Polyacrylate esters with long-chain alkoxylated hydrocarbonoxy groups are disclosed which can be obtained by the transesterification of polyacrylate esters with polyoxyalkylene monools, wherein the polyacrylate esters, up to 50% of which can be replaced by the corresponding methacrylate esters, have been obtained by free radical polymerization and wherein the polyoxyalkylene monools have the average formula EQU R.sup.1 O(C.sub.n H.sub.2n O--).sub.x H. wherein. R.sup.1 is an alkyl, alkenyl or alkylphenyl group, PA1 n has an absolute value of 2, 3 or 4 and an average value of 2.0 to 2.5 and PA1 x is 10 to 200.. The compounds, which can be used as emulsifiers, solubilizers and for thickening aqueous solutions which contain anionic surfactants, particularly in cosmetics and for personal grooming, are distinguished by a content of low molecular weight components, which is smaller compared to that of products obtained by copolymerization.

The invention is directed to polyacrylate esters with long-chain alkoxylated hydrocarbonoxy groups and their use as emulsifiers, solubilizers and thickeners for aqueous, anionic surfactant-containing solutions, particularly in cosmetics and personal grooming. More particularly, the invention relates to polyacrylate esters with a reduced content of low molecular weight or oligomeric compounds, as well as with a distribution of polymers which approximates a Poisson distribution, and particularly to those polyacrylate esters, which have improved physiological properties.
Copolymers of polyoxyalkylene (meth)acrylate esters and alkyl (meth)acrylate esters are known from the art.
For example, in Japanese Published Patent Application 61/145254, organic and inorganic pigments are described, the surfaces of which are treated with a copolymer which consists of 1 to 99% by weight of polyoxyalkylene (meth)acrylate and 1 to 99% by weight of alkyl (meth)acrylate and the alkyl group of the alkyl methacrylate has 6 to 22 carbon atoms. These copolymers increase the dispersibility of pigments which have been treated with them.
From German Offenlegungsschrift 36 36 429, polymeric surfactants are known which are based on copolymers of hydrophobic and hydrophilic monomers and which contain in copolymerized form (a) as hydrophobic monomers, compounds of formula ##STR1## in which R=H or CH.sub.3
X=C.sub.4 to C.sub.20 alkyl or ##STR2## R.sup.1 =H, C.sub.1 to C.sub.20 alkyl or halogen ##STR3## n=1 to 4 R.sup.2, R.sup.3 =H, C.sub.1 to C.sub.20 alkyl, F, Cl, Br, and PA1 Y= ##STR5## R.sup.4 =H, CH.sub.3 or C.sub.2 H.sub.5 R.sup.5 =H, Cl to C.sub.4 alkyl and PA1 m=2 to 50. PA1 R is either a hydrogen group and R' is a hydrogen group or an alkyl group with 1 to 4 carbon atoms, or PA1 R is a --COOX group and R' is a hydrogen group or the --CH.sub.2 COOX group, or PA1 R is a methyl group and R' is a hydrogen group, and PA1 X is a hydrogen group or an alkyl group with 1 to 4 carbon atoms PA1 Y is a hydrogen group and Z is a --COOR, --C.sub.6 H.sub.4 R'--, --CN--, Cl--, --OOCR''-- or --CH.dbd.CH.sub.2 group or PA1 Y is a methyl group and Z a --COOR--, --C.sub.6 H.sub.4 R'--, --CN-- or --CH=CH.sub.2 group or PA1 Y and Z are chloro groups and PA1 R is an alkyl group with 1 to 8 carbon atoms or a hydroxyalkyl group with 2 to 8 carbon atoms, PA1 R' is a hydrogen, chloro, bromo or alkyl group with 1 to 4 carbon atoms and PA1 R'' is an alkyl group with 1 to 8 carbon atoms, and PA1 R'' is an alkyl group with 8 to 20 carbon atoms or an alkylphenyl group with 8 to 16 carbon atoms, PA1 n on the average is a number from 6 to 100 and PA1 m on the average is a number from 0 to 50, with the proviso that n.gtoreq.m and (n+m) is equal to 6 to 100. PA1 R.sup.1 is an alkyl group with 8 to 30 carbon atoms, an alkenyl group with 8 to 22 carbon atoms or a monoalkyl- or dialkylphenyl group with 6 to 16 carbon atoms per alkyl group, wherein up to 40% of the Ri groups may be replaced by alkyl groups with 1 to 4 carbon atoms, PA1 n has a value of 2, 3 or 4 and an average value of 2.0 to 2.5 in the average molecule and PA1 x has a value of 10 to 200,
(b) as hydrophilic monomers, compounds of the formula ##STR4## in which R=H or CH.sub.3,
In aqueous systems above the critical micelle concentrations, these polymeric surfactants form micellar structures, which, in the case of suitable formations and in particular concentration ranges, are present as liquid crystalline phases (mesophases). The copolymers described in the German Offenlegungsschrift 36 36 429 are intended to make possible a wide variation of mesophasic structures and stability parameters. These copolymers have surfactant properties and the water-soluble compounds can be used in detergent formulations to enhance laundering power. The copolymers furthermore can be used to increase the viscosity of aqueous phases, the viscosity-increasing effect being largely independent of the pH.
European published patent application 0 011 806 relates to a liquid emulsion polymer which has a ph-dependent thickening effect on aqueous preparations and contains
a) 15-60% by weight of an .alpha.,.beta.-ethylenically unsaturated monomeric carboxylic acid of the formula EQU RCH.dbd.C(R')--COOH
wherein
b) 15-80% by weight of at least one nonionic, copolymerizable .alpha.,.beta.-ethylenically unsaturated monomer of the formula EQU CH.sub.2 .dbd.CYZ
wherein
c) 1-30% by weight of a nonionic surface active vinyl ester of the formula ##STR6## wherein R is a hydrogen or methyl group and each R' group is an alkyl group with 1 or 2 carbon
At a pH of less than about 5.0, the polymer is stable in the form of an aqueous colloidal dispersion. However, when the pH is adjusted to a value of 5.5 to 10.5 and higher, it becomes an effective thickener for aqueous systems.
Copolymers of a similar composition are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,469,611 and 4,552,685. Gel chromatographic analysis of these copolymers of the state of the art shows a relatively broad molecular weight distribution, which can be responsible for a decreased surfactant activity. As can furthermore be demonstrated by NMR spectroscopic analysis and gel chromatographic analysis, the copolymers contain appreciable portions of low molecular weight compounds. These low molecular weight portions consist of appreciable amounts of residual monomers as well as of low molecular weight compounds. It is assumed that the cause for this may be found in the polymerization parameters of the different monomers, which differ greatly from one another.
These low molecular weight portions are, however, undesirable in various ways. They adversely affect and diminish the surface active properties of the known copolymers, since they themselves contribute nothing or only very little to these properties. The low molecular weight portions are, however, also undesirable for physiological reasons, since they lead to impairment of health, such as skin irritations, sensitizations, etc.
It is not possible to separate these interfering portions from the copolymers of the state of the art in an economic manner.

Polyacrylate ester with long-chain alkoxylated hydrocarbonoxy groups and their use in cosmetics and personal grooming


Methods of treating hazardous materials, such as, for example, contaminated soils, are disclosed. In one aspect, a method may include treating a contaminated soil with a hazardous material treatment composition to form a resulting material. In one aspect, the hazardous material treatment composition may include mostly salt, and from 0.5 to 15 wt % sorbent. The method may further include treating the resulting material with one or more inorganic binding agents. Other methods of treating hazardous materials are also disclosed, as well as compositions for treating hazardous materials.

Tremendous volumes of soil worldwide are contaminated with hazardous materials, such as, for example, oil-derived hydrocarbons, and heavy metals, to name just a few examples. Soil remediation is a process by which the soil may be treated in order to reduce the level of hazardous materials in the soil. Large sums of money are spent on soil remediation.
There are numerous approaches for remediating contaminated soils. Representative approaches include, but are not limited to, biological treatment to biologically alter the hazardous materials, air stripping to strip the hazardous materials from the soil with air, soil washing to wash the contaminants from the soil, solvent extraction to extract the contaminants from the soil with a solvent, vitrification in which the contaminates are locked into the soil with vitrification, vacuum extraction in which a vacuum is used to extract the contaminants from the soil, and thermal desorption in which heat is used to thermally desorb the contaminants from the soil. The approaches may be performed either in-situ or else soil may be excavated and transported to a treatment facility.
However, there are known disadvantages associated with each of these approaches. For example, biological treatment may tend to be relatively specific for certain contaminants and may face challenges when mixed contaminants are present in the soil. Air stripping and vacuum extraction may be relatively ineffective when the contaminants have low volatility. Vitrification may tend to be challenging when the soil has flammable materials and may tend to be costly in operation and capital cost. Soil washing and solvent extraction tend to consume large volumes of water or solvent which then need to be processed and may tend to be expensive. Thermal desorption may tend to be expensive and energy intensive.
Thus there is a general need in the art for new and useful hazardous material treatment methods.


Provided are a low temperature active matrix display device using a plastic substrate and method of fabricating the same. The low temperature active matrix display device includes: a plastic substrate; a reflection layer disposed on the plastic substrate; a buffer layer disposed on the reflection layer; a thin film transistor disposed on the buffer layer in a first region of the plastic substrate; an interlayer dielectric layer disposed on the thin film transistor; a capacitor disposed in a trench formed in a second region of the plastic substrate and having a first electrode connected to a source electrode and a drain electrode of the thin film transistor, the trench extending from the interlayer dielectric layer to the reflection layer; and a display device having one electrode connected to a second electrode of the capacitor. The above-described structure includes photoresist spacers to decrease a leakage current from the TFT, includes a reflector to protect the plastic substrate from deformation due to laser irradiation, and employs a three-dimensional capacitor to increase an aperture ratio.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an active matrix display device using a plastic substrate and method of fabricating the same.
2. Discussion of Related Art
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a conventional active matrix display device. Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional active matrix display device is a device that displays a unit image of a predetermined display and includes a thin film transistor (TFT), a capacitor (C), and an organic light emitting diode (OLED). Here, the TFT is formed on a buffer layer 3a in a first region of a substrate 1a, and the capacitor C is formed on an interlayer dielectric layer 15a in a second region of the substrate 1a.
In the above-described conventional active matrix display device, an activated active region can be defined in the TFT using lithography equipment, in the case of using a glass substrate. However, in the case of using a plastic substrate, it is impossible to define the activated region in the TFT using the lithography equipment because the plastic substrate is deformed. If the activated region is disposed adjacent to a gate, an excessive leakage current occurs from the TFT so that the OLED cannot operate.
Also, during a low temperature activation process using a laser, the glass substrate passes the laser and avoids being deformed, whereas the plastic substrate absorbs the laser and suffers from thermal deformation.
To prevent the thermal deformation of the plastic substrate, some manufacturers may adopt a process operation of etching an active region after an activation process using a laser. However, in this case, a leakage current occurs between devices through a gate terminal, so that the OLED cannot operate.
Further, since the plastic substrate requires a sufficient alignment margin in comparison to the glass substrate, the area of the capacitor C in the unit pixel is greatly increased and an aperture ratio is notably reduced. Therefore, the conventional active matrix display device needs to form a large-sized capacitor in a small area.

Low temperature active matrix display device and method of fabricating the same

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute


A cutting tool consists of at least one cutting blade. The cutting blade is composed of a blade body, a shank, and a blade edge. The blade body and shank are composed of a titanium alloy having a hardness of less than 20RC. The blade edge is composed of a titanium alloy having a hardness of greater than 35RC. The blade body and blade edge are connected by an intermediate border layer, formed during molding and sintering steps in the production of the cutting blade. The blade body, shank, and blade edge are all formed as a single body. The method for forming the cutting blade comprises the steps of molding different titanium alloy powders at a pressure between 2 and 15 tons/cm.sup.2, followed by sintering at 1100.degree. C. to 1300.degree. C.

This invention relates to a cutting tool composed of a plurality of titanium alloys. More particularly, this invention relates to a cutting tool made of titanium alloys, in which the chemical composition of the blade base is different from the chemical composition of the blade edge. Also more particularly, this invention relates to a cutting tool intended for domestic use, such as kitchen knives, scissors and the like, which can be manufactured at a low cost.
Regardless of whether intended for professional or for non-professional use, a primary concern for a cutting tool is the sharpness of the cutting blade. Consequently, forged cutting blades of special steels containing, for example, manganese, cobalt, tungsten, molybdenum or the like are preferred for cutting tools. However, cutting tools made of these forged special steels are often expensive, and are therefore unpopular for domestic or nonprofessional use. In addition, cutting tools intended for domestic use tend to rust from lack of care. Therefore, they are often made of stainless steel containing large amounts of nickel and chromium. However, cutting tools made of stainless steel tend to dull more readily.
Recently, titanium alloys are drawing increasing attention for use as a raw material for cutting tools. Titanium does not rust and, because it has a low specific gravity, cutting tools made from titanium are lightweight. Additionally, by employing titanium alloys which include aluminum, vanadium or the like, a substance having very high hardness can be obtained. As a result, the quality of cutting tools made of such a very hard material is excellent. However, such alloys often are expensive, and cutting tools manufactured from such alloys and intended for domestic use have little marketability where the production cost of the raw material is high.

Cutting tool of a titanium alloy complex


Various embodiments generally relate to a method for synchronizing a receiver, said method including receiving a stream that includes a cyclic extension, estimating a size of the cyclic extension, extracting an amount of the stream according to the estimated size, and comparing the extracted amount to the stream to determine thereby a portion of the stream likely to include a symbol start point.

Communication systems typically require mechanisms to provide synchronization at the receiver. Such mechanisms are in particular required for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), a communication scheme for transmitting data over N parallel sub-carriers, which is used within the context of Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) systems, certain wireless local area networks, digital radio systems, power line communications as well as other systems.
An OFDM symbol of length L=N+G consists of N (complex) time-domain samples emerging from an OFDM modulator, as well as a cyclic extension of length G. The cyclic extension is a portion of the N samples taken from the end and/or beginning and positioned preceding and/or following the N samples. The cyclic extension may be utilized as an aid in distinguishing one OFDM symbol from another, as well as function as a guard interval for mitigating inter-symbol interference (ISI) and other undesirable propagation effects.
For an OFDM symbol to render any useful information, an OFDM receiver must be able to distinguish the OFDM symbols. A correlation technique is normally used to determine a starting point of an OFDM symbol. However, in certain communication systems, including DVB-T systems, the precise length of an OFDM symbol is not known to a receiver. Common methods of determining the length of the symbol and estimating its position have been to guess a certain symbol length, perform correlations of the received signal, and to see how the correlation changes over time. If the correlation increases beyond a threshold level, the OFDM symbol is deemed to have been found. While likely to ultimately succeed, this brute force method is time consuming and susceptible to various error sources. Moreover, these random guesses may also not provide a sufficient result in a reasonable amount of time.

Method and apparatus for synchronizing a receiver


A data structure is maintained for performing a program operation that is allowed to be suspended to perform reads in a NAND device, where the data structure indicates a plurality of tiers, where each tier of the plurality of tiers has a number of allowed suspends of the program operation while executing in the tier, and where a sum of the number of allowed suspends for all tiers of the plurality of tiers equals a maximum allowed number of suspends of the program operation. In response to performing a resume of the program operation, after performing a read following a suspend of the program operation, a determination is made of a tier of the plurality of tiers for the program operation and a subsequent suspend of the program operation is performed only after a measure of progress of the program operation has been exceeded in the determined tier.

A solid state drive (SSD) is a data storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. SSDs have no moving mechanical components and this distinguishes SSDs from traditional electromechanical magnetic disks, such as, hard disk drives (HDDs) or floppy disks, which contain spinning disks and movable read/write heads. Compared to electromechanical disks, SSDs are typically more resistant to physical shock, run silently, have lower access time, and less latency.
Many types of SSDs use NAND-based flash memory which retains data without power and comprise a type of non-volatile storage technology. A requirement of SSDs may be to ensure that read and/or write commands are serviced in a reliable amount of time, and the performance of command latencies may be provided by a quality of service (QoS) metric. For example, a movie stored in a SSD in a laptop may have to be read and the QoS metric may be associated with the reading.
The quality of service of an SSD may be related to the predictability of low latency and consistency of high input/output operations per second (IOPS) while servicing read/write input/output (I/O) workloads. This means that the latency or the I/O command (i.e., read or write command) completion time needs to be within a specified range without having unexpected outliers. Throughput or I/O rate may also need to be tightly regulated without causing sudden drops in performance level.

Method, system, and apparatus for multi-tiered progressive memory program operation suspend and resume


A nacelle may comprise an inlet cowling comprising an inlet cowling aft edge having an aft edge length; a boat tail cowling comprising a boat tail cowling forward edge having a forward edge length, wherein the boat tail cowling forward edge is disposed adjacent to the inlet cowling aft edge. The forward edge length may be shorter than the aft edge length, forming a step being defined by a portion of the inlet cowling aft edge that is radially outward of the boat tail cowling forward edge. The nacelle may further comprise a transition fairing coupled to the boat tail cowling, wherein the transition fairing comprises a fairing forward edge disposed adjacent to the inlet cowling aft edge and a fairing ramp surface spanning between the inlet cowling aft edge and a boat tail cowling external surface.

A nacelle is a casing or housing that holds an engine and/or other equipment on an aircraft. Nacelles are often coupled to an underside of an aircraft wing, for example, by a pylon. Nacelles are typically designed to enhance aerodynamic efficiency, and to fit under the aircraft wing without hanging too close to, or contacting, the ground.


A manufacturing system includes a plurality of lamination heads and a head-moving system defining a continuous loop lamination path configured to move the lamination heads in series along the lamination path. The manufacturing system also includes at least one lamination mandrel positioned along a portion of the lamination path. The lamination heads are each configured to dispense a layup material onto the at least one lamination mandrel or onto layup material previously applied onto the lamination mandrel while the lamination heads are moved by the head-moving system through one or more revolutions of the lamination path to lay up a composite laminate.

Composite materials are used in a wide variety of applications due to their favorable properties such as high specific strength, high specific stiffness, and high corrosion resistance. The manufacturing of a composite structure typically involves the layup of multiple composite plies of composite laminate material onto a mandrel to form a composite laminate. The layup material is typically a fibrous material that is pre-impregnated with resin (e.g., prepreg). For example, the layup material may be epoxy-impregnated carbon fiber prepreg.
Automated layup machines enable the layup of composite laminates at relatively high production rates due to the relatively high deposition rates of automated layup machines. A tape lamination head is one type of automated layup machine in which a continuous strip of layup material such as prepreg tape is dispensed from the lamination head onto a layup surface as the lamination head is moved over the layup surface.
A conventional lamination head may lay up each new course of tape while moving in a first direction of travel. At the end of a course, the lamination head lifts off of the layup surface and moves back over the layup surface in a second direction of travel opposite the first direction of travel and starts applying another course of tape along the first direction. The off-part movement of the lamination head each time it moves along the second direction undesirably adds to production flow time.
In an effort to reduce off-part movement, certain types of lamination heads may be configured to rotate 180 degrees at the end of a first course, and then reverse direction to lay up a second course of tape alongside or over the first course. The capability for rotating the lamination head adds complexity to the lamination system due to the need to rotate the entire weight of the lamination head, the material supply, support cabling, and other associated components. Further adding to the complexity is the need to temporarily lift the lamination head off of the layup surface prior to rotation, and then lower the lamination head back down onto the layup surface once rotation is complete.
Other efforts to reduce off-part movement include a dual-head arrangement having a first lamination head and an opposing second lamination head. The first lamination head is configured to lay up a first course of tape as the dual-head arrangement moves along a first direction of travel, and the second lamination head is configured to lay up a second course alongside or over the first course after the dual-head arrangement reverses direction and moves along a second direction of travel. Although effective in reducing off-part movement, a dual-head arrangement may increase the overall cost and complexity of the lamination system relative to the cost and complexity of a single lamination head.
As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for manufacturing a composite laminate that avoids the above-noted challenges associated with off-part movement of lamination heads.

System and method for laminating a composite laminate along a continuous loop lamination path


An electrical socket comprises an insulative housing, a stiffener defined around the insulative housing, a load plate and a load lever. The housing defines two supporting portions at two opposite sides, each of said supporting portions defining a mounting portion in a middle portion thereof. The stiffener comprises a first side, a second side opposite to the first side, a third side and a fourth side opposite to the third side, the third, fourth sides defined corresponding to the two supporting portions of the housing respectively and with an engaging portion engageable with the mounting portion, each of said third, fourth sides formed with an upwardly curved configuration at a middle portion thereof for supporting the supporting portion. The two supporting portions seat on the third, fourth sides respectively, thus making a gap formed between the supporting portions and opposite end of corresponding sides respectively.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a socket connector, and more particularly, to a socket connector having a connector housing with ends slightly lifted off to provide a deformation free configuration in use.
2. Description of Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 7,189,093 issued to Ma on Mar. 13, 2007 discloses an electronic socket, which comprises a plurality of conductive terminals received in an insulative housing, a stiffener surrounding the housing, a load plate pivotably assembled with one end of the stiffener and a load lever pivotably attached to the other end of the stiffener. The stiffener defines a plurality of semi-circular slits at the two ends of a window thereof. Bottom walls of the housing define a plurality of semi-cylindrical protrusions corresponding to the semi-circular slits. By virtue of the engagement of the semi-cylindrical protrusions and the semi-circular slits, the stiffener body is assembled with the housing completely.
However, Ma's art has its limitation. In use, stress is concentrated mainly on area where the located/load lever is pivotably attached the stiffener. When the electrical package is mounted into the receiving cavity of the housing, the load plate will be locked onto the stiffener by the load lever, so as to secure the electrical package in the housing. During above process, middle portion of the stiffener will be deformed downwardly under the operational force, and the two ends of the stiffener will be deformed upwardly. Accordingly, because the housing is mechanically engaged with the window of the stiffener, the housing may be curved under the force. Accordingly, solder ball disposed on a periphery region of the bottom wall of the housing may be stretched under condition that the housing is deformed. If so, reliability of the electrical socket is destroyed inadvertently effected.
In view of the above, an improved electrical socket that overcomes the above-mentioned disadvantages is desired.

Socket connector having connector housing with ends slightly lifted off stiffener ensuring deformation-free operation


In accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, a method may include powering on a management controller for providing out-of-band management to an information handling system using electrical energy provided by an external device via an external port, receiving a management task from the external device via the external port for coupling an external device to the management controller for communication of data between the external device and the management controller, calculating an additional amount of power required to perform the management task, instructing a controller coupled between the management controller and the external port to negotiate for the additional amount of power from the external device, and responsive to the controller successfully negotiating for the additional amount of power, performing the management task.

As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Many information handling systems include a management controller to provide for management of such information handling systems by another information handling system coupled to the management controller either by a network connection or via direct coupling between the other information handling system and the management controller. Examples of a management controller may include a baseboard management controller (BMC), a remote access controller (e.g., a Dell Remote Access Controller or Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller), or a chassis management controller (CMC).
Such a management controller may provide out-of-band management facilities for management of an information handling system. For example, such management may be made by a management controller even if an information handling system is powered off or powered to a standby state. However, when providing management capabilities during a powered off or standby state of the information handling system, the management controller and other components of the information handling system managed by the management controller are powered from an auxiliary power rail which is provided electrical energy from a power supply unit of the information handling system which converts an alternating current input source waveform into a direct current voltage delivered to the auxiliary power rail. However, in traditional approaches, in the event that an information handling system is not plugged into an alternating current power source or in the event of loss of an alternating current input when plugged in, the management controller is not powered and thus cannot be used for its management facilities.

Systems and methods for management of an information handling system having no alternating current power source


In a webbing take-up device, a lock ring of an energy absorption mechanism is disposed coaxially to a spool. An anchor hook (one end portion) of a wire is anchored to the lock ring, and the wire is wound around a wire attachment face (outer peripheral portion) of the lock ring from the anchor hook to another end portion of the wire. Most of the wire excluding a second energy absorption portion is accordingly disposed around the wire attachment face of the lock ring that is disposed coaxially to the spool, thereby enabling an increase in size of the body of the webbing take-up device to be suppressed in comparison to a case in which the lock ring is disposed parallel to the spool.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a webbing take-up device provided with an energy absorption member.
Related Art
In a retractor (webbing take-up device) described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2001-310705, a locking base is fixed to one end portion of a bobbin (spool) so as to be capable of rotation integrally therewith. In a vehicle emergency, a pole provided to the locking base engages with a latch plate. When this occurs, a shear pin that fixes the latch plate is broken, and the latch plate rotates.
The retractor described above is provided with a housing shaft, with the housing shaft disposed parallel to the bobbin (spool). A wire member (energy absorption member) is wound around the housing shaft. The wire member extends from the housing shaft to a pulley of the latch plate, and one end of the wire member is anchored to the pulley. The wire member extending from the housing shaft to the pulley abuts a deforming portion configured by an EA bolt. When the latch plate is rotated, while the wire member is deformed by the deforming portion of the EA bolt, the wire member is wound onto the latch plate. Impact energy is thereby absorbed.
However, with this retractor, there is an issue that the retractor has a large body since the housing shaft, around which the wire member is wound, is disposed parallel to the bobbin (spool) as described above.


An active aerostatic bearing comprises a first plate and a force actuator. The first plate has a central recess area including an orifice forming an inlet restrictor for pressurized air from a central nozzle. The pressurized air forms an air gap between a guiding surface and the first plate. The force actuator is configured to act to deform the first plate so as to change a shape of the air gap, wherein the actuator is configured to cause a conical deformation of the first plate.

Aerostatic bearings have been extensively used in precision motion systems, specifically in semiconductor manufacturing and inspection. The absence of stick-slip effect in aerostatic bearings results in a precise and repeatable motion. Aerostatic bearings preserve a clean environment, as they require no oil lubrication. They comprise two parts: a guiding surface (which is usually lapped to have a low surface roughness) on which slides a pad which includes the air pressure supply and a lower surface with an orifice through which the air flows. Aerostatic Bearings are generally classified based on the type of inlet restrictor. Those with a centrally fed orifice are commonly employed due to their ease of manufacturing.
Pressurized air is forced into a pad. The orifice acts as an inlet restrictor, and the exhaust restrictor is composed by the thin gap between the guiding surface and the pad's lower surface. Loading/unloading the pad changes the pressure distribution resulting from the alteration of the gap height and the recess pressure.
One of the disadvantages of air bearings is their limited static stiffness. Indeed, a change of load results in a change of gap height which can lead to inaccuracies in high precision machines. Static stiffness can be increased by changing the exhaust restrictor. A deformable membrane can replace the pad's lower surface. In this case, the response of the pad involves both rigid body motion and the deformation of the membrane. EP 0143471 B1 suggests adding a pivoting membrane that allows an infinite static stiffness. EP 0065337 B1 suggests extending the range of infinite stiffness by using inner and outer gas chambers.
The main disadvantage of these passive load compensation methods is the requirement of pressurized chambers, adding to manufacturing complexities. Additionally, the geometric inaccuracies of the guiding surfaces remain uncompensated. Actively controlled air bearings offer a way to overcome these limitations and add a macro-positioning capability to compensate for the geometrical inaccuracies of the guiding surface.
Active compensation strategies can be grouped into two categories: flow restriction control and gap geometry control. The main limitation of flow restriction control is in its limited bandwidth caused by the latency in the response.
Gap geometry control offers a collocated actuation. In this approach, the force of an actuator acts directly on the gap geometry and instantly changes the pressure distribution. The simplest means of gap actuation method is described by Roe et al. (S.-K. Ro, S. Kim, Y. Kwak, and C. H. Park, "A linear air bearing stage with active magnetic preloads for ultraprecise straight motion," Precis. Eng., vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 186-194, January 2010): The linear axes uses four iron core motors with permanent magnets to actively preload a set of eight porous media air bearings.
Van Ostayen et al. (Ron A. J. van Ostayen, Anton van Beek, and Rob Munnig-Schmidt, "Design and Optimization of an Active Aerostatic thrust Bearing," ASPE Annu. Conf. October 2007) presented a design with an active pad supported in the center, with a flexible plate with intermediate circumferential support, and an electromagnetic actuator mounted on the edge of the pad to deform the plate. This method increases the design complexity because it involves a plate deformation. A membrane-like thin plate is required to obtain high mechanical stiffness comparable to passive load compensation levels. However, membrane-like thin plates under point loading cause local deformation. Thus, the servo force will not affect the pressure and gap height across the whole pad, limiting the servo's impact on the load capacity and thus requiring a high-density servo actuator to change the load capacity.


A thread-based microfluidic guiding system is provided and includes a substrate, two fiber threads arranged on the substrate in a cross manner. The two fiber threads are used as physical guiding pathways to guide a sample fluid and a buffer fluid, respectively. The two fiber threads have capillary action, so that the sample fluid, the buffer fluid or a mixture fluid thereof can flow along fiber surfaces of the two fiber threads, which can be pre-treated by plasma. The thread-based microfluidic guiding system of the present invention is different from recessed microfluidic channel structures, and can simplify system structure, lower manufacture cost, accelerate detection operation and enhance detection sensitivity.

A typical microfluidic channel system mainly includes a substrate which is made of glass transparent plastic material and is etched by complicated development etching processes to form grooved microfluidic channels on a surface thereof. Moreover, a basic structure of the microfluidic channel system can be assembled by using another substrate to cover thereon. This type of microfluidic channel system is widely used as a carrier of detections for optics, electrochemistry, and electrochemical electrophoresis analyses.
For example, Taiwan patent No. 1294968 reveals a bio-electrical detection chip, which includes a chip body, a first microchannel, a second microchannel, and a pair of working electrodes. The first microchannel, the second microchannel, and the pair of working electrodes are disposed on the chip body, and the first and second microchannels penetrate through the chip body. The first microchannel is interconnected with the second microchannel. The first microchannel is utilized to guide a sample fluid to flow; the second microchannel is utilized to guide a buffer fluid to flow. The two working electrodes are disposed at both sides the second microchannel, respectively, thereby performing a non-contact electrophoresis analysis.
However, the drawback of the grooved microfluidic channels within the conventional substrates is that surface tension or viscosity of the microfluid influence a capillary action of the microfluid and a rate of the flow along a pipe wall of the microfluidic channel. Furthermore, the greater the surface tension or viscosity, the greater an adhesion force of on the pipe wall is; the longer a flowing duration is.
Thus, it is prone to the problem of poor fluidity. Moreover, if a voltage is applied to the microfluid in the grooved microfluidic channels for carrying on electrochemical analyses such as capillary electrophoresis, a Joule heating effect is easy to generate in the microfluid within the grooved microfluidic channels, thereby affecting a variety of background parameters and accuracy of the experimental results. In addition, if the purpose of the experiment is changed, the shape of the grooved microfluidic channel also needs to be re-fabricated by the complicated development etching processes. Thus, its overall analysis and detection cost is relatively high.
In the channels of the conventional electrophoresis chips, because the substrates are mainly made of glass and polymer organic transparent silicon compound, and because lengths of an injection channel and a separation channel are fixed due to its manufacturing processes, injection volume that is used for separating the sample can not be changed quantitatively. As a result, the analyzed sample which reaches a detection end is a very small amount, resulting in a poor signal to be obtained, or it is not easy to be detected. Therefore, the present system is developed by twining different number of turns of coils, thereby changing the fed amount of the sample in order to achieve a high detection sensitivity.
Therefore, there is a signification need to provide an improved microfluidic guiding system for solving the problem existing in the structure of the conventional grooved microfluidic channels.

Thread-based microfluidic guiding system


A method and composition for treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), administered as two component treatment, involving 1) an orally administered squalene in combination with 2) the inhalation of squalene medication. Each medication component must be administered concurrently.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and composition for treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), administered as a two component treatment, involving 1) an orally administered SQUALENE, 500 mg twice per day and 2) the inhalation of squalene through the nasal membrane to the blood stream three times per day, 2-to-3 drops (10 to 15 mg.) each time. The period of treatment is two to six months, depending on the quantity of the viral load. The two components are administered concurrently to achieve the best results. Medicinal theoretical study have shown that squalene has the potential of antiviral activity, furthermore, in vitro assay has shown that the squalene compound inhibits the replication of hepatitis C virus and competitive to interferon-.alpha.(IFN). This is beside the use of that treatment on a hepatitis C patient.
2. Description of Prior Art
Chronic infection by hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a global disease and the number of carriers is estimated to be 300 million (reported by Purcell in 1994, Van der Poel in 1994, Love et al. In 1996 and Kim et al. In 1996). Alter and Maste in 1994 reported that four million individuals are in the United States alone. Outside the United States, for example in Egypt, 25% of the Egyptian population is infected. HCV is the major etiologic agent or human parentally and community-acquired non-A, non-B hepatitis (NANBH) (Choo et al. in 1989). Most HCV infections occur by blood transfer, whether by blood transfusion or a contaminated syringes, which is often seen in cases of shared syringes by drug addicts.
20% of the infected individuals develop acute clinical hepatitis (Kim et, al. in 1996). However, in most cases the virus establishes a chronic infection that persists for decades as stated by Iwarson in 1994. The uncertainty of the availability or even the prospects of safe and effective anti-HCV vaccines, made no protection against HCV for many years. The unavailability of HCV diagnostic identification, until it was recently identified by molecular cloning and sequencing around 1989 (Alter et al., Choo et al., Kuo et al.), where technology of the diagnostic test became available to the diagnostic laboratories and the practicing physicians in early 1990's. Prior to that time, chronic HCV infections could have been asymptotic, therefore, making diagnosis of HCV cases by the physician difficult and essentially undetectable until late stage when secondary effects of the infection are noted by the patient, who only then seeks treatment. Moreover, no reported method exists for effective treatment of late stage HCV carriers, with the exception of interferon (IFN) treatment which have significant side effects (Renault et al. In 1989) or liver transplantation, which has unpredictable results in some cases. Even though, the patients who go for liver transplantation and still have HCV in their blood stream still at risk from developing liver cirrhosis and other complications. At present the only accepted medical treatment is the IFN; its positive response is observed in about 50% of the patients with chronic HCV infection and the reduction in the viral load was averaged to 25 to 31% (Statistical data from C&S clinical Laboratories Inc.). Although IFN has shown great promise in a subset of patients treated for a prolonged period of time, these response rates have overall, unfortunately been disappointing, and toxicity to effective doses is substantial. Therefore, the need for an effective treatment to abolish HCV completely from the patient system is necessary.
Because of latent nature of the symptomatology (10 to 15 years) of the infection, the liver may be saved only if the chronic liver disease is not sufficiently advanced. This can be achieved if the HCV replication can be inhibited by the use of certain anti-HCV compound if available. A proportion of those patients will, nevertheless, ultimately develop problems such as cirrhosis, portal hypertension, varices, gastric erosions, ulcers and hepatocellular carcinoma. With this understanding, it is not surprising that late stage HCV carriers are still at increased risk of morbidity and mortality. A review of the patents and medical literature fails to reveal any suggested safe remedies for HCV. However, there are alternative methods for treatment using natural products which is historically known to cure liver and gastric problems (John Gerared, James Duke, and Kee Chang Huang), however, according to the late clinical trial in Egypt (personal communication), where they used undisclosed group of herbs for the treatment of hepatitis C. The analysis of the herbs used have shown to contains some toxic substances, which in unregulated doses can cause serious side effects and makes the use of these herbs as a treatment for HCV dangerous. Such poison constituents include: Pyrogallol, which when ingested, causes gastrointestinal irritation, renal and hepatic damage, hemolysis, methemoglobinemia, convulsion, circulatory collapse and even death; Camphor, which when ingested or injected causes nausea, vomiting, vertigo, mental confusion, delirium, colonic convulsion, coma, respiratory failure and death; and Bis(2-ethylhexyl)Phthalate where the symptoms of its exposure are irritation of eyes and mucous membranes and may reasonably be anticipated to be carcinogen Seventh Annual Report on carcinogens (PB95-109781, 1994) p. 168!. Moreover, case studies of HCV treatment using the undisclosed herbs have been released in which symptoms have been reported suggested the above mentioned poison constituents, and thus suggesting the identity of the herbs.
Medicinal information sources shows that, there are many pharmaceutical preparations for viral hepatitis, however none of them is specific for HCV except the IFN. This could be due to at least three reasons. First: because of the late discovery of the HCV diagnostic test. Second: because of the latent nature of the HCV infections. Third: the receptors or reaction sites were not clear until very recently on October of 1996, when two research groups (Love et al.) in Agouron Pharmaceuticals and (Kim et al.) In Vertex Pharmaceuticals published simultaneously their articles about the possible HCV sites which could be the basis for future efforts for drug design. Recently, the combination of Ribavirin and IFN was introduced as a therapy of chronic hepatitis C (Schvarcz et al.) where a clinical trial was made in four European countries showing shorter period of treatment than IFN alone and a sustained response rate defined as normal alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels and undetectable HCV RNA in six months after the end of therapy.

Squalene is an antiviral compound for treating hepatitis C virus carriers


An apparatus is provided for ensuring the proper orientation of an electronic device within a rack slot. A constraint is added to one of a pair of rail assemblies and a corresponding constraint is added to the rack, the pair of constraints cooperating to allow the pair of rail assemblies to be installed only in the proper sides of the rack. Mounting holes are provided on the device and inner rails of the rail assemblies that allow the inner rail assemblies to be installed only on the proper sides of the device. A key and key slot combination is then provided in an inner rail and a middle rail of one rail assembly with the combination preventing the inner rail from being fully inserted into the incorrect middle rail. Thus, the correct orientation of the device is ensured by the pair of rail assemblies, the spacing of mounting holes in the device, and the rack constraint.

For a device that plugs into a rack level power source (e.g., bus bars), it can be harmful to the device or even hazardous if the device is installed upside down. If a device is installed in an inverted position, the device power leads will engage the power source incorrectly, i.e., the ground plug will contact the live bus bar.
FIG. 1 is an isometric view of a prior art arrangement of a rack 10 and an electronic device 20. In FIG. 1, rack 10 includes posts 12a . . . 12d. Rail assemblies 30a, 30b include inner rails 32a, 32b, middle rails 34a, 34b, and outer rails 36a, 36b. Typically, inner rails 32a, 32b are affixed to device sides 22a, 22b using mounting keyholes 38a . . . 38d (FIG. 2, for device side 22a) and 39a . . . 39d (device side 22b).
FIG. 3 is an isometric view of prior art rail assemblies 30a, 30b, which include front mounting brackets 40a, 40b and rear mounting brackets 42a, 42b. FIG. 1 through FIG. 3 illustrate that inner rails 32a, 32b may be interchangeably installed on either side 22a, 22b of electronic device 20. Similarly, rail assemblies 30a, 30b may be interchangeably installed on either side (posts 12a/12b or posts 12c/12d) of rack 10. Thus, after inner rails 32a, 32b are attached to electronic device 20, the device may be improperly inverted when installed (direction 150 (FIG. 7)) in rack 10 by installing the inner rails into the opposite middle rail (i.e., inner rail 32a into middle rail 34b), or by installing the entire rail assemblies onto the wrong posts (assembly 30a onto posts 12c/12d). In other words, with the apparatus of FIG. 1-FIG. 3, device 20 may be inverted when installed, causing electrical connectors 44 (FIG. 4) to connect to the opposite polarity (i.e., connecting power directly to ground).
It is not always possible or desirable to change the device chassis or rack to prevent installing the device inverted. For example, subsequent changes to a device chassis may make initial custom rack adaptations obsolete.
Thus, what is needed is an apparatus that ensures proper device orientation within a rack system that accommodates device chassis modifications and entirely different device chassis.

Keyed rack rail ensuring proper device orientation


A circuit for driving an ink-jet head comprising a common driving waveform generation circuit 11 for generating a driving voltage signal, an analog/digital converter circuit 12 for converting the driving voltage signal into driving waveform data, a gradation data separation/accumulation circuit 13 for separating printing gradation data contained in printing data therefrom, accumulating therein the separated printing gradation data temporarily, and outputting the separated printing gradation data at a predetermined timing, a comparator circuit 14 for comparing the printing gradation data with the driving waveform data and outputting a comparison signal. The circuit further comprises a printing control circuit 15 for judging presence of an ink discharge instruction signal contained in the printing data and outputting a switch control signal, a switch control circuit 16 for making a logical product by the comparison signal and the switch control signal, and outputting an analog switch control signal, and a bidirectional analog switch for controlling conductivity of the driving voltage signal so as to drive the piezoelectric actuator in accordance with the analog switch control signal. As a result, volume of ink droplets discharged from a nozzle can be controlled to comply with a picture image with density gradation, and free vibrations generated in the piezoelectric actuator are damped to thereby obtain ink droplets with a constant speed regardless of the size of the ink droplets.

An ink-jet printer is known which uses an ink-jet recording system that jets a liquid ink droplet through a nozzle of the ink-jet head onto a recording medium such as a printing paper, thereby recording characters, image and the like on the medium.
The ink-jet printer using the foregoing system has advantages as follows:
(1) the mechanism, construction, and printing process of the system are comparably simple, and no noise is emitted in printing;
(2) being capable of discharging a minimal ink droplet, high resolution printing is possible;
(3) arranging plural color inks facilitates color printing;
(4) the system does not consume much power; and
(5) the price is comparably low.
Owing to these advantages, the ink-jet printer using this system has been spreading rapidly as a printer for not only personal computers but also for various office automation apparatus.
Of the ink-jet printer, the so-called drop-on-demand (DOD) type ink-jet printer, which discharges ink droplets only when a printing instruction is issued to minimize the ink consumption, is the most popular.
As major techniques to discharge ink by this DOD type ink-jet printer, there are the piezoelectric system that applies a pressure to the ink chamber by a force induced by the piezoelectric actuator as an electromechanical transducer and the bubble system that utilizes an expansion pressure of bubbles produced by an instantaneous vaporization of ink by an electric heater.
As a conventional example, a circuit for driving an ink-jet head using the piezoelectric actuator and a method of driving the same will be described with reference to FIG. 14 and FIG. 15.
In the circuit for driving an ink-jet head shown in FIG. 14, the emitter of an NPN transistor Q2 and one terminal of a piezoelectric actuator PZ are connected to the ground terminal GND as the earth potential.
A power source voltage VH for the ink-jet head is applied to the emitter of a PNP transistor Q1, one terminal of a second resistor R2, and one terminal of a third resistor R3.
A control signal S for driving the piezoelectric actuator PZ enters input terminals of a first inverter U1 of the open collector type and a second inverter U2. The output of the first inverter U1 is given through a first resistor R1 to the other terminal of the second resistor R2 and the base of the PNP transistor Q1.
The output of the second inverter U2 is given to the other terminal of the third resistor R3 and the base of the NPN transistor Q2. The collector of the NPN transistor Q2 is connected through a fifth resistor R5 to one terminal of a fourth resistor R4 and to the other terminal of the piezoelectric actuator PZ. The other terminal of the fourth resistor R4 is connected to the collector of the PNP transistor Q1.
The foregoing driving circuit drives the ink-jet head as follows.
Applying a pulse waveform voltage to the piezoelectric actuator PZ deforms a part of a wall in an ink chamber to increase the volume of the ink chamber, and ink is supplied in the increased space inside the ink chamber. And, stopping the voltage supply to the piezoelectric actuator PZ, or applying a pulse waveform voltage of the reverse polarity against the foregoing pulse waveform deforms the part of the wall in the ink chamber in the reverse direction to decrease the volume of the ink chamber, thus discharging ink droplets through the nozzle.
FIG. 15 illustrates waveforms of the control signal S, a driving voltage signal VCp applied to the piezoelectric actuator PZ, and a displacement X of the piezoelectric actuator in the conventional circuit for driving an ink-jet head shown in FIG. 14.
In FIG. 15, an initial period T0, a charge period T1 having a pulse change, and a discharge period T2 constitute one printing cycle.
During the initial period T0, the control signal S is in low level, and the output of the first inverter U1 and the second inverter U2 shown in FIG. 14 are in high impedance.
When the output of the first inverter U1 and the second inverter U2 are in high impedance, each of the bases of the PNP transistor Q1 and the NPN transistor Q2 is biased by the power source voltage VH through the second resistor R2 and the third resistor R3.
Accordingly, the PNP transistor Q1 is nonconductive, and the NPN transistor Q2 is conductive, and the piezoelectric actuator PZ is discharged through the fifth resistor R5, so that the driving voltage signal VCp is at the ground potential, namely, zero volt.
When entering into the charge period T1, the control signal S rapidly goes up to the high level, which turns the outputs of the first inverter U1 and the second inverter U2 into low level, thus turning the NPN transistor Q2 nonconductive and the PNP transistor Q1 conductive. Consequently, the piezoelectric actuator PZ is charged by the power source voltage VH through the fourth resistor R4.
Accordingly, the drive voltage signal VCp goes up toward the power source voltage VH in accordance with a time constant by a product of a resistance of the fourth resistor R4 and an equivalent capacitance Cp of the piezoelectric actuator PZ. This voltage VCp charges the piezoelectric actuator PZ to fill ink into the ink chamber.
When entering into the discharge period T2, the control signal S rapidly goes down to low level, the output of the first inverter Ul and the second inverter U2 go back again to high impedance. Thereby, the PNP transistor Q1 turns nonconductive, the NPN transistor Q2 turns conductive. And then, the drive voltage signal VCp goes down toward the ground potential in accordance with a time constant by a product of a resistance of the fifth resistor R5 and an equivalent capacitance Cp of the piezoelectric actuator PZ, thereby discharging the piezoelectric actuator PZ to discharge ink through the ink chamber.
The rapid rise during the charge period T1 and the rapid fall during the discharge period T2 will generate free vibrations of the piezoelectric actuator PZ and the ink in the ink chamber by the intrinsic frequencies thereof and the free vibrations attenuate gently, which is illustrated in the displacement X of the piezoelectric actuator PZ in FIG. 15 as an example.
When the foregoing ink jet recording system is applied for printing characters and graphics and the like in which the density of dots on the recording media is maximum and constant, namely, when it is applied for printing such characters and graphics in general documents and reports, the recording system can display the full advantages.
However in recent years, picture images in which the intermediate density gradation is required to be presented in full colors continuously or in a step form, for example, three-dimensional picture images with shadows and photographic images and the like have frequently been brought into computer images or office automation equipment, and accordingly, these picture images are strongly desired to be printed in a high quality.
Several techniques have been put forward to display the intermediate density gradation, and one of the most popular techniques of the ink-jet recording system is the so-called dither or density pattern method, which displays one pixel of a printing picture image by means of plural dot groups.
Although the density pattern method varies the black dot number in one pixel of a picture image in a step form in accordance with the gradation, and devises the configuration of the dot pattern to display a pseudo gradation, there is a problem that the method displays one pixel of a printing image by means of plural dot groups, and therefore, the resolution of the printing image will remarkably deteriorate.
That is, to obtain a fine gradation in this density pattern method accompanies an increase of the dot number in one pixel, resulting in an increase of one pixel in the picture image, and the quality of a printing image is deteriorated even if a high resolution printer is used.
To obtain a high resolution picture quality, on the contrary, will result in a problem that a powerfully appealing picture with sufficient gradation cannot be acquired.
On the other hand, the so-called area gradation method has been proposed which directly controls areas of individual dots on recording media to vary the density. The multi-droplet method, which is an area gradation method, constitutes one dot with a set of plural fine ink droplets continuously discharged, controls a volume of ink droplets in accordance with the number of fine ink droplets, and thereby, varies the area of the dot on the recording media to add a gradation to the density.
However, this multi-droplet method needs to put plural fine ink droplets continuously discharged on a position that can be regarded as one picture element on a recording medium so as to form a picture element. Therefore, in a printer construction in which a recording head and a recording medium move continuously and relatively, the speed of response to discharge fine ink droplets has to be increased so as not to fluctuate with time positions on the recording medium at which ink droplets are put in order to acquire a high quality picture image.
It is regarded that the speed of response to discharge ink droplets in the multi-droplet method has to be 10 to 20 times higher than the speed of response of a general ink-jet head. Particularly, in the ink-jet head of the piezoelectric system, free vibrations are generated in the piezoelectric actuator and ink inside the ink chamber, and an discharging motion and the subsequent ink supply are repeated before the free vibrations attenuate.
Accordingly, ink droplets are split and atomized, making it difficult to form stable ink droplets and resulting in a problem that the speed of response cannot be increased.
Further, in the multi-droplet method, as ink droplets combine randomly in flight of fine ink droplets or owing to a flight direction thereof, the characteristics of ink droplets change influencing on the shape of a picture element and the stability when ink droplets are put on a recording medium, posing a problem in the stable discharge of continuous fine ink droplets.
Further, there is another method to display the density gradation, in which by controlling the driving voltage, the driving time or the driving waveform applied to a piezoelectric actuator of a head, a volume of ink droplets discharged from the head is directly controlled so as to vary the quantity of ink to be put on a recording medium, in other words, the area of dots.
This method exceeds in displaying gradation by discharge in a dot unit at each printing cycle, because by properly controlling the driving voltage, the driving waveform, or the time of the drive voltage to be applied to a piezoelectric actuator, a quantity of ink to be sucked into the ink chamber or a quantity of ink to be discharged can be controlled.
However, when the piezoelectric actuator is driven in this method, the amplitude, phase, attenuation time, etc. of the free vibrations generated in the piezoelectric actuator and the ink inside the ink chamber are changed due to the variation of the quantity of ink sucked into the ink chamber or the quantity of discharged ink. Accordingly, a position of a meniscus which is a face to discharge ink from is not stabilized, which accompanies a problem of dispersions of a diameter and discharge speed of ink droplets in the subsequent discharging motion, leading to an unstable discharging motion.
Furthermore, to vary the driving voltage, the driving waveform or the driving time applied to all of the piezoelectric actuators for each density that changes sequentially, it is necessary to prepare, for all of the piezoelectric actuators, respective circuits that generate the driving voltage, the driving waveform and the driving time, and drive the each driving circuit individually for each of the actuators, by which the entire driving circuits and control software become complicated, thus resulting in a difficulty to embody these.
The present invention has been made to solve the foregoing various problems of a conventional inkjet head printer and it is therefore an object of the invention to provide a circuit and a method for driving an ink-jet head that controls free vibrations of the piezoelectric actuator so as to discharge ink droplets of a stable quality with a virtually constant discharge time in a constant speed regardless of the size of ink droplets without deteriorating the resolution of the printing image by gradation in density.

Circuit for driving ink-jet head and method of driving the same


A system, apparatus, and method are directed to evolving detectors in an Artificial Immune System for use in detecting unauthorized computing activities. In one embodiment, a population of detectors is generated with a matching value and expectation value of zero. The detectors are then compared to logged fragments of system calls within a computing device to modify the matching value. When the matching value for a given detector is equal to or greater than an expectation value, the detector's expectation value may be set to the matching value. The detectors may then evolve and/or generate other detectors using mutation, and/or recombination, or the like. Detectors continue to generate and/or to evolve until a detector's matching value reaches a determined value, in which case, the detector may be evaluated to determine if an unauthorized activity is detected. If an unauthorized activity is detected, a detection response may be performed.

Over the last several decades, many anti-virus (anti-worm, anti-Trojan horse) technologies have been developed and brought to market. Most of these technologies are traditional in that new virus, worm, or Trojan horse signatures need to be manually identified and appended to a list. The resultant consumer software then also needs to be updated with these new signatures on a regular basis in order to protect the consumer's computer from the newest computer pathogens.
A more recent development in antiviral technology has been the idea of an Artificial Immune System (AIS). Artificial Immune Systems have the potential to provide adaptive solutions to the ever-increasingly severe problem of large-scale computer attacks. The central idea behind anti-virus AIS is the establishment of a defined 'normal' behavior of a computer's processes. This 'normal' behavior is considered the 'self' in the biological metaphor, whereas a deviation from this normal behavior is considered 'non-self' and potentially harmful to the system. Regardless of the new viruses that may be developed and targeted at a computer running an AIS, the AIS should be able to detect the abnormal functioning of its processes and signal an alert. Compared to a traditional signature-logging anti-virus technology, AISs provide an adaptive solution to the computer virus problem. By making the technology adaptive, AISs are simpler and more elegant than the traditional anti-virus solutions.
Whatever the application of the specific AIS, a recurring problem is the tradeoff between speed and thoroughness. If speed is crucial, the algorithm may often be designed to be less thorough, which may then lead to a decreased detection rate and/or an increase in false positives. If thoroughness is the priority, then the algorithm that is designed may result in running more slowly, which in turn may be so slowly that the detection of a malign intrusion or other unauthorized activity may be too late to prevent the behavior. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.

Method for evolving detectors to detect malign behavior in an artificial immune system


Approaches for visualizing data buses in a circuit design include determining ones of the data buses that satisfy selection criteria. For each element connected to a data bus of the ones of the data buses, a method and system determine whether the element is of interest or the element is not of interest. A graphical representation of the ones of the data buses and each element of interest is generated, and data buses of the circuit design determined to not satisfy the selection criteria and elements not of interest are excluded from the graphical representation. The graphical representation is displayed on a display device.

Register Transfer Level (RTL) languages, such as Verilog and VHDL, continue to be popular for describing circuit designs. The implementation flow for realizing a circuit from a circuit design includes processes for synthesizing, simulating, and formally verifying the circuit design. At various stages of the implementation flow, a designer will typically seek to analyze the circuit design for purposes of debugging and achieving performance objectives. However, the increasing complexity and size of circuit designs has made the analysis of circuit designs difficult.

Visualization of data buses in circuit designs


A cable support structure, used in a solar application or other applications, comprising a cable structure which comprises latitudinal cables extending between two sides of an enclosure of a roof, panels or solar modules being arranged in a row on the latitudinal cables forming an array supported by the cable structure, the cable structure in turn being supported by the sides of the enclosure in such a way that weight of the array and force loads on the array are completely or partially distributed on the sides of the enclosure.

One installation of solar module is to install the solar module onto the surface provided by a rack system on a roof or ground. The process of the traditional installation of solar module comprises:                1. Screwing anchorages on the roof (or if ground mounted, stick pillars in the ground or concrete);        2. Sealing the holes on the roof at the anchorage points;        3. Assembling a rack system made by rigid and heavy parts;        4. Securing the rack system to the anchorage points on the roof or on the ground;        5. Screwing the solar modules on the rack;        6. Electrically connecting solar modules with electric cables.
A traditional variant of screwing rack system into the roof is to make the whole system heavier with ballasts.
However, roofs are often designed to support a limited static load and this is not enough to support the gravity of solar modules and mounting system.
Each contact point of rack and roof needs a mounting hole which damages the membrane and may damage the roof. And each hole needs to be sealed which will increase costs for labor, material and roof insurance.
Professional labor is necessary to assemble the framework, to screw the modules to the framework, and to connect electric wires.
The framework for supporting the modules leads to expensive costs for material and transport.
Japanese patent JP200-71805 discloses a cable structure consisting of cable net which is weaved by longitudinal cables and latitudinal cables. The grid of the cable net provides a space in which a solar module is placed. The four sides of the solar module are respectively supported by the four sides of one grid. And the cable net is placed on a slope provided by a rigid rack. Such cable structure needs many cables, and cables are very expensive: thus, it is very hard to decrease the cost of the cable structure. Except that, the rack is also necessary, and accordingly the rack must be screwed or ballasted on the roof.


The present invention relates to a plasma display panel, and more particularly, to a plasma display panel and method of manufacturing the same in which a manufacturing process is simple. To this end, in a plasma display panel according to an embodiment of the present invention, metal electrodes are composed of a green tape having a black electrode formed at the bottom and a silver electrode formed at the top, and are formed by exposing the green tape to ultraviolet rays of different wavelengths consecutively. Therefore, it is possible to simplify a manufacturing process of a plasma display panel and to reduce manufacturing cost.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display panel, and more particularly, to a plasma display panel in which a manufacturing process is simplified and method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, as a flat panel display device, a plasma display panel (hereinafter, referred to as 'PDP') that can be easily made large attracts public attention. The PDP is adapted to display an image by controlling a gas discharge period of each of pixels according to digital video data. An example of a representative PDP is an AC type PDP that has three electrodes and is driven by alternate current (AC) voltage, as shown in FIG. 1, and is driven by an AC voltage.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing the configuration of a cell that is arranged on a typical AC type PDP in a matrix shape. FIG. 2 schematically shows the structure in which electrodes of an upper substrate of the AC type PDP are arranged.
Referring to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2, the cell of the PDP includes an upper plate having a pair of sustain electrodes 14 and 16, an upper dielectric layer 18 and a protection film 20, all of which are sequentially formed on an upper substrate 10; and a lower plate having an address electrode 22, a lower dielectric layer 24, barrier ribs 26 and a phosphor layer 28, all of which are sequentially formed on a lower substrate 12. In the above, the upper substrate 10 and the lower substrate 12 are spaced apart from each other in parallel by means of the barrier ribs 26.
The sustain electrode 14 includes a transparent electrode 14A that has a relatively wide width and is formed using a transparent electrode material (ITO) through which a visible ray can pass, and a metal electrode 14B for compensating for a resistance component of the transparent electrode 14A. Meanwhile, the sustain electrode 16 includes a transparent electrode 16A that has a relatively wide width and is formed using a transparent electrode material (ITO) through which a visible ray can pass, and a metal electrode 16B for compensating for a resistance component of the transparent electrode 16A. In this time, the metal electrodes operate as bus electrodes. This pair of the sustain electrodes is composed of the scan electrode 14 and the sustain electrode 16 depending on a pulse applied thereto. The scan electrode 14 is mainly supplied with a scan pulse for scanning a panel and a sustain pulse for maintaining discharging. The sustain electrode 16 is mainly supplied with the sustain pulse.
The upper dielectric layer 18 and the lower dielectric layer 24 are accumulated with electric charge upon discharging.
The protection film 20 serves to prevent damage of the upper dielectric layer 18 due to sputtering and to increase emission efficiency of secondary electrons. The protection film 20 is typically formed using magnesium oxide (MgO).
The address electrode 22 is formed in a way to intersect the pair of the sustain electrodes 14 and 16. This address electrode 22 is supplied with a data pulse for selecting cells to be displayed.
The barrier ribs 26 are formed parallel to the address electrode 22 and serve to prevent ultraviolet generated by the discharging from leaking toward neighboring cells.
The phosphor layer 28 is coated on the lower dielectric layer 24 and the barrier ribs 26 and emits any one visible ray of red, green and blue lights.
Further, an inert gas for discharging a gas is injected into discharge spaces.
A method of manufacturing the upper substrate of the plasma display panel constructed above will now be described.
FIG. 3 is a view shown to explain a conventional method of manufacturing the upper substrate of the PDP.
A black electrode paste 33 is printed on a transparent electrode 32, i.e., an upper substrate 31 in which an ITO electrode is formed by means of a screen method, and is then dried (FIG. 3a).
Thereafter, a first ultraviolet is exposed to the black electrode paste 33 through a first photomask 34 (FIG. 3b). It is preferred that the photomask 34 is patterned so that the first ultraviolet is exposed only to the black electrode paste 33 located between discharge cells. Thus, the first ultraviolet is exposed only to the black electrode paste 33 located between the discharge cells, thereby hardening only the exposed portion. A black matrix for precluding light generated from one discharge cell from transmitting to neighboring discharge cells is formed at the exposed portion.
Meanwhile, a silver electrode paste 35 is printed on the exposed black electrode paste 33 by means of a screen-printing method (FIG. 3c). A second ultraviolet is exposed to the silver electrode paste 35 through a second photomask 36 (FIG. 3d). At this time, it is preferred that the second ultraviolet has a light source having a wavelength that can harden not only the silver electrode paste 35 but also the black electrode paste 33 printed below the silver electrode paste 35, through the second photomask 36. The second photomask 36 is preferably patterned so that the silver electrode paste 35 located over the transparent electrode 32 is hardened.
After the corresponding electrode pastes 33 and 35 are hardened by the second ultraviolet as described above, the upper substrate 31 is developed to form a predetermined bus electrode 37 and a black matrix 38. A dry and sintering process are then performed (FIG. 3e). At this time, the bus electrode 37 has a silver electrode 37b and a black electrode 37a.
Thereafter, a dielectric paste is printed on the upper substrate 31 on which the bus electrode 37 is formed and is then dried, thus forming a predetermined dielectric layer 39. Thereby, the upper substrate of the plasma display panel is completed (FIG. 3f).
In the conventional method of manufacturing the upper substrate of the plasma display panel, when the bus electrode is formed, the processes of printing, drying and exposing the black electrode paste and the silver electrode paste are needed twice. Therefore, there is a problem in that the process is very complicated. Further, there is a problem in that additional cost is spent in terms of a manufacturing process.

Plasma display panel and method of manufacturing the same


A laser alignment device for a circular saw includes a base located on a blade guard of the circular saw, and a laser module mounted at the base. The laser module includes a retaining seat pivotally connected to the base, an auxiliary seat mounted at the retaining seat, and a laser beam generator installed in the auxiliary seat. A first adjusting unit includes a first knob and a first eccentric shaft connected to the first knob and coupled to a first elongated slot in the retaining seat for allowing adjustment of the angle of inclination of the laser beam generator by rotating the first knob. A second adjusting unit includes a second knob and a second eccentric shaft connected to the second knob and coupled to a second elongated slot in the auxiliary seat for allowing adjustment of the angular position of the laser beam generator by rotating the second knob.

Many circular saws are equipped with a laser beam generator in order to facilitate cutting of a workpiece by an operator. An alignment line on the surface of the workpiece is formed by means of the diffused light plane of the generated laser beam from the laser beam generator so that the saw blade can be moved into alignment with the alignment line for accurately cutting the workpiece. However, the operator needs to adjust the orientation of the laser beam generator to ensure good cutting accuracy before cutting the workpiece.
During adjustment of the orientation of the laser beam generator, a tool must be used to rotate adjustment screws at different locations, thus enabling the laser beam generator to be pushed by the adjustment screws to the desired position. This adjustment procedure requires the use of a tool and thus has the drawback of slow adjustment speed. Further, after adjustment of the position of the laser beam generator, the laser beam generator may be biased or deviated from the adjust position by the elastic restoring force of the mating springs, which lowers adjustment accuracy and affects cutting precision.


In accordance with one or more embodiments, a gaming device includes a novel payout structure wherein, upon placing a wager, an initial value of a prize is established at the gaming device. During the duration of a game play (which may last, in one or more embodiments, for a predetermined number of rounds or a predetermined amount of time) the value of the prize is adjusted based on outcomes or symbols obtained by the player. For example, the value of the prize may be decreased from a substantially high initial value over the course of a game play. At the end of the game play, a player is provided with a prize based on the final value of the prize.

Gaming devices such as slot machines generate more than $15 billion in revenue per year for U.S. casinos. In fact, most casinos generate more than half of their gaming revenue from gaming devices such as slot machines. To take advantage of the popularity of slot machines and other gaming devices, some casinos offer three or four thousand slot machines in a single location.
Despite the popularity of gaming devices in casinos, players continually get bored with the games available and demand innovation and change to stimulate their ongoing interest. In response, gaming device manufacturers and game designers continually strive to develop new types of games. However, despite the continuing efforts to develop new games, other aspects of the gaming experience have to date not been significantly changed or improved to stimulate player interest. For example, the payout structure of most gaming devices is very traditional and has not changed much in generations of gaming devices.
In most gaming devices, a payout table depicts which outcomes obtainable on a gaming device correspond to payouts. As a player obtains an outcome that corresponds to a payout in the payout table, the corresponding payout amount is added to the player's credit meter balance. Payouts for a typical game vary from a handful of coins to five hundred coins. Of course, payouts as high as several thousand or a million dollars are available on some select gaming devices. However, such high payouts, if available at all, typically correspond to one outcome in a payout table and this outcome is one that is very rarely achieved. In other words, in the typical payout structure of most gaming devices payouts of amounts significant enough to stimulate player excitement are not always available and, if available, are rarely achieved. This is due to the casino's need to remain profitable.
Unfortunately, the casinos' need for profitability results in a lack of excitement on players' part over small payouts and frustration over the infrequency of larger payouts. Accordingly, a need exists for a new and innovative payout structure that stimulates more excitement in players than do conventional payout structures.

Gaming device method and apparatus employing alternate payout features


A method and apparatus for a pressure relief valve assembly. The valve assembly may be coupled to one or more casings and/or tubular members to control fluid communication therebetween. The valve assembly is a one-way valve assembly that relieves pressure within an annulus formed between adjacent casings and/or tubular members to prevent burst or collapse of the casings and/or tubular members. The valve assembly is resettable downhole.

1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention generally relate to a pressure relief valve assembly.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditional well construction, such as the drilling of an oil or gas well, includes a wellbore or borehole being drilled through a series of formations. Each formation, through which the well passes, must be sealed so as to avoid an undesirable passage of formation fluids, gases or materials out of the formation and into the borehole. Conventional well architecture includes cementing casings in the borehole to isolate or seal each formation. The casings prevent the collapse of the borehole wall and prevent the undesired inflow of fluids from the formation into the borehole.
In standard practice, each succeeding casing placed in the wellbore has an outside diameter significantly reduced in size when compared to the casing previously installed. The borehole is drilled in intervals whereby a casing, which is to be installed in a lower borehole interval, is lowered through a previously installed casing of an upper borehole interval and then cemented in the borehole. The purpose of the cement around the casing is to fix the casing in the well and to seal the borehole around the casing in order to prevent vertical flow of fluid alongside the casing towards other formation layers or even to the earth's surface.
If the cement seal is breached, due to high pressure in the formations and/or poor bonding in the cement for example, fluids (liquids or gases) may begin to migrate up the borehole. The fluids may flow into the annuli between previously installed casings and cause undesirable pressure differentials across the casings. The fluids may also flow into the annuli between the casings and other drilling or production tubular members that are disposed in the borehole. Some of the casings and other tubulars, such as the larger diameter casings, may not be rated to handle the unexpected pressure increases, which can result in the collapse or burst of a casing or tubular.
Therefore, there is a need for apparatus and methods to prevent wellbore casing and tubular failure due to unexpected downhole pressure changes.


A gamma-ray image acquisition device (1) acquires the direction and energy of a target scattered gamma-ray generated by Compton scattering of an incident gamma-ray and acquires the direction and energy of a recoil electron. These pieces of information are used to acquire the incident direction and energy of the incident gamma-ray. The gamma-ray image acquisition device (1) acquires a two-dimensional image by imaging spectroscopy based on the incident directions and energies of a plurality of incident gamma-rays, the two-dimensional image being an image in which each pixel corresponding to each incident direction includes energy distribution information. In the two-dimensional image, the area and the solid angle of an imaging range are proportional to each other. This enables acquiring the distribution of gamma-ray intensities without depending on distance and thereby acquiring an image that indicates more useful information than conventional images.

Techniques for capturing the distribution of gamma-ray radiation as a two- or three-dimensional image have conventionally been studied in fields such as cosmic-ray observation and medical care. One method of detecting gamma-rays ranging from several hundred kilo electron volts (KeV) to several million electron volts (MeV) is to use scattering of gamma-rays resulting from the Compton effect. In Compton scattering, the incidence of a gamma-ray on a substance causes the emission of a recoil electron from the substance, and the incident gamma-ray turn into a scattered gamma-ray. To use Compton scattering to improve accuracy in detecting gamma-rays, techniques have been developed for detecting the direction and energy of each of a scattered gamma-ray and a recoil electron to acquire the direction of an incident gamma-ray. Such gamma-ray image acquisition devices are referred to as Electron-Tracking Compton Cameras (hereinafter, referred to as "ETCCs").
T. Tanimori et al., "An Electron-Tracking Compton Telescope for a Survey of the Deep Universe by MeV gamma-rays," Astrophysical Journal, The American Astronomical Society, Aug. 26, 2015, Volume 810, No. 1, 28 (hereinafter, referred to as "Document 1") have reported a technique for efficiently removing background radiation in cosmic-ray observation using an ETCC, after making various improvements thereto. Document 1 has also defined a Point Spread Function (hereinafter, referred to as "PSF") of the ETCC with improved performance, as in the case of ordinary optical telescopes, and has discussed resolving power quantitatively.
D. Tomono and other 17 members, "Environmental Gamma-Ray Imaging (V) With Electron-Tracking Compton Camera," [online], Sep. 28, 2015, the Physical Society of Japan, Retrieved Apr. 14, 2016, from the Internet: <http://www-cr.scphys.kyoto-u.ac.jp/research/MeV-gamma/Presentation/2015/JPS2015A_tomono20150915v5.pdf> have proposed a technique for imaging environmental gamma-rays with an ETCC. Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 2015-148448, No. 2015-190965, and No. 2015-224986 disclose techniques for improving the accuracy of an ETCC in tracking recoil electrons.
Meanwhile, in medical fields, Positron Emission Tomography (hereinafter, referred to as "PET") and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (hereinafter, referred to as "SPECT") perform focal imaging using gamma-rays.
Incidentally, in order to image the distribution of gamma-rays, conventional studies have focused on the removal of background radiation and the removal of noise generated in devices. Thus, no consideration is given to imaging for obtaining more useful information from obtained information. Besides, in PET, there is a limit to the reduction of noise because of the detection principles of PET.

Gamma-ray image acquisition device and gamma-ray image acquisition method


A method for receiving SRS configuration information by a terminal may comprise the steps of: receiving, from a base station, the SRS configuration information including information on the number of simultaneously transmissible SRS resources configured for the terminal; and performing SRS transmission on the basis of the SRS configuration information.

As the introduction of a new radio access technology (New RAT) system leads to demands for larger communication capacities in more communication devices, there is a need for enhanced mobile broadband communication, relative to legacy RAT.
Massive machine type communication (MTC) that provides various services at any time in any place by interconnecting multiple devices and things is also one of important issues to be addressed for the future-generation communication. In addition, a communication system design is under discussion, in which services/UEs sensitive to reliability and latency are considered. As such, New RAT is intended to provide services in consideration enhanced mobile broadband communication (eMBB), massive MTC (mMTC), and ultra-reliable and low-Latency communication (URLLC).

Method for receiving SRS configuration information and terminal therefor


A locking buckle assembly for coupling and decoupling a web strap includes a strap plate and a base part. The base part includes a front plate and a rear cover. A locking mechanism including a release button and a locking peg is positioned between the front plate and the rear cover. The release button and the locking peg are biased by a spring through respective openings in the front plate. A lock plate is provided on a surface of the front plate. Respective longitudinal axes of the lock plate and the front plate are angularly offset from each other. The strap plate includes an opening sized to receive the lock plate and couples to the base part when the lock plate captures the strap plate and the longitudinal axes of the strap plate and the base part are aligned. In that orientation, the locking peg couples to the strap plate and the strap plate and the base part are only decoupled by pressing of the release button in opposition to the urging of the spring.

Messenger bags, laptop bags, totes and other bag styles often have straps that allow the user to sling the bag over their shoulder or across their body to the opposite shoulder. These straps are known to include a way to make the strap shorter or longer in order to position the bag in a particular location or orientation at the user's side or against their back. In some cases, this strap includes a buckle mechanism that is separable into two components that divides the strap into two portions. The two portions can be reconnected by an engaging and locking action of the buckle mechanism. Typically, each separate strap portion has one component of the buckle mechanism at its respective free end.
These buckle mechanisms are suited for the bag-strap applications described above and can be found in other applications, such as in clothing belts, climbing and safety harnesses, seatbelts and as a closure mechanism for bag flaps and the like.
The known buckle mechanism is usually hand operated by the user, i.e., a mechanical device. When engaged or locked together, the buckle components remain engaged until the user manually intercedes with the intention of separating them. The user must press, pinch or otherwise manipulate the components of the buckle mechanism to release and disengage the buckle, separating the strap. To reconnect the strap portions, the user must align and engage the buckle again.
What is needed is a buckle mechanism that improves on those that are known.