Embodiments relate to display panel and pixel driving device techniques. A hybrid scheme is provided in that a PWM (pulse width modulation) scheme, in which a ramp voltage is supplied as a gate voltage of a transistor and an LED is turned off at a time point when the gate voltage becomes the same as a threshold voltage, and a PAM (pulse amplitude modulation) scheme, in which a start voltage of the ramp voltage is determined depending on a gray scale value of a pixel, are combined.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a technique regarding a display panel and a pixel driving device.
2. Related Art
With the development of informatization, various display devices capable of visualizing information are being developed. A liquid crystal display (LCD), an organic light emitting diode (OLED) display device and a plasma display panel (PDP) display device are display devices which have been developed so far or are being developed. These display devices are being developed to appropriately display high-resolution images.
However, the above-described display devices have the advantage of high resolution, but are at a disadvantage that the display devices are difficult to make larger in size. For example, large OLED display devices developed so far have only sizes of 80 inches (about 2 m) and 100 inches (about 2.5 m). Therefore, they are not suitable for fabricating a large display device with a width of more than 10 m.
As a method for solving such a problem in terms of large size, interest in a light emitting diode (LED) display device is increasing recently. In an LED display device technique, as a required number of modularized LED pixels are disposed, one large panel may be configured. Otherwise, in an LED display device technique, as a required number of unit panels each of which is configured by a plurality of LED pixels are disposed, one large panel structure may be formed. As such, in the LED display device techniques, by disposing LED pixels by increasing the number thereof as many as required, a large display device may be easily realized.
The LED display device has the advantages of not only a large size but also various panel sizes. In the LED display device techniques, it is possible to variously adjust horizontal and vertical sizes according to appropriate disposition of LED pixels.
Meanwhile, there may be various schemes of driving a display panel in which LEDs are disposed. As representative schemes, there are a pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) scheme and a pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme. The PAM scheme is a scheme in which an analog voltage corresponding to a gray scale value of a pixel is supplied to the pixel and the magnitude of a current flowing to the pixel is differently controlled depending on the analog voltage, and has a problem in that it is difficult to implement a low gray scale in a display panel in which LEDs are disposed. The PWM scheme is a scheme in which a time of a current supplied to a pixel is adjusted depending on a gray scale value of the pixel. In the conventional active scheme, since a comparator circuit should be disposed in the pixel, a problem is caused in that the structure of the pixel is complicated and accuracy is not uniform due to an offset of a comparator.

LED driving circuit, display panel, and pixel driving device


Methods and apparatus are provided for managing data in a hierarchal storage subsystem. A plurality of volumes is designated as a storage group for Level 0 storage; a threshold is established for the storage group; space is allocated for a data set to a volume of the storage group; the data set is stored to the volume; the threshold is compared with a total amount of space consumed by all data sets stored to volumes in the storage group. Data sets are migrated from the storage group to a Level 1 storage if the threshold is less than or equal to the total amount of space used by all of the data sets stored to volumes in the storage group. Thus, contention between migration and space allocation is reduced.

A data processing facility typically includes one or more host devices to which are attached storage devices, either directly or through a network. As a customer's business grows, the need for increased storage also grows. However, installing additional high speed storage devices, such as DASD (direct access storage device), can become expensive. Moreover, not all of a customer's storage may need to be of the expensive, high speed variety. Rather, such storage may be allocated to data which is to be accessed frequently while less frequently accessed data may be stored on slower and less expensive storage devices, such as tape cartridges. Storage with multiple levels is said to be configured as hierarchal storage.
The operating system of the host may include a hierarchal storage manager. The OS/390® or z/OS® operating system which operates on an IBM® S/390® server may include a Data Facility Storage Management Subsystem (DFSMS™) which automates storage management policies and procedures to move data up and down a storage hierarchy. It will be appreciated that other vendors may provide other products which also manage hierarchal storage space. And, while the present invention will be described in the context of DFSMS from IBM, the invention is not limited to being incorporated into that particular product.
One component of DFSMS is the hierarchal storage manager (DFSMShsm™, also referred to herein as "HSM") which oversees backup, recovery, migration and space management operations. One of the functions provided by the space management function of DFSMShsm is "interval migration" which directs the periodic migration of data sets to locations where they are stored less expensively or in a form which saves space. HSM interval migration automatically manages volumes in DASD storage space (also known as Level 0) based upon user-specified constructs. Volumes storing data sets which have common storage requirements, as defined by the customer, may be grouped together in "storage groups". One of the parameters which the customer may select for a volume is a "high threshold". At predetermined intervals, HSM examines DASD volumes in alphabetical order and determines whether the space used by the data sets stored to a volume exceed the high threshold. If so, data sets in that volume are eligible for migration from Level 0 to Level 1 (such as DASD/tape media). Migration will then be performed on all such volumes, beginning with the largest data set in each volume and continuing with progressively smaller data sets until another user-defined parameter, the volume's "low threshold", is reached.
Another function of DFSMS is the allocation of space for new data sets. Typically, space for a new data set will be allocated to the volume which has the most amount of free space. Frequently, however, the volume to which space is allocated is the same volume from which data sets are being migrated. Such a conflict causes contention for common resources, including volume table of contents (VTOCs), catalog entries and the like, resulting in a slowdown in data migration and/or customer workload.
Consequently, a need exists for reduced contention between data migration and space allocation as well as for increased migration speed.

Data migration with reduced contention and increased speed

International Business Machines Corporation


A yarn recovering device for textile machines, arranged upstream of a textile machine for temporarily recovering a length of yarn previously fed to the machine, and for returning it subsequently. A motorized reel has a substantially axial inlet port and an outlet port on its lateral surface, with a passage for the yarn between the ports. The reel is operatable to rotate from a resting configuration, in which it is kept still, to an active, yarn-recovering configuration, in which it is driven in one direction for winding the yarn on itself and recovering it from the machine, to a subsequent active, yarn-unwinding configuration, in which it is driven in the opposite direction for unwinding the yarn from itself and returning it to the machine. A position sensor measures the position of the reel and sends a corresponding measured position signal to a position control loop which compares the measured position signal with a reference position signal corresponding to a desired position for the motorized reel, and drives the reel in such a way as to minimize the difference between the measured position and the desired position.

As is known, knitting machines draw the yarn either directly from a spool or through a yarn-feeding device which draws the yarn from the spool and feeds it to the machine under a regulated tension.
For certain particular machinings, such as the knitting of the heel in the sock-manufacturing processes, the yarn fed to the machine must be periodically recovered, and then returned more or less progressively. Since neither the traditional feeders nor the spools are capable of recovering the yarn previously fed, this function is performed by a dedicated yarn-recovering device located upstream of the machine.
To this purpose, devices are known which are provided with a pneumatically operated rocking arm having an eyelet mounted to its free end, through which the yarn passes. At rest, the arm is arranged with its eyelet aligned to the running direction of the yarn, between two stationary eyelets which are also passed through by the yarn. By rotating the arm, the yarn is deviated from its rectilinear path and a length of yarn is consequently recovered.
The above known devices provided with a rocking arm have the main drawback that their yarn-recovering capacity, i.e., the maximum length of yarn recoverable at each operation, is rather limited since strictly correlated to the length of the arm, which of course, for size reasons, cannot exceed predetermined values, typically in the range 300 to 400 mm.
Moreover, the operation of the arm can subject the yarn upstream of the device to considerable peaks of tension, which circumstance, as well known to the person skilled in the art, is undesirable because it may cause the yarn to brake and may affect the accuracy and the exactness of the feeding process.

Yarn-recovering device for textile machines


This invention relates to a fluorescent screen structure wherein a plurality of first electrodes (for example stripelike selected electrodes) having a plurality of fluorescent substances (especially fluorescent substances of different colors for a color screen) severally deposited thereon and second electrodes (for example stripelike reverse bias electrodes not for electrodeposition) not having the fluorescent substances deposited thereon between these first electrodes are provided on a common base (especially a glass substrate for a fluorescent screen panel) and a field emission display (FED) using this and methods for manufacturing these. According to the invention, even in such cases as when pillars for supporting a high vacuum are formed in an FED, a uniform fluorescent screen can be obtained without the pillars constituting an obstruction and a fluorescent substance can be deposited in such a way that it will not subsequently impair the level of a vacuum in a display in which the fluorescent screen is used and also a fluorescent substance can be deposited in a pattern such as a narrow stripe pattern having fine widths and fine pitches highly precisely and without mixed colors and with good manufacturability.

This invention relates to a fluorescent screen structure and a field emission display (FED) and methods for manufacturing these, and for example relates to a color fluorescent screen structure for various types of display and a field emission display using this fluorescent screen structure having field emission cathodes as electron sources and to methods for manufacturing this color fluorescent screen structure and display.
Generally, as methods for making fluorescent screens in color cathode ray tubes (including monochrome tubes), slurry methods, printing methods or electrodeposition have been used.
However, with a fluorescent screen panel for an FED, many column-shaped bodies several hundreds of .mu.m tall called pillars which withstand the high vacuum inside the panel and support the vacuum are formed before the fluorescent substances are applied, and it is necessary to coat the fluorescent substances in the gaps between these numerous pillars.
Because of this, with the slurry methods and printing methods that have been used conventionally, the pillars constitute solid obstructions in the process and it has been difficult to form an even fluorescent screen. Furthermore, because an organic material has been used as the bonding material, it has not been possible to completely remove this material just by burning it off in a baking step. For example, when forming a color fluorescent screen in an FED it is necessary to maintain an ultra-high vacuum of about 10.sup.-8 Torr inside the display, but with slurry methods there has been the problem that gas emitted by the fluorescent screen as a result of the presence of the organic material mentioned above causes the vacuum to deteriorate.
With the electrodeposition method it is possible to coat a fluorescent substance onto predetermined areas (areas of an electrode pattern) irrespective of the existence of the pillars, and because there is no gas emission from the coated film it is also possible to maintain a high vacuum. The present inventors have already proposed forming a fluorescent screen for an FED by making the best use of the advantages of the electrodeposition method (Japanese Patent Applications Nos. H.4-225994, H.6-76738). According to a method disclosed in these previous applications, when electrodepositing a fluorescent substance of a certain color on selected electrodes, by applying a zero or reverse polarity voltage (reverse bias) on non-selected electrodes on which the fluorescent substance is not to be electrodeposited, unwanted adhesion of the fluorescent substance to the non-selected electrodes can be prevented.
With this electrodeposition method, a fluorescent substance to be deposited is dispersed in a water-soluble or non-water-soluble electrodeposition solution containing an electrolyte (added to positively or negatively charge the fluorescent substance); bodies to be electrodeposited on (electrodes on the inner side of a panel) and an opposing electrode are disposed facing each other in the electrodeposition solution with an inter-electrode distance normally of the order of several tens of mm provided therebetween, and a fluorescent screen is formed by electrodepositing the fluorescent substance onto the electrodes with the electrode side being given a negative potential and the opposing electrode side being given a positive potential when the fluorescent substance is charged positively and the electrode side being given a positive potential and the opposing electrode side being given a negative potential when the fluorescent substance is charged negatively.
For example, as proposed in Japanese Patent Publication No. S.60-11415, to form a color fluorescent screen consisting of fluorescent substances of the colors green, blue and red, fluorescent substances of these three colors are electrodeposited one after another on stripelike transparent electrodes by repeating the above process for each of the colors.
However, the present inventors have discovered as a result of studies into techniques for coating a fluorescent substance onto a fluorescent screen panel by this electrodeposition method that there are the following problems to be solved:
First, for such reasons as that conventionally electrodeposition has been carried out with the opposing electrode (facing electrode) only disposed parallel to the fluorescent screen panel surface with a predetermined distance (for example of the order of 40 to 50 mm) therebetween and that during electrodeposition the charged fluorescent substance particles actually involved in electrodeposition brought about by electrophoresis are only those within a small distance from the surface being electrodeposited on (this distance varies with the electrodeposition time but at the most is about 1 mm), the fine control of the field strength applied to the charged fluorescent substance particles necessary to achieve an electrodeposition coating on a narrow stripe pattern with good precision is difficult and as a result it has not always been possible to realize the even formation of a very fine fluorescent screen.
Also, in electrodeposition onto electrodes of narrow stripe pattern, the spaces between the stripes also naturally are narrow, and with conventional electrodeposition methods there has been the problem that electrodeposition is also carried out on spaces around the stripe electrodes to be electrodeposited on and on adjacent stripe electrodes, and mixed colors tends to occur.
There has also been the problem that because the opposing electrode is disposed a fixed distance from the fluorescent screen panel surface the electrodeposition tank itself is large, a large quantity of solution is used and consequently it is difficult to uniformly stir and circulate the electrodeposition solution.

Method for manufacturing a fluorescent screen display


A semiconductor integrated circuit includes a first input terminal configured to input a baseband signal, a second input terminal configured to input a local oscillation signal, an output terminal configured to output a modulating signal, a first amplifier circuit configured to receive the baseband signal through the first input terminal and to output a first amplified signal of the baseband signal, a 2-multiplying circuit configured to receive the local oscillation signal through the second input terminal and to output a 2-multiplied signal of the local oscillation signal, an adder configured to add the 2-multiplied signal and the first amplified signal and to output an addition signal, a second amplifier circuit configured to receive the addition signal and to output a second amplified signal of the addition signal, and a mixer configured to multiply the second amplified signal and the local oscillation signal and to output the modulating signal to the output terminal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor integrated circuit including a mixer, and a wireless communication apparatus including the semiconductor integrated circuit.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a GSM (Global System For Mobile Communications) transmitter or a WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) transmitter, specifications of receiving band noise of a low level must be satisfied, and a transmitting spectrum must be in a regulation spectrum mask by satisfying low distortion requirements.
Generally, a transmitter is designed so that a transmitting spectrum is in a regulation spectrum mask. Furthermore, a receiving band noise level is decreased by inserting a SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave) filter etc. in a transmitter output.
However, in a transmitter, it will be mainstream in the future to reduce chip external devices, especially SAW filters, so as to reduce an implementation area and costs for the purpose of enhancement of competitiveness.
The specification of receiving band noise of a low level will still be applied in the future, while also desiring to reduce an implementation area. Actually, in a conference presentation, a WCDMA transmitter aiming at reducing SAW filters has been reported.
To reduce the receiving band noise of a transmitter, it is known to raise the gain of a transmitter. However, generating spurious signals in a transmitter increases when a gain is raised. A transmitting spectrum may not then fall in a regulation spectrum mask. That is, noise and distortion have the relation of a trade-off, and it is difficult to realize both of low noise and low distortion simultaneously.

Semiconductor integrated circuit including a mixer and wireless communication apparatus


The invention relates to a laser treatment apparatus including a laser oscillator, an interlock provided in the laser oscillator, a movable table which moves with a certain movement period, a timer, an interlock provided in the timer, a sensor which can detect movement of the movable table, and a computer, in which the timer starts measuring time when the sensor senses passage of the movable table, and when the movable table does not pass the sensor even after the movement period, conduction between contacts of the interlock provided in the timer is blocked to operate the interlock in the laser oscillator, thereby stopping laser output. The invention also relates to a laser treatment method using the laser treatment apparatus.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laser light irradiation method and a laser treatment apparatus for laser light irradiation. The invention also relates to a method for manufacturing a semiconductor device using laser light irradiation.
2. Description of the Related Art
A laser treatment apparatus which performs various kinds of processing by laser light irradiation and a laser light irradiation method have been known.
One feature of using laser light is that only a region which is irradiated with laser light and absorbs energy thereof can be selectively heated unlike in the case of heat treatment using radiation heating or conduction heating. For example, laser treatment using an excimer laser oscillator, which oscillates ultraviolet light having a wavelength of 400 nm or less, heats a semiconductor film selectively and locally, and achieves crystallization or activation of the semiconductor film with little thermal damage to a glass substrate.
A method for laser-annealing a semiconductor film formed over a large-size glass substrate with a linear laser is explained as an example of the laser light treatment apparatus and the laser light irradiation method with reference to FIGS. 2A to 2C. First, a semiconductor film 1002 formed over a substrate 1001 is scanned by a linear laser 1003, whose beam spot 1004 has a longitudinal length L of several hundred micrometers, in a width direction of the linear laser (in the direction of an arrow in FIG. 2A). Then, a region of several hundred micrometers in the semiconductor film 1002 is laser-annealed (FIG. 2A). Subsequently, the linear laser 1003 is translated (is moved) by as much as the longitudinal length L of the linear laser 1003 (FIG. 2B), and the semiconductor film 1002 is scanned again by the linear laser 103 in a width direction (FIG. 2C). By repeating this process several hundred to thousand times, the semiconductor film 1002 formed over the large-size substrate 1001 can be entirely laser-annealed.
FIGS. 2A to 2C show the case of using a linear laser. In the case of shaping a continuous wave laser beam converted into a harmonic into a linear laser, a longitudinal length of the linear laser needs to be as extremely short as several hundred micrometers to obtain a power density sufficient to laser-anneal a semiconductor film. Therefore, in the case of entirely laser-annealing a semiconductor film formed over a large-size glass substrate, for example, a glass substrate having a side of approximately one meter, the substrate needs to be placed on a movable table such as an XY stage which can be moved right to left and up and down, and the movable table provided with the substrate needs to be reciprocated several hundred to thousand times.
Note that, in this specification, a direction of a longer axis of a linear laser is referred to as a long-axis direction or a longitudinal direction, and a direction of a shorter axis of a linear laser is referred to as a short-axis direction or a width direction.
Meanwhile, an injury, a fire, and the like are major disasters which occur in performing laser annealing. When a combustible material is irradiated with laser light, the combustible material has possibility of igniting by absorbing the laser light and generating heat. Therefore, especially against a fire, it is very important to take preventive measures in advance (Reference 1: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-174264, Reference 2: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-263866, Reference 3: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-18079, and Reference 4: Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-126977).
It is an object of the present invention to safely perform laser annealing without irradiating an unintended region with laser light so as not to cause a disaster even when an unusual situation is brought about in performing laser annealing.
A disaster such as a fire in performing laser annealing is thought to be caused by an abnormal stop of a stage which moves a substrate (for example, an XY stage), vibration of an apparatus due to an earthquake or the like, generation of an abnormal gas, generation of smoke, a change in an optical system such as a mirror due to high heat, or the like.
When a stage is abnormally stopped at an unexpected position during laser annealing, a portion below an intended irradiation position may ignite, or a portion therearound may ignite due to reflected light from an unspecified position or the like, which is very dangerous. As a cause of a stage stop at an unexpected position, freeze (abnormal stop) of a system control computer (for example, a personal computer (PC)), abnormality in communication between a PLC and a PC, a malfunction of an electronic device due to noise from outside, or the like can be given.
When an optical element such as a mirror falls or a reflection angle or an incident angle is changed due to apparatus vibration caused by an earthquake or the like, a portion different from a portion normally irradiated with laser light is irradiated with the laser light. Therefore, the portion may ignite.

Laser treatment apparatus, laser treatment method, and manufacturing method of semiconductor device

Semiconductor Energy Laboratory Co., Ltd.


Methods, structures and systems for encoding and decoding isosurface data. An encoder process takes volume data and an isolevel as input and produces compressed isosurface data as output. The compressed isosurface data produced by an encoder process is composed of an occupancy image record, an optional intersection points record, and an optional normal vectors record. An occupancy image is compressed with a context-based arithmetic encoder. Compressed isosurface data can be stored in a data storage device or transmitted through a communication medium to a remote computer system, where the decoder process is executed. The decoder processes take compressed surface data as input and produce surface data as output. The decoder processes first reconstructs the occupancy image by decoding the occupancy image record. An in-core isosurface decoder process produces a polygon mesh as a surface representation. An out-of-core isosurface decoder process produces a set of oriented points as a surface representation.

Polygon meshes are widely used in computer aided geometric design, geometric modeling, medical imaging, and computer graphics to represent surfaces in digital form. Polygon meshes are described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,506,947 "Curve and Surface Smoothing Without Shrinkage," by G. Taubin, and in the paper "A Signal Processing Approach To Fair Surface Design," by G. Taubin, Siggraph'95 Conference Proceedings, August 1995, pages 351-358, both are incorporated herein by reference in its entirety for all purposes. A polygon mesh includes a polygon mesh connectivity, a set of polygon mesh vertex positions, and a set of polygon mesh normals. The polygon mesh connectivity includes a plurality of vertices, and a plurality of faces. The set of polygon mesh vertex positions includes a plurality of vertex position vectors, with each vertex position vector corresponding to one vertex of the polygon mesh connectivity. The set of polygon mesh normals can be either a set of polygon mesh vertex normals or a set of polygon mesh face normals. The set of polygon mesh vertex normals includes either a plurality of vertex normals, with each vertex normal corresponding to one vertex of the polygon mesh connectivity. The set of polygon mesh face normals includes either a plurality of face normals, with each face normal corresponding to one face of the polygon mesh connectivity.
An isosurface extraction algorithm constructs a polygon mesh approximation of a level.set of a scalar function defined in the volume spanned by a 3D regular grid. Data acquired by medical imaging systems such as Computed Axial Tomography (CAT) Scanners and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Scanners are example of scalar functions defined on the vertices of a 3D regular grid. The 3D regular grid includes a plurality of grid vertices and a plurality of grid edges, with each grid edge connecting two particular grid vertices. Two grid vertices connected by a grid edge are called neighbors. The grid vertices of the 3D regular grid are points pα in 3D space, where α=(α0,α1,α2) is a triple of non-negative integers, α0ε{0, . . . ,n0−1}, α1ε{0, . . . ,n1−1}, α2ε{0, . . . ,n2−1}. FIG. 1 is a prior art diagram showing a 3D regular grid 100 and one of its cells 140. The grid vertices of the 3D regular grid are organized as n0 layers 110, n1 rows 120, and n2 columns 130. Each set of eight neighboring grid vertices form a cell 140Cα={pα,pα−(001),pα−(010),pα−(011),pα−(100),pα−(101),pα−(110),pα−(111)}The cells of the 3D regular grid correspond to values of α=(α0,α1,α2) in the following ranges: α0ε{1, . . . ,n0−1}, α1ε{1, . . . ,n1−1}, α2ε{1, . . . ,n2−1}. The vertices of cell 140 are grid vertices 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, and 148.
The scalar function f(p) is specified by its values fα=f(pα) on the grid vertices pα of a 3D regular grid, and by a method to interpolate in between these values. The level set is specified by an isovalue f0. The interpolation scheme is assumed to be linear along the grid edges, so that the isosurface cuts each edge in no more than one point. Ifpα and pα−δ1are grid points connected by an edge, andfα>f0>fα−δ1 or fα<f0<fα−δ1,the location of the point pα,j where the isosurface intersects the edge is given by the formula
      p          α      ,      j        =                              (                      1            -                          t                              α                ,                j                                              )                                  p          β                    +                        t                      α            ,            j                                            p          α                                                          where                                                            t                      α            ,            j                                =                            f          β                -                  f          0                                      f          β                -                  f          α
The isosurface extraction algorithm determines interfaces between adjacent data values indicating a change in the measured value, and then models the surface with polygonal elements having a vertex position for each polygon mesh vertex, and a vector normal to the surface at each of the vertices, or a face normal to the surface at each polygonal face of the polygon mesh. The most popular isosurface algorithms are Cuberille, described by L. S. Chen, G. T. Herman, R. A. Reynolds, and J. K. Udupa in the paper "Surface Shading in the Cuberille Environment," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 5, no. 12, pages 33-42, 1985; and Marching Cubes, described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,166,876 "System and Method for Detecting Internal Structures Contained Within the Interior Region of a Solid Object," by H. E. Cline and W. E. Lorensen, and in the paper "Marching Cubes: a High Resolution 3D Surface Construction Algorithm," Siggraph Conference Proceedings, 1987, by W. E. Lorensen and A. V. Cline. In this disclosure we refer to the polygon meshes produced by these and related algorithms as isosurface meshes.
In the Marching Cubes method mentioned above the points defined by the intersection of the isosurface with the grid edges are the vertices of the polygon mesh. In the Cuberille method mentioned above each of the points defined by the intersection of the isosurface with the grid edges correspond to one polygon mesh face. In his PhD thesis "Segmentation and Surface-Based Modeling of Objects in Three-Dimensional Biomedical Images," New York University, New York, March 1991, A. D. Kalvin observed that the polygon mesh generated by Marching Cubes is the dual mesh of the quadrilateral mesh generated by the Cuberille algorithm. Each vertex of the grid where the scalar function is specified (the primal grid) is the centroid of a dual grid cell, or voxel. Every edge of the primal grid intersects the common face of the two voxels corresponding to the ends of the edge. The mesh generated by the Cuberille algorithm is the regularized (converted to manifold) boundary surface of the solid defined by the set of voxels corresponding to grid vertices with scalar value above the isovalue. Without regularization, in general this mesh is highly singular (non-manifold). The conversion to manifold requires duplication of vertices and edges, so that in the resulting mesh every edge has exactly two incident faces. Which vertices to duplicate and how to connect the faces can be determined by virtually {\em shrinking} the solid, moving the faces in the direction of the inside. The multiplicity of each dual grid vertex in the regularized mesh only depends on the local connectivity of the eight incident voxels. Again, the regularization can be done by table lookup while the volume data is being scanned, with a table of size 256.
The vertices of the polygon mesh generated by the Marching Cubes method are connected forming polygon faces according to the following procedure. Since the function value associated with each of the eight corners of a cell may be either above or below the isovalue (isovalues equal to grid function values are called singular and should be avoided), there are 256 possible configurations. A polygonization of the vertices within each cell for each one of these configurations is stored in a static lookup table. When symmetries are taken into account, the size of the table can be reduced quite significantly.
The Cuberille algorithm constructs its isosurface mesh from the same information as the Marching Cubes algorithm. The edge intersections in the primal mesh specify the location of the face centroids of the Cuberille mesh. The location of the cuberille vertices can then be computed by local averaging, or by using more accurate schemes, such as those introduced by S. Gibson in the paper "Constrained Elastic Surface Nets: Generating Smooth Surfaces From Binary Segmented Data," Medical Image Computation and Computer Assisted Interventions, Conference Proceedings, pages 888-898, 1998; and by G. Taubin in the paper "Dual Mesh Resampling," Pacific Graphics 2001, Conference Proceedings, Tokyo, Japan, October 2001. The situation is similar for normals. If computed in the server as the gradient of the scalar function at the edge intersection points, and included in the compressed data, the Marching Cubes decoder will treat them as vertex normals, and the Cuberille decoder as face normals. T. Moller, R. Machiraju, K. Muller, and R. Yagel discuss different methods to estimate isosurface normals from volume data in the paper "A Comparison of Normal Estimation Schemes," IEEE Visualization'97, Conference Proceedings, pages 19-26, 1997. If the normals are not included in the compressed data, then it is up to the client to decide how to estimate them from the vertex coordinates and the connectivity information. The implication of these observations is that there is considerable freedom in the implementation of the decoder, making absolutely no changes to the encoder or the compressed bitstream. It is not even necessary for the decoder to produce a polygon mesh as output. For visualization purposes, and in particular if normals are included in the compressed data, a point-based approach could be very effective. One such point based surface representation approach is described by S. Rusinkiewicz and M. Levoy in the paper "Qsplat: A Multiresolution Point Rendering System for Large Meshes," Siggraph Conference Proceedings, 2000. Another related method is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,719,685 "Dividing Cubes System And Method For The Display Of Surface Structures Contained Within The Interior Region of a Solid Body," by H. E. Cline, W. E. Lorensen, and S. Ludke.
A number of general purpose polygon mesh compression algorithms have been proposed in recent years. M. F. Deering developed a mesh compression scheme for hardware acceleration, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,371 "Method and apparatus for geometric compression of three-dimensional graphics data," and U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,004 "Method and apparatus for decompression of compressed geometric three-dimensional graphics data." Other methods to encode the connectivity of triangle meshes with no loss of information were introduced by Taubin and Rossignac in U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,369 "Compression of Simple Geometric Models Using Spanning Trees," and U.S. Pat. No. 5,905,507 "Compression of Geometric Models Using Spanning Trees;" C. Touma and C. Gotsman in U.S. Pat. No. 6,167,159 "Triangle Mesh Compression;" J. Rossignac in the paper "Edgebreaker: Connectivity Compression for Triangular Meshes," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 47-61, January-March 1999; S. Gumhold in U.S. Pat. No. 6,469,701 "Method for Compressing Graphical Information;" and others.
In the Technical Report GIT-GVU-99-36, "Connectivity Compression for Irregular Quadrilateral Meshes," Georgia Tech GVU, 1999, A. King, D. Szymczak and J. Rossignac describe a method to compress quadrilateral meshes. Methods to encode the connectivity of polygon meshes composed of faces with arbitrary number of cerners were introduced by M. Isenburg and J. Snoeyink in the paper "Face fixer: Compressing Polygon Meshes with Properties," Siggraph 2000 Conference Proceedings, pages 263-270, July 2000; B. Konrod and C. Gotsman in the paper "Efficient Coding of Non-Triangular Meshes," Pacific Graphics Conference Proceedings, Hong-Kong, 2000; and A. Khodakovsky, P. Alliez, M. Desbrun, and P. Schroder in the paper "Near-Optimal Connectivity Encoding of 2-Manifold Polygon Meshes," Graphical Models, Special Issue on Processing of Large Polygonal Meshes, 2003. These algorithms focus on compressing the connectivity information very efficiently, and are all based on a traversal of the primal or dual graph of the mesh. Some of them compress connectivity of very regular meshes to a small fraction of a bit per vertex, and all to 2-4 bits per vertex in the worst case. When the geometry information (vertex coordinates, and optionally normals, colors, and texture coordinates) is also taken into account, the cost per vertex increases considerably. For example, adding only vertex coordinates quantized to 10 bits per vertex lifts the cost to typically 8-16 bits per vertex. In addition, all of these approaches are incompatible with the out-of-core nature of isosurface extraction algorithms that visit the voxels in scan order.
In the paper "Progressive Geometry Compression," Siggraph 2000 Conference Proceedings, pages 271-278, July 2000, A. Khodakovsky, P. Schroder, and W. Sweldens follow a different approach to compress large connected and uniformly sampled meshes of low topological complexity, based on resampling, subdivision and wavelets. They obtain up to one order of magnitude better compression rates than with the connectivity preserving schemes, by approximating the mesh geometry with a subdivision mesh, and compressing this mesh instead.
In the paper "Semi-Regular Mesh Extraction From Volumes," IEEE Visualization 2000, Conference Proceedings, pages 275-282, October 2000, Z. J. Wood, M. Desbrun, P. Schroder, and D. Breen introduced a method based on surface wave propagation to extract isosurfaces from distance volumes that produces semi-regular multi-resolution meshes. These meshes can be compressed with Khodakovsky's wavelet-based scheme.
Isosurface algorithms generally, take as input very large volume data files, and produce polygon meshes with very large number of vertices and faces. Data stored in a server can be transmitted to a client for remote visualization. The server can store and transmit the volume data to the client, which then executes the isosurface algorithm on the received volume data, and renders the resulting polygon mesh in a visualization system. Alternatively, the server can compute the isosurface and transmit the resulting polygon mesh to the client, which only renders the received polygon mesh in a visualization system.
In both cases the transmission time constitutes a major bottleneck because of the large file sizes involved. In the first case, in addition to the size of the transmitted data, the burden of the computation is shifted to the client. In the second case this is true even using general purpose polygon mesh compression schemes to reduce the size of the transmitted data. It is, therefore, important to compress the data stored in the server and/or transmitted to a remote client, and to be able to divide the computational burden between server and client according to the computational resources of the client.
All isosurface construction algorithms construct an isosurface approximation from an occupancy image, a set of intersection points, and a set of intersection point surface normals. The occupancy image, the set of intersection points, and the set of intersection point surface normals are extracted from the volume data. Since whether a grid edge intersects the isosurface or not depends on the values of the scalar function at the grid edge ends, isosurface construction algorithms generate polygon mesh vertices an faces as a function of an "occupancy image" extracted from the volume data. The occupancy image is a 3D binary image defined by one grid vertex bit per grid vertexB={bα:α=(α0,α1,α2)} where bαε{0,1},specifying whether the scalar function attains a value above or below the isovalue on that grid vertex. The location of the surface points along the intersecting grid edges and the polygon mesh normals are associated with the intersecting grid edges. A grid edge is an intersecting grid edge if occupancy image has different values at the grid edge ends. Since the gradient vector of a function is normal to its level sets, normals used for shading can optionally be computed during the volume traversal as finite difference approximations to the gradient vectors normalized to unit length.
FIG. 2 is a flow chart of a typical prior art isosurface extraction algorithm 240 which takes volume data 205 as input and produces surface data 220 as output. While the isosurface extraction algorithm 210 scans the volume data in step 215, it determines the occupancy image in step 230, computes the intersection points in step 235, computes normal vectors to the intersection points in step 240, and from the information contained in the occupancy image, intersection points, and normal vectors, in step 245 it computes a surface representation that returns as the surface data 220.
FIG. 3 is a prior art diagram that shows the occupancy image 300 composed of grid vertex bits 310, each grid vertex bit 310 corresponding to a grid vertex 320, each grid vertex 320 having an associated scalar function value 330, the value of the grid vertex bit 310 being determined by whether the associated scalar function value 330 is greater than the isovalue 340. In this diagram each grid points 320 corresponds to a voxel 350 as in the Cuberille algorithm. The occupancy image partitions the voxels into two sets 360 and 370. The topology and connectivity of the isosurface 370 is determined by the set of voxel faces separating the sets 360 and 370.
FIG. 4 is a prior art diagram that shows the intersection points. Each intersection point 410 corresponds to one quadrilateral face 420 separating the sets 360 and 370 of FIG. 3.
FIG. 5 is a prior art diagram that shows the normal vectors. Each normal vector 520 corresponds to one intersection point 510.
In the paper "Compression of Isosurfaces," Proceedings of IEEE Vision, Modeling and Visualization (VMV 2001), Stuttgart, Germany, November 2001, D. Saupe and J.-P. Kuska presented an algorithm to compress isosurfaces, which extracts and encodes the occupancy image and intersection points. Normals are computed from the reconstructed Marching Cubes polygon mesh. The occupancy image is encoded with an octree-based scheme to deal more efficiently with large homogeneous regions of empty space. The intersection points are encoded with a multi-symbol context-based arithmetic coder. This is a complex method with compression rates significantly higher than those achieved using this invention. In the paper "Space-Efficient Boundary Representation of Volumetric Objects," Proceedings of the Joint Eurographics-IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization (VisSym01), Ascona, Switzerland, May 2001, L. Mroz and H. Hauser encode the occupancy image using a more complex scheme based on chain coding, where the voxels that contain isosurface intersections are linked in long chains and represented as a sequence of symbols, each one specifying in which direction to go to visit the next cell. This method is also significantly less efficient than this invention, even if normals are not included in the compressed data. In the paper "Compressing Isosurfaces Generated with Marching Cubes," The Visual Computer, vol. 18, no. 1, pages 54-67, 2002, S. N. Yang and T. S. Wu describe a rather complex method to compress triangle meshes generated by the Marching Cubes algorithm. Each mesh vertex is represented by the index of the containing cube, the index of the supporting edge, and the position of the vertex along the supporting edge. The decoder interconnects these vertices forming triangles using the occupancy image, as in the original Marching Cubes method. But the occupancy image is not encoded in the bitstream. Instead, it is reconstructed from the cube and edge indices in the encoding of mesh vertices by a complex procedure that in fact determines the connected components of the grid graph after removing the edges where mesh vertices are supported. Normal vectors are not compressed. Compression rates are several times worse than with the method of this invention, and it is not possible to do an out-of-core implementation.
Entropy encoding is a well established technique to represent with a minimum number of bits a finite sequence of "independent symbols" that belong to a finite "alphabet". The fundamentals of entropy encoding is explained by D. Salomon in the book "Data Compression: The Complete Reference," Springer-Verlag, 1997, ISBN 0-387-98280-9. Symbols that appear more often in the sequence are represented with fewer bits than those that appear more infrequently. The absolute lower bound for the total number of bits necessary to represent the sequence of independent symbols with no loss of information is given by the so-called "entropy." In practice the "arithmetic coder," described by I. H. Witten, R. M. Neal, and J. G Cleary, in the paper "Arithmetic coding for data compression," Communications of the ACM, vol. 30, no. 6, June 1987, asymptotically achieves the entropy. Arithmetic coding is used as the basis of many image and data compression schemes and applications, such as those described by K. M. Marks, in the paper "A JBIG-ABIC compression engine for digital document processing," IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 42, no. 6, 1998. Arithmetic coding has also been implemented in hardware, as described by M. J. Slattery and J. L. Mitchell, in the paper "The Qx-coder," IBM Journal of Research and Development, vol. 42, no. 6, 1998.
To deal with the lack of stationary distribution of symbols in the sequence, "adaptive" models are used. In arithmetic coding with an adaptive model the encoder updates the alphabet probabilities after encoding each symbol. Since encoder and decoder must use the same model to encode and decode each symbol, the model update procedure must be based on data previously encoded, and agreed upon information. Among these data are the initial probabilities, which may be hard-coded or included in the compressed data. A common practice is to start with uniform probabilities and keep track of the relative symbol frequencies as probability estimates.
For binary data, where the alphabet is composed of two symbols, keeping track of global symbol frequencies is usually not good enough as a model update procedure, and a "context-based" procedure is used. This is a state machine model with separate sets of probability estimates associated with each state or "context". The update procedure determines the context from previously encoded data, and after the symbol is encoded with the probabilities associated with a context, the set of probabilities corresponding to that context is updated, but not the other. Context-based arithmetic coding is a very efficient adaptive compression scheme.
JBIG is short for "Joint Bi-level Image experts Group." This is both the name of a standards committee, and of a particular scheme for the lossless compression of binary images, described in the international standard ITU-T T.82 Information technology—Coded representation of picture and audio information—Progressive bi-level image compression, March 93. It can also be used for coding gray scale and color images with limited numbers of bits per pixel. JBIG is one of the best available schemes for lossless image compression. The JBIG algorithm is based on context-based arithmetic coding. For each pixel in an image a "context" is derived from a specific fixed pattern of surrounding pixels preceding the current pixel in the scan order. The standard defines several such neighborhoods.
FIG. 6 is a prior art diagram showing two different ways 620 and 630 of defining a 10-bit context of a bit 610 described in the JBIG standard. All the above mentioned papers and references are incorporated herein for all purposes.


A shifting device including at least one coupling device, a shaft, a sliding sleeve-of the coupling device which is arranged in an axially moveable and rotationally fixed manner on the shaft and an actuator arrangement of the coupling device for axially moving the sliding sleeve. At least one coupling toothing is associated with the coupling element which can rotate about a rotational axis with respect to the shaft and a counter toothing corresponding to the coupling toothing is associated with the sliding sleeve in a rotationally fixed manner. At least one annular actuator element of the actuator arrangement surrounds the periphery of the sliding sleeve about the rotational axis.

EP 1977130 B1 shows a shifting device of this type. The shifting device has a coupling element which is rotatably supported on the shaft relative to the shaft. The coupling element should be rotatably fixedly connected to the shaft via the shifting collar upon engagement of a gear and be able to rotate again relative to the shaft upon changing gears. For this purpose, the shifting collar is situated on the shaft in an axially shiftable and rotatably fixed manner and therefore is shiftably supported on a hub which is fixedly connected to the shaft.
The rotatably fixed, detachable connection between the shifting collar and the coupling element is implemented with the aid of tooth engagement. For this purpose, a coupling toothing, which corresponds to a mating toothing on the shifting collar, is provided on the coupling element. The teeth of the toothings and the tooth gaps are longitudinally oriented, so that when a gear is engaged, the teeth of the mating toothing are insertable into the tooth gaps of the coupling toothing until the teeth of the toothings are alternately opposite each other in the circumferential direction and are thus rotatably fixedly coupled. An electromagnetic actuator system for actuating the shifting collar or an annular element of the actuator system surrounds the shifting collar on the circumferential side, so that the shifting device may have a very compact design.
Coupling elements may be, for example, gear wheels, so-called idler gears, on which the coupling toothing is provided directly. Alternatively the coupling elements are coupling members having the coupling toothing which are rotatably fixedly coupled with a gear wheel.
The installation space required by a shifting device of this type is dependent on the radial and axial dimensions of the coupling element and the shifting collar. The dimensions of the electromagnetic actuator are dependent on the forces needed for shifting. The installation space required by the shifting device is therefore essentially also influenced by the size of the actuator system and may therefore be large if a great deal of power is required.

Shifting device comprising a coupling device


RFID tags pre-installed on bale wrap segments provide location information for a specific area of the bale wrap. RFID tag readers located on the cotton harvester provide signals for use by the module wrapping apparatus for initiating a cutting or separating operation, once a module has been wrapped, and for warning an operator of a situation where the wrapping function has not proceeded in an orderly fashion after a signal for starting the wrapping function has been received. A wrapped module carries the pre-installed RFID tags which are readable by RFID readers carried by module handlers in the field and/or at the gin input which identify the modules and establish a position to which the module may be automatically oriented so that an ideal module wrap cutting location is easily calculated. The RFID tag reading taken in the field or at the gin thus senses the number on the tag as well as the location of the tag, and the module identification is input to an electronic database.

It is known in the process of harvesting seed cotton, corn stover, hay or other products to use a module forming apparatus, such as a baler, to produce wrapped cylindrical modules or bales of the harvested product. U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,650, granted on Jul. 24, 2001 discloses a cotton harvester which embodies a module forming apparatus equipped with a module wrapping apparatus.
It is desired to be able to automatically trace the harvested product as it is produced along with associated information which might include customer name, field number, weight, average yield where module is produced, moisture content, module diameter, seed variety, and GPS location and associated mapping data.
Another desire is for a combined round module forming and wrapping apparatus to have the capability of separating a predetermined length of wrapping material from a wrapping material supply roll for applying a desired number of wraps to the circumference of a module having a preselected diameter. This would include separating pre-partitioned lengths of wrapping material from the supply roll (see U.S. Pat. No. 6,787, 209, granted on Sep. 7, 2004 for an example of wrapping material supply rolls including pre-partitioned lengths of wrapping material), or would include defining at what point to cut the predetermined length of wrapping material from the supply roll. A related desired feature is to be able to know how many predetermined or pre-partitioned lengths of wrapping material remain on the supply roll once a bale is wrapped.
In conjunction with the wrapping apparatus, it is also desired that there be confirmation that the bale or module has been successfully wrapped before it is ejected from the baling or module forming apparatus.
Once the bale or module is ejected onto the ground from the baling or module forming arrangement, there may be a need for reliably determining the orientation of the bale if there is a need to position the bale in a particular orientation relative to a wrap location, such as when a particular wrap area on the bale provides added protection against moisture (U. S. Pat. No. 7,093,407, granted Aug. 22, 2006 discloses a way of marking a wrapped bale so that it can later be properly oriented for maximum protection against ground moisture).
In the case of wrapped cotton bales or modules arriving at a gin, the wrapper must be cut at a specific location to prevent formation of a loose inner tail that can become separated from the remainder of the removed wrap and can enter into the gin system. The first length of wrapping material entering the bale chamber on the harvester or processor typically does not bond well with the next adjoining layer of wrap. After about six feet (two meters) of wrapping material are applied to the circumference of the module or bale, the tension and tackiness of one side of the wrapping material helps bond the inner layer to the second layer. Although it is known to provide apparatus for removing wrappers from modules at the cotton gin (for example, see U.S. Pat. No. 7,165,928, granted Jan. 23, 2007), a reliable method and apparatus for determining the location of the loose inner tail and cutting the wrap at a location offset from the tail is necessary to avoid gin contamination with plastic tail material. If the bales vary in size, the positioning process becomes more difficult.
Another need at the gin is automatic identification of the order that modules are passing down the gin feeder floor. An identification system used today requires a worker to physically place identification tags on modules in the field, and to remove the tag from a given module and maintain it in order with other prior and post tags for grower quality identification and payment purposes.
There is a need then to automatically place an identification marker on a cotton bale or module so that the module may be identified and tracked from the time it leaves the bale or module forming and wrapping arrangements until the time it enters the gin.

Cotton harvester for producing modules which can be automatically identified and oriented


Method for sewage water treatment using suspended activated sludge where sewage water is supplied to the equalizing tank being then re-pumped to the activation tank from which is supplied to the post-sedimentation tank after the clearing process and from here, after the remaining sludge sedimentation, to the drainage. The activation process is automatically interrupted after a drop of the sewage water level in the equalizing tank below the minimum level setting and the excessive sludge is then pumped off from the activation tank. The sludge re-pumping is interrupted and the activation process restored owing to the subsequent raising of the sewage water level in excess of the operation level setting.

The biological method of-the sewage water treatment consists in utilizing the activated sludge formed by a mixture of various bacteria and small microorganisms. For its existence, this sludge needs organic substances contained in sewage water which is decomposited and thus cleared by these substances. The activating process is possible only due to a continuous oxidation introduced as a rule by blowing air into the activation tank.
For the sewage water treatment are used partly microorganisms seated firmly on their base in the form of various systems of biological filters and reactors wetted by sewage water, partly activating systems with suspended sludge where the sludge floccules are mixed together with sewage water and with air.
The sewage water treatment plants using the suspended sludge method know hirherto can be devided into systems using a continuous sewage water passage through the activation tank, and to systems using a discontinuous or intermittent passage.
In the continuous sewage water treatment systems, the sewage water is supplied after its coarse pre-treatment to the activation tank and, after a technologically necessitated period needed to its clearing, drained to a separated post-sedimentation tank together with the activated sludge. In this tank, the sludge is finally separated by sedimentation on the cleared water being drained away.
In the system using the discontinuous sewage water passage, the sewage water is supplied after its coarse pre-treatment to the activation tank either immediately or having been re-pumped from the equalizing tank. After the water treatment, the activation process is interrupted, i.e. the aeration and the water mixing, if any in the activation tank are stopped the cleared water being pumped or drawn by gravity to the drainage after the sludge sedimentation. After this, the activation tank is refilled the above described treatment cycle being repeated. Compared with the continuous sewage water treatment method, the post-sedimentation tanks can be omitted the activation one (SBR) being refilled in cycles.
The disadvantage of the above described sewage water activation treatment systems is their difficult utilization for small household treatment plants respecting in particular the demands connected with the treatment plant operation control.
In the activation treatment plants using the continuous sewage water passage, the sludge must be continuously re-pumped from the post-sedimentation tank to the sewage water inflow to the activation tank, As soon as the sludge concentration in this tank exceeds the permitted value, the excessive sludge must be pumped away from the sewage water treatment plant, A skilled operator is required to perform regular measuremants of the sludge concentration in the activation tank and to remove the sludge. In addition to this, a low sewage water inflow would cause an intermittent load of the activation tank. This would be followed by a deteriorated drainage water quality or by a necessity of overdimensioning the activation and the post-sedimentation tanks to obtain the required drainage water parameters.
With respect to a sludge accumulation in the activation tank, the hitherto known small sewage water treatment plants with a continuous water passage are designed either for a high sludge density where the sludge suspension must be maintained using a method with high demands on energy for up to 200 days till the sludge drainage without any interruptions of the water treatment plant function, or they require skilled operators draining regularly the sludge away from the activation tank. Both systems cannot be kept functioning for a longer time period without sewage water inflow due to the sludge autolysis followed by the sludge remowal from the activation process introduced stepwise due to the consumption of activation substances in the activation tank. In this way, the water treatment plant function is substantially affected. The activation sewage water treatment plants with discontinuous water passage (SBR) are earmarked by a relatively sophisticated control systems thus being excessively expensive for their use in low capacity sewage water sources.

Method and apparatus for sewage water treatment


A process cartridge includes a toner frame and a developing frame joined together without damaging seal members and so that toner leakage due to damage of the seal members can be prevented. The invention also relates to an electrophotographic image forming apparatus to which such a process cartridge can detachably be mounted. Inner corners of opposed portions of ridges and grooves, provided on joint surfaces of the developing frame and the toner frame where a seal member for sealing an opening formed by fitting the ridges and the grooves together, are provided with parallel inclined surfaces.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a process cartridge which can detachably be mounted to a main body of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, and an electrophotographic image forming apparatus to which a process cartridge can detachably be mounted.
The electrophotographic image forming apparatus serves to form an image on a recording medium by using an electrophotographic image forming process. The electrophotographic image forming apparatus may include, for example, an electrophotographic copying machine, an electrophotographic printer (for example, a laser beam printer, an LED printer and the like), an electrophotographic facsimile, an electrophotographic word processor and the like.
2. Related Background Art
In the past, in electrophotographic image forming apparatuses using an electrophotographic image forming process, an electrophotographic photosensitive drum and process means acting on the photosensitive drum have been integrally incorporated into a cartridge unit to form a process cartridge which can detachably be mounted to a main body of the electrophotographic image forming apparatus. According to this system, since the maintenance of the apparatus can be performed by an operator himself, operability is greatly improved. Thus, such a process cartridge has been widely used with the electrophotographic image forming apparatus.
In such a process cartridge, a toner frame containing toner is integrally joined to a developing frame supporting a developing means at an interface. A sealing member sealing an opening portion of the toner frame is pulled out between the toner frame and the developing frame. As a result, the toner can be sent to the developing frame. Further, after the sealing member is pulled out, in order to prevent the toner from leaking through the interface, a seal member is provided between the toner frame and the developing frame.
The present invention relates to an improvement in the prior art.

Electrophotographic image forming apparatus


A surge protection device to protect telecommunication equipment coupled to telephone lines is shown having in a first embodiment three cells with each cell having a semiconductor element with a reverse breakdown PN junction mounted on a heat sink. The device includes a lead frame having a first pair of leads formed with a platform raised out of the plane of the remainder of the lead frame to provide suitable clearance relative to the semiconducting elements and each platform has a finger extending downwardly into engagement with a top electrode of a respective semiconducting element and is soldered thereto. A second lead lies in the plane of the lead frame and is soldered to a first heat sink plate mounting two semiconducting elements and another finger extending from one of the platforms is soldered to a second heat sink plate mounting the third semiconducting element. The heat sinks, semiconducting elements and portions of the leads are encapsulated in thermally conductive, electrically insulative epoxy. The device, when subjected to excessive current and voltage conditions, is adapted to fail closed. A second embodiment has two cells mounted on a single heat sink plate mounted in the same manner as in the first embodiment.

The field of the invention is that of surge protection systems and more particularly to protectors for high voltage and current transients that may occur on telephone tip or ring lines.
Solid state surge protection systems conventionally employ a surge protection device having a semiconducting element disposed between a pair of electrodes. This element is arranged in the circuit to selectively conduct electrical energy between the tip line and common, the ring line and common and, if desired, between the tip line and the ring line. For example, in the event the telephone circuit experiences an electrical surge as a result of lightning or A.C. line cross or the like in the circuit, the system is designed to shunt current from and thereby to protect telecommunication equipment connected in the circuit from damage due to the surge condition. On occasion, the circuit may experience an electrical surge which results in destruction of the semiconducting element so that the circuit components and telecommunication equipment would not thereafter be protected against subsequent occurring electrical surge conditions. Accordingly, the conventional surge protection systems typically incorporate means designed to move the electrodes into electrical engagement with each other following destruction of the semiconducting element, thereby to maintain a short circuit condition between the electrodes to protect the circuit components and telecommunication equipment coupled to the circuit against subsequently occurring transient surge conditions until such time as the semiconducting element is replaced. For example, the device electrodes in a typical system are resiliently engaged between spring loaded electrical contact arms or the like to be biased together by the spring contact arm loading in the event the semiconducting element is destroyed by the noted surge conditions. Frequently, however, difficultly is encountered in establishing and maintaining the desired short circuit condition between the electrodes following destruction of the semiconducting element.
In copending application, Ser. No. 07/720980, an improved surge protection device is described and claimed comprising a semiconducting element having first and second electrodes disposed in electrically conductive relation with respective opposite sides of the element and the element is normally operable to selectively conduct electrical energy between the electrodes to provide a first level of surge protection for the circuit. The element becomes conductive, for example, on occurrence of selected surge voltage in the circuit due to lightning or the like for connecting the circuit to ground to protect the circuit and circuit components from the voltage surge. When the surge condition has passed, the semiconducting element returns to its non-conducting condition permitting resumption of normal circuit operation. In the event the device is destroyed as a result of being subjected to a greater electrical surge exceeding the first level of surge as described above, the electrodes are adapted to contact each other to maintain a short circuit condition to thereby provide a second level of surge protection. A first one of the electrodes is disposed in electrical engagement with a limited portion of one side of the semiconducting element to facilitate establishment and maintenance of the desired short circuit condition between the electrodes in the event of element destruction. The first electrode comprises a disc part and post of lesser cross sectional size than the disc part. A distal end of the post part of the first electrode is secured in electrically conductive relation to the selected limited portion of the said one side of the element whereby as destruction of the semiconducting element occurs along a critical energy condition path, the post part of the electrode passes through the element along that path to be electrically engaged in short circuit condition with the second electrode for providing the second level of surge protection. While this protective device is effective it would be desirable to provide a device which is particularly suitable for mounting on a circuit board.


A tire building drum having a plurality of alternating wide and narrow drum segments bearing shells matable to form a cylindrical tire-building surface includes a shaft and concentric hub rotatable relative one another to expand and collapse the drum. In a preferred embodiment, blocks coupled to each respective segment via springs are mounted for bidirectional radial movement in rotationally-fixed relation to the shaft. Links nestable when the drum is collapsed connect the blocks with the hub to drive the blocks radially and function as over-center toggles stabilizing the drum when expanded. Variable-engagement slides associated with the blocks most effectively resist non-radial forces exerted by the links when their relative magnitude is greatest. Dimensional stability and precision of the drum are facilitated by radial and angular stops which are not subject to sliding wear. Pins of different lengths coupling the wide and narrow drum segments to the blocks cooperate with the springs to retract the narrow drum segments first and by a greater distance when collapsing the drum. The springs also cooperate with the radial stops by taking up relative movement between the blocks and drum segments to prevent expansion of the drum at any point during transition to its collapsed condition.

Radially expandable mandrels find utility in a number of environments including the manufacture of tires, bands and laminated products and the restoration of collapsed tubular structures to their original shape.
In tire manufacture, uncured rubber compound and ply materials are wrapped in layers around a tire building drum when the drum is in an expanded cylindrical condition in order to form what is known in the art as a tire "carcass." While on the drum, the carcass is typically subjected to an operation known as "stitching" in which the drum is rotated and the carcass is forcibly pressed between the drum and external rollers in order to eliminate air pockets or gaps in the layers and to generally coalesce the carcass into a substantially integral structure. When the carcass is completed, the drum is driven into an at least partially radially collapsed condition in order to facilitate removal of the carcass for further processing.
A typical tire building drum includes a plurality of alternate wide and narrow drum segments fitted with arcuate shells on their outer surfaces. The drum segments are coupled to an internal mechanism capable of driving the drum segments radially in opposing directions. When a carcass has been completed, the segments are retracted radially inwardly in order to at least partially collapse the drum to permit the carcass to be readily removed. As in the case of U.S. Pat. No. 3,779,835, the mechanism may be one which times the retraction of the narrow segments to proceed ahead of retraction of the wide segments in order that the wide and narrow segments do not interfere with one another and possibly jam the mechanism. After the previously-built carcass has been removed, the segments are then extended radially until the drum assumes an expanded condition in which the shells mate to form a substantially perfect cylinder upon which the next carcass can be built.
Tire manufacturers constantly strive to improve the uniformity of the tires they make so that those tires will be less likely to generate objectionable vibration or steering disturbances when they are put to use on vehicles. In order to be capable of consistently and economically producing tires capable of meeting increasingly stringent uniformity specifications, it is believed important that tire building drums be capable of simultaneously meeting a number of performance criteria. However, prior art tire building drums tend to suffer from deficiencies in one or more of the areas which will now be discussed.
In the first instance, tire building drums represent a considerable capital investment to tire manufacturers. As such, it is important that their structure be relatively simple so that they can be economically produced and maintained. In view of the investment they represent, the construction of tire building drums should also be one which lends itself to a long operating life with low wear. The problem of wear is not merely an issue of capital expense however.
A problem from which a number of prior art tire building drums suffer is that they are sometimes subject to sliding wear of components which influence either the expanded diameter of the drum or the precise fit of adjacent shells when the drum is in its expanded condition. Variability of the expanded diameter of the drum over it useful life is liable to cause undesired variation in tires produced using the drum and gaps between segments can generate scrap as the result of rubber compound being forced into such gaps.
Lack of rigidity and radial stability is also a problem with some prior art tire building drums, particularly after they have been in use for some time. It is important that a tire building drum be substantially rigid when the drum is expanded so as to be capable of resisting external forces during stitching or other operations without excessively deforming in a way which could effect the quality of tire carcasses built on the drum. For safety as well as quality reasons, a tire building drum should exhibit a high degree of radial stability, particularly when expanded, so as not to be susceptible to unexpected collapse.
Yet another performance deficiency of at least some prior art tire building drums relates to their tendency to exhibit backlash. Backlash can be described as a lack of predictability of the radial positions of the exterior drum segments for any given condition of the mechanical inputs which drive the drum. Such mechanical inputs are supplied by a tire building machine to which a tire building drum is connected in use and conventionally take the form of relative rotary inputs. For precise control over an important phase of the tire manufacturing process, it is desirable for a tire building drum to accurately translate its rotary inputs into predictable and repeatable radial positioning of the exterior drum segments. When backlash is present however, the radial position of the segments for a given rotary input is somewhat uncertain. There is concern that such uncertainty could be capable of causing undesired variability in tire carcasses built on the drum. It is desirable therefore that a tire building drum be substantially devoid of backlash and remain so irrespective of normal wear accruing over its operating life.
In addition to the foregoing, a tire building drum should have an operating mechanism which is sufficiently compact as to be capable of operating a drum small enough to produce carcasses for thirteen inch or even smaller tires without sacrificing performance in the areas noted above. The relative complexity and size of components needed for adequate strength in some prior art tire building drums prevents their use or degrades their performance in such applications.


A system and method may improve latency for user equipment (UE) registration in cellular networks. UE registration may retrieve the UE's Session Management Function Data locally rather than from a network or cloud-based unified data management (UDM) entity that manages a unified data repository (UDR). For example, the UE may send a unique identification (e.g., a UE ID) for the UE to a registering entity of a cellular network system. The UE ID may then be used to identify a UE Group Identification for the UE at the UDM. The UE Group Identification may be a pointer to the locally-stored Session Management Function Data for the UE. The entity requesting registration may then use the pointer to retrieve the Session Management Function Data locally rather than a remote entity such as the UDM.

The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. The work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Fifth Generation or "5G" cellular networks offer significant improvements over earlier cellular network designs including much higher data rates (1-20 Gigabits per second), much lower data latency (e.g., 1 millisecond), and increased capacity as the network expands. 5G consists of an array of technologies to meet these goals including antenna and cellular tower design, a larger frequency spectrum, and software implemented by various carriers to improve the capabilities of their subscribers. For example, carriers may modify any one of the processes involved in cellular network management (e.g., user equipment (UE) registration, etc.) to make slight improvements in data rates, latency, or network capacity that, collectively, contribute significant improvements in cellular network improvements.
One aspect of 5G networks is Unified Data Management (UDM). Unified data management (UDM) manages network user data in a single, centralized element. UDM is similar to the subscriber service (HSS) from previous cellular network generations, but is cloud-native and specifically designed for 5G. It can be paired with the user data repository (UDR) which stores the user data such as customer profile information, customer authentication information, and encryption keys for the information. UDM resides on the control plane (e.g., 5G protocols for controlling the connection between the UE and the network) and utilizes "microservices" or lightweight, distributed applications based on software components that work across the cloud, to communicate between the user plane and the control plane.
Typical UE registration in 5G networks is described in detail by Unified Data Management Services specification 3GPP TS 29.503 (available at: https://portal.3gpp.org/desktopmodules/Specifications/SpecificationDetails.aspx?specificationId=3342). 3GPP TS 29.503 describes that data such as the Session Management Function Data (e.g., Selection Subscription Data, Session Management Subscription Data, Data Network Name (DNN) array, etc.) are stored in UDM and downloaded to the SMF during the registration process. The Session Management Function Data typically accounts for at least 50 KB of data for each UE and includes groups of subscribers that have identical data. The Session Management Function for each UE is stored in UDM even if it is identical to other data stored elsewhere in UDM for other UE. Thus, massive amounts of redundant data may be stored in UDM. Further, the UE registration process requires that the SMF download the Session Management Function Data for each UE. Further, the transfer of the Session Management Function Data from UDM to SMF or other entities during registration will consume additional time and bandwidth.

Session management function (SMF) data storage in cellular network registration


An electronic memory, typically a flash EPROM, contains an array of memory sections (40), each containing an array of memory cells (54). Global bit lines (60) fully traverse the memory. Local bit lines (58) partially traverse the memory. Data stored in the memory is sensed with an arrangement that utilizes impedance matching to achieve high sensing accuracy with low noise sensitivity. The impedance matching may be provided solely from the sections and lines of the memory or partially from a separate reference memory section (102) that contains reference memory cells (104).

Semiconductor memories are formed with memory cells that store bits of data. The memory cells are normally very small. As a result, cell data signals that indicate the states of the stored data are electrically small and need to be amplified. Devices commonly referred to as sense amplifiers provide the amplification. A sense amplifier typically amplifies the difference between a data signal received at one input terminal and a reference signal received at another input terminal. Because the cell data signals are small, sense amplifiers must be highly sensitive to correctly read the stored data.
One way to enhance the sensitivity of a sense amplifier is to employ a balanced sensing arrangement that takes advantage of the largely matching impedance characteristics of portions of the circuitry used to access the memory cells. Referring to the drawings, FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional balanced sensing arrangement for a semiconductor memory. The memory circuitry in FIG. 1 consists of memory sections 20 and 22, multiplexers ("MUXes") 24 and 26, and sense amplifiers 28 that provide data output signals.
Each memory section 20 or 22 consists of an array of memory cells 30 accessed through word lines 32 and bit lines 34. Each memory cell 30 is diagramatically shown as being at the intersection of a word line 32 and a bit line 34. When a word line 32 in section 20 is activated, signals indicative of the data in cells 30 along that word line 32 are provided on associated bit lines 34 to MUX 24 which supplies a subset of the data signals on data lines 36 to sense amplifiers 28. A similar activity occurs when a word line 32 in memory section 22 is activated. Signals indicative of the data in cells 30 along that word line 32 are furnished on associated bit lines 34 to MUX 26 which furnishes a subset of those data signals on data lines 38 to amplifiers 28.
A balanced sensing arrangement is achieved by utilizing one memory section 20 or 22 as a reference array when a word line 32 is activated in the other section 22 or 20 for a read operation. During the read operation, none of cells 32 in the reference array are activated. Substantially no current flows through bit lines 34 in the reference array. However, both of MUXes 24 and 26 are activated so that sense amplifiers 28 are connected by way of data lines 36 to a subset of bit lines 34 in section 20 and by way of data lines 38 to a subset of bit lines 34 in section 22.
The subset of bit lines 34 in memory section 22 presents largely the same impedance as the subset of bit lines 34 in memory section 20. Accordingly, the impedance "seen" by sense amplifiers 28 along data lines 38 and the associated subset of bit lines 34 in section 22 largely matches the impedance "seen" by amplifiers 28 along data lines 36 and the associated subset of bit lines 34 in section 20. Matching impedances at the input terminals to sense amplifiers 28 in this way reduces sensitivity to noise, thereby improving the sensing accuracy. Data lines 36 and 38 are, however, commonly quite long, especially when the memory of FIG. 1 is a large memory. The resultant increased impedance is disadvantageous.
Pitts, U.S. Pat. No. 6,052,308, describes an extension of the balanced sensing arrangement of FIG. 1 to a flash EPROM containing a group of memory arrays whose memory cells are formed with floating-gate field-effect transistors ("FETs"). In a floating-gate FET, a floating gate lies between a control gate and the FET's channel region. An n-channel floating-gate FET is programmed by placing electrons on the floating gate to raise the FET's threshold voltage. When the FET is selected for reading by providing an access voltage between the control gate and the FET's source, the access voltage is less than the threshold voltage so that the FET is turned off. This defines a low logic state commonly referred to as logic "0". The FET is erased by removing electrons from the floating gate to reduce the threshold voltage. An access voltage applied between the control electrode and the source is then greater than the threshold voltage. The FET turns on and draws substantial current to establish a high logic state commonly referred to as logic "1".
The floating-gate memory cells utilized in Pitts are of a type subject to an overerasure phenomenon in which the amount of electronic charge removed from a floating gate during erasure is occasionally so great that the cell is turned on even though the cell's word line is not activated. Such an overerased cell draws substantial current. Pitts can eliminate the overerasure by performing a "soft" programming operation on overerased cells. However, if a read operation were performed on one memory section 20 or 22 in FIG. 1 at a time when the other section 22 or 20 contains an overerased cell, i.e., during erasure and/or prior to "soft" programming, the current flowing through the overerased cell could severely damage the sensing accuracy.
Pitts uses an array switching technique to address the overerasure problem. When a memory cell in one of the memory arrays is being read, the EPROM examines a group of associated memory arrays and chooses, as the reference array, an associated array not then undergoing erasure. This is cumbersome because it requires substantial circuitry to perform the array switching. Also, Pitts still needs to perform soft programming whenever overerasure occurs. It would be desirable to have a simple, highly sensitive arrangement for sensing data stored in the cells of a semiconductor memory, especially a flash EPROM of complex architecture.

Electronic memory having impedance-matched sensing


The method of present invention is used for addressing a broadcast message in a trunking system, in which said trunking communication system includes a base station and mobile stations. This method includes the following steps: adding a new index of trunking broadcast time slots, with all the mobile stations that support boundless capacity group call service monitoring these trunking broadcast time slots; the base station transmitting the paging message of the boundless capacity group call in the trunking broadcast time slot; and using the group identification as the broadcast address, allowing addressing to the group identification and not a single mobile station. The method of present invention efficiently solves the problem of paging channel capacity limitations of the boundless capacity group call service supported by CDMA trunking telecommunication systems, and greatly shortens the time of group call connection.

In the prior art, a CDMA trunking communication system combines CDMA technology with a dedicated dispatching communication system and employs a half-duplex communication method, which can achieve quick connection and support a group call method of one-to-many.
In the CDMA trunking communication system, the addressing method for an air interface paging message generally involves a mobile station (MS) identification such as IMSI that is carried in a paging channel message (such as the common paging message) which is transmitted by a base station (BSS) and is sent to a designated mobile station. Generally, a CDMA trunking communication system has an addressing method for air interfaces corresponding to each mobile station to achieve the requirement of a limited group call service of group users in each cell.
When a CDMA trunking communication system is used in commanding and dispatching systems, such as public security, fire fighting, mass gathering, and military dispatch, a large amount of users may generally gather in a certain region. For example, many thousands of users of a same group may gather in a single cell, and these type of dispatching systems are often characterized as having a large capacity and concentrated group dispatching region. According to the general practice, when a group is built, each mobile station in the group will be individually paged. The problem is that at almost the same time, a single paging channel has to transmit many thousands of paging messages, thereby making it difficult for the paging channel to bear the heavy load. Up to the present, there is no efficient solution for the addressing method in a boundless capacity group call service (i.e., a group having no limitation on the number of members of the group).

Method for addressing broadcast message in a trunking system


A fluidized-bed reactor for the chemical vapor deposition of a coating on a substrate surface is described. The reactor enables high rates of deposition and a highly homogeneous coating by modifying the boundary layer formed between the gasified reactive gas stream and the substrate. The boundary layer is minimized by the presence of an exhaust outlet placed in close proximity to the center of the surface of the substrate and/or the presence of a gas inlet capable of injecting a tangential stream of gas which results in a swirling radial flow of reactive gas. Methods of forming a metal coating on a surface of a substrate using the reactor are provided as well.

Deposition of silicon on a substrate by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is practiced routinely in the semiconductor and tool industries. Atmospheric pressure CVD, low pressure CVD and plasma-assisted CVD are examples of commonly used processes. However, the high cost of capital equipment, i.e., the "reactor," and/or operation of the equipment result in high overall cost of the product and limit the commercial utility of CVD for depositing thick layers of silicon.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,227,195 and 4,582,560 to Sanjurjo, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference, disclose a reactor design that takes advantage of the high heat and mass transfer rates of a fluidized bed reactor (FBR) and combines this with CVD chemistry. In particular, these patents teach the use of subhalide chemistry and a mode of feeding reactants in a condensed phase into an FBR-CVD reactor, a design that was well adapted to coat a substrate located inside the fluidized bed. However, when the same design is used to coat a substrate situated outside the bed, the gas species generated in the bed flows laminarly around the substrate creating a boundary layer as shown in FIG. 1. The formation of such a boundary layer limits the rate of coating deposition on a substrate located outside the bed.
The overall coating deposition rate at a given temperature may be increased by a combination of (a) enhancing the gas-to-solid mass transfer rate and (b) increasing the partial chemical potential gradient between the bed and the substrate surface. However, the overall rate of deposition is limited by the concentration gradient between the bulk of the gas phase as it flows out of the bed and past the substrate and the surface of the substrate.
For a typical substrate the equivalent boundary layer thickness will be of a magnitude similar to its size. Thus, for a 10 cm-diameter solar cell wafer, the thickness of the boundary layer could be 5 cm or greater for linear gas flow velocities typical in a conventional fluidized bed reactor, e.g., about 5 cm/s.
Locating the substrate near the top of the bed, e.g., approximately 1 mm from the bed, can significantly increase gas-to-solid mass transfer but it requires elaborate and expensive heat management designs and at best provides relatively slow deposition (1 micron per minute) of high quality epitaxial thin layers (typically 1 to 2 microns thick). For very fast deposition of polycrystalline silicon layers (4 microns per minute or greater) up to 100 .mu.m thick, a faster deposition approach would be desirable.

Fluidized bed reactor to deposit a material on a surface by chemical vapor deposition, and methods of forming a coated substrate therewith


A protective device for an elevator system extends about a rope and extends upward from an elevator car. The protective device blocks contact with the portion of the rope enclosed by the device. As a result, the risk of damage to the ropes caused by a person, such as a mechanic, who is present on the top of the car, is minimized. The invention is particularly advantageous for synthetic ropes that are subject to damage due to contact with abrasive objects or solvents. In one embodiment, the protective device is a tubular structure formed from a rigid, abrasion resistant material. In other embodiments, the protective device is a sheath formed from an abrasion resistant, woven fiber material that extends about the rope.

A conventional traction type elevator includes a cab mounted in a car frame, a counterweight attached to the car frame via a plurality of ropes, and a machine driving a traction sheave that is engaged with the ropes. The ropes used in elevator applications have traditionally been steel wire ropes. Such ropes are inexpensive and durable. A limiting factor in the use of steel wire ropes, however, is their weight. The higher the rise of the building or hoistway, the longer and heavier the rope becomes. The rope gradually begins to dominate the load to be carried by the elevator system until the weight of the rope exceeds the tensile strength of the rope itself. Another disadvantage is the lubrication required for steel wire ropes. The steel wire ropes are treated with an oil lubrication that ultimately becomes deposited on the hoistway equipment, in the machine room, and in the pit of the hoistway.
There has recently been much interest in replacing the traditional steel wire ropes used in elevator applications with ropes formed from high strength, lightweight synthetic materials, such as aromatic polyamid or aramid materials. Lightweight ropes formed from these materials could potentially reduce the size of many elevator components, such as machines and brakes, and could extend the rise of elevators.
The use of such synthetic ropes in traction elevators poses many problems. One of the potential problems is the increased risk of inadvertent damage to the synthetic ropes. Typical aramid materials, such as KEVLAR, have high tensile strength, but the fibers of this type of synthetic rope are more easily abraded and fractured than traditional steel ropes. They are also vulnerable to solvents. A mechanic working in the vicinity of the synthetic ropes may inadvertently come into contact with the ropes with a tool or other abrasive object or with a liquid solvent. This contact may damage the fibers of the rope and reduce the load-carrying capabilities and the expected life of the rope, requiring premature replacement of the ropes.
One solution to this problem is to monitor the wear of the ropes to ensure prompt replacement of any worn ropes, such as suggested in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/781,944. This application discloses the use of a plurality of spaced inserts disposed within the rope. The inserts are monitored in various manners to detect elongation of the rope. A mechanism of this type may be used to determine when to discard and replace the ropes.
The above art notwithstanding, scientists and engineers under the direction of Applicant's Assignee are working to develop mechanisms to minimize the risk of damage occurring to elevator ropes.