A digital camera is adapted for being mounted to a bow for archery. The camera comprises a self-contained digital unit within a housing and is protected from vibrational disturbances caused by the release of the bowstring. A viscoelastic material is used to reduce vibrations. The housing is water resistant to protect the internal circuitry of the camera from environmental elements encountered during hunting. A secure digital slot is connected to the digital camera circuitry and can accept a SD flash memory card. The camera may also be connected for transmitting images to an external device for viewing.

This invention relates to cameras mounted to archery bows. The thrill of the hunt, and head-to-head competition in archery contests, has motivated the archer to record his performance. The benefits of capturing the travel of the arrow, or reaction of the prey, are numerous and help the hunter/archer to enhance his skills. By watching the recorded activity, the hunter/archer can better understand the mechanics of the sport, and correct errors where present in order to become a better archer. Furthermore, it provides a source of enjoyment to relive the thrill of the hunt, or to admire the grace and beauty of arrow flight.
There exist a number of bow-mounted cameras that achieve varying degrees of success. In addition to single-shot cameras, there also exist multi-frame, or video, cameras that are mountable to bows. As with any hand-held camera, however, the quality of the picture obtained depends in large part on minimizing the susceptibility of the camera to extraneous motion. While it may be practically impossible to completely remove the effects of a wavering hand, it is nonetheless desirable to minimize the vibration effects of the bowstring upon release. The twang of the bowstring, besides creating a vibratory distortion to the recording process, is also a violent shaking that can cause damage to the camera itself.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a camera that can be mounted to an archery bow, where the camera is capable of withstanding and minimizing the vibration effects from the release of the bowstring. It is also desirable to provide a camera that is of simple construction and that can be easily mounted to a bow. It is further desirable that such camera be either a single shot digital camera or a digital video, or multi-frame, camera.

Vibration resistant camera for mounting to archery bow


A user input initiating delivery of a first change set to a stream maintained by an artifact management application can be detected. A first set of elements and a first set of elements types associated with the first change set can be identified. A second set of element types that pertain to at least one unit of work identified for the first set of elements can be identified. A second set of elements that are involved in the same unit of work can be identified. A second change set modifying the second set of elements can be identified. A third change set modifying at least one element type can be identified. A change set group can be created and the first change set, the second change set and the third change set can be added to the change set group. The change set group can be delivered to the stream.

The present invention relates to artifact management, and more specifically, to artifact management applications.
Engineering assets sometimes are stored in artifact management applications, such as a requirements management system, a quality management system or a test management system. Such artifact management applications often are record-based and store core engineering artifacts and their properties (such as a requirement and/or test cases), links among the artifacts (such as traceability links), and other auxiliary artifacts that are complimentary to core artifacts (such as tags of an artifact or category of a test case). Core engineering artifacts and links are typically associated with a type system, which defines their properties, and data types associated with these properties.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Configuration management of engineering artifacts with automatic identification of related change sets based on type system

International Business Machines Corporation


An anchor base for mounting machinery supports wherein fasteners extend through holes defined in the base. The base holes are provided with a concave countersunk surface which receives a complementary shaped convex fastener guide permitting the fastener to be obliquely oriented to the plane of the base, and the supporting surface and yet providing an effective holding force. This construction of the anchor base also permits an adapter to be used in conjunction with the base wherein if the supported machinery overlies the machinery support as not to provide access to the regular base mounting holes, a mechanical hold-down force on the base is still possible.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to supports for heavy machinery providing a greater degree of flexibility of installation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heavy equipment, such as large machine tools, generators, turbines, motors, large fixtures and gauges, presses, rolling mills, and the like, must be accurately supported to permit the desired tolerances and dimensions to be maintained and insure proper operation in accordance with designed specifications. To permit such accurate support of heavy equipment, machine supports are used which are capable of distributing the machine weight and permit minute vertical adjustment while under heavy loads, and which are also capable of damping vibrations. Such mounting equipment may include adjustable wedges, screws, and the like, mounted upon a cast metal base which is supported upon a floor, specially prepared foundation or the like.
The heavy equipment to be supported will include a mounting foot or pad which will rest upon the machinery mount, and it is not unusual for the supported equipment to include a base which extends outwardly from the pad or foot which tends to overlie the machinery mount and restrict access thereto. Accordingly, the design of heavy equipment often renders it difficult to properly utilize known machinery mounts rendering installation difficult.
Adhesives are regularly used to affix the machinery mount to the supporting floor or foundation, but it is often desired to augment the adhesive mounting with fasteners and the like, but installation of such fasteners is often difficult or impossible to achieve because of interference with the base of the supported equipment.


An apparatus is disclosed for releasably holding a toolholder shank having a lockable surface and a releasable surface utilizing an actuating bolt with an associated threaded actuating nut. When the actuating bolt is rotated in a locking direction, the actuating nut is drawn onto the bolt thereby clamping against the lockable surfaces of the toolholder shank. When the actuating bolt is rotated in the releasing direction, a releasing segment acts upon the toolholder thereby ejecting it from the tool support member.

Minimizing the downtime of a machine tool in a production environment is critical to the success of a manufacturing facility. Historically, one major contributor to such downtime was the time needed to change damaged or worn out cutting tools used by the machine tool. A cutting tool is held by a toolholder, which is typically mounted within a tool support member secured to a machine tool. When the cutting tool must be replaced, the entire toolholder with the cutting tool is removed from the spindle. A number of commercial couplings permit quick connecting and disconnecting of the toolholder to and from the spindle to expedite the tool changing process. One such device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,659 entitled "Apparatus for Holding a Toolholder Shank." This patent is co-owned by the Assignee of the present application and is hereby incorporated by reference. The apparatus described in that patent utilizes two locking balls which are urged radially outwardly within a tool support member to engage apertures on the shank of a toolholder. While this arrangement is efficient and permits the toolholder to be removed or secured to a tool support member in a short amount of time, the design of this arrangement may limit its application to toolholders having a width of one inch or greater. Since many industrial applications require the use of a cutting tool which must be mounted on a much smaller toolholder, a need exists for a quick change toolholder system for toolholders which may be designed having a width of less than one inch.
Such a system must not only have a compact design, but furthermore, provide quick connecting and disconnecting of the toolholder from the toolholder support member in an efficient manner that makes it practical for use by a machine tool operator.
The system described hereinafter is a quick change tooling system by which a toolholder is secured with a tool support member utilizing simple hardware that permits the size of the toolholder and toolholder support member to be significantly reduced over other commercially available quick change tool systems.


Various methods and devices involving a slave device are discussed. The slave device, which may be without a clock input, receives a clock message and generates a clock based on the received clock message. In some embodiments, the slave device receives a further clock message and transmits a confirmation message simultaneously with receiving the further clock message. In other embodiments, determining a clock may comprise sampling the clock message with an internal system clock and providing the clock based on located edges. Other techniques are also discussed.

Serial data transmission is widely used for communication between devices. A serial communication interface frequently used is the so-called serial peripheral interface (SPI), which may for example be used in automotive applications for communication between nearby devices. For example, it may be used to retrieve sensor data. A very similar serial system is known under the name Microwire.
In conventional SPI systems, an SPI master supplies each of a plurality of SPI slaves with a clock signal. Based on this clock signal, also referred to as SPI clock, data communication between master and slaves is performed. Each slave may communicate with the master during assigned time slots.
The SPI clock signal toggles at the highest available data rate provided by the serial connection in such systems. Therefore, the SPI clock is a limiting signal regarding capacitive load and is furthermore a major contributor to electromagnetic emissions. An amount of slaves in such a system may be limited by a capacitive load on a clock line and/or by such emissions.
For example, in an automotive application increasing an amount of sensors which constitute slaves in a car may bring the serial peripheral interface to its data rate limit, as for each slave a time slot for transmission has to be assigned and therefore with a constant clock rate the data rate available per sensor may decrease with increasing number of sensors. On the other hand, increasing the clock rate may not be possible due to the above-explained effects.
While such constraints may be overcome by completely redesigning the communication system used, for example by using both edges of the clock signal for transmission of data or by dithering the clock signal, such approaches may for example require a significant modification of a master device used, which is undesirable in some circumstances. Also, a redesign of the communication system may be detrimental to backward compatibility with legacy devices, for example conventional SPI devices.


A resin composition (X), which is a curable resin composition according to the present invention, contains a curable resin component (10), a surface-modified nanodiamond (20), and an organic medium. The surface-modified nanodiamond (20) includes a ND particle (21), which is a nanodiamond particle, and a silane coupling agent (22). The silane coupling agent (22) has a (meth)acryloyl-containing organic chain and is bonded to the ND particle (21). The resin composition (X) is suitable for forming a nanodiamond-dispersed cured resin portion having both high transparency and high scratch resistance. An optical element according to the present invention has a light-transmitting region and includes a cured resin portion, which is a cured product of the resin composition (X), in at least part of the light-transmitting region. The optical element is advantageous for actually providing an optical element including a cured resin portion or cured resin layer having both high transparency and high scratch resistance.

Various applications demand plastic materials or resinous materials that have both excellent transparency and high scratch resistance. Non-limiting examples of the applications include applications in or for various camera lenses; spectacle lens surface coatings; and antireflective films, index matching films, and hardcoat layers in various optical elements. As such resinous materials, there have been developed, for example, composite materials containing fine zirconia particles or fine titanium oxide particles dispersed therein (for example, Patent Literature (PTL) 1 and PTL 2 below).
On the other hand, fine particulate diamond materials, which are called nanodiamonds, have been developed more and more. Of such nanodiamonds, so-called single-nano-sized nanodiamonds having a particle diameter of 10 nm or less may be required in some uses. Techniques for such nanodiamonds can be found typically in PTL 3 and PTL 4 below.

Curable resin composition and optical member


Display apparatus (20) is configured to be plugged into the cigarette lighter socket of a vehicle. LEDs 37 and control circuit 36 are configured to provide a gently blinking display mode to enhance the driving pleasure at night. In case of emergency, switch 34 triggers the LEDs 34 to provide high intensity blinking warning light. Batteries (24, 25, 26) provide power to the apparatus when it is detached from the cigarette lighter socket of the vehicle.

Traditional transducer apparatus derives power from a battery source and requires an on/off switch to control the power supplied to the apparatus. The objective of the invention is to develop an automobile display apparatus to derive power from the cigarette lighter and for the power of the display apparatus to be switched on and off according to the motion and ambient light of the vehicle. A further objective of the invention is to design the display apparatus such that it can be detached from the motor vehicle and to be used as a portable warning signal lighting apparatus by night time.


The present invention is a step load bracket having a substantially horizontal portion and a substantially vertical portion connected to the substantially horizontal portion. The present invention also includes at least one support member connected to the substantially vertical portion and the substantially horizontal portion. The support member provides support for a body component of a vehicle having a step, such as a fascia, when a load is applied to the fascia in a vertical direction, but has pre-determined crush characteristics when the fascia suffers from an impact load in a horizontal direction, such as during a rear-end collision.

Fascias and other types of body panel components are commonly used to provide an aesthetically pleasing appearance for a vehicle. These components are typically injection molded parts, and are most commonly used on the front or rear of the vehicle, and will have the appearance of a bumper and body panel formed as one component. These types of fascias are commonly used with sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), which commonly include a hatch for accessing or entering the rear of the vehicle.
The fascia, having the appearance of a bumper, includes a step portion for aiding in accessing and entering the rear of the vehicle through the hatch. Because the fascia is made of a relatively thin plastic, the step portion is not strong enough to support the weight of a person when being stepped on. Prior solutions to this problem have included the fascia being supported by an Expanded Polypropylene Particle (EPP) foam insert. This provided support of the bumper fascia step and ease of repair in the event of a rear impact. The fascia is also attached to the frame of the vehicle using the common EPP foam insert and various fasteners, such as a push-pin.
However, it is typically considered aesthetically unappealing if the fasteners which are used to attach the fascia to the foam insert are in view. Attempts have been made to attach the fascia to the foam insert in such a manner that the fasteners are no longer visible. However, this has resulted in reduced structural integrity of the foam insert and the fascia.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a step, formed as a portion of a fascia, to have support when force is applied in a vertical direction, while having the aesthetically pleasing appearance such that the fasteners are removed from view.


Password definition and recognition in programmable devices with back-to-back transparent, touchscreens includes defining first and second contact patterns on respective first and second ones of the touchscreens as patterns of touchscreen contact inputs generated from contact of respective contact elements on the touchscreens contemporaneously, wherein the touchscreens enable a viewer to see through the touchscreens. A composite password pattern is defined by mapping location of the first pattern on the first screen relative to the location of the second pattern on the second screen. Recognizing a successful entry of the composite password pattern requires an entry of the first pattern on one of first and second, back-to-back touchscreens contemporaneously with an entry of the second pattern on another of the first and second touchscreens in an alignment that is compliant with the composite password mapping.

Programmable computing devices may provide touchscreen components. A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that a user can receive inputs through contact with the surface of the touchscreen, such as by touching the screen with one or more fingers. Some touchscreens can also detect and recognize inputs from other objects such as a stylus, ordinary or specially coated gloves, etc. A user can use the touchscreen to select items displayed on the screen, and thereby initiate actions such as navigating to a displayed hyperlink reference by automatically invoking a browser routine, or controlling how content is displayed by invoking zooming or repositioning routines.
Touchscreens enable users to interact directly with displayed content and thereby provide inputs and selection data to the programmable device without requiring the use of a mouse, touchpad or other intermediate input device.

Password entry for double sided multi-touch display


A dichroic filter column (4) is provided on an incident surface (11). At least one of two end parts of a light guide plate (1) in a thickness direction is divided into a plurality of light guide paths (6), in a width direction of the light guide plate (1) by a plurality of cutout grooves (5). Portions of the plurality of light guide paths (6) on an incident surface (11) side are aligned in accordance with positions of a plurality of dichroic filters (31), respectively. The plurality of dichroic filters (31) are elements of the dichroic filter column (4).

There has been known a surface light source device employing a light guide plate (see Patent Literatures 1 through 3, for example).
The light guide plate is designed and produced so as to (i) have: two end parts in its length direction, at least one of which serves as a incident surface; and two end parts in its thickness direction, which serve as an exit surface and a back surface, respectively, and (ii) direct light, emitted from a light source, incident on the incident surface, so as to cause the light to exit from a substantially entire area of the exit surface.
The light that has entered into the light guide plate is totally reflected from the exit surface and the back surface of the light guide plate, so as to exit from a substantially entire area of the exit surface.
It is desirable that the surface light source device (i) has less leakage of light from the back surface of the light guide plate, (ii) emits more light from the exit surface of the light guide plate, and (iii) has uniform luminance distribution in the light-emitting surface. In view of such a light source device, there has been conventionally known, as an advantageous technique, the use of a light guide plate which has a wedge shape as being viewed cross-sectionally in a direction orthogonal to a width direction of the light guide plate, which wedge shape has, in its length direction, (i) a root end part (an end part having a greater thickness), a surface of which serves as the incident surface, and (ii) a pointed end part. Such a light guide plate can direct more light toward its pointed end part. Therefore, a surface light source device including the light guide plate whose cross-sectional shape is a wedge shape has been widely applied to the surface light source device.
Meanwhile, a full-color LCD generally includes: a display device; and a backlight including the surface light source device. The backlight is provided on a backside of the display device. The display device includes: a liquid crystal layer; polarizers at least one of which is attached to the liquid crystal layer on a display side of the display device, and the other one(s) of which is attached to the liquid crystal layer on a backside of the display device; and color filters, provided between the liquid crystal layer and the at least one of polarizers on the display side, which allow corresponding R (red) light, G (green) light, and B (blue) light to pass through, selectively. The light guide plate of the backlight directs light emitted from the light source toward the backside of the display device. The display device controls orientation of a liquid crystal element by application of a voltage, so as to adjust an amount of light passing through each of the color filters. The display device thus carries out full-color display.
The color filters used in such a display device have high color saturation, and can develop colors in a wide color reproduction range.
However, the color filters cause an entire display to be darker, because (i) each of the color filters allows light of a corresponding predetermined primary color (wavelength) to pass through while causing light of other colors to be less intense, and (ii) this reduces the amount of light which has passed through the color filters to approximately one-third of the amount of light emitted from the light source.
In view of the problem, there has been known a technique of using dichroic filters in place of the color filters such that the dichroic filters are provided on a surface (the exit surface of the light guide plate of the surface light source device) of the backlight (see Patent Literature 4). Each of the dichroic filters reflects visible light having a wavelength other than a specific wavelength so as to selectively allow visible light having the specific wavelength to pass through.


Within a social network, a user may establish a set of contacts who share with the user various content items and comments related thereto. However, these content items are often hosted by a content source outside of the social network, and the user may have to transition to the content source to view the content item, and then transition back to the social network to submit a comment. Instead, a device may monitor the social network to record shared content items. When the user requests a presentation of the content source, the content items hosted by the content source that have been shared with the user may be included in the presentation. The presentation of the content source may also accept comments from the user regarding a content item, and send the comments to the social network where the content item was shared with the user.

Within the field of computing, many scenarios involve a social network, such as a database of users and associations established thereamong to represent various types of relationships (e.g., familial relations, friendships, and academic, professional, and business relationships). A user within a social network may establish a set of contacts, such as individuals with whom the user has a relationship, and may add new individuals as new relationships are formed. The social network may enable users to share with his or her contacts within the social network various types of messages, such as personal status messages. The social network may also allow a user to view the messages shared with the user by his or her contacts, such as a news feed comprising the personal status messages of the user's contacts.
Within a social network, a user may share with his or her contacts one or more content items hosted by various content sources. Such content items and content sources may include, e.g., web pages hosted by a website, images hosted by an image database, audio or video recordings hosted by an audio or video sharing service, and files hosted by a file server. A user may share these content items with his or her contacts in many ways, e.g., by adding an item to a set of shared content items that are of interest to the user and that may be viewable by all contacts of the user, or by sending a message to a contact that references a content item. The user may also annotate the content item with a comment, such as a summary of the content item or the user's personal opinions of the content item, and his or her contacts may also be permitted to annotate the content item with comments. The social network may promote this sharing of content items by generating a presentation thereof; e.g., upon request of a user, the social network may generate a content item feed comprising the content items that have been shared with the user by his or her contacts. For a particular content item hosted by a content source (e.g., an image hosted by an image database), the social network may be configured to integrate the content item with the presentation, or to provide a reference to the content item hosted by the content source (e.g., a preview version of an image hosted by the image database, and a hyperlink to an area of the image database where a full version of the image may be viewed). The content source may also permit users to submit comments regarding a content item.

Presenting content items shared within social networks


This invention involves a kind of fatty acid methyl ester (bio-diesel fuel), especially the method of obtaining ester-like substances by means of chemical alterations of oil.

Due to the increasing energy consumption and shortage of petroleum resources around the world as well as the soaring oil price, the demand for bio-diesel fuel, a kind of renewable energy source, is increasing day by day. The production is gaining momentum and techniques employed in production mainly involve refinement of the soybean oil, colza oil to the extent that the concentration of free acid achieves less than 0.1%. It is also achieved through synthesizing with methanol solution of alkaline catalyzer by means of ester-exchange reaction.
For raw materials with a high concentration of free fatty acid, the means of alkaline ester exchange reaction isn't applicable. Instead, free fatty acid should be reduced by using acid catalyst ester before the alkaline ester exchange reactions are applied.
Raw materials with high free fatty acid content are also esterified and undergo ester exchange reaction by means of getting mixed with acidic catalysts. Some also adopt the methods of hydrolyzing oil first into fatty acid, then esterifying it with acidic catalysts or by applying pressure. Some others are supercritically esterified under the high temperature and high pressure.
All in all, all the methods have some shortcomings, i.e., the method of alkaline ester exchange reaction is highly costly as it requires refined soybean oil and colza oil as raw materials. Acidic catalyst ester exchange reaction method, which needs enamel facilities due to its strong corrosive property, is not appropriate for production on a large scale and the large amount of sulfuric acid consumption causes severe environmental contamination. High-temperature and high-pressure or supercritical esterification entails advanced alloy materials due to its strong corrosive properties. Hence, a large amount of investment and fairly high energy consumption are required due to immediate cool-down after high-temperature reaction.


A package that includes a substrate and an integrated device. The substrate includes a core portion, a first substrate portion and a second substrate portion. The core portion includes a core layer and core interconnects. The first substrate portion is coupled to the core portion. The first substrate portion includes at least one first dielectric layer coupled to the core layer, and a first plurality of interconnects located in the at least one first dielectric layer. The second substrate portion is coupled to the core portion. The second substrate includes at least one second dielectric layer coupled to the core layer, and a second plurality of interconnects located in the at least one second dielectric layer. The core portion and the second substrate portion include a cavity. The integrated device is coupled to the first substrate portion through the cavity of the second substrate portion and the core portion.

FIG. 1 illustrates a package 100 that includes a substrate 102, an integrated device 103, an integrated device 104 and an integrated device 106. The substrate 102 includes at least one dielectric layer 120, a plurality of interconnects 122 and a plurality of solder interconnects 124. A plurality of solder interconnects 144 is coupled to a first surface of the substrate 102 and the integrated device 104. A plurality of solder interconnects 164 is coupled to the first surface of the substrate 102 and the integrated device 106. A plurality of solder interconnects 134 is coupled to a second surface of the substrate 102 and the integrated device 103. The package 100 is coupled to a board 105 through the plurality of solder interconnects 124 such that the integrated device 103 is located in a cavity 150 of the board 105. There is an ongoing need to provide robust, reliable package with small form factors.

Package comprising an integrated device coupled to a substrate through a cavity


An improved method and associated system for controlling the brake system of a vehicle train including a tractor vehicle and a trailer vehicle, wherein a control device disposed in the tractor vehicle is adapted to initiate automatic braking of the trailer vehicle, and wherein the conditions of the driving roadway, especially the coefficient of friction, are taken into account in braking of the trailer vehicle. The intensity of braking of the trailer vehicle is reduced by the control device when a coefficient of friction smaller than a predetermined minimum value is detected between the vehicle train or parts thereof and the driving roadway. One application of the invention is in load trains equipped with means for preventing rollover or overturning.

The present invention is directed generally to a method and system for controlling the brake system of a tractor and trailer vehicle combination.
DE 101 28 692 A1 describes a method of the general type under consideration used to prevent a vehicle train comprising a tractor vehicle and a trailer vehicle (referred to therein as a "load train") from overturning or rolling over while negotiating a curve. For this purpose, the vehicle train is braked by automatic actuation of the brake system when a specified, relatively high lateral acceleration is reached—the tractor vehicle and trailer vehicle each being braked. If the vehicle train is traveling on a driving roadway with relatively low coefficient of friction, wheel lock can occur, potentially leading to an undesired reduction of the cornering force of the wheels and, in turn, to swerving of the vehicle train. If the vehicle train is equipped with an anti-lock brake system (ABS), the wheel-lock protection function of the ABS prevents wheel lock and thus maintains the cornering force.
Commonly, a tractor vehicle equipped with an ABS is coupled with a trailer vehicle that lacks an ABS. In such case, wheel lock can occur during automatic braking of the trailer vehicle, potentially leading to an unsafe driving condition. In the method described in DE 101 28 692 A1, the brake system of the trailer vehicle is generally actuated intermittently in order to avoid such potentially unsafe driving conditions. However, this method makes no allowance for the real external conditions, such as the coefficient of friction of the driving roadway at that particular time. As a result, the physically possible braking effect of the trailer vehicle is not fully realized, especially on a driving roadway with relatively high coefficient of friction, and the measures to prevent the vehicle train from overturning cannot be applied optimally.
It is desired to provide an improved method and system for controlling the brake system of a vehicle train in which the conditions of the driving roadway are taken into account in braking of the trailer vehicle.

Method for controlling the brake system of a vehicle train


A dual damascene processing method comprising the steps depositing sequentially a first oxide layer, a SRO layer and a second oxide layer over a substrate. Then, photolithographic and etching operations are conducted to form a via that links up with a desired wire-connecting region above the substrate. Next, another photolithographic and etching operations are conducted to form interconnect trench lines followed by the deposition of metal into the via and trench. Finally, the surface is polished with a chemical-mechanical polishing operation to remove the unwanted metal on the surface. The invention is capable of controlling the depth of trench and obtaining a smoother trench bottom for the metal lines. Furthermore, the separation of via and trench etching steps makes the control of the final etch profile much easier, thereby able to get an optimal result.

1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a dual damascene processing method. More particularly, the present invention relates to a dual damascene process that can be applied to form deeper vias and narrower metallic interconnects.
2. Description of Related Art
As the level of integration for integrated circuits increases, the number of interconnects necessary for linking up devices is going to increase too. Therefore, design employing two or more metallic layers is gradually becoming the norm in the fabrication of integrated circuits. When the level of integration is further increased a high production yield and good reliability is difficult to get. Damascene processing method is a fabrication technique that involves the creation of interconnect lines by first etching a trench in a planar dielectric layer, and then filling that trench with metal. The method is capable of producing highly reliable interconnects that also has a good yield. Therefore, this method is going to be the best selection in the manufacturing industry for sub-quarter micron interconnects.
Conventional damascene processing technique has a number of problems. For example, depth of trench lines is hard to control, profile of via sidewall is difficult to standardize, and the processing window is quite narrow.
FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B are cross-sectional views showing the manufacturing steps of a first conventional dual damascene processing method. As shown in FIG. 1A, a silicon dioxide layer 12 is deposited over a substrate 11. The substrate 11 has a desired wire-connecting region 10 (the desired wire-connecting region can be a metallic layer or a silicide layer) already formed thereon. Then, photolithographic and etching processes are carried out to form a via 13 that links up with the desired wire-connecting region 10. Next, reverse metal photolithographic and etching processes are performed to create trench lines 14 and 15. After the completion of etching, metal is deposited filling the via 13 and the trenches 14 and 15. Thereafter, unwanted metallic layer on the surface is removed using a chemical-mechanical polishing process, thereby forming the cross-sectional structure as shown in FIG. 1B.
In the above damascene method, the trenches and the via structures are formed within the same oxide layer. One big disadvantage is that, since there is no etching stop layer within the oxide layer, the oxide layer can be over-etched during trench etching operation. Furthermore, since trenches are etched using a reactive ion etching method, a rough bottom surface will be formed in the trenches. However, the biggest problem is that the depths of etch for the trenches are difficult to control, thereby leading to vastly different metal interconnect line thickness.
FIG. 2A and FIG. 2B are cross-sectional views showing the manufacturing steps of a second conventional dual damascene processing method. In this second double damascene method, a silicon nitride layer is formed in the middle of the oxide layer to act as an etching stop layer. Thus, unlike the first dual damascene method, the defect of over-etching due to the absence of a stop layer is prevented. First, as shown in FIG. 2A, a first oxide layer 23 is deposited over a substrate 22. The substrate 22 has a desired wire-connecting region 21 already formed thereon. Then, a silicon nitride layer 25 that has a via opening 24 is formed over the first oxide layer and established a structure as shown in FIG. 2A. Next, as shown in FIG. 2B, a second oxide layer 26 is deposited over the silicon nitride layer 25. This is followed by photolithographic and etching processes for forming the trenches. Due to the presence of a silicon nitride layer 25, after etching out trenches 27 and 28, etching will not continue down once the stop layer is reached. Only in places where a via opening 24 has formed in the silicon nitride layer 25, will the etching continues down until the desired wire-connecting region 21 is reached forming a via 29 as shown in FIG. 2B. Subsequently, metal is deposited filling the trenches 27, 28 and via 29 until they are completely filled. Thereafter, unwanted metal on the oxide surface is removed using a chemical-mechanical polishing method. Then, subsequent processes are carried out. Although this method can control the trench depth, there are some other problems too. The first problem is that the silicon nitride layer, which is used as a stop layer, has a rather large dielectric constant K, thereby increasing the parasitic capacitance of the interconnect lines. Furthermore, the etchant used in the etching must have a high silicon nitride/silicon dioxide selectivity ratio. Another problem is the narrow processing window. During photolithographic and etching operations, if the photomask is not properly aligned, the etching region will be shifted. The situation is depicted in FIG. 3. In FIG. 3, a substrate 31 having a desired wire-connecting region 30 already formed thereon is provided. Then, a first oxide layer 32, a silicon nitride layer 33 that has a via opening, and a second oxide layer 34 are sequentially formed over the substrate 31. Next, photolithographic and etching operations are performed. Width of the trench 35 remains unchanged. However, due to a moderate shift of photomask to the right, position of the etching region is correspondingly shifted thereby leading to a narrowing of the via 36. When metal is ultimately filled, contact area between the metal and the desired wire-connecting region will be reduced. A smaller contact area will increase the contact resistance between connecting wires. Therefore, this method has a narrow processing window and will increase the level of difficulty in processing.
In light of the foregoing, there is a need in the art to provide an improved dual damascene processing method.


A device for measuring the depth below skin level of a blood vessel that has been punctured in the course of a catheterization or other interventional vascular procedure comprises a tubular member having a proximal end and a distal end portion that is preferably tapered to a small outer diameter. The lumen may have a stepped diameter extending between the proximal and distal ends. A first portion of the lumen is distally located and is of a diameter generally equal to the diameter of a guidewire with which the measuring device is used. The second segment of the lumen is of a substantially larger diameter. A side entry port is made through the wall of the tubular member at the distal base of the larger diameter section of the lumen. Graduated markings on the side wall of the tubular member extend from the side entry port toward the proximal end of the instrument. When the instrument is fed over a guidewire into a puncture wound formed through the skin and into an artery, the wall of the artery can be accurately located relative to the skin's surface by noting the graduated markings on the exterior of the tube at the point where blood flow enters the side entry port and fills the larger diameter lumen. Rather than having two coaxially disposed lumens as above, the tubular member may have a double lumen, one extending the entire length for accommodating the guidewire and the other extending between the tube's proximal end and the side entry port.

I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a surgical instrument used during a vascular interventional procedure, and more particularly to an instrument for accurately measuring the depth below the skin surface of the blood vessel through which the vascular catheter is to be passed.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
In a typical interventional procedure, such as the placement of a vascular catheter, the so-called Seldinger procedure is used to gain access to a blood vessel. More particularly, a needle trocar is passed through the skin to puncture an opening through the wall of an artery. Next, a dilator may be passed over the trocar to slightly enlarge the diameter of the puncture wound so that it can accommodate a tubular introducer. Once the introducer is in place, an elongated, flexible guidewire may be passed through the introducer into the blood vessel. An interventional device may then be advanced over the guidewire and through the vascular system.
Once the procedure in question has been concluded and the interventional device has been withdrawn, any guide catheter, the guidewire and the introducer must also be removed. As is explained in a co-pending U.S. Pat. application of Makower et. al. Ser. No. 07/912,921, filed Jul. 13, 1992, and entitled "HEMOSTATIC IMPLANT INTRODUCER", a difficulty often arises in stemming the flow of blood through the entry wound. When only manual pressure is relied upon to stem the blood flow, considerable time is required on the part of surgical personnel to maintain the pressure until clotting has taken place. The device described in the aforereferenced Makower et. al. application has been especially designed to more rapidly effect hemostasis by providing a means for injecting a mass of hemostatic material (collagen) as a plug into the puncture wound. That device is intended to position the collagen plug beneath the skin and directly in contact with the exterior wall of the punctured blood vessel, but without introducing any of the collagen plug material through that puncture site. To accomplish this end, it is important that the depth of the punctured blood vessel beneath the skin surface be accurately gauged so that the surgeon can accurately place the barrel of the puncture sealing device (PSD) into the wound only to that desired depth, thus assuring that the plug will not be made to enter the blood vessel where it could act as a thrombogenic site.

Surgical depth measuring instrument and method


A multipole assembly configured to be disposed in a mass spectrometer includes a plurality of rod electrodes. Each rod electrode included in the plurality of rod electrodes may be made of molybdenum. The multipole assembly further includes a sacrificial anode in electrical contact with a rod electrode included in the plurality of rod electrodes. The sacrificial anode is made of a material having an electrochemical potential that is more negative than the electrochemical potential of the rod electrode.

A mass spectrometer is an analytical tool that may be used for qualitative and/or quantitative analysis of a sample. A mass spectrometer generally includes an ion source for generating ions from the sample, a mass analyzer for separating the ions based on their ratio of mass to charge, and an ion detector for detecting the separated ions. The mass spectrometer uses data from the ion detector to construct a mass spectrum that shows a relative abundance of each of the detected ions as a function of their ratio of mass to charge. By analyzing the mass spectrum generated by the mass spectrometer, a user may be able to identify substances in a sample, measure the relative or absolute amounts of known components present in the sample, and/or perform structural elucidation of unknown components.
A mass spectrometer may include one or more multipole assemblies having a plurality of electrodes for use in guiding, trapping, and/or filtering ions. As an example, a multipole assembly may be a quadrupole having four rod electrodes arranged as two opposing pairs. Opposite phases of radio-frequency (RF) voltage may be applied to the pairs of rod electrodes, thereby generating a quadrupolar electric field that guides or traps ions within a center region of the quadrupole. In quadrupole mass filters, a mass resolving direct current (DC) voltage may also be applied to the pairs of rod electrodes, thereby superimposing a DC electric field on the quadrupolar electric field and causing a trajectory of some ions to become unstable and causing the ions to discharge against one of the rod electrodes. In such mass filters, only ions having a certain ratio of mass to charge maintain a stable trajectory and are subsequently detected by the ion detector.
When a multipole assembly is used in a mass spectrometer, an imprecise electric field generated by the multipole assembly may cause poor transmission of ions and result in diminished resolution, sensitivity, and/or mass accuracy.

Multipole assembly with galvanic protection for use in a mass spectrometer


A N-byte vector processor is provided which can emulate 2N-byte processor operations by executing two N-byte operations sequentially. By using N-byte architecture to process 2N-byte wide data, chip size and costs are reduced. One embodiment allows 64-byte operations to be implemented with a 32-byte vector processor by executing a 32-byte instruction on the first 32-bytes of data and then executing a 32-byte instruction on the second 32-bytes of data. Registers and instructions for 64-byte operation are emulated using two 32-byte registers and instructions, respectively, with some instructions requiring modification to accommodate 64-byte operations between adjacent elements, operations requiring specific element locations, operations shifting elements in and out of registers, and operations specifying addresses exceeding 32 bytes.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data processors, and more particularly to improved architecture of data processors for reducing costs, size, and code density.
2. Description of Related Art
Microprocessors are designed to handle specific data widths. For example, a vector processor designed for parallel processing of 32 8-bit data elements uses 256-bit wide vector registers and execution units having 32-byte data paths. Vector processor instructions may specify a location of any of 32 elements within a vector register and a type of operation to be performed on the specified elements. Because the register sizes, execution unit architecture, and instruction syntax are adapted to operate on vectors of a specific size, such architectures are generally unable to accommodate larger size data widths.
Therefore, as newer microprocessors are designed for larger data widths to increase processing power, smaller data width architectures are unable to support these larger data operations. Consequently, the new designs provide larger registers and new instructions to specify data element locations and operation types. For example, 512-bit wide registers and instructions capable of specifying up to 64 element locations are needed to process 64 bytes of data. In order to process larger data widths, the size and cost of the microprocessor increases because of the need to increase chip size and to develop and manufacture new vector processor circuits.
Minimizing costs and chip area are important goals in microprocessor design. Therefore, a vector processor capable of processing larger data widths without a proportional increase in chip size, cost, and code length is desired. Specifically, an vector processor capable of emulating larger data width operations with existing architecture designed for smaller data width operations is desired.

Scalable width vector processor architecture for efficient emulation


A method for producing granules made from malt extract is provided. The method provides for producing granules continuously or in batches under the prevention as much as possible of non-uniform temperature distributions in the production process. Simultaneously, the controllability of the granulation in the production is improved. This is realized by linking thermal conditions in the spraying zone and the temperature conditions in other region of the apparatus. This is achieved such that the supply of the heated process gas for drying is realized exclusively in the spraying region. The reliable supply of particles into the spraying region is performed through the special geometric configuration of the apparatus under the use of gravity.

The invention relates to a method for producing granules from malt extract. Typical substances in the sense of the present invention are various malt extracts from grains, such as barley, wheat, rice, corn, etc., which are provided for use in the food and beverage industries, as well as for beer production.
Up until now, malt extracts have been used, as a rule, as aqueous suspensions with a solids content of up to 80%. If further processing is not performed at the same site, then large amounts of water must be transported.
However, after being concentrated in vacuum evaporation, malt extracts can be granulated in fluidized beds (EP 02712929.5). Here, the handling of the concentrate is difficult. Conglutination and unstable processing conditions occur. The effectiveness of such processes is low.


A resin sealing structure according to the invention has convex parts formed in the vicinities of the perimeters of elements on a substrate to prevent thereby the resin, when it is applied for sealing, from invading the wiring parts of the elements. There may be narrow enough gaps between the substrate and the elements not to allow the resin to enter. This structure enables resin sealing to be accomplished at a high yield and dispenses with metallic caps or the like.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to flip chip mounting of elements, and more particularly to a resin sealing structure for elements, such as acoustic surface wave elements and GaAs elements, whose electric characteristics are changed by any foreign matter sticking to the surface.
Flip chip mounting of elements according to the prior art is accomplished by forming bumps on pads on the surface of elements, and connecting those bumps to pads on the substrate side. After the flip chip mounting, the gap between each element and the substrate is sealed with resin to ease stress, prevent the invasion of foreign matter and protect the bumps. However, if any foreign matter sticks to the surface of a GaAs element or a surface acoustic wave element, which is operable at a high frequency, the desired electric characteristics cannot be obtained, and therefore the gap between the substrate and the element should have an airtight structure, with the element covered with resin all around.
To meet this requirement, a structure in which the gaps between the substrate and the elements are made airtight is formed by dropping a resin of high viscosity type, which would not enter into the gaps between the substrate and the elements, on the elements and hardening it.
For instance, in an example described in Paper A380 presented at the 1995 Convention of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, after bumps are formed on semiconductors, the heights of bumps are made uniform, an electroconductive adhesive is transcribed on them, and the semiconductors are flip chip-mounted into cavities in the substrate. After that, insulating resin is applied around the elements and, after the resin is hardened, solder sealing is formed with metallic caps.
However, in a structure wherein flip chip-mounted elements are covered with resin as in this example, since the resin enters through the gaps between the substrate and the elements to come into contact with the electrode pattern, signals often cannot flow, resulting in a failure to achieve the desired characteristics.
Moreover, a structure using insulating resin or metallic caps involves many constituent parts and many manhours spent to fit them, resulting in poor productivity and impossibility to supply inexpensive products.


An aircraft passenger seat configured to recline and including a seatpan pivotally attached to a seatback, a spreader defining a non-linear guide path controlling the seatpan angle as the seat reclines, translating seatback linkage defining a non-linear guide path controlling the seatback angle as the seat reclines, and a drive link arranged to translate horizontally relative to the spreader to drive seat recline motion.

The present invention relates generally to an aircraft passenger seat configured to recline, and more particularly, to an aircraft passenger seat having a translating seatback linkage pivot for providing greater control and customization over the relationship of the seatback and seatpan angles as the seat reclines.
Aircraft passenger seats are typically configured to recline during flight to enhance comfort. Premium and luxury seats, such as those found in passenger suites, may be configured to recline to horizontal for sleeping. More economical seats typically have a limited amount of recline due to space limitations behind the seat.
In the above reclining seats, the seatback and seatpan are typically pivotally attached in an arrangement in which the pivot is fixed. In such an arrangement, the movement of one seating surface can advantageously be used to drive the movement of the other, but the horizontal fixing of the pivot disadvantageously limits the amount of seatback recline, particularly in seats with a fixed privacy partition located behind the seat and a short distance between the pivot and the partition. Further, the pivotal attachment of the seatback and seatpan in such a constrained space limits achieving certain seating angles during the reclining motion. Therefore, what is needed is a seat recline mechanism configured to take full advantage of limited space, as well as a seat recline mechanism configured to achieve seat angles not capable of being achieved in fixed pivot seats without the complexity, cost and weight of additional actuators.

Aircraft seat with translating seatback linkage pivot


A cable assembly comprising a hollow sleeve, an electrical conductor within the hollow sleeve, and first and second connectors on opposing ends of the electrical conductor that are fastened to opposing ends of the sleeve. The first connector is adapted to blind-mate to a corresponding connector in a cabinet backplane and the second connector is adapted to couple to an electronic device to be installed in the cabinet. Power is provided from the backplane to the electronic device via the electrical conductor. The hollow sleeve is disposed within a tunnel supported by the cabinet. The hollow sleeve has a length greater than that of the tunnel such that the first connector protrudes from a first opening of the tunnel and the second connector protrudes from a second opening of the tunnel.

Electronic devices, such as servers and computers, often are installed in power distribution cabinets. A power distribution cabinet receives power from an external source, which power is provided to a backplane of the cabinet. The backplane of the cabinet provides power to the electronic devices housed in the cabinet via busbars and/or cables coupled therebetween. Busbars and cables are difficult to install and are expensive to repair.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A hot forge forming facility includes at least a material supply device, a heating device, a guiding device and a punching device. The material supply device carries a continuous supply of metal material in rolls. The heating device heats and softens the metal material. The guiding device guides and drives the metal material to the heating device. The punching device compresses, forms and cuts the softened metal material in continuous punching operation to smoothly and quickly produce desired products that are consistent with actual production requirements.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a forming facility, particularly to a hot forge forming facility that forms a continuous supply of metal material into desired products by heating and punching processes.
2. Background of the Invention
Due to its hard property, metal material has to be heated and softened before it is hammered or compressed to shape desired products.
For example, please refer to FIG. 1 that shows a metal conveyor chain, made of a carrier member 10 and a connecting member 12 composing a basic unit. A plurality of such basic units are joined to compose a conveyor chain; wherein the carrier member 10 has a through hole 14 to enable hooking thereon by one end of a hook (not shown in drawing); while the other end of the hook may be used to hang large or small chunk of meat, or a bag unit carrying a load. FIG. 2 shows the connection of the carrier member 10 with the connecting member 12 by an insert key 16.
The above components are made of metal. Each component is made by placing a piece of metal work on a heating facility to soften the metal work; then, the softened metal work is placed into a first punching facility to compress the softened metal work into the shape of a flat strip; and then, the flattened metal strip is placed into a second punching facility to punch the metal strip into a desired shape of product; finally, the punching facility equipped with a cutting device cuts off the residual materials from the desired product.
In the above production process, the manufacturer must continually move the metal work to different forming facilities. In case the heated and softened metal work is not put into the first punching facility in time for next processing, the metal work will soon cool down and lose its purpose anticipated in the prior heating and softening process. However, since the metal work is an integrated block unit, it is not possible to wait until the entire metal block is heated and softened for the next process; therefore, it takes much time and inconvenience in processing that metal work.
In other words, all processing units in conventional hot forging process are independent devices installed at different locations, resulting in inconvenience in hot forging process. Therefore, to solve the foregoing weakness, all the processing devices and units must be integrated to form a systemized facility.


The invention relates to a system for determining a value representing a sleep quality, wherein the system has an evaluation device (10) for connecting to at least one sensor (11), which can be coupled to a piece of sleep or rest furniture for detecting vibrations, movement and/or sound in order to extract physiological data (12) of at least one person using the piece of sleep or rest furniture. The system is characterized in that at least one additional sensor (21) is provided on the sleep or rest furniture or in an environment of the sleep or rest furniture, which sensor is designed for detecting environmental parameters (5).

The invention relates to a system for determining a value representing a sleep quality, wherein the system comprises an evaluation device for connection to at least one sensor, which can be coupled to a piece of sleep or rest furniture for detecting vibrations, movement and/or sound, in order to extract physiological data of at least one person using the piece of sleep or rest furniture. The invention also concerns a piece of sleep or rest furniture, in particular a bed, with such a system. The invention also relates to a sensor arrangement for use in such a system.
In the clinical field, monitoring devices are known to monitor the respiration and/or cardiac activity of a patient during sleep in order to be able to intervene in questionable cardiac function and circulation parameters.
Meanwhile, devices for monitoring sleep status on the basis of physiological parameters are also commercially available for non-clinical purposes. These devices, which are placed on a nightstand for example, capture sounds and/or motion during sleep using microphones and/or cameras. A sleep state is derived from the recorded information, the temporal course of which is recorded. The recorded sleep progress can be called up and evaluated afterwards. It can provide information on how deep and restful sleep has been, for example by giving a value representing a sleep quality on a given scale.
In addition to systems that use cameras and/or microphones, there is also a known sensor-based system in which a pressure-sensitive sensor strip is placed over the mattress and this sensor strip is connected to a mobile phone (smartphone) that records the sensor data. From the sensor data a heart rate and a respiratory rate are derived.
In order to summarize the results clearly, it is known that from the sensor data recorded as continuously as possible during a sleep period, e.g. one night, a value is determined that represents the sleep quality. In practice, however, it has been shown that such a sleep quality value, which is based on sensor data relating to the vibration or movement of parts of the bed, such as a mattress, in some cases does not correctly reflect the recovery value of sleep for the person concerned.
It is the object of the present invention to improve an initially mentioned system for recording the sleep quality on the basis of the sensor data in order to achieve a greater correspondence between the determined value and the subjectively perceived sleep quality.

System for determining a sleep quality, sensor arrangement for such a system, and sleep or rest furniture comprising such a system


A semiconductor device having a double-layer interconnection with contact portions between first and second metal films, each having a multi-layered structure, covered with at least a silicon nitride film is provided wherein an electromigration characteristic at the contact portions is improved. The improvement is achieved by defining a value obtained by multiplying a thickness of the silicon nitride film by a stress of the nitride film formed at the contact portions is not larger than 2/5 of a value obtained by multiplying a thickness of the silicon nitride film by a stress of the nitride film formed at non-contact portions. By this, the stress exerted on the second metal film is reduced to improve the electromigration life at the contact portions by about one order of magnitude. The first and second metal films, respectively, have a multi-layered structure including a sub-layer made of Al or Al alloys.

1. Field of The Invention
This invention relates to electronic devices and more particularly, to semiconductor devices having a super LSI multilayer interconnection structure.
2. Description of The Prior Art
As is known in the art, the high degree of integration of super large scale integration circuits invariably requires multilayer or multilevel interconnections where the interconnection structure has two or more layers built up therein. Semiconductor devices having such an interconnection structure include a protective layer for preventing moisture and/or impurities from entering. This protective layer is to cover the multilayer interconnection therewith and has usually a structure which includes a phosphosilicate glass layer (P-containing SiO.sub.2) or a non-doped silicate glass layer (made of SiO.sub.2 alone) and a silicon nitride film formed by plasma-enhanced CVD. A typical example of a two-layer electrode or wiring structure is illustrated with reference to FIG. 9. In the figure, there is generally shown a semiconductor device S which includes a substrate 20 having a transistor region (not shown) covered with an insulating film 21 having an opening 21a. A first metal film 22 serving as a first electrode is formed on the substrate 20 as shown. Moreover, an insulating film 23 having an opening 23a is formed over the first metal film 22 and a second metal film 24 serving as a second electrode is provided on the insulating film 23. The second metal film 24 is in contact, as C, with the first metal film 22 through the opening 23a. Finally, a protective layer 25 having a double-layered structure of a phosphosilicate glass layer-or non-doped silicate glass layer and a silicon nitride layer (both not shown) is formed to cover the entire surface of the semiconductor device, thereby completing a two-layer interconnection structure. This interconnection structure is fundamentally composed of three lines including a line of the first electrode 22, a line of the second electrode 24 and the contact portion C where the first electrode 22 and the second electrode 24 are electrically contacted.
The degree of integration of large scale integrated circuits becomes higher with a finer size of the metal films or electrodes. When an electric current is applied to such a circuit, there will arise the problem that the breakage of the fine electrode takes place. This is called electromigration (which may be hereinafter referred to often as EM) failure. This EM failure takes place due to the fact that Al atoms ordinarily used as the metal film are moved along the direction of movement of electrons generated by application of the current and a portion of the film where the movement is violent is broken. To avoid this, it has been proposed that elements other than Al, e.g. Cu, Ti and the like, are added to the Al film so that the number of vacancies present in Al grain boundaries are decreased to reduce the movement of Al atoms (P. B. Gate, Solid State Technology, Vol. 3, pp. 113-120, (1983)).
Another problem involved in the fine electrode of the super large scale integrated circuits is a phenomenon where when kept merely at high temperatures, the electrodes are broken. This is called stress migration (which may be referred to often as SM). With regard to the SM phenomenon, it has been reported that the breakage frequently takes place when the circuit is maintained at a temperature of approximately 150.degree. C. This will be overcome to an extent by addition of Cu or the like element (J. Kelma et al, The 22nd Annual Proceeding International Reliability Physics Symposium, pp. 1-5 (1984)).
The above two reports have been made to solve the problems on the single-layer electrode line. With LSI circuits including a double-layer or multilayer interconnection structure, the problems involved in the EM and SM phenomena at contact portions between the interconnected electrodes have to be solved, like the single-layer wiring line.
Few reports have been made on the EM and SM phenomena at the contact portion. It is empirically assumed that the EM and SM characteristics will be improved by tapering the insulating film at the contact portion to improve the aluminium coverage of the second wiring. This tapered technique has now been in use. However, it has been reported that this technique has the following disadvantage (H. Tomioka et al, The 27th Annual Proceeding International Reliability Physics Symposium, p. 57 (1989)). The second aluminium film is usually formed by sputtering at relatively high sputtering power. In this condition, when the contact portion is tapered, the substrate made generally of SiO.sub.2 is apt to be sputtered at the tapered contact portion as well. This results in SiO.sub.2 formed between the first and second aluminium films, thereby causing the EM characteristics to be degraded. Thus, care should be paid to the formation of SiO.sub.2 at the contact interface.
Another approach is to make the first electrode layer 22 which has a multi-layered structure including a first sub-layer 22a, a second sub-layer 22b and a third sub-layer 22c as is shown in FIG. 9. Likewise, the second electrode layer 24 is arranged as having a multilayer structure which includes a first sub-layer 24a, a second sub-layer 24b and a third sub-layer 24c as is shown in FIG. 9. The sub-layers 22a, 24b are each made of Al or an Al alloy. By this, the movement of Al atoms toward the substrate 20 and the first electrode layer can be prevented to an extent by the presence of the sub-layer 22a or 24a. More particularly, the EM and SM phenomena can be suppressed to an extent on comparison with the case where the layers 22 and 24 are made only of Al or an Al alloy.
The status of the double-layer electrode arrangements can be summarized in the following table.
Table ______________________________________ Possibility for Application EM Phenomenon to Semi- Prior Measure for Solving conductor Art EM Problem Device ______________________________________ first several *improved by addition of possible to metal reports impurity elements use in 1.2 .mu.m film *improved by increas- line width ing grains of Al *improved by formation of a multi-layered conductive structure second several *improved by addition of possible to metal reports impurity elements use in 1.2 .mu.m film *improved by increasing line width grains of Al *improved by formation of a multi-layered conductive structure contact few *because of poor coverage difficult to portion reports of the seond metal film use in a size at the contact portion, of 1.2 .mu.m the portion is tapered but square with a problem that SiO2 is formed at the interface between the first and second metal film first several improved by addition of possible to metal reports impurity elements use in 1.2 .mu.m film line width *improved by formation of a multi-layered conductive structure second several improved by addition of possible to metal reports impurity elements use in 1.2 .mu.m film line width *improved by formation of a multi-layered conductive structure contact few *because of poor coverage not known portion reports of the second metal film, the portion is tapered, which is now under study ______________________________________
As will be apparent from the above table, although EM and SM characteristics of the first and second metal films and the problems involved in the contact portion have been individually reported, we have not found any attempt to match the respective films and the contact portion when the double-layer electrode structure is applied to semiconductor devices.

Semiconductor device having a double-layer interconnection structure

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


A thermal transfer printing method including the steps of: forming first an image on an intermediate transfer drum by heating a meltable-type thermal transfer ink sheet with a thermal head; and transferring the image formed on the intermediate transfer drum onto an image receptor, wherein the meltable-type thermal transfer ink sheet and the image receptor are fed at a velocity V.sub.1 and a velocity V.sub.3, respectively and the intermediate transfer drum rotates at a peripheral velocity V.sub.3, the velocities V.sub.1, V.sub.2 and V.sub.3 satisfying the equations (1), (2) and (3): (1) N.sub.1 =V.sub.2 /V.sub.1 =1 to 10, (2) N.sub.2 =V.sub.3 /V.sub.2 =1 to 10, and (3) N.sub.3 =V.sub.3 /V.sub.1 .gtoreq.2. With such a method, the amount of ink sheet to be consumed can be substantially reduced, and the printing velocity can be increased, while at the same time a printing device for use in this method can be scaled down.

The present invention relates to a thermal transfer printing method and, in particular, to an indirect thermal transfer printing method.
An indirect thermal transfer printing method of the conventional type is an image formation method wherein a device such as shown in FIG. 1 is used. In FIG. 1, numeral 10 denotes a rotatable intermediate transfer drum of which the surface is formed of an elastic material of good releasing property such as silicone rubber, fluorine-containing rubber or the like. Numeral 11 denotes a recording part which is arranged so that a thermal transfer ink sheet 12 can be pressed against the intermediate transfer drum 10 with a thermal head 13. In printing, the ink sheet 12 is moved in the direction indicated by an arrow as the intermediate transfer drum 10 rotates. Numeral 14 denotes a transfer part which is arranged so that an image receptor 15 can be pressed against the intermediate transfer drum 10 with a pressing roller 16. In transferring, the image receptor 15 is moved in the direction indicated by an arrow.
The thermal head 13 heats the thermal transfer ink sheet 12 so as to selectively soften or melt portions of the ink thereof, which is transferred onto the surface of the intermediate drum 10. While the intermediate drum 10 and the ink sheet 12 are thus moved in the directions indicated by the arrows, respectively, the softened or melted ink is transferred onto the intermediate drum 10 thereby forming an ink image 17 thereon. As the drum 10 rotates, the ink image 17 is moved to the transfer part 14, pressed against the image receptor 15 there, and transferred onto the image receptor 15 to form a final ink image 18 thereon.
According to such an indirect thermal transfer printing method, the ink of the ink sheet which is heated with the thermal head 13 is transferred onto a smooth surface of the intermediate transfer drum 10. Hence, there has been overcome such a problem involved in a common thermal transfer method that unclear transferred images are likely to be formed on a recording sheet of which the surface is poor in smoothness. Further, according to the indirect thermal transfer printing method of the conventional type, ink images on the intermediate transfer drum 10 are transferred onto the image receptor 15 by pressing thereagainst under a relatively large pressure with the pressing roller 16. Hence, the quality of the thus obtained images is not subject so much to the superficial conditions of the image receptor. Therefore, the indirect thermal transfer printing method provides clear images regardless of the type of the image receptor 15.
With this type of indirect thermal transfer printing method, however, there are problems left unsolved such as high cost for consumable items due to a large amount of expensive ink sheet consumed in thermal transfer printing and low printing speed.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an indirect thermal transfer printing method which is capable of effectively utilizing a thermal transfer ink of an ink sheet while improving the printing speed.
This and other objects of the invention will become apparent from the description hereinafter.


Device for production of material columns in the ground, in particular of compact columns or drains, with a apparatus carrier (10), a sled (14) movably guided upon a Makler (12) for manipulation of a conveyor system, comprising at least of a deep jolt ramming machine (16) with forward thrust head and material conveyance conduit, and a cantilever beam (20) held by the Makler (12) with a rope winch (22) for manipulating a container (26), with which material can be charge wise supplied to a charge lock (18), wherein the container (26) is synchronized with and is moveable relative to the sled (14). The material flows from the charge lock (18) through a lock door (21) into the material conveyance conduit (17) and from there finally into the ground (100).

1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a device for providing columns of material in the ground, in particular packed material columns or drains.
2. Description of the Related Art
A comparable device is basically known from DE 22 60 473 C2. This includes a lifting device in the form of a movable crane. The lifting device serves for manipulating a conveyor system for constructing columns of material, which is comprised of a deep jolt ramming machine or another type of forward thrust head and a material conveyance conduit. With the help of the forward thrust head first a borehole is formed downwardly and this is subsequently filled with material. Depending upon the task at hand, the construction can be formed or configured in various ways. For production of drains, the material is loosely filled, so that a comparatively large porous space remains between the material particles. On the other hand a strongly compacted construction can be achieved, wherein the materials is strongly, and with sideways compression, packed.
In each case the fill material is supplied from above via the material conveyance tube or conduit wherein the entire conveyance system, that is, inclusive of the material conveyance conduit, is placed under positive pressurization, on the one hand to prevent penetration of water or earth material into the hollow space excavated by the boring or tunneling unit comprised of the material conveyance conduit and the forward thrust head, and on the other hand, to assure an emission of material underground.
The filling material is provided to the conveyor system in a charge-wise manner by means of a container and, more particularly, by feeding at the upper end of the material conveyor conduit. For manipulating of the container a rope or cable winch is provided, which is provided on the cantilevered beam of the lifting device in a known manner. Therewith it is possible, on other one hand, to set the container on the ground in order that it, while there, can be filled with available material. On other hand it can be lifted to the upper end of the material conveyor conduit, in order to feed or charge this with fill material.
In accordance with a further already in use development of the above-described device, a so-called Makler or rigging is used in place of the crane. Here we refer to a vertical mast, upon which a sled is moveably mounted, guided upon guide rails. The sled serves for manipulation of a transport system of the category discussed above.
The Makler further carries on its upper end a cantilever beam provided with a rope winch for manipulating the container. Makler and cantilever beam thus together form one constructive unit.
The manipulation of the conveyor system on the one hand and the container on the other hand are possible independently of each other. So the sled, and therewith the ramming machine, can be moved up and down in steps of approximately 0.5 m to 1.0 m. During the respective upwards movement fill material is emitted from the tip of the ramming machine. During the respective subsequent downward movement the material is packed sideways and also partially towards downwards into the ground. In this manner the so-called compact columns are formed.
Independent of the movement of the boring or sinking unit and the sled with charging lock or lock, the rope or cable winch is used to respectively lower the container to the ground, fill it with material and subsequently raise it again.
For charging the supply system with fill material it is necessary that the sled be halted so that the container can be docked to the supply conduit and be emptied. It is thus necessary that the jolt-ramming machine be halted at intervals, in order that the respective charge of material can be introduced. In the entirely conventional case a 10 m long gravel column with a column diameter of 0.8 m would require a gravel volume of 5 m.sup.3. Considering a useable volume of the container in the order of approximately 1 m.sup.3 there would thus be a requirement for five charges, which would lead to the necessary frequent interruptions in the production process.

Device for providing columns of material in the ground


A new and distinct cultivar of Aloe plant named ‘ALLIGATOR’ is disclosed, characterized by upright rosette of rigid green leaves, liberally dappled with light yellow-green or greyed-green spots and margined by reddish teeth, colored near Greyed-Red 180A. Plants tolerate full sun as well as observed low temperature tolerance to −2° C. Offsets form freely on plants with maturity, creating ornate clusters. The new variety is an Aloe, typically produced as a garden or container plant.

The new cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program. The seed parent is the unpatented proprietary Aloe hybrid 'FRK 02'. The pollen parent is the unpatented proprietary Aloe hybrid 'FRK 17'. The crossing was made in March 2014 at a commercial greenhouse in Vista, Calif. 'ALLIGATOR' was selected by the inventor in September 2015.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar 'ALLIGATOR' was first performed by tissue culture at a commercial laboratory in Vista, Calif. in October 2015. 'ALLIGATOR' has since produced several generations and has shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type.


An intelligent fuel oil monitoring system includes a fuel level detector coupled to a fuel tank of a motor vehicle to detect the amount of the fuel oil in the fuel tank, a microcontroller coupled to the fuel level detector to receive traveling data of the motor vehicle and to establish an average speed-fuel consumption relationship curve and fuel consumption and travel distance relationship curves at different speeds and to calculate the distance the motor vehicle can travel based on the amount of the fuel oil detected by the fuel level detector subject to the fuel consumption and travel distance relationship curve, and a display unit coupled to the microcontroller and controlled by the microcontroller to display data.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the monitoring of the fuel oil of a motor vehicle and more particularly, to an intelligent fuel oil monitoring system and method that accurately displays on a display unit the rest amount of the fuel oil and the estimated mileage the vehicle could travel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Regular oil meters for motor vehicle commonly use a float to detect the rest amount of fuel oil in the fuel tank and to indicate the current amount of fuel by means of FULL, ¾, ½, ¼ and EMPTY. This indication is an estimated value of the current fuel tank capacity. This float type fuel oil measuring system uses a float to detect the fuel oil level, causing a variable resistor to change its resistance subject to the change of the fuel oil level, and the change of the resistance value of the variable resistor drives the oil meter to indicate the rest fuel oil amount.
The indication of the aforesaid float type fuel oil measuring system is limited to upper and lower limits. The oil meter always indicates FULL when over the upper limit, or EMPTY when below the lower limit. Because regular fuel tanks have an irregular shape, every scale represents a different amount. Based on the indication of the oil meter of the motor vehicle, the driver must estimate the mileage the motor vehicle can go by means of experience. When the fuel oil is at a low level, the driver may be getting anxious, and may worry about finding no gas station and roadside breakdown. Therefore, regular oil meters have drawbacks as follows:
1. The pointer of the oil meter is still aimed at FULL after the fuel tank has been fully filled with fuel oil and the car has run for a certain distance, and the driver may misunderstand the indication of the oil meter.
2. Every scale indicated by the pointer of the oil meter represents a different amount of fuel oil for a different mileage to go, and the driver may misjudge the mileage the car could go with the rest amount of fuel oil.
3. When the pointer is aimed at EMPTY, the driver cannot know the actual rest amount of fuel oil and may worry about roadside breakdown and become anxious in finding a gas station, bringing negative effects on traffic safety.
4. When the indicator light of the oil meter is on, the driver will become more anxious.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a motor vehicle fuel oil monitoring system that eliminates the aforesaid drawbacks.

Intelligent fuel oil monitoring system and method


A method and apparatus for performing a distinct count metric by utilizing aggregate navigation. For a distinct count query of an identifier of a detail table, where the query specifies zero or more restrictions, an aggregate table associated with the detail table is identified. It is then determined whether the aggregate table contains the identifier that is being distinct counted, and if so, whether the identifier is different in every row of the aggregate table. If it is, then the rows of the aggregate table that satisfy the specified restrictions are plain counted to obtain a result for the distinct count query. If the identifier is not different in every row of the aggregate table, a distinct count operation is performed on the rows of the aggregate table that satisfy the specified restrictions to obtain a result for the distinct count query.

A database is a collection of data. A user typically stores, retrieves and modifies the data in a database using a computer program, such as a database management system (DBMS).
One type of DBMS is a relational data base management system, which stores information in tables. A table is a series of intersecting rows and columns. The rows of a table typically represent records, which are collections of information about particular items, and the columns typically represent fields, which specify particular attributes of a record—e.g., a particular type of data that is contained in each field of the record. Each field contains the data having the particular attribute for the intersecting row and column.
The data stored in the tables of a relational database is commonly accessed and retrieved using a query and analysis tool. For example, a user can use the tool to perform specific operations on the tables, rows, and on individual data elements. One type of operation is an aggregation operation, and one such aggregation function is called a distinct count.
Distinct counts are a very important and common analytics requirement. For a detail table comprised of rows that are divided into columns, a distinct count indicates the number of unique values appearing in a first column of rows that satisfy zero or more conditions on other columns. For example, for an Ordered Items detailed table that contains a row for each item that has been ordered by a customer and, which is divided into a customer ID column, an item ID column, an order date column, and a customer zip code column, a user may wish to count the number of different user IDs contained in the rows containing the zip code 98210.
Conventional, known methods of performing a distinct count metric are unable to use aggregate navigation to perform the distinct count. To the contrary, these conventional methods always obtain the distinct count metric from the most detailed source, resulting in significant performance bottlenecks. A major performance problem is generally encountered while using conventional methods to perform distinct count metrics in an analytics environment because, by their very nature, these conventional methods of distinct counting are more than an order or magnitude slower than other aggregation functions. This problem is compounded when there is more than one distinct count measured in a report.
Accordingly, a technique for performing a distinct count metric that utilizes aggregate navigation will have significant utility.

Optimization for aggregate navigation for distinct count metrics


A device for separately packaging two components to be mixed together on first use, and for dispensing the resulting mixture, the device being of the type comprising two superposed containers suitable for communicating with each other via a passage and capable of rotating relative to each other about an axis of rotation without moving axially, a single shutter disposed in said passage to close it during separate storage of the components, one of the containers further including a guide mechanism for guiding displacement of the shutter in said passage and the other container including a drive mechanism for transforming relative rotation of the two containers into axial displacement of the shutter in the guide mechanism, thereby opening the passage. The shutter further includes a retaining mechanism suitable for limiting its displacement in the guide mechanism at the end of relative rotation of the containers.

This type of device makes it possible to mix components without reducing volume, and thus without setting up excess pressure liable to squirt the mixture out through the opening.
Japanese utility model 2 503 369 discloses a device of that type, in which the shutter drops to the bottom of the lower container at the end of relative rotation between the two containers. The shutter can then become caught in the passage if the device is turned over, thereby impeding dispensing of the mixture, particularly if the mixture is viscous.
Also, French patent application No. 2,691,950discloses a device with two containers including a moving shutter which, at the end of its displacement, bears against a shoulder of an actuator member mounted on the upper container. In that device, the above-mentioned drawback does not exist. However, the shutter extends over substantially the full height of the upper container and turns out to be expensive to produce if said container is large in size. The relatively great length of the shutter also gives rise to considerable twisting thereof during actuation, and that can lead to jamming. In addition, the shutter is screwed at its bottom end onto a chimney which co-operates with the upper container to form a groove in which the component contained therein can be retained without mixing with the other component.
German patent DE 44 36 863 C1 discloses a two-container device that is relatively complex in structure, having two shutters which move apart from each other during relative rotation of the containers.


The decoding apparatus in the present invention includes a memory operable to hold encoded data representing one of a compressed sound and a compressed image, a memory read-out unit operable to sequentially read out the encoded data from said memory, a match determining circuit operable to determine whether or not data matching a specific bit sequence exists in the encoded data read out by said memory read-out unit, a deleting circuit operable to delete a part of the specific bit sequence from the encoded data read out from said memory, when said match determining circuit determines that the specific bit sequence exists, and a decoding circuit operable to decode the post-deletion encoded data.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a decoding apparatus which performs decoding of encoded data and an encoding apparatus which performs encoding, in data compression and data expansion of audio and image.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a decoding apparatus which decodes sound, image and so on, encoded data is outputted to an inverse quantization unit after being decoded in a fixed-length decoding unit and a variable-length decoding unit, as shown in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 6-69812 (Section 5, FIG. 1), for example. Furthermore, in an encoding apparatus which performs encoding, quantized data is encoded by a fixed-length encoding unit and a variable-length encoding unit, and compressed data is outputted.
Furthermore, in general, a decoding apparatus which performs fixed-length decoding and variable-length decoding is structured in the manner shown in FIG. 1. The decoding apparatus in the diagram includes a processor 900, an input data memory 910, and input data memory I/F 920, a decoding circuit 930, an output data memory 940, and an output data memory I/F 950.
The processor 900 accesses the input data memory 910 in order to perform the processing of encoded data stored in the input data memory 910. The processing of data described here includes the deletion of a marker. In the case of JPEG, various markers are defined, as markers indicate the existence of a header or a table. A marker is a specific bit sequence such as "FF", and indicates that the 1-byte data following it is not data, but a control code. In the decoding of encoded data, when a specific bit sequence identical to the marker exists within the encoded data, distinguishing data (for example, "00") indicating that such specific bit sequence is not a marker is added. For example, although the "FF" in "FF01" within the encoded data is a marker, "FF" in "FF00" is not a marker, but data. The processor 900 deletes such distinguishing data as "00".
The decoding circuit 930 outputs a data request signal to the input data memory I/F 920 in order to read the data to be decoded, from the input data memory 910.
In the case where accessing by the processor 900 and the decoding circuit 930 conflict, the input data memory I/F 920 permits the accessing by one side, and places the accessing of the other on stand-by.
Upon reading the data to be decoded from the input data memory 910, the decoding circuit 930 carries out the decoding, outputs the result to the output data memory 940, and outputs, to the output data memory I/F 950, a data output signal indicating that the output data is valid.
The output data memory I/F 950 outputs the write address to the output data memory 940.
Thus the decoding apparatus which decodes the data in the input data memory 910 and stores the result in the output data memory 940 operates in such manner.
In the conventional decoding apparatus, the processor deletes the distinguishing data indicating a non-marker, and writes the result in the input data memory, after which the decoding circuit performs decoding and the decoded result is outputted to the output data memory. Because the deletion of the distinguishing data indicating a non-marker is performed using the processor, input and output between the memory and the processor, as well as the deletion performed by the processor become a necessity, so there exists the problem of deterioration of decoding performance.

Decoding apparatus and encoding apparatus with specific bit sequence deletion and insertion