requirement becomes more critical. Further, in order to survive in the market and to attract consumers to buy, it is quite important to reduce the size of high-tech products for mobility and to lower their cost while maintaining the product quality. The fabrication of image-forming lens sets encounters the same market challenge.


Methods and apparatus to flush residual used oil from the lubrication system of an engine during an oil change. The method includes draining used oil from a tank of the lubrication system and then adding fresh oil to the tank. An adaptor or fitting is used to provide an outlet in the lubrication system to flush any residual used oil that may not have been drained along with used oil in the oil tank. The engine may be started such that a scavenging pump of a lubrication system pumps residual used oil out of the system through the outlet. Once a user observes that residual used oil has been substantially flushed from the system, the engine is stopped to terminate the flushing process.

Routine oil changes in internal combustion engines are known to prolong engine life by maintaining oil in a condition to better protect moving components of an engine. After extended use, engine oil is often broken down by exhaust gasses that escape the combustion chambers of an engine and then contact the engine oil. These gasses can cause the oil to break down from its original state and thus reduce the amount of protection the oil can offer to the engine.
It is known in the prior art to regularly change engine oil to remove used, broken down oil and replace it with fresh oil in order to protect an engine. In particular, it is known in the prior art to accomplish this by draining the oil from an oil tank and/or pan, refilling the oil tank and/or pan, and replacing the oil filter. However, this method can leave residual used oil in various portions of a lubrication system that are not readily drained. Such used oil can then mix with fresh oil that has been refilled into the engine. Mixing of the used oil with the fresh oil can cause the fresh oil to break down faster than it would otherwise. This mixing can also alter the characteristics of the fresh oil and thus reduce the amount of protection that the fresh oil can provide to the engine.
Many internal combustion engines have either a wet sump lubrication system or a dry sump lubrication system to circulate oil to various components in the engine for lubrication and cooling. A wet sump engine may have an oil pan located near a lower most portion of the engine for collecting and retaining the oil that is circulated throughout the engine during operation. An oil pump is used to draw oil from the oil pan and direct it through internal passageways within the engine, typically including passageways in the engine block and the cylinder head. These passageways deliver the oil to locations in the engine that require lubrication and/or cooling. For example, oil may be delivered to the pistons, valves, bearings, gears, and other components having parts that move relative to one another requiring lubrication and/or cooling. Once the oil has been delivered to these components it is returned, typically by gravity, back to the oil pan for recirculation throughout the engine.
Dry sump lubrication systems differ from wet sump systems in that much of the oil is retained in an oil tank that is remote from the oil pan and may even be remote from the engine itself. In these systems, oil is drawn from the oil tank and is pumped through internal passageways of the engine by a primary oil pump to reach the components that may require cooling or lubrication. Like in wet sump systems, the oil may be allowed to return to the oil pan, via gravity, once it has lubricated or cooled the appropriate component. However, an additional oil pump, often called a scavenging pump, draws the engine from the oil pan and delivers it back to the oil tank for subsequent recirculation by the primary oil pump. In this manner, a minimal amount of oil is retained in the oil pan or the 'dry sump'. In such dry sump systems, the oil may be filtered when it is passed from the oil pan to the oil tank. However, some dry sump engines may filter the oil between the primary oil pump and the passageways of the engine or at other points within the lubrication system in addition to, or in place of filtering the oil in between the dry sump and the oil tank.


Disclosed is a thermocouple assembly having a resilient mount; a buffer having a first side and a second side, with the buffer first side connecting with the resilient mount; an insulator having a first side and a second side, with the insulator first side connecting with the buffer second side; and a thermocouple having a first side and a second side, the thermocouple first side connecting with the insulator second side, and the thermocouple second side being configured to be in thermal contact with an object to be measured.

Thermocouples are conventionally used for measuring surface temperature of pipes, tanks and other cylindrical objects, including brazing or welding a thermocouple into a recess of a component wall. However, as applications often prohibit machining a recess into a component wall (e.g., a process pressure boundary) for housing/receiving the thermocouple structure. In other instances, modifying a component surface to position the thermocouple affects the operating temperatures themselves.
Structures for measuring surface temperature without altering the component include but are not limited to (1) spring loaded bayonet thermocouples, (2) hose clamping thermocouples to the surface, (3) attaching mineral insulated (MI) thermocouples to tabs which confine the thermocouple and clamp to an object's surface, and (4) an RdF Strapon® design which utilizes thermocouple wire in a sandwiched assembly of shim stock, Kapton®, and adhesive.
These structures also have drawbacks limiting the accuracy of the surface temperature measurement. Spring loaded bayonet thermocouples, for example, often provide inaccurate and or unstable temperature measurements due to limited sensor thermal contact area, thermal shunting (heat transfer along the probe's length), and instability of the thermocouple-to-surface contact pressure. Bayonet thermocouples are also often attached by simple hose clamps whose thermal expansion which, if different from thermal expansion of object being sensed, can cause the hose clamp to loosen and thereby compromise the magnitude and stability of the thermocouples contact pressure which affects detected temperature.
Hose clamping thermocouples to the component being measured is often only effective for one thermal cycle. After one thermal cycle, dissimilar thermal expansion of the hose clamp and the component surface may cause the hose clamp to loosen, resulting in loss of thermocouple contact pressure. With a loss of thermocouple pressure comes the potential for physical dislocation of the thermocouple from its original intended measurement location and changes to its thermal contact resistance, resulting in decreased temperature measurement accuracy.
Sheathed mineral insulated thermocouples typically have a cylindrical shape, with measured temperature being affected by thermocouple surfaces near the sensing tip. When used to measure the temperature of a relatively flat surface, the different geometries of the cylindrical sensing tip and the flat surface can compromise accuracy. In such cases, temperature measurements can be compromised by contact with or exposure to external objects or conditions such as the surrounding air temperature, and/or by heat drawn away from the thermocouple sensing region (referred to as thermal shunting) by the instrumentation mounting hardware.
The impact of these issues may be reduced by increasing thermocouple contact with the sensed surface and limiting its exposure to other objects or conditions. One way to achieve this is by applying a capacitance discharge spot welded sheet metal attachment to the object being sensed and by insulating the thermocouple from ambient air. While this configuration provides measurements more indicative of actual surface temperature, it too has drawbacks. The installation requires extensive surface preparation, for example, requiring spot welding on the surface of an object to be measured and increased installation time over alternative mechanical attachment methods.
Other configurations attempt to overcome these and other drawbacks by using an RdF Corp Strapon® shim stock type thermocouple. These configurations use Kapton® as an insulting material, with adhesives holding the assembly together that are limited to thermal environments below 450° F. Their fastening mechanisms also lack any spring function to accommodate dissimilar thermal expansion, preventing them from maintaining a continuous contact pressure on an object to be measured. Accordingly a need exists for apparatuses for repeatable, high quality temperature measurement data with long-term reliable performance demonstrated over multiple thermal cycles.


A monitoring apparatus including a loudspeaker, a photographic camera that photographs image information on a photographic subject, a proximity sensor, and a monitoring control unit is disposed at a first remote location. An autonomous operation controller including an autonomous operation control unit is disposed at a second remote location remote from the first remote location. Under remote control of this autonomous remote controller, the monitoring apparatus performs photographing of the image information on the photographic subject and acquires the image information.

A conventional method of acquiring image information of a remote location is to setup a camera on the spot and transfer the image information taken via a wired or a wireless scheme. The method of transferring the image information taken via the wired or the wireless scheme to acquire the image information of the remote location is referred to as "a remote technique", "a monitoring technique", "an Internet technique", or "a long-time monitoring technique" (hereafter, "autonomous operation control system", generically in this specification).
Specifically, as an image information transmitting method by the autonomous operation control system, a method of transferring images at intervals of constant cycles from a camera ("a monitoring camera method or an ftp method"), a method of allowing a user (an operator) to operate a photographic camera at a remote location, and transmitting a photographed image ("a remote control method or a web camera method"), a crime prevention apparatus-based method of transmitting a photographed image by mounting a computer on a photographic camera side on the site, making a determination based on information from a sensor and the like on the site, and performing automatic photographing, and the like have been conventionally adopted. Furthermore, as the autonomous operation control system of this type, a monitoring system using photographic images photographed by a monitoring camera is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-078921.
However, the technique based on the autonomous operation control system using the image information acquired by the camera as explained above has following disadvantages. As the conventional photographic camera, an ordinary monitoring camera is used. Since this monitoring camera is constituted by adding only a microphone or a proximity sensor to a function of the monitoring camera, the camera basically functions merely as the monitoring camera.
Some monitoring cameras additionally include a temperature sensor that measures a temperature or an external sensor having another function. However, if a monitoring target (the photographic subject) is, for example, a weather observation apparatus, the camera is disadvantageously insufficient in the number of elements that the camera can measure and in measurement accuracy.
With a control method (photographing method) based on the conventional autonomous operation control system, it is difficult to appropriately grasp the photographic subject and, therefore, disadvantageously difficult to realize automation. In addition, if the operator or the like is responsible for all operations relating to photographing and the number of photographic subjects and the number of locations at which the photographic cameras are disposed increase, a heavy burden is disadvantageously cast on the operator.
Furthermore, to prevent the autonomous operation control system from malfunctioning, it is necessary that a monitoring apparatus that constitutes the photographic camera that actually perform photographing has an autonomous control function. To do so, it is necessary to incorporate a complicated and large-capacity program into firmware, and to also incorporate high-specification hardware necessary to execute the program into the firmware. This results in a disadvantageous and considerable increase in a cost of the monitoring apparatus. In addition, the more complicated the program is, the more so-called program bugs occur, resulting in lots of operations and labor required to perform debugging.
Moreover, if photographing is constantly continued so as to prevent photographic defect in a weather condition such as rain, unnecessary image information is then increased, and a cost of an image storage apparatus that constitutes the autonomous operation control system and a cost of a communication line are disadvantageously incurred. Furthermore, although it is necessary to dispose photographic cameras or monitoring cameras for photographing the photographic subject, it is disadvantageously difficult to dispose many monitoring cameras in a wide area such as a farm land in terms of cost. In addition, it is considerably difficult to secure communication lines following installation of the monitoring cameras in terms of both cost and technique.
The present invention has been achieved in order to solve the conventional problems. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an autonomous operation control system that can photograph image information or the like using a monitoring apparatus, and that can operate photographing of the image information or the like performed by the monitoring apparatus and acquire the image information from another remote location.

Incorporated Administrative Agency National Agricultural and Bio-Oriented Research Organization


Certain bridged and unbridged amido transition metal compounds of the Group IV-B metals are disclosed. These compounds may be used in a catalyst system comprising the amido transition metal compound and an alumoxane. Also disclosed is a process using the catalyst system for the production of high molecular weight polyolefins and, particularly, high molecular weight isotactic polypropylene.

The various compounds that are derived from the polymerization of .alpha.-olefins show huge differences in their chemical and physical properties. These differences reflect differences in molecular structure, some of which are inherent in the use of a particular monomer or monomer combination, and some of which result from a pattern, or lack thereof, in how the monomers are combined. It is inherent that polymers of .alpha.-olefins having 3 or more carbon atoms will have pendant hydocarbyl groups attached to the polymer backbone chain. However, the stereochemical arrangement of these hydrocarbyl groups is a consequence of the interaction of monomer, catalyst and coordinated polymer during polymerization. Any pendant hydrocarbyl group may be said to lie on one side of a plane defined by the carbon atoms of the polymer backbone in an idealized elongated configuration.
As previously alluded to, the physical properties exhibited by a particular olefin polymer of a particular molecular weight are determined in major part by the arrangement of these hydrocarbyl groups along the polymer backbone. Strong polymers tend to be stereochemically regular, meaning the adjacent hydrocarbyl groups reside on the same side of the polymer backbone or switch at fairly regular intervals. Either arrangement facilitates crystalization thus lending ridgidity and strength to the the solidified polymer.
Other critical determinants of the properties which a polymer will exhibit are the type and relative concentration of monomers and comonomers, the weight average molecular weight (M.sub.w) of the polymer molecules comprising the resin bulk, the molecular weight distribution (MWD) and the composition distribution of the resin. For end use applications which require high strength and low creep, the M.sub.w of such a resin must generally be in excess of 100,000.
Five types of stereoregularity, or tacticity, have been characterized: atactic, normal isotactic, isotactic stereoblock, syndiotactic, and hemiisotactic. Although all of these stereoregular configurations have been primarily demonstrated in the case of polypropylene, in theory each is equally possible for polymers comprised of any olefin, cyclic olefin or internal olefin, having 3 or more carbon atoms.
Atactic polyolefins are those wherein the hydrocarbyl groups pendent to the polymer molecule backbone assume no regular order in space with reference to the backbone. This random structure is represented by a polymer backbone of alternating methylene and methine carbons, with randomly oriented branches substituting the methine carbons. The methine carbons randomly have R and S configurations, creating adjacent pairs either of like configuration (a "meso" or "m" dyad) or of unlike configuration (a "racemic" or "r" dyad). The atactic form of a polymer contains approximately equal fractions of meso and racemic dyads. Since atactic polyolefins exhibit no regular order or repeating unit configurations in the polymer chain, they are amorphous materials. Atactic polyolefins exhibit little if any crystallinity, hence they are generally unsuitable for high strength applications regardless of the weight average molecular weight of the resin.
Isotactic polyolefins are those wherein the pendent hydrocarbyl groups are ordered in space to the same side or plane of the polymer backbone chain. Using isotactic polypropylene as an example, the isotactic structure is typically described as having the pendent methyl groups attached to the ternary carbon atoms of successive monomeric units on the same side of a hypothetical plane through the carbon backbone chain of the polymer, e.g., the methyl groups are all above or below the plane as shown below. ##STR1## The degree of isotactic regularity may be measured by NMR techniques. Bovey's NMR nomenclature for an isotactic pentad is . . . mmmm . . . with each "m" representing a "meso" dyad or successive methyl groups on the same side in the plane.
In the normal isotactic structure of a polyolefin, all of the monomer units have the same stereochemical configuration, with the exception of random errors which appear along the polymer. Such random errors almost always appear as isolated inversions of configuration which are corrected in the very next .alpha.-olefin monomer insertion to restore the original R or S configuration of the propagating polymer chain.
The formation of stereoblock isotactic polymer differs from the formation of the normal isotactic structure in the way that the propagation site reacts to a stereochemical error in the chain. As mentioned above, the normal isotactic chain will return to the original configuration following an error because the stereochemical regulator, the catalytic active metal species and its surrounding ligands, continues to dictate the same stereochemical preference during monomer insertion. In stereoblock propagation, the catalytically active metal site itself changes from one which dictates a monomer insertion of R configuration to one which dictates an S configuration for monomer insertion. The isotactic stereoblock form is shown below. ##STR2##
Long before anyone had discovered a catalyst system which produced the isotactic stereoblock form of a polyolefin, the possible existence of a polymer of such micro-structure had been recognized and mechanisms for its formation had been proposed based on conventional Ziegler-Natta mechanisms in Langer, A. W., Lect. Bienn. Polym. Symp. 7th (1974); Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 295, 110-126 (1977). The first example of this form of polypropylene and a catalyst which produces it in a pure form were reported in U.S. Pat. No. 4,522,982.
The lengths of individual blocks of the same configuration in the stereoblock structure vary widely due to changing reaction conditions. Since only the erroneous parts of the chains affect the crystallinity of the resin product, in general, normal isotactic polymers and isotactic stereoblock polymers of long block length (greater than 50 isotactic placements) have similar properties.
Highly isotactic polyolefins exhibit a high degree of crystallinity. Accordingly, isotactic polyolefins are, depending upon their weight average molecular weight exceeding about 100,000, well suited to high strength end use applications.
Syndiotactic polyolefins are those wherein the hydrocarbyl groups pendent to the polymer molecular backbone alternate sequentially in order from one side or plane to the opposite side or plane relative to the polymer backbone, as shown below. ##STR3## In NMR nomenclature, this segment, or pentad, is described as . . . rrrr . . . in which each r represents a "racemic" dyad, i.e., successive methyl groups on alternate sides of the plane. The percentage of r dyads in the chain determines the degree of syndiotacticity of the polymer. Highly syndiotactic polymers are generally highly crystalline and will frequently have high melting points similar to their isotactic polymorphs. Like isotactic polyolefins, syndiotactic polyolefins are capable of exhibiting a high degree of crystallinity, hence are suitable for high strength applications provided their M.sub.w exceeds about 100,000.
For any of the above described materials the final resin properties and its suitability for particular applications depend on the type of tacticity, the melting point, the average molecular weight, the molecular weight distribution, the type and level of monomer and comonomer, the sequence distribution, and the presence or absence of head or end group functionality. Accordingly, the catalyst system by which such a stereoregular polyolefin is to be produced should, desirably, be versatile in terms of M.sub.w, MWD, tacticity type and level, and comonomer choice. Further, the catalyst system should be capable of producing these polymers with or without head and/or end group functionality, such as olefinic unsaturation. Still further, such catalyst system must be capable, as a commercially practical constraint, of producing such resins at an acceptable production rate. Most preferably, the catalyst system should be one which, at its productivity rate, provides a resin product which does not require a subsequent treatment to remove catalyst residue to a level which is acceptable for the resin in the end use application desired. Finally, an important feature of a commercial catalyst system is its adaptability to a variety of processes and conditions.
Conventional titanium based Ziegler-Natta catalysts for the preparation of isotactic polymers are well known in the art. These commercial catalysts are well suited for the production of highly crystalline, high molecular weight materials. The systems are, however, limited in terms of molecular weight, molecular weight distribution, and tacticity control. The fact that the conventional catalysts contain several types of active sites further limits their ability to control the composition distribution in copolymerization.
More recently a new method of producing isotactic polymers from an alumoxane cocatalyzed, or activated, metallocene which in its natural state has chirality centered at the transition metal of the metallocene, was reported in Ewen, J. A., J. Amer. Chem. Soc., v. 106, p. 6355 (1984) and Kaminsky, W., et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Eng.; 24, 507-8 (1985).
Catalysts that produce isotactic polyolefins are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,096. This patent discloses a chiral, stereorigid metallocene catalyst which is activated by an alumoxane cocatalyst which is reported to polymerize olefins to isotactic polyolefin forms. Alumoxane cocatalyzed metallocene structures which have been reported to polymerize stereoregularly are the ethylene bridged bis-indenyl and bis-tetrahydroindenyl titanium and zirconium (IV) catalyst. Such catalyst systems were synthesized and studied in Wild et al., J. Organomet. Chem. 232, 233-47 (1982), and were later reported in Ewen and Kaminsky et al., mentioned above, to polymerize .alpha.-olefins stereoregularly. Further reported in West German Off DE 3443087Al (1986), but without giving experimental verification, is that the bridge length of such stereorigid metallocenes can vary from a C.sub.1 to C.sub.4 hydrocarbon and the metallocene rings can be simple or bi-cyclic but must be asymmetric. In contrast to the metallocene catalysts disclosed in U.S. U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,096 and West German Patent DE 3443087Al, certain species of this invention are capable of producing a highly isotactic polymer using an achiral catalyst.
The use of transition metal based catalysts having amido groups attached to the transition metal have received some attention in polymer research. A process for producing syndiotactic polystyrene using a tris-amido zirconium catalyst is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,301. As taught therein, the zirconium compound may be combined with an alumoxane to produce a polymerization catalyst. A syndiotactic polymer results when vinyl aromatic monomers, which have been known to yield syndiotactic polymers generally, are polymerized by a tris-amido zirconium-alumoxane catalyst.
In European Patent 349,886, titanium having bonded thereto a saturated alkyl-substituted amido group, is reported to yield an active catalyst in the presence of alumoxane. This catalyst system is capable of producing polyethylene copolymers having a high degree of structural randomness and narrow molecular weight distribution. Also reported in EP 349,886 are references to prior amide containing Group IV-B metal catalysts for the homopolymerization of ethylene, which, when applied to copolymerization, suffer from the various disadvantages of low molecular weight product, broad molecular weight distribution and low catalytic activity.
In view of the high strength and other physical properties that make stereoregular polymers desirable in applications for which other moldable plastics are ill suited and in view of the few methods currently available for producing stereoregular polymers, there is a need for a catalyst as disclosed hereinafter for producing high molecular weight, highly isotactic polymers. It is further desirable that such a catalyst have high activity so as to allow production of a polymer which is ready to be molded and/or machined for its ultimate use without treatment for removal of contaminants (catalyst residue). It is also desirable to obtain a catalyst that is useful for production of ethylene base polymers.

Amido transition metal compound and a catalyst system for the production of isotatic polypropylene


A plurality of channels each perform signal processing on a respective input signal. An operating device includes a plurality of channel strips, and each of the channel strips is associated with one of the plurality of channels and includes a multi-functional operator to which a desired parameter is assignable. A display control device performs control for displaying on a display screen a plurality of types of parameters related to the signal processing of one of the plurality of channels; and an assignment control device that, in response to any one type of parameter being selected from among the parameters displayed on the display screen, assigns the selected type of parameter to each of the multi-functional operators of the channel strips.

The embodiments of the present invention relate to a sound processing apparatus and method suited for use in an audio mixer and the like.
Generally, existing audio mixers (hereinafter referred to simply as "mixers") are constructed in such a manner that each of a plurality of channels performs sound characteristic adjustment processing on an input sound signal and outputs the thus-processed sound signal selectively to buses, and that each of the buses mixes the sound signals supplied from one or more of the channels and outputs the mixed result to an output destination. Existing digital mixers perform various signal processing, such as channel-specific sound characteristic adjustment processing and sound-signal-path setting processing, exclusively through digital signal processing on digital sound signals. Generally, in such mixers, values of all parameters to be used for such signal processing are stored in a memory.
A plurality of channel strips are provided on an operating panel of the digital mixer, and a human operator can use operators or manual operators, included in each of the channel strips, to adjust the values of the parameters for controlling the signal processing of the channel assigned to the channel strip. Examples of such parameters for controlling the signal processing of one channel include input gain, attenuator, frequency bands and gains of an equalizer, threshold and ratio of a compressor, fader level, bus-specific send levels, panning, channel on/off, and many others. However, if the digital mixer is constructed to include physical operators in one-to-one corresponding relation to these many parameters, not only the number of component parts of the mixer would become enormous, but also a casing of the mixer would increase in size. To avoid such inconveniences, some of the existing digital mixers include a multi-functional operator per channel strip such that a desired parameter is assignable to the multi-functional operator, so as to achieve a reduced number of component parts, reduced size of the casing, and the like.
One of such existing audio mixers, for example, may be configured such that a selection of a parameter to be assigned to the multi-functional operators is made, for example, via a channel strip screen displayed on a display. More specifically, the channel strip screen includes a plurality of channel strip images corresponding to a plurality of channel strips on a physical operating panel, and parameter images indicative of parameters of the channel assigned to the channel strip are displayed in each of the channel strip images. Once any one of the parameter images in any one of the channel strip images is selected on the channel strip screen, the parameter image corresponding to the selected parameter is placed in a selected state in all of the channel strip images, and the selected parameter is assigned to the multi-functional operators of all of the channel strips.


An image processor generates a Super-Resolution (SR) frame by upscaling. A Human Visual Preference Model (HVPM) helps detect random texture regions, where visual artifacts and errors are tolerated to allow for more image details, and immaculate regions having flat areas, corners, or regular structures, where details may be sacrificed to prevent annoying visual artifacts that seem to stand out more. A regularity or isotropic measurement is generated for each input pixel. More regular and less anisotropic regions are mapped as immaculate regions. Higher weights for blurring, smoothing, or blending from a single frame source are assigned for immaculate regions to reduce the likelihood of generated artifacts. In the random texture regions, multiple frames are used as sources for blending, and sharpening is increased to enhance details, but more artifacts are likely. These artifacts are more easily tolerated by humans in the random texture regions than in the regular-structure immaculate regions.

Super-resolution (SR) methods aim to generate new high-resolution (HR) information beyond the Nyquist frequency of an existing low-resolution (LR) image. SR methods are attracting great practical interest, especially for HDTV, UHDTV (4KTV and 8KTV), video communication, video surveillance, medical imaging, etc. For example, a HDTV image of 1080 lines and 1920 pixels per line may be converted to a UHDTV image of 2160 lines and 3840 pixels per line by expanding each HDTV pixel to four UHDTV pixels.
Super-resolution technologies can be classified into the classical multi-frame SR and single-frame SR. The multi-frame SR method recovers high frequency information from multiple frames of a video or a set of images with sub-pixel misalignment. Most of the approaches involve motion estimation method to recover these misalignments. Various blending and regularization methods such as IBP (iterative back-projection) and MAP (maximum a-posterior) have been used to make the reconstructed HR image consistent with the input LR image. Weights may be calculated using various cues such as a degree of similarity in patch matching, motion vector continuities, and the length of motion vectors for blending and regularization.
Since multi-frame SR methods need to capture, buffer, and manipulate multiple images or frames, the memory consumption and computational complexity are rather high. Moreover, although such SR schemes provide reasonably stable results up to a magnification factor of about 2, they are limited in the presence of noise and misregistration. These limitations and the undesirability of any resulting visual artifacts have led to the development of single-frame SR methods, which are also named example-based SR, learning-based SR, or "hallucination".
Typical example-based SR methods recover high-resolution (HR) information using one single-input low-resolution (LR) image. Two major modules are used, HR information recovery, and restoration. In the first module, the input LR image is first divided into many small LR patches that may overlap. For each LR patch, the first module searches its corresponding high-resolution examples in a pre-trained database of any other LR images and/or downsampled/upsampled LR images. Then, the resulting HR patches are used to reconstruct an enlarged image, typically using a blending and weighting process. There is also an approach of selecting patches instead of searching to reduce the computational complexity. In the second module, post-processing such as Iterative Back-Projection (IBP) is used to keep the consistency between the reconstructed HR image and the input LR image, using some assumptions such as an image formation model. There are also some other single-frame SR approaches using other technologies, such as a FFT-based iterative deblur method.
Some approaches use techniques from both the "classic SR" (i.e. multi-frame SR) and example-based SR (i.e. single-frame SR). For example, patch examples may be searched from both a downsampled input LR image and the LR image itself. A hybrid SR approach may extending the search in the current LR image to multiple frames in a video.
Super-resolution has many possible solutions. Many of the existing SR approaches employ optimization methods such as MAP (Maximum a-Posterior), ML (Maximum Likelihood) and IBP (Iterative Back-Projection) to regularize the reconstruction image to be consistent with the input LR image while balancing the sharpness and the artifacts. These approaches are based on certain objective criteria such as Mean Square Error (MSE).
A Human Visual System (HVS) model attempts to model a human's visual preferences, which may be somewhat subjective. HVS has different preferences and sensitivity to image details and artifacts in different local regions. For example, noise and artifacts in the random texture region are less visible for HVS than those in a regular structure region. Humans may immediate notice an artifact or error which seems out of place in an otherwise regular structure, such as a checkerboard, but the same artifact in a random region may not be very noticeable. Thus the same size artifact may be quite irritating to the user when located in a regular structure, but may be invisible when in a random region of the picture.
The HVS model mimics this human preference by permitting more detail information (and a greater chance of artifacts or errors) in a random-texture region than in regular structure regions. Prior art SR methods that ignore the HVM may not create an optimal high-resolution image in terms of a viewer's visual experience.
The HVS model is used to predict the perceptual characteristics of people and has been intensively researched for decades. The HVS models such perceptions as visual attention, foveation, color perception, stereo perception and Just Noticeable Distortion (JND) which has solid support from biological and psychological experiments. Among these models, the JND model is widely used in image processing. The JND model outputs a threshold that represents the limitations of a person's HVS in perceiving small changes in an image. If the noise, artifacts or detail changes in an image are smaller than the JND threshold, they cannot be perceived by the visual system of human being. In practice, these image distortions can be ignored in image processing.
The JND model is usually formulated based on the luminance adaptation, contrast masking, and color masking characteristics of the HVS in a spatial or transformed domain. In the most recent research, the impacts of different textures and temporal variations are also considered.
Some approaches use the JND model to reduce the computational complexity or to select different processing methods used in image upscaling and SR. A JND model that considers luminance adaption and contrast masking may be used to terminate MAP iterations, so that the computation of the SR can be reduced. While useful, prior art approaches considered only a part of HVS characteristics in optimizing the SR reconstruction.
What is desired is an image converter that can generate Super-Resolution images. An image converter can upscale images to a higher resolution is desired. Super-Resolution images that better fit a human's visual experience is desirable. In particular, using both single-frame and multi-frame information is desirable. It is desired to suppress artifacts in regular structures while allowing artifacts and more detail in random structures within a picture. It is desired to identify immaculate regions that are generated to have less detail and fewer resulting artifacts, and detail-preferred regions that are allowed to have artifacts in the SR image.

Visual-experience-optimized super-resolution frame generator

Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute Company, Limited


Embodiments of a color video coding and decoding scheme are disclosed. In one embodiment, an efficient color coding scheme for color video using three dimensional (3-D) discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) employing correlation among different color components is described. At least one of the color components is coded, and an adjustment to at least some of the remaining color components relative to the coded color component are then coded. This adjustment comprises a partial error adjustment based at least in part on a ratio of color components intensities. Other embodiments, for instance for decoding, are described and claimed.

This disclosure is related to color video and/or image coding.
Color images and/or videos are usually visually appealing and have been found at times to convey more information than gray scale images or video. Therefore, efficient color image and/or video compression schemes are desirable. One issue in coding video, for example, including color video, is motion estimation. Motion estimation is typically computationally intensive and may also affect the amount of compression achieved.


A method and system for facilitating collaboration between two groups without impairing or affecting the structure of the two groups is provided.

Social networking sites, such as FACEBOOK, NING, and MYSPACE, do not allow two groups to collaborate in a manner similar to the way groups would collaborate in a non-electronic manner. For instance, groups cannot enter into a distinct collaboration group without fundamentally modifying the constituent groups. The existing paradigm for online collaboration only creates a semblance of collaboration by simply adding users of one group to another group. The result is merely an expansion of one or both groups rather than a focused collaboration that runs parallel to its constituent groups.
The current paradigm as described above exhibits several drawbacks: Problem 1—The addition of users from one group into the other merely expands membership of a group, but does not create a dedicated group focused on a particular collaboration. Problem 2—The addition of new users to an existing group for the sake of a particular collaboration (rather than to be a part of the broader activities of that group) fundamentally alters and arguably dilutes the original group. Problem 3—Adding outside parties to a group is often inappropriate where group membership in the online group is based on real world relationships. For example, a high school classroom would not allow individuals who are not part of the real world class to join the virtual world classroom group for the sake of collaborating with them. Even two classrooms in the same school that want to collaborate on a project would most likely not choose to simply become a single, larger class.

Dynamic collaboration in social networking environment


A method for cleaning rolling stock (5) during cold rolling of the rolling stock (5) in a tandem mill (1) which includes a plurality of mill stands (7, 9). The rolling stock (5) is moved through the tandem mill (1) in a direction of movement (3) and a cleaning liquid (26) is sprayed onto the rolling stock (5) between two roll stands (7, 9) in a spraying direction having a component opposite to that of the direction of movement (3).

The invention relates to a method for cleaning a workpiece during cold rolling of the workpiece.
During cold rolling of a workpiece, the workpiece, which is generally a metal strip, normally undergoes multiple deformations, wherein each deformation reduces the thickness of the workpiece. The deformations are carried out, for example, in a so-called tandem mill wherein the workpiece is moved in one direction of rolling through a plurality of mill stands arranged in tandem along the direction of rolling and each mill stand produces a deformation. Alternatively or in addition, in so-called reversing rolling, the workpiece is moved alternately in opposite directions of rolling through the same mill stand in a plurality of rolling passes, wherein deformation of the workpiece is produced in each pass.
A mill stand generally has two work rolls disposed one above the other which are separated by a roll gap through which the workpiece is passed. To reduce friction between the workpiece and the work rolls, a rolling emulsion is applied to the workpiece and/or to the work rolls. A rolling emulsion generally contains water, rolling oil and an emulsifier in order to make the rolling oil miscible with the water. An emulsion may additionally contain other components, e.g. at least one antioxidant, a wear protection additive and/or a corrosion protection additive.
During cold rolling, metal particles are abraded from the workpiece and from the work rolls. In addition, emulsion residues, particularly rolling oil, continue to adhere to the workpiece. The abraded metal particles and emulsion residues contaminate the surface of the cold-rolled workpiece and adversely affect its surface quality. To reduce such impurities, it is attempted, for example, to minimize the contamination of the surface of the workpiece in the cold rolling plant e.g. by keeping the equipment clean, appropriate maintenance or having a low oil concentration in the emulsion. The workpiece is also cleaned, for example, after cold rolling. The cleaning is effected by mechanical means (e.g. by brushing), in combination with a fluid or chemically.
DD 282 632 A5 discloses a device for cleaning cold-rolled strip as it exits the roll gap. The device is in the form of a retaining plate on which V-shaped mechanical scrapers are mounted and which additionally incorporates holes for the application of cleaning agent to the workpiece. A mechanical scraping device is by its nature subject to wear. In addition, hard particles that may have entered the scraping device can scratch the surface of the workpiece.
DE 30 28 285 A1 discloses a method for cleaning metal strips during cold rolling, wherein a cleaning solution is sprayed onto the upper and lower surface of the metal strip immediately before and after the last rolling operation. However, if the workpiece is only cleaned before and after the last rolling operation, metal particles that have already been firmly rolled into the surface of the workpiece prior to the last rolling operation can either no longer be removed at all or can only be removed with great effort from the surface of the workpiece.

Cleaning rolling stock during cold rolling of the rolling stock


A method for producing a rotationally symmetrical body from a molding material, such as a molten metal, which comprises atomizing the molding material in liquid form through a spraying nozzle that is disposed relative to a spray receiving the sprayed molding material on an initial position of said surface, forming a level of liquid molding material on said spray receiving surface and molding material, forming a controllably rotating body of said liquid molding material while it is solidifying, said solidifying rotating body having a diameter, drawing the so-formed body downwardly from said initial position while continuing its rotation, continuously forming said body at said initial position, monitoring the diameter values of the rotating body at a plane adjacent to said initial position, and controlling said rotation by said diameter values.

The present invention is an improvement of the process and apparatus described in German patent publication No. 3,916,115 A1.
In the known methods of forming rotationally symmetrical bodies by drawing from a pool of liquid molding material, disturbances can occur due to solidification of some metal droplets on the spraying orifice, wear, spalling of refractory material at the outlet of the molten metal melt container, or any other change in operating characteristics from melt to melt. These affect the consistency of flow of sprayed molding material in the process. Such a change in the consistency of flow of material can detrimentally affect the geometry of the product being formed.
Therefore, it is the object of the present invention to improve the known process and apparatus, and thus improving the dimensional stability of the diameter the formed product.

Process and apparatus for producing rotationally symmetrical bodies


Systems and methods for providing accelerated transmission of broadcast data, such as financial data and news feeds, over a communication channel using data compression and decompression to provide secure transmission and transparent multiplication of communication bandwidth, as well as reduce the latency associated with data transmission of conventional systems.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to systems and method for providing data transmission, and in particular, to systems and method for providing accelerated transmission of data, such as financial data and news feeds, over a communication channel using data compression and decompression to provide secure data transfer and effectively increase the bandwidth of the communication channel and/or reduce the latency of data transmission.
2. Description of Related Art:
The financial information services industry covers a broad range of financial information ranging from basic stock quotations to analyst reports to detailed pricing of callable bonds. Users of financial information can generally be divided into two segments—Information users and Analytics users. Information users range from non-finance business professionals to curious stock market investors and tend to seek basic financial information and data. Analytical users on the other hand, tend to be finance professionals who require more arcane financial information and utilize sophisticated analytical tools to manipulate and analyze data (e.g. for writing option contracts).
Historically, proprietary systems, such as Bloomberg, Reuters and Bridge Information, have been the primary electronic source for financial information to both the informational and analytical users. These closed systems required dedicated telecommunications lines and product-specific hardware. The most typical installations are land-based networking solutions such as T1 or ISDN, and satellite-based "wireless" solutions at speeds of 384 kbps.
Latency of financial data and news is critical to the execution of financial transactions. Indeed the more timely receipt of financial data from various sources including the New York Stock Exchange, American Stock Exchange, National Association of Securities Dealers (NASDAQ), Options Exchange, Commodities Exchanges, and Futures presents a fundamental advantage to those who trade. Latency is induced by the long time taken to compress and encrypt data prior to transmission, along with the associated time to decrypt and decompress. Often current methods of encryption and compression take as much or substantially more time than the actual time to transmit the uncompressed, unencrypted data. Thus one problem within the current art is the latency induced by the act of encryption, compression, decryption, and decompression.
Modern data compression algorithms suffer from poor compression, high latency, or both. Within the present art algorithms such as Lempel-Ziv, modified/embellished Lempel-Ziv, Binary Arithmetic, and Huffman coding are essentially generic algorithm having a varied effectiveness on different data types. Also small increases in compression to the negentropy limit of the data generally require exponentially greater periods of time and substantially higher latency. Generic algorithms are currently utilized as data types and content format is constantly changed within the financial industry. Many changes are gradual however there are also abrupt changes, such as the recent switch to decimalization that has imposed substantial requirements on data transmission bandwidth infrastructure within the financial industry. Thus another problem within the current art is the high latency and poor compression due to the use of generic data compression algorithms on financial data and news feeds.
Within the financial and news feeds, data is often segregated into packets for transmission. Further, in inquiry response type systems, as found in many financial research systems, the size of request packets and also response packets is quite small. As such, response servers often wait for long periods of time (for example 500 msec) to aggregate data packets prior to transmission back to the inquirer. By aggregating the data and then applying compression, higher compression ratios are often achieved. This then translates to lower data communications costs or more customers served for a given amount of available communications bandwidth. Thus another problem within the current art is the substantial latency caused by aggregating data packets due to poor data compression efficiency and packet overhead.
Thus, given the importance of receiving financial information over computer networks, an improved system and method for providing secure point-to-point solution for transparent multiplication of bandwidth over conventional communication channels is highly desirable.
These and other limitations within the current art are solved by the present invention.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

System and method for data feed acceleration and encryption


In order to obtain an ear-hook headphone that is light and comfortable to wear, a supporting portion that supports a housing portion is provided in the vicinity of one end of an approximately U-shaped bend of an arm-shaped guide portion; a pushing portion that resiliently pushes from behind the auricle of a user toward the housing portion is provided in the vicinity of the other end; and a sound-outputting surface of the housing portion is disposed on the face side of the listener wearing the headphone to be approximately perpendicular to the surface formed by the bend of the arm-shaped guide portion. According to this construction, the housing portion can be easily accommodated in the earhole of the user's ear with the guide portion being slipped along the base of the user's ear, and the headphone can be reliably worn with the pushing portion resiliently pushing from behind his/her auricle.

Conventionally, there have been headband-type headphones in which a housing that incorporates a speaker unit is fixed by a supporting body on both ends of a horseshoe headband. With respect to headphones of this type, the headband is worn on the head of a user and sound is emitted toward earholes from diaphragms of the speaker units within the housings, thereby reproducing audio signals.
Also, with respect to an ear-hook headphone shown in FIG. 1, for example, a left unit 141 is worn in such a manner that the unit is hung on an ear 142 and sound is emitted toward an earhole from a diaphragm of the speaker unit within the housing, thereby reproducing audio signals. In addition, as this applicant's prior patent there are headphones which have been registered as Japan Patent Office Publication of Examined Applications, Examined Patent Publication No. 6-59120.
However, due to the fact that the above-mentioned headband-type headphones must be worn on the user's head, there has been inconvenience of giving unpleasant sensation to the user, such as applying weight to the user's head and affecting user's hairstyle.
Further, with respect to the ear-hook headphone shown in FIG. 1, since the force of the left unit 141 falling down by its own weight is applied to the upper end of the auricle of the ear 142, a load f on an arm base 143 becomes large, thereby providing inconvenience of unpleasant sensation when wearing the headphone.


A gas purifier for impure gas having an end of life detector. The purifier has:. A. a housing; and PA0 B. an impurity-sorbing material packed within the housing. The impurity-sorbing material has the property of reacting with impurities in the impure gas. This reacting causes expansion of the impurity-sorbing material; and PA0 C. an impure gas inlet; and PA0 D. a pure gas outlet; and PA0 E. a pressure responsive electrical switch within the housing. The position of the switch is responsive to expansion of the impurity-sorbing material; and PA0 F. An indicator outside the housing to indicate the position of the switch.

Gas purifiers for removing impurities from impure gas are well known. These known purifiers typically have a housing in fluid communication with an inlet and an outlet. As impurity-sorbing material is located within the housing.
Considerable difficulty has been encountered in attempting to determine when this impurity-sorbing material has come to the end of its life. In general the impurity-sorbing material has come to the end of its life when it no longer sorbs the impurities in the impure gas. However it is difficult and expensive to determine the end of life of the impurity sorbing material by measuring the impurities in the outlet gas. For this reason recent Attempts to determine the end of life of the impurity-sorbing material have been centered around the impurity-sorbing material itself. Some prior end of life sensors have been placed in the gas stream; but placing the sensor there can cause contamination of the gas. Other prior end of life sensors ave experienced a wide variety of other problems.

Gas purifier having pressure responsive switch as end of life detector


A heddle (10) is provided for weaving strip-shaped warp yarn. Said heddle (10) includes a heddle shaft (12) formed by two shaft parts (13). Said shaft parts (13) are placed on top of each other in a respective end section (15) of the heddle shaft (12) and interconnected. The end eyelets (16) of the heddle (10) are also in said end section (15). To form a yarn eye between both shaft parts (13), two separate warp yarn guiding bodies (20) are placed therebetween. To determine the position of the warp yarn guiding body (20) with respect to the heddle shaft (12), at least one shaft projection (22) is produced by stamping and subsequent bending or embossing each shaft part (13) for each warp yarn guiding body (20). Said shaft projection (22) engages in an associated recess (25) of the warp yarn guiding body (20), and a bonding connection is produced.

Furthermore, the heddle is to be disposed for the use of strip-shaped warp yarn.
There exist a plurality of different known shapes and embodiments of heddles for different applications. For example, publication DE 23 51 795 A1 describes a heddle for processing wires, for example for the production of mattress supports. The heddle comprises a heddle shaft that is held on both ends in the heddle frame. The heddle shaft comprises two shaft parts that abut tightly against each other at least at the two end sections. In order to form a yarn eye in the central region of the heddle shaft, cylindrical pins extending transversely to the direction of extension of the heddle shaft are inserted between the two shaft parts. The yarn eye for guiding the warp wire is formed between these two pins.
Publication EP 1 795 635 B1 describes a heddle known for processing strip-shaped warp yarns. There, the heddle shaft is made of a strip that has a cutout to form the yarn eye. For guiding the strip-shaped warp yarn, the guiding surfaces delimiting the yarn eye are rounded by various measures, for example by the use of elements having curved yarn guiding surfaces or by bending over punched out latches of the heddle shaft adjoining the yarn eye.
EP 2 166 138 A1 discloses a jacquard heddle for use in jacquard machines. The heddle body or heddle shaft is made of a round material in this case. The round material has a flat section that has an opening for the heddle mail, said opening being delimited by two limbs that thus represent spaced-apart shaft parts. The heddle mail may be glued between the two shaft parts. Ribs may be provided on the shaft parts, said ribs engaging in a groove on the heddle mail in order to hold the mail well and securely.
EP 1 795 636 B1 shows a heddle with a heddle shaft of two parallel-extending strip-shaped shaft parts, in which case two spaced-apart cylindrical pins extending in the direction of extension of the heddle shaft may be provided for delimiting the yarn eye in the central region of the heddle shaft. Each of these pins represents a warp yarn guiding body. The cylindrical warp yarn guiding bodies may be, for example, glued, welded, riveted or soldered to the strip-shaped shaft parts. A similar heddle is also known from publication JP 2001-303383 A.

Heddle for a loom, in particular a circular loom


An apparatus for vertically aligning a given point on a pressure transducer unit with a desired point an a patient, the apparatus comprising: (a) a light source; (b) a housing adapted to contain the light source; (c) at least one leveling tube having a leveling axis that is substantially parallel to the light beam, the leveling tube comprising (i) a closed transparent envelope containing a liquid and a bubble of gas, and (ii) lines formed on the envelope, where the leveling axis is substantially horizontally aligned when the bubble of gas is located between the two lines; (d) an indicating mark formed on the housing means, where the beam of light is vertically aligned with the given point on the transducer unit when the indicating means is vertically aligned with the given point on the transducer unit; and (e) a locking system for selectively locking the housing means to prevent movement thereof relative to the transducer unit when the beam of light is both horizontally aligned and vertically aligned with the given point on the transducer unit. To vertically align the given point with the desired point, one of the transducer unit and the patient are vertically displaced relative to the other until the light source causes light to reflect off of the patient at the desired point.

The present invention is particularly useful for monitoring a patient's central venous pressure. Accordingly, that application will be discussed in the following detailed description. However, the present invention may have application in situations where other bodily fluid pressures are to be measured. The scope of the present invention should therefore be determined by the attached claims and not the following detailed description.
Central venous pressure (CVP) is the pressure of blood in the right atrium or vena cava of a human heart. A patient's CVP provides important information about the patient such as: (a) the patient's blood volume; (b) the effectiveness of the patient's heart as a pump; and (c) the patient's vascular tone. Therefore, in combination with a clinical assessment of the patient, a health care worker will often monitor the patient's CVP, and particularly any upward or downward trends in CVP, to determine whether and what type of intervention is appropriate for the patient.
CVP is normally measured in terms of centimeters or millimeters of water pressure. A typical pressure in the right atrium is 0 to 4 cm H.sub.2 O, while pressure in the vena cava is approximately 6 to 12 cm H.sub.2 O.
One method of measuring CVP is to insert a catheter into an arm or leg vein or the subclavian vein and thread the catheter through the vein into the vena cava close to the right atrium. FIG. 3 depicts a catheter inserted through the subclavian vein into the vena cava. A manometer or other pressure measuring device is then attached to second end of the catheter through intravenous (IV) connecting tubing. If a manometer is used, pressure in the vena cava displaces or equilibrates with the pressure exerted by the column of fluid in the manometer and the point at which the fluid in the manometer settles is the recorded as the CVP.
In a modern hospital setting, the pressure measuring device is typically a pressure transducer which generates an electrical signal corresponding to the pressure at the end of the IV connecting tubing. Such pressure transducers generally comprise a diaphragm so arranged that the diaphragm is measurably displaced by the pressure in the IV connecting tubing. The electrical signal generated by the transducer is proportional to the displacement of the diaphragm. Because displacement of the diaphragm is proportional to CVP, the magnitude of the electrical signal can thus be empirically related to CVP. Properly calibrated with equipment for analyzing these electrical signals, a pressure transducer allows the health care worker to accurately measure and monitor trends in CVP.
In order to obtain an accurate measurement of CVP, the zero point of the manometer or a given measuring point on the pressure transducer must be closely vertically aligned with a desired point on the patient such as a mark corresponding to the patient's right atrium and/or vena cava. If the vertical level of the point at which pressure is measured is below the right atrium, the CVP reading will be too high. On the other hand, if the vertical level of this measuring point is higher than the right atrium, the CVP reading will be too low.
Perhaps even more importantly, if the vertical level of one of the right atrium and the measuring point changes over time while the other of these vertical levels remains the same, CVP may appear to trend upwardly or downwardly when actual CVP has remained constant or, alternatively, an actual upward or downward trend in CVP may be masked by the change in measured CVP. This may result in the health care worker providing inappropriate intervention. Accordingly, consistency in aligning the pressure monitoring device in relation to the right atrium over time is perhaps more important than accurately aligning the pressure monitoring device with the right atrium.
The consequences of not consistently aligning the pressure monitoring device with the right atrium of the heart can be quite serious. For example, if: (a) a first CVP measurement is taken at time t.sub.1 ; (b) the patient subsequently moves or is moved so that the patient's right atrium is lower than at time t.sub.1 ; (c) by time t.sub.2 the patient's actual CVP raises, indicating higher blood pressure; and (d) a second CVP measurement is taken at time t.sub.3, the second CVP measurement may not reflect the rise in CVP that occurred between time t.sub.1 and time t.sub.2. The health care worker may mistakenly assume that CVP is constant and no intervention is necessary, while in fact the higher actual CVP may indicate third spacing of bodily fluids caused by increased blood volume and pressure. In this case, the appropriate intervention, i.e., halting the flow of intravenous fluids into the blood stream, may not be taken. Serious problems may thus be hidden by a pressure transducer that is improperly vertically aligned with the right atrium of the heart.
It is therefore essential that the pressure measuring device be consistently and accurately aligned with the right atrium of the heart so that actual CVP and upward and downward trends in CVP are accurately monitored.

Apparatus and method for measuring fluid pressure in a medical patient