A liquid electrophotographic developing apparatus capable of preventing image drift and reducing the load in the squeezing process. A developing roller faces a photoreceptor belt with a predetermined spacing to supply a liquid developer to the photoreceptor belt while rotating at a peripheral velocity in the opposite direction to that of the photoreceptor belt in a developing region thereon. A peripheral velocity ratio of the peripheral velocity to a moving velocity of the photoreceptor belt is determined so as to maximize a solid component ratio of a developed toner layer on the photoreceptor belt.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to liquid electrophotographic imaging systems, and in particular to a developing apparatus having a developing roller for supplying a latent image substrate with liquid developer and a control method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a liquid electrophotography using a liquid developer composed of charged toner particles dispersed in a dielectric fluid. An electrostatic latent image formed on a latent image substrate is developed by adhering toner particles to surfaces of the latent image substrate due to electrophoresis. As a liquid developer supplying system, it is generally known that a thin layer of liquid developer is formed on a cylindrical roller or a belt to continuously supply the liquid developer to a developing region of the latent image substrate. In the case of a developing roller, the developing roller is rotated to continuously supply a predetermined amount of liquid developer to the surface of the latent image substrate. In this case, the developing roller also serves as an opposed electrode.
The liquid developer supplied from the developing roller to the latent image substrate forms a meniscus on the developing region of the latent image substrate. In this case, the amount of toner developed on the latent image depends on the amount of liquid developer supplied. Therefore, in order to increase the developing speed, the concentration of solid component of liquid developer supplied is increased or the amount of liquid developer supplied is increased by rotating the developing roller more quickly.
After the developing process has been completed, an image portion on the surface of the latent image substrate is normally composed of toner particles and dielectric fluid. This may cause the shape of image to be liquidly lost or disordered depending on the concentration of the toner. To avoid such an undesired phenomenon and perform the transferring process smoothly, a squeezing process is adopted to squeeze only dielectric fluid from the image portion.
In the squeezing process, there is known such a method that dielectric fluid is squeezed by making a rotating roller touch on the latent image substrate under the high pressure. Also, there is known another method that applies an electric field between the roller and the latent image substrate with a gap to drift toner particles toward the latent image substrate and then removes upper dielectric fluid.
There has been disclosed a liquid image forming apparatus having a single roller used as both a developing roller and a squeezing roller in Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. 6-186859. In this prior art, the roller rotates in the same direction as that of a photoreceptor drum, allowing excess liquid developer to be removed from the surface of the photoreceptor drum. In addition, a liquid reserving plate is provided over the roller such that it makes contact with the roller, preventing liquid developer from going around the roller.
However, in the described-above prior art, developing can be ensured by: supplying the liquid developer in excess of the minimum required for developing: using a higher concentration of liquid developer; excessively increasing the rotation speed of the roller with respect to the photoreceptor drum; or relatively elongating the developing time using a plurality of rollers. As a result, an increasing amount of liquid developer causes the amount of dielectric fluid contained in it to be also increased.
When the amount of dielectric fluid is increased, a lower concentration of liquid developer comes into contact with the developed portion for a relatively long time. Therefore, a solid component ratio in a toner image after the developing process is reduced, where a solid component ratio is defines as a ratio of toner in a developed portion composed of toner and solvent. As a result, there is a high probability that the developed image is disordered and developer is deposited on an area of an image substrate for background, so that a clear image cannot be obtained.
Moreover, depending on the rotation speed of the developing roller, the image itself is disordered in some cases. In addition, as the solid component ratio of toner layer becomes lower, the higher load such as application of pressure or electric field in the squeezing process is required.
In particular, when the developing roller is shared with the squeegee roller and the liquid reserving plate is provided, the developing region can be exposed to a smaller concentration of liquid developer intercepted by the liquid reserving plate. Therefore, the solid component ratio could not be improved. An increased solid component ratio allows a toner image to be prevented from drifting and the transferring process to be performed smoothly, and in addition, the quality of the final image to be improved.
Thus, even in the above-prior art, the excess liquid developer can be removed from the developed toner image on the surface of the photoreceptor drum. However, the problems such as image drifting and a high load required in squeezing could not been solved. Also, an appropriate amount of liquid developer to obtain clear images has not been defined.
The inventors found that a developer supplying condition can be optimized so as to maximize the solid component ratio of a developed toner layer, and thereby the disadvantages of the described-above prior art can be solved.
An object of the present invention is to provide a liquid electrophotographic developing apparatus thereof capable of preventing image drift and reducing the load in the squeezing process.
According to the present invention, a developing apparatus develops an electrostatic latent image on a latent image substrate using a liquid developer in which toner particles are dispersed in a dielectric fluid, wherein the latent image substrate moves at a predetermined velocity in a first direction The developing apparatus includes: a developing roller facing the latent image substrate with a predetermined spacing, for supplying the liquid developer to the latent image substrate while rotating at a peripheral velocity in a second direction, wherein the second direction is opposite to the first direction in a developing region on the latent image substrate, wherein a peripheral velocity ratio of the peripheral velocity of the developing roller to the predetermined velocity of the latent image substrate is determined so as to maximize a solid component ratio of a developed toner layer on the latent image substrate.
A peak peripheral velocity ratio (kt) providing a maximum solid component ratio of a developed toner layer may be represented by
kt=(2mt/Lxcfx81c)+1,
where mt is a saturated amount of developed toner, L is a length of the predetermined spacing, xcfx81 is a density of the liquid developer, and c is concentration of the liquid developer.
The peripheral velocity ratio (k) may be set to a value ranging from 0.8kt to 1.2kt.
A peak peripheral velocity ratio (kt) providing a maximum solid component ratio of a developed toner layer may be represented by   kt  =            mt      +                                    mt            2                    +                      2                        mtLc                                      xe2x80x83                                    ρ                                      Lc                    xe2x80x83                  ρ
where mt is a saturated amount of developed toner, L is a length of the predetermined spacing, xcfx81 is a density of the liquid developer, and c is concentration of the liquid developer. The peripheral velocity ratio (k) may be set to a value ranging from 0.8kt to 1.2kt.
A glass transition temperature of the toner particles dispersed in the dielectric fluid may be equal to or lower than xe2x88x921xc2x0 C. The solid component ratio of developed toner layer may be 20 wt % or more.
An image forming apparatus includes: a latent image substrate moving at a predetermined velocity in a first direction; a developing roller facing the latent image substrate with a predetermined spacing, for supplying a liquid developer including toner particles to the latent image substrate while rotating at a peripheral velocity in a second direction, wherein the second direction is opposite to the first direction in a developing region on the latent image substrate; a squeezing roller for squeezing the developed toner layer to produce a toner image on the latent image substrate; and a transfer section for transferring the toner image to another medium, wherein a peripheral velocity ratio of the peripheral velocity of the developing roller to the predetermined velocity of the latent image substrate is determined so as to maximize a solid component ratio of a developed toner layer on the latent image substrate.
An image forming apparatus includes: a photoreceptor belt rotating at a predetermined velocity in a first direction; a plurality of developing devices corresponding to different colors, the developing device being arranged along the first direction, each of the developing devices comprising: a developing roller facing the photoreceptor belt with a predetermined spacing, for supplying a liquid developer including color toner particles to the photoreceptor belt while rotating at a peripheral velocity in a second direction, wherein the second direction is opposite to the first direction in a developing region on the photoreceptor belt; and a squeezing roller for squeezing the developed toner layer to produce a color toner image on the photoreceptor belt: and a transfer section for transferring a multicolor toner image obtained by a sequence of the developing devices to another medium, wherein a peripheral velocity ratio of the peripheral velocity of the developing roller to the predetermined velocity of the photoreceptor belt is determined so as to maximize a solid component ratio of a developed toner layer on the photoreceptor belt.

Liquid electrophotographic imaging system with a maximized solid toner ratio


A portable table for cleaning fish, fowl, and other game. A one-piece molded work tray is mounted on foldable legs and includes a molded-in holding area, a molded-in fillet bowl, a cut-out opening into a trash bag, a recess with a knife and bag storage area covered by a removable cutting board, a guttering system for leading waste from the work surface or the storage area into the trash bag opening, and an apron extending from the guttering system into the trash bag opening to facilitate guiding waste into the trash bag. Slotted knobs are disposed about the trash bag opening to assist in the attachment of the trash bag. The foldable legs of preferably scissors type folding legs with a center brace and chain support. The work tray rest on the top of the unfolded legs. The rim of the work tray contains diagonal cutouts for the legs to pass through so that the folded legs may be stored inside the work tray.

The present invention relates to a table for cleaning fish, fowl and other game, and in particular, to a table which is collapsible and portable.
Various devices have been proposed to assist the sportsman in cleaning fish, fowl, or other game.
Aldridge et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,934) discloses a table for eating and cleaning seafood. A perforated tabletop is provided with a hatch in the middle covering a waste container suspended under the table.
Polries (U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,359) discloses a portable, collapsible fish cleaning table with an opening in the tabletop through which waste can be dumped into a receptacle suspended below the tabletop. The table is provided with scissor-type folding legs and a fish clamp on the work surface.
A device known as the Pro-Fillet Fish Cleaning System may be used on the lap or may be fitted with 2.times.4 legs to form a table. It comprises a one-piece molded plastic surface with a cutting surface, a trough or gutter leading to an opening for a trash bag, and a storage slot for a knife. The device is not known to provide a holding area, any means for sharpening a knife, any provision for a fillet bowl or the like, or provision for a removable cutting board.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,683,639 issued to Brenny on Jul. 13, 1954 for "Foldable Utility Table with Laterally Extensible Leg Means" discloses a table with foldable legs, cut-outs on either side of the table for receiving two covered pans, and a central opening for access to a refuse receptacle.
U.S. Design Pat. No. Des. 307,365 issued to Dry et al. on Apr. 24, 1990 for "Fish Cleaning Table" discloses a design similar to Brenny in that two covered bowls are set in cut-outs in the surface of a table with folding legs.
U.S. Design Pat. No. Des. 264,531 issued to Trode on May 25, 1982 for "Portable Fish Filleting Table" also discloses a table with folding legs, a cutting surface, and an opening in the cutting surface for what may be a refuse receptacle. The refuse receptacle appears to act as a support for one end of the table.
U.S. Design Pat. No. Des. 226,603 issued to Knighten on Apr. 3, 1973 for "Folding Table for Cleaning Fish and Small Game" discloses a table with folding legs, a cutting surface and an opening which may be for waste disposal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,522,765 issued to Dotson et al. on Jun. 4, 1996 for "Fish Cleaning Device" discloses a fish cleaning board. The board is provided with means to grip the fish during the cleaning operation, an opening to a waste receptacle, and a knife sharpener.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,935,991 issued to Tourney on Jun. 26, 1990 for "Fish Cleaning Station and Method of Using the Same" discloses a fish cleaning table of a commercial variety.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,713,188 issued to Holladay on Jan. 30, 1973 for "Fish Filleting and Skinning Board" discloses a fish filleting board.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,628 issued to Olson on Jun. 19, 1984 for "Table for Cleaning Fish" discloses a fish cleaning table designed to be suspended from a sink. It discloses a vacuum molded body, a gutter arrangement leading to a drain opening, and means for attaching a trash bag.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,846,076 issued to Menges, Sr. et al. on Jul. 11, 1989 for "Bucket Board and Seat Apparatus" discloses a a molded polyethylene board with a guttering arrangement leading to a waste discharge into a bucket.
U.S. Pat. No. 692,866 issued to Lawrence on Feb. 11, 1902 for "Fish Cutting Table" discloses a commercial device for cleaning fish.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,229,858 issued to Baxter et al. on Oct. 28, 1980 for "Boat-Mounted Fish-Cleaning Tray" discloses a tray for mounting on the side of a boat. It discloses a separate cutting board and an arrangement for allowing waste to run over the side of the boat.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,474,494 issued to Sims on Dec. 12, 1995 for "Fish Cleaning Apparatus" discloses a tray mounted to a waste receptacle.


An exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system includes an EGR duct configured to effect fluid communication between an exhaust duct and an intake duct of an internal combustion engine; a heat exchanger having a first flow passage and a second flow passage, the first flow passage being in fluid communication with the EGR duct, the second flow passage being configured to receive a heat transfer medium from a heat transfer medium source; an upstream purge valve in fluid communication with the second flow passage of the heat exchanger, and configured to effect selective fluid communication between a purge fluid source and the second flow passage of the heat exchanger; and a controller operatively coupled to the upstream purge valve. The controller is configured to purge the second flow passage of the heat exchanger by opening the upstream purge valve.

Reciprocating internal combustion (IC) engines are known for converting chemical energy stored in a fuel supply into mechanical shaft power. A fuel-oxidizer mixture is received in a variable volume of an IC engine defined by a piston translating within a cylinder bore. The fuel-oxidizer mixture burns inside the variable volume to convert chemical energy from the mixture into heat. In turn, expansion of the combustion products within the variable volume performs work on the piston, which may be transferred to an output shaft of the IC engine.
Variations in the temperature of an oxidizer stream entering an engine are known to affect engine performance. For example, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) may be used to modify a temperature of the flow of oxidizer entering the IC engine in addition to an oxygen concentration of the oxidizer flow. The EGR flow may be cooled through an EGR cooler to adjust a temperature, water mole fraction, or both, of the EGR flow.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,621,262 (the '262 patent), entitled "Hybrid Thermal Energy Conversion For HCCI Heated Intake Charge System," describes a method for operating an internal combustion engine coupled to a hybrid power train, whereby waste energy from a component of an electrical power system is used to heat intake air during homogeneous charge compression ignition operation of the engine. According to the '262 patent, a heat exchanger harvests vehicle thermal energy and an electric heater harvests waste electrical energy to heat intake air. Further, the '262 patent describes an EGR cooler for cooling an EGR flow.
However, the intake thermal management described by the '262 may be an expensive and complex retrofit for a vehicle not already having a hybrid powertrain. Accordingly, the present disclosure addresses the aforementioned problems and/or other problems in the art.

Exhaust gas recirculation system for an internal combustion engine and method for operating same


At least one exemplary embodiment is directed to a rear zoom lens system which includes focus preset devices 15 and 16 for controlling the storage of a given distance from a subject (camera-to-subject distance) and shift of focus to the position. Trajectory information can be stored corresponding to each of camera-to-subject distances and indicating correspondences between zoom-and-focus positions, which facilitates moving the second lens group to compensate for the movement of the first moving lens group while facilitating maintaining its focus.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera and/or camera zoom lens system, and more particularly, though not exclusively, to a camera zoom lens and/or camera having a function for presetting focus to any distance.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, cameras with autofocus and zoom lens have become widespread. FIG. 8 illustrates a block diagram of a conventional example of a digital camera with a zoom lens.
An optical system 1 is made up of a four-group rear focus zoom lens (hereinafter called "RFZ lens") construction consisting of four lens groups. The RFZ lens 1 consists of a first lens group (hereinafter called "front lens") 101 as a fixed lens group, a second lens group (hereinafter called "zooming lens") 102 as a moving lens group having a magnification varying function, a third lens group (hereinafter called "afocal lens") 103 as another fixed lens group, and a fourth lens group (hereinafter called "focus lens") 104 as another moving lens group having both a focusing function and a compensator function for reducing a shift in the position of an imaging surface due to a change in magnification.
Although each lens group actually consists of one or more lenses, the number of elements in each lens group is not particularly limited.
Reference numeral 2 designates a photoelectric conversion device such as a CCD, reference numeral 3 designates an aperture mechanism for regulating the amount of light incident on the photoelectric conversion device 2, and reference numeral 4 designates aperture driving device through which the aperture mechanism 3 is controlled by a control circuit 7 to maintain a constant amount of light incident on the photoelectric conversion device 2. Reference numeral 5 designates an aperture and lens position detecting device, and reference numeral 6 designates a detection circuit for detecting the output of the aperture and lens position detecting device 5 and outputting it to the control circuit 7.
Reference numerals 8 and 9 designate lens driving devices, such as step motors, for driving the moving lens groups 102 and 104, respectively, and reference numerals 10 and 11 designate motor drivers for driving the lens driving devices 8 and 9, respectively. The control circuit 7 controls the lens driving devices 8 and 9 to drive the lens groups 102 and 104 based on their position detection signals from the aperture and lens position detecting device 5.
Reference numeral 12 designates an amplifier for amplifying the output of the photoelectric conversion device 2, reference numeral 13 designates a process circuit for converting the output signal to a signal such as an NTSC picture signal while generating an AF signal for automatic focus (AF), and reference numeral 14 designates an AF device for performing an AF operation according to the AF signal from the process circuit. Although a hill-climbing method is proposed as an AF method, since it is known in the art, its detailed description will be omitted (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 62-103616 (1987)).
FIG. 3 illustrates a graph showing information on the position of the focus lens 104 relative to the position of the zooming lens 102 illustrated in FIG. 8. For example, suppose that zooming is done in such a condition that a subject located at a distant (e.g., at infinity) position is in focus. In this case, in order to maintain focus on the subject at all times during zooming, it is necessary to move the focus lens 104 according to the position of the zooming lens 102 in such a manner that the focus lens 104 will move to follow the track of cam movement, or cam trajectory (e.g., the infinity curve (8) illustrated in FIG. 3).
In a rear focus zoom lens system, cam trajectory information as shown in FIG. 3 is prestored in a storage device, so that during zooming the position of the focus lens relative to the zooming lens is determined from the cam trajectory information and controlled to maintain its focus.
FIG. 9 illustrates a flowchart showing the flow of a focus preset function of a zoom lens of a front focus type. When a storage operation is performed, the focus position at the time when the operation is done is stored, while when an execution operation is performed, the focus position is compared with the stored position to drive the focus lens to the stored position. At first, it is determined whether a storage operation is present (S901). If present, the current focus position is stored (S902) and the procedure goes to the next step. If not present, the procedure goes to step S903 to determine whether an execution operation is present. If the execution operation is present, it is determined whether stored information (stored position) is present (S904). If present, the current focus position is compared with the stored position (S905). If the current position does not match the stored position, the direction of driving the focus lens is determined (S906) to drive it (S907) in the direction, and the procedure returns to step S905. These operations are repeated until the current position matches the stored position. If there is no stored position in step S904, the procedure returns to step S901. The stored, focus-preset position is not changed even when the position of the zooming lens changes.
Recently, in order to expand the possibilities of photography, there has been a strong demand for image-taking apparatuses such as cameras having a focus preset function for shifting focus to a predetermined stored position in a given manner. The demand for compact size and excellent AF performance has also been increasing. For these reasons, the rear focus lens design is becoming popular for optical apparatuses.
However, in the conventional rear focus lens, the position of the focus lens, needed to maintain its focus, varies according to the zoom position. Therefore, when performing zooming, the system has to do more than just store the focus position, or it will result in a deviation from the stored position of distance from a subject (camera-to-subject distance).
In other words, in such a rear focus lens construction, the stored, focus-preset data is almost equal to nothing. Even if such data is stored, it can be subject to some constraints (e.g., canceling the stored data whenever a zooming operation is performed). Thus, conventional systems do not use focus preset functions in a rear focus lens configuration.

Zoom lens system and camera using the same


A rare earth magnet of the invention has a composition represented by the compositional formula RaHbFecCodBeMf, where:                R is at least one rare earth element including Y;        H is at least one heavy rare earth element from among Dy and Tb;        M is at least one element from among Ga, Zn, Si, Al, Nb, Zr, Ni, Cu, Cr, Hf, Mo, P, C, Mg, and V;        13≦a≦20;        0≦b≦4;        c=100−a−b−d−e−f;        0≦d≦30;        4≦e≦20;        0≦f≦3, and has a structure constituted by a main phase: a (RH)2(FeCo)14B phase, and a grain boundary phase: a (RH)(FeCo)4B4 phase and a RH phase, with a crystal grain size of the main phase of 10 nm to 200 nm.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a rare earth magnet constituted by a polycrystal having nanosize crystal grain size and to a manufacturing method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Rare earth magnets such as a neodymium magnet (Nd2Fe14B) have been used for various applications as very powerful permanent magnets with a high magnetic flux density. A nanosize crystal grain size should be ensured to obtain even better magnetic properties.
A technique by which a melt of a magnet composition is rapidly cooled by a single roll method or a twin roll method to obtain a thin strip has been used to realize a nanosize crystal grain size. Where the cooling rate during rapid cooling is too high, an amorphous structure is obtained in the entire magnet or part thereof. The amorphous structure can be crystallized by appropriate annealing, but the grain size in this case becomes larger than that of the crystal structure directly formed by rapid cooling.
In sintered magnets using multi-domain Nd2Fe14B particles with a size of about several micron, a grain boundary phase should be present as a barrier preventing the movement or appearance of magnetic walls in order to realize a high coercive force.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-251037 (JP-A-2007-251037) and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-069444 (JP-A-2008-069444) disclose a method including the steps of feeding an alloy melt containing praseodymium (Pr), neodymium (Nd), iron (Fe), cobalt (Co), niobium (Nb), yttrium (Y), and boron (B) to a rotating cooling roll, rapidly cooling, obtaining a thin strip, and crystallizing the thin strip by heat treating at a temperature rise rate of 150 to 250° C./min. As a result, a thin alloy strip for a rare earth magnet constituted by a polycrystal and including the aforementioned constituent element can be obtained.
However, no consideration is given to a graph boundary phase and there is room for increasing a coercive force.
A coercive force of the aforementioned magnet at room temperature has been evaluated, but for a motor of a hybrid vehicle the evaluation should be conducted for a coercive force at a temperature close to 160° C. which is in the usage temperature range of the motor.

Rare earth magnet and manufacturing method therefor


A level shifting apparatus includes a first capacitor, a first side of the first capacitor configured to receive a first voltage. The level shifting apparatus further includes an edge detector configured to receive the first voltage. The level shifting apparatus further includes an output inverter connected to a second side of the first capacitor, the output inverter configured to output an voltage-level shifted signal of the level shifting apparatus. The level shifting apparatus further includes a latch loop configured to receive feedback the output signal to an input of the output inverter, wherein the edge detector is configured to selectively interrupt feedback of the output signal to the input of the output inverter.

Level shifters are used to change a signal voltage level between the input/output (I/O) device voltage, e.g., 3.3V, to the core device voltage, e.g., 0.9V. In some approaches, the level shifters are formed using I/O devices. The I/O devices have a thicker gate dielectric layer in comparison with the core devices to withstand higher voltages.
In some approaches, the level shifters increase a voltage level of a logically high voltage from a first level to a second higher level. In some approaches, these level shifters do not increase a voltage level of a logically low voltage. The level shifters which maintain a same logically low voltage level increase a voltage swing of an output signal in comparison with an input signal. In some approaches, the level shifters include a bias circuit to increase the logically low voltage level.
In some approaches, the level shifters are formed using devices similar to the core devices. The core devices have a thinner gate dielectric than the I/O devices. As a result, a voltage swing which is able to damage the core devices has a smaller range with respect to the I/O devices.

Level shifting apparatus and method of using the same

TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY, LTD.


An implantable physiologic device, e.g., a multi-programmable, microprocessor based cardiac pacemaker, is provided with data storage and transmission capabilities for transmitting out certain current operating parameters and sensed events and for storing counted events for transmission of counts, histograms and real-time clock data out on command. The device preferably comprises a rate responsive cardiac pacemaker for providing an optimized pacing rate of stimulation pulses as a function of at least one selected rate control parameter. Each rate control parameter has a value which varies as a function of changes in a patient's physiologic demand and includes a sensor system for sensing the rate control parameter value and for providing a sensor output representative thereof. The cardiac pacemaker also includes control circuitry which includes a rate response defining means for deriving desired pacing rates as a function of the sensor output signal(s) modified by sensor gain and selective weighting coefficient values. An achievement monitoring means that has a predetermined achievement criterion monitors the relationship between the derived pacing rates and the achievement criterion over an optimization period. Output circuitry providing optimized pacing rates as a function of optimization is accomplished by adjusting the rate response gain for each sensor as a function of the monitored achievement relationship. Another optimization function is provided by adjusting a sensor weighting coefficient value which weights or regulates the relative contribution each sensor's derived desired pacing rates will contribute toward the pacemaker-derived optimized pacing rate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to cardiac pacemakers, and more particularly, pertains to cardiac pacemakers of the type which measure physiologic or metabolic requirements and vary the rate of the pacemaker in accordance therewith and store data related to a variety of physiologic sensor data, sensed and paced events, rates, sensitivities, trends, and the like, for telemetry out on command.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Early cardiac pacemakers provided a fixed-rate stimulation pulse generator that could be reset on demand by sensed atrial and/or ventricular depolarizations. Modern pacemakers include complex stimulation pulse generators, sense amplifiers and leads which can be configured or programmed to operate in single or dual chamber modes of operation, delivering pacing stimuli to the atrium and/or ventricle at fixed rates or rates that vary between an upper rate limit and a lower rate limit.
In recent years, single and dual chamber pacemakers have been developed which measure rate control parameters (RCP's) which are directly or indirectly related to metabolic requirements (e.g., demand for oxygenated blood) and vary the pacing rate in response to such measured RCP's. Such RCP's include, for example, physical activity of the body, right ventricular blood pressure and the change of right ventricular blood pressure over time, venous blood temperature, venous blood oxygen saturation, evoked response, respiration rate, minute ventilation, and various pre- and post-systolic time intervals measured by impedance or pressure sensing within the right ventricle of the heart. Such RCP-measuring, sensor-driven pacemakers have been developed for the purpose of restoring rate response to physiologic stress in patients lacking the ability to increase rate adequately by stress.
In general, a rate responsive pacemaker includes a sensor which produces a sensor output representative of a selected RCP, such sensor output varying between a maximum sensor output level and a minimum sensor output level ("Sensor Output"). The pacemaker provides a pacing rate ("Pacing Rate") which typically varies as a linear or monotonic function ("f") of the sensor output between a selectible lower pacing rate ("Lower Rate") and upper pacing rate ("Upper Rate"). Function f has a selectible slope (i.e., Pacing Rate change/Sensor Output change) adjustable by means of an external programmer in conjunction with the Lower and Upper Rates. Thus, the Pacing Rate typically provided is equal to the pre-selected Lower Rate plus an increment which is a function of the measured Sensor Output, as follows: EQU Pacing Rate=Lower Rate+f (Sensor Output).
A human's heart rate, however, is normally controlled by a complex set of inputs to the autonomic nervous system. Consequently, no single type of sensor has been found to be entirely satisfactory for controlling rate response functions. Some of the shortcomings of single-sensor, rate responsive pacemakers, for example, can include: (1) long-term sensor instability, such as from degradation; (2) long-term changes in correlation between sensor output and its RCP being measured, due to physiologic changes in the patient, such as biologic/sensor interface changes due to tissue changes; (3) changes in sensor sensitivity; and (4) the need for frequent re-programming to accommodate the foregoing problems, as they are encountered.
Various efforts have consequently been made to develop a multiple-sensor pacemaker which is capable of varying its rate as a function of more than one type of measured RCP. Unfortunately, implementation of such multiple sensor-driven rate response concepts has proven to be very difficult and not entirely satisfactory. In addition to those problems listed above as to single-sensor pacemakers, other problems which are typically encountered include: (1) differences between sensors in long-term stability; (2) differences between sensors in immunity to noise; (3) differences in response time to changing metabolic conditions; (4) differences between sensors in correlation between each sensor output and its RCP being measured; and (5) complex set-up procedures, including the need for frequent re-programming.
The enhanced functional capabilities of RCP-measuring, sensor driven process has, together with advances in microprocessor technology, led to the need for and the ability to implement diagnostic data storage of a number of pacing parameters and physiologic event data categories, including the following:
______________________________________ Stored Data for Telemetry Out Prior Art ______________________________________ PVC's (R-sense events) U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 PVC couplets U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 Pace outputs (events) U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 PAC's (P-Sense events) U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 P-Sense events during U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 P-refractory Loss of Capture (LOC) events U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 Noise (R sense) during U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 R-refractory Pacemaker reversions for U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 V & A sense amp. PAC's U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 Trends derived from changes U.S. Pat. No. 4,388,927 from initial test data stored by physician in RAM reflecting above data parameters Bradycardia pauses Nappholz U.S. 4,393,874 Rolling or frozen rate Medtronic .RTM. ELITE .RTM. pacer versus time histograms (trends) P-Sense, R-Sense events Medtronic .RTM. ELITE .RTM. pacer Sensor events Medtronic .RTM. ELITE .RTM. pacer Short, medium and long-term Medtronic .RTM. ELITE .RTM. pacer data periods Rate range histograms in Medtronic .RTM. ELITE .RTM. pacer 8 bins Times of events (PVCs, PACs) U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 A-V interval histograms U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 Pacing rate or interval U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 histograms V-PVC interval histograms U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 Peak QRS amplitude histograms U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 Pace pulse amplitude, width, U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 interval histogram Overflow accumulation of U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 histogram bins Alternate accumulation of U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 "n" histograms ("previous" and "current") over the same period of time Accumulation of histograms U.S. Pat. No. 4,513,743 for each x hour period of each 24 hour day Sensing threshold U.S. Pat. No. 4,827,934 Percent pacing over "x" time U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 period or number of events Average rate over "x" time U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 period or number of events Maximum rate over "x" time U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 period or number of events Number of tachycardia U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 episodes over "x" time period or number of events Maximum tachycardia duration U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 over "x" time period or number of events Number of days since implant U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 Number of days since last U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 reprogramming/data read out Patient medical history and U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 medication Programmed parameter values U.S. Pat. No. 4,726,380 Number of high rate episodes Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II sensed Duration of high rate Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II episodes sensed Shortest interval in longest Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II high rate episode Number of PVCs Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II Number of A-sense followed Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II by V-sense Number of A-sense followed Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II by V-pace Number of A-pace followed Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II by V-sense Number of A-pace followed Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II by V-pace Number of times VURL reached Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II Number of times tachy Intermedics .RTM. Cosmos .RTM. II termination initiated Stimulation Thresholds Vitatron Quintech .RTM. TX 915 Short-term rate histogram Siemens Sensolog .RTM. 703 (frozen bins) Sensor Indicated Rate Siemens Sensolog .RTM. 703 Histogram (whether or not pacer is inhibited) every 16 seconds distributed in 4 rate bins, all frozen when one bin filled Pace event counter Siemens Sensolog .RTM. 703 Interference event counter Siemens Sensolog .RTM. 703 Retrograde P-wave termination ELA Chorus .RTM. attempts Fallback starts ELA Chorus .RTM. Number of program changes ELA Chorus .RTM. Other data/events as listed ELA Chorus .RTM. above ECG signal slope/changes as U.S. Pat. No. 4,716,903 time changes ______________________________________
In the context of such RCP-measuring sensor-driven pacemakers, the storage for telemetry out on command of these and a number of other parameters, falling within the categories of current operating and measured parameter values and cumulative logged data is of importance to physicians. For example, it would be desirable to a physician to know just when certain logged data event and histogram bin counters overflow and data collection is halted. In conjunction with sensing natural cardiac depolarization, i.e. P-sense and R-sense events, it is desirable to track the sensing threshold and develop trend data over time. Where the available RCP sensor is capable of detecting capture, it is desirable to record certain operating parameters upon detection of loss-of-capture (LOC).

Diagnostic function data storage and telemetry out for rate responsive cardiac pacemaker


The present invention is a method and apparatus for filtering high frequency time series data using a variety of techniques implemented on a computer. The techniques are directed to detecting and eliminating data errors such as the decimal error, monotonic series of quotes, long series of repeated quotes, scaling changes, and domain errors. Further, by means of comparison with nearby quotes in the time series, the techniques are also able to evaluate the credibility of the quotes.

A time series is a time-ordered sequence of data. A financial time series is a time-ordered sequence of financial data, typically a sequence of quotes for a financial instrument. These data should be homogeneous. Homogeneity means that the quotes of a series are of the same type and the same market; they may differ in the origins of the contributors, but should not differ in important parameters such as the maturity (of interest rates, . . . ) or the moneyness (of options or their implied volatilities). The filter user is responsible for ensuring data homogeneity.
All quotes have the following general structure:                1. A time stamp. This is the time of the data collection, the arrival time of the real-time quote in the collector's environment. Time stamps are monotonically increasing over the time series. We might also have other time stamps (e.g. the reported time of the original production of the quote). Such a secondary time stamp would however be considered as side information (see item 4 immediately below) rather than a primary time stamp.        2. Information on the quote level. There are different types of level information as markets and sources are different in nature and also differently organized. Some level information can be termed "price", some other information such as transaction volume figures cannot. Some non-prices such as implied volatility quotes can be treated as prices with bid and ask quotes. A neutral term such as "level" or "filtered variable" is therefore preferred to "price". In the case of options, the price might be first converted to an implied volatility which is then the filtered variable. Different quoting types require different filtering approaches. This is discussed below.        3. Information on the origin of the quote: information provider, name of exchange or bank, city, country, time zone, . . . . In the filtering algorithm, we only need one function to compare two origins. This will be used when judging the independence and credibility of quotes as explained in further sections. A further analysis of bank names or other IDs is not really needed.        4. Side information: everything that does not fall into one of the three aforementioned categories, e.g. a second time stamp. This is ignored by filtering.
The information on the quote levels is organized in different structures depending on the market and the source. Some important cases are listed here:                single-valued quotes: each quote has only one value describing its level. Example: stock indices.        bid-ask quotes: each quote has a bid value and an ask value. Example: foreign exchange (FX) spot rates.        bid or ask quotes: each quote has a bid or an ask value, often in unpredictable sequence. This can be regarded as two different single-valued time series. Example: quotes on some exchanges.        bid or ask or transaction quotes: each quote has a bid value or an ask value or a transaction value. Again, this can be regarded as three different single-valued time series. Example: the data stream from the major short-term interest rate futures exchanges also includes transaction data.        middle quotes: in certain cases, we only obtain a time series of middle quotes with are treated as single-valued quotes. The case of getting only transaction quotes (no bid, no ask) is technically identical. Also transaction volume figures are treated as single-valued quotes, for example.        OHLC quotes: open/high/low/close. An OHLC filter can be made in analogy to the bid-ask filter, with some tests of the whole quote followed by quote splitting as to be explained.We recognize a data error as being present if a piece of quoted data does not conform to the real situation of the market. We have to identify a price quote as being a data error if it is neither a correctly reported transaction price nor a possible transaction price at the reported time. In the case of indicative prices, however, we have to tolerate a certain transmission time delay.
There are many causes for data errors. The errors can be separated in two classes:                1. human errors: errors directly caused by human data contributors, for different reasons:                    (a) unintentional errors, e.g. typing errors;            (b) intentional errors, e.g. dummy quotes produced just for technical testing;                        2. system errors: errors caused by computer systems, their interactions and their failures.Strictly speaking, system errors are also human errors because human operators have the ultimate responsibility for the correct operation of computer systems. However, the distance between the data error and the responsible person is much larger for system errors.
In many cases, it is impossible to find the exact reason for the data error even if the quote is very aberrant. The task of the filter is to identify such outliers, whatever the reason.
Sometimes the cause of the error can be guessed from the particular behavior of the bad quotes. This knowledge of the error mechanism can help to improve filtering and, in some cases, correct the bad quotes.
Examples of some of the errors to be expected are as follows:                1. Decimal errors: Failure to change a "big" decimal digit of the quote. Example: a bid price of 1.3498 is followed by a true quote 1.3505, but the published, bad quote is 1.3405. This error is most damaging if the quoting software is using a cache memory somewhere. The wrong decimal digit may stay in the cache and cause a long series of bad quotes. For Reuters page data, this was a dominant error type around 1988! Nowadays, this error type seems to be rare.        2. "Test" quotes: Some data contributors sometimes send test quotes to the system, usually at times when the market is not liquid. These test quotes can cause a lot of damage because they may look plausible to the filter, at least initially. Two important examples:                    "Early morning test": A contributor sends a bad quote very early in the morning, in order to test whether the connection to the data distributor (e.g. Reuters) is operational. If the market is inactive overnight, no trader would take this test quote seriously. For the filter, such a quote may be a major challenge. The filter has to be very critical to first quotes after a data gap.            Monotonic series: Some contributors test the performance and the time delay of their data connection by sending a long series of linearly increasing quotes at inactive times such as overnight or during a weekend. For the filter, this is hard to detect because quote-to-quote changes look plausible. Only the monotonic behavior in the long run can be used to identify the fake nature of this data.                        3. Repeated quotes: Some contributors let their computers repeat the last quote in more or less regular time intervals. This is harmless if it happens in a moderate way. In some markets with high granularity of quoting (such as Eurofutures), repeated quote values are quite natural. However, there are contributors that repeat old quotes thousands of times with high frequency, thereby obstructing the filtering of the few good quotes produced by other, more reasonable contributors.        4. Quote copying: Some contributors employ computers to copy and re-send the quotes of other contributors, just to show a strong presence on the data feed. Thus, they decrease the data quality, but there is no reason for a filter to remove copied quotes that are on a correct level. Some contributors run programs to produce slightly modified copied quotes by adding a small random correction to the quote. Such slightly varying copied quotes are damaging because they obstruct the clear identification of fake monotonic or repeated series made by other contributors.        5. Scaling problem: Quoting conventions may differ or be officially redefined in some markets. Some contributors may quote the value of 100 units, others the value of 1 unit. The filter may run into this problem "by surprise" unless a very active filter user anticipates all scale changes in advance and preprocesses the data accordingly.
Filtering of high-frequency time-series data is a demanding, often underestimated task. It is complicated because of                the variety of possible errors and their causes;        the variety of statistical properties of the filtered variables (distribution functions, conditional behavior, non-stationarity and structural breaks);        the variety of data sources and contributions of different reliability;        the irregularity of time intervals (sparse/dense data, sometimes long data gaps over time);        the complexity and variety of the quoted information: transaction prices, indicative prices, FX forward premia (where negative values are allowed), interest rates, prices and other variables from derivative markets, transaction volumes, . . . ; bid/ask quotes vs. single-valued quotes;        the necessity of real-time filtering: producing instant filter results before seeing any successor quote.
There are different possible approaches to filtering. Some guidelines determine our approach:                Plausibility: we do not know the real cause of data errors with rare exceptions (e.g. the decimal error). Therefore we judge the validity or credibility of a quote according to its plausibility, given the statistical properties of the series.        We need a whole neighborhood of quotes for judging the credibility of a quote: a filtering window. A comparison to only the "last valid" quote of the series is not enough. The filtering window can grow and shrink with data quality and the requirements for arriving at a good filtering decision.        The statistical properties of the series needed to measure the plausibility of a quote are determined inside the filtering algorithm rather than being hand-configured. The filter is thus adaptive.        Quotes with complex structures (i.e. bid/ask or open/high/low/close) are split into scalar variables to be filtered separately. These filtered variables may be derived from the raw variables, e.g. the logarithm of a bid price or the bid-ask spread. Quote splitting is motivated by keeping the algorithm modular and overseeable. Some special error types may also be analyzed for full quotes before splitting.        Numerical methods with convergence problems (such as non-linear minimization) are not used. Such methods would probably lead to problems as the filter is exposed to very different situations. The chosen algorithm produces unambiguous results.        The filter needs a high execution speed; computing all filtering results from scratch with every new quote would not be efficient. The chosen algorithm is iterative: when a new quote is considered, the filtering information obtained from the previous quotes is re-used; only a minimal number of computations concerning the new quote is added.        The filter has two modes: real-time and historical. Thanks to the filtering window technique, both modes can be supported by the same filter run. In historical filtering, the final validation of a quote is delayed to a time after having seen some successor quotes.

Filtering of high frequency time series data


Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, are provided for user equipment category signaling. In some example embodiments, there may be provided a method that includes receiving, by a user equipment in dual connectivity with a master base station providing an Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network and with a secondary base station providing a next generation radio access network, a request for capability information; generating, by the user equipment, category information, the category information indicating, to the master base station and the secondary base station, an achievable data rate for the user equipment over the dual connectivity, the category information being common to both the Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network and the next generation radio access network; and providing, by the user equipment, capability information to the master base station, the capability information including the generated category information. Related systems, methods, and articles of manufacture are also described.

In Fifth Generation (5G) wireless networks, there may be provided extreme broadband, ultra-robust, low latency connectivity, and/or massive machine-to-machine connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT), when compared to prior generations such as Long Term Evolution (LTE), 3G, and/or the like. With 5G, the network may include a radio access technology (RAT) referred to as New Radio (NR), which provides a wireless, radio access network to user equipment (UE). The NR access technology may further couple to a core network, such as a 5G core network (CN). In 5G, the 5G core network may support a variety of options, such as a standalone NR, a NR as an anchor with Evolved UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) extension option, a standalone E-UTRA, and an E-UTRA as the anchor with the NR extension option. These options may be in accordance with 3GPP TS 23.501, 3rd Generation Partnership Project; Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; System Architecture for the 5G System; Stage 2 (Release 15).

User equipment category signaling in an LTE-5G configuration


In a preferred embodiment, a vertical takeoff aircraft body having an inverted hemispherical upper portion, a generally cylindrical lower portion with a diameter of its upper end slightly greater than a diameter of its lower end but less than a diameter of the lower end of the upper portion, and a truncated inverted generally cone-shaped transition portion joining the upper portion and the lower portion; and a plurality of vertical columns attached to the aircraft body and spaced apart from the aircraft body, equidistantly disposed about the aircraft body. The present invention also provides novel landing gears for such an aircraft as well as a novel method of adjusting the pitches of rotating blades thereof.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vertical take-off aircraft generally and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, a novel vertical take-off aircraft that is aerodynamically stable and has high-lift.
2. Background Art
Vertical take-off aircraft are useful in various situations in which horizontal space is limited. Aircraft are well known means of air transport. Among conventional aircraft are: common airplanes with fixed wings, helicopters with rotating wings, common airplanes with tilting rotors (Osprey), gyrocopters with freely rotating wings creating lift by spinning because vehicle is pushed with regular horizontal motor with propeller, fighter jets with adjustable thrust downwards for takeoff and horizontal thrust to fly (Joint Air Strike Fighter), rockets, and disc-shaped aircraft with internal engine exhaust blowing over airfoil to create lift.
A disadvantage of many of these conventional aircraft is that they require a relatively long horizontal distance to take off. Others, such as rockets, are unsuitable for general use.
The Osprey suffers from the disadvantage that it has only a lift force or a push force by propellers and during transitional flight, this force is divided. Because of the tilting of the propellers, the vehicle bearing low pressure disc (created by the propellers) gets much smaller and is divided into a vertical part and a horizontal part. But the vertical part needs enough bearing capacity to lift. This is resolved by providing oversized propellers—more than necessary—and this requires more than necessary engine power that is not efficient. Huge propellers are not efficient and are disturbing for straight level flight. During the tilting process, the propellers cut through the downwards directed air stream, reduce efficiency, and make the aircraft very shaky and unsecured. The tilting rotating masses create a gyroeffect and make it very hard to stabilize the aircraft, one movement creating another effect and so on. Sometimes the aircraft is impossible to control and it falls down.
Some attempts to provide such an aircraft include the following:
U.S. Pat. No. 2,859,003, issued Nov. 4, 1958, to Servanty, and titled AERODYNE, describes a vertical take-off aircraft that has three equally spaced engines spaced apart from the base of a fuselage by vertical wings. Three vertical winglets are disposed near the top of the fuselage. The fuselage is generally bullet-shaped.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,045,951, issued Jul. 24, 1962, to Freeland, and titled AIRCRAFT, describes an aircraft in which the four engines-thereof are disposed within a fuselage that slopes inwardly and downwardly from a dome-shaped upper portion, but the lower portion is flared outwardly at the bottom thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,120,359, issued Feb. 4, 1964, to Sprecher, and titled AIRCRAFT WITH EQUI-SPACED POWER PLANT, describes an aircraft that has four equally spaced engines disposed at an upper end of a fuselage and joined thereto by wings and four interposed wings disposed at a lower end of the fuselage and bearing at their distal ends landing gears. The fuselage is generally bullet-shaped.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,252,673, issued May 24, 1966, to Reichert, and titled SUPERSONIC VTOL AIRCRAFT AND LAUNCH VEHICLE, describes an aircraft having two engines disposed on the outside of a cylindrical shroud disposed in approximately the middle of a bullet-shaped aircraft, the shroud being supported from the aircraft by struts. Three wings are disposed at a lower end of the fuselage.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,123,018, issued Oct. 31, 1978, to Tassin de Montaigu, and titled HELICOPTER WITH COAXIAL ROTORS, OF CONVERTIBLE TYPE IN PARTICULAR, describes a helicopter that is clearly non-symmetrical.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,433,819, issued Feb. 28, 1984, to Carrington, and titled AERODYNAMIC DEVICE, describes a rotatable disk affixed to a central, generally dome-shaped body, the disk including a plurality of selectively vectorable jets. A plurality of reaction jets are attached to the central body.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,178,344, issued Jan. 12, 1993, to Dlouhy, and titled VTOL AIRCRAFT, describes, insofar as pertinent, a disk-shaped aircraft having a plurality of rotating sets of rotor blades disposed at least partially beneath the disk. The rotor blades may be pivotable to provide for horizontal motion of the aircraft.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,358, issued Jan. 21, 1997, to Demidov et al., and titled MULTIPURPOSE AIRBORNE VEHICLE, describes an aircraft having a plurality of rotor units disposed below a ring-shaped fuselage.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,691, issued Nov. 24, 1998, to Lariviere, and titled VERTICAL TAKEOFF AND LANDING AIRCRAFT, describes such an aircraft that is clearly not symmetrical about its vertical axis.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,293,491, issued Sep. 25, 2001, to Wobben, and titled VERTICAL TAKE-OFF AND LANDING AIRCRAFT, describes another such aircraft that is clearly not symmetrical about its vertical axis.
Accordingly, it is a principal object of the present invention to provide a vertical takeoff aircraft that is aerodynamically stable.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such an aircraft that has high lift.
It is another object of the invention to provide such an aircraft that is highly symmetrical.
It is an additional object of the invention to provide novel landing gears, including ball wheels, for such an aircraft.
It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a novel method of adjusting pitches of rotating blades for such an aircraft.
Other objects of the present invention, as well as particular features, elements, and advantages thereof, will be elucidated in, or be apparent from, the following description and the accompanying drawing figures.

Aerodynamically stable, high-lift, vertical takeoff aircraft


The invention is directed to a method of polishing a surface of a substrate comprising aluminum, comprising contacting a surface of the substrate with a polishing pad and a polishing composition comprising an abrasive, an agent that oxidizes aluminum, and a liquid carrier, and abrading at least a portion of the surface to remove at least some aluminum from the substrate and to polish the surface of the substrate, wherein the abrasive is in particulate form and is suspended in the liquid carrier.

Metallic mirrors have numerous applications in the field of optics. Typically, mirror surfaces are formed by applying a metallic coating to a substrate composed of another metal or of another material such as glass. When subjected to temperature variations, such as in various space and military applications, differential rates of expansion and of contraction of the mirror components lead to dimensional instability of the mirror surface. One solution has been to polish the surface of substrates composed of a single metal or metal alloy, which obviates problems caused by differences in thermal properties, and provides the substrate with the mechanical strength and rigidity of metals. Aluminum is a preferred metal due to its lightness, low cost, and compatibility with conventional surface forming processes. The performance of such mirrors in optics applications depends strongly on the surface needing to be highly uniform to minimize light scattering caused by surface irregularities.
Surface roughness parameters relevant to optical performance include not only average surface roughness (Ra) or root mean square surface roughness (Rq), but also importantly parameters including Rmax and/or Rz. Rmax is the largest peak-to-valley height in a given sampling region wherein the peak represents a high spot on the surface and the valley represents the depth of a scratch on the surface. Rz is an average value for Rmax measured in several distinct sampling regions. Not only must average surface roughness be low for good optical performance, but also Rz, Rmax or related parameters must be low to minimize light scattering.
Existing methods for mirror fabrication attempt to remedy the drawbacks resulting from imperfectly formed metal surfaces by electroplating a layer of electroless nickel onto the mirror substrate and then using optical techniques to polish the second metal layer to provide surfaces exhibiting reduced light scattering. However, because again such mirrors consist of different metals, bimetallic stresses at temperatures differing from room temperature compromise mechanical and optical stability of the mirrors. Further, fabrication of the second metal layer adds significant complexity and expense to the manufacturing process.
Highly polished aluminum surfaces have additional applications in the field of solar cell fabrication. Mirror arrays are frequently used to concentrate solar radiation onto photovoltaic solar cells to improve conversion efficiency. Since diffraction of light by surface irregularities on the mirror surfaces results in lowered efficiencies in conversion of incident solar radiation to electric power, improved methods for economically producing highly reflective surfaces composed of aluminum can facilitate development of solar cell technology.
Two methods are commonly used to polish aluminum surfaces. In the field of optics, single-point diamond turning has been used for many years to produce aluminum mirrors useful for reflecting infrared (e.g., long wavelength) light. In single-point diamond turning, an aluminum substrate is rotated while in contact with a precisely positioned diamond cutting tool. The diamond cutting tool "peels" a very thin layer of aluminum from the surface of the substrate to form a surface having a precisely defined geometry. However, the diamond cutting tool produces microscopic grooves which compromise optical performance due to light scattering, particularly at shorter wavelengths. Further, single-point diamond turning is an expensive and highly time-consuming process suitable only for low volume production of specialized optical components.
The most commonly used process for polishing aluminum substrates is lapping. In lapping, a slurry of abrasive particles, typically aluminum oxide or silicon carbide in a carrier of water or an oil, is used to polish an aluminum surface by moving a polishing surface known as a lapp relative to the aluminum surface with the abrasive slurry therebetween, to abrade the surface by mechanical action of the abrasive. However, lapping generates shavings of aluminum which tend to produce microscratches on the polished surface, leading to unacceptable surface defectivity for optical applications.
Chemical-mechanical polishing or planarization (CMP) has long been used in the electronics industry to polish or planarize the surface of memory or rigid disks. Typically, memory or rigid disks comprise an aluminum substrate coated with a first layer of nickel-phosphorus. The nickel-phosphorus layer is frequently planarized by a CMP process to reduce surface waviness and roughness prior to coating with a magnetic layer, such as cobalt-phosphorus. The nickel-phosphorus layer has a highly homogeneous microstructure and a particular chemistry which differs considerably from aluminum and aluminum alloys, which have a different surface chemistry than nickel-phosphorus and an inhomogeneous microstructure comprising crystallites dispersed throughout a matrix. Further, CMP produces microscratches and leaves imbedded abrasive particles on the substrate surface, which defects cannot be tolerated in optical applications.
Thus, there remains a need for efficient and economical methods of polishing aluminum surfaces to exacting standards of surface roughness suitable for diffraction-free reflectance of light in the visible and ultraviolet ranges. The invention provides such a method. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of the invention provided herein.

Use of CMP for aluminum mirror and solar cell fabrication


A timer circuit is provided including a self-holding circuit that includes a reset delay circuit for delaying an input pulse by a prescribed time. The output of the self-holding circuit is caused to fall by the rising edge of the input pulse and to rise by the falling edge of the input pulse or the rising edge of a pulse fed back through the reset delay circuit whichever occurs last. Since the pulse duration can be stretched up to a length equal to the reset delay time by the action of the self-holding circuit, the possibility of the input pulse being split through a pulse stretching circuit is eliminated.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a timer circuit used as an interval timer or the like in an electronic circuit. More particularly, the present invention relates to a timer circuit including circuitry for stretching the duration of an input pulse to a prescribed value.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an electronic circuit, in order to produce pulses of fixed time duration, usually a one-shot timer (monostable multivibrator) is used. However, a one-shot timer only uses an input pulse as a trigger and therefore cannot be used in applications where it is required to stretch the duration of an input pulse by a prescribed time length.
For such applications, a timer circuit as shown in FIG. 5, for example, has been used heretofore which uses a pulse stretching circuit 11 to stretch the duration of an input pulse by a prescribed time length. The pulse stretching circuit 11 of this timer circuit is constructed in such a way that an input pulse and a pulse produced by delaying the input pulse by a delay time D through a delay circuit 11a are input to an OR circuit 11b. As a result, the OR circuit 11b produces an output pulse with the input pulse duration stretched by the delay time D through the delay circuit 11a, as is shown in FIG. 6.
However, when the input pulse duration is shorter than the delay time D, the output of the OR circuit 11b falls at the falling edge of the input pulse which occurs before the corresponding pulse passed through the delay circuit 11a arrives at the input of the OR circuit 11b. This results in the splitting of the output pulse provided at the output of the OR circuit 11b, as is shown in FIG. 7. Therefore, in applications where there is a possibility that the duration of an input pulse may become short or where it is required to stretch the pulse duration significantly relative to the duration of the input pulse, a timer circuit such as that which is shown in FIG. 8 has been used in the past. The timer circuit of FIG. 8 consists of a plurality of cascaded stages, each constructed with the pulse stretching circuit 11 of FIG. 5 comprising the delay circuit 11a and the OR circuit 11b. The plurality of stages are intended to produce an output pulse with its duration stretched to a desired length even when the input pulse duration is short.
However, even with the plural stage timer circuit shown in FIG. 8, when the input pulse duration is shorter than the delay time provided by the delay circuit 11a in the pulse stretching circuit 11 of each stage, it will be appreciated that the splitting of the output pulse cannot be avoided, as in the case shown in FIG. 7.
Accordingly, the prior art timer circuit has had the problem that it requires a very large number of pulse stretching circuits 11, each providing only a short delay time and increasing the size of the entire circuitry, when the input pulse duration is particularly short and when it is required to stretch the pulse duration significantly.
In view of the above situation, it is an object of the present invention to provide a timer circuit which stretches the duration of an input pulse while avoiding the splitting of the output pulse even when the input pulse duration is particularly short. It is another object of the invention to provide such a timer by including a circuit for securing a minimum value for the input pulse duration.
The present invention overcomes the aforementioned and other shortcomings of the above known and similar timer circuits which use a pulse stretching circuit to stretch the duration of an input pulse by a prescribed time length. The present invention is summarized and is described in detail below.

Timer circuit for stretching the duration of an input pulse


An image reading system and an image reading apparatus are provided. The system or apparatus includes a reading unit configured to read a still original, a selecting unit configured to select one of a plurality of image data of a first area acquired by reading the first area a plurality of times, the first area being a partial area of the original, and a generating unit configured to generate a file storing a first image data which is the image data of the first area selected by the selecting unit, and a second image data which is image data acquired by reading a second area of the original different from the first area by the reading unit.

Recently, there have been widely used portable information terminal devices having touch panels. Since some portable information terminal devices allow browsing of electronic books, there is a need to computerize bound books. For this reason, some image reading apparatuses has a function of reading a bound original such as a book in a two-page spread state. Those image reading apparatuses read two facing pages of an original at once, and stores image data of the read original in an electronic file.
For example, JP2005-269095A describes an image reading apparatuses for reading an original in a two-page spread state (a two-page spread original). The image reading apparatus employs a technique of separately performing image correction on a right page image and a left page image.

Image reading apparatus which generates an image by selecting one of a plurality of image data of a first area and a second area


Provided is a tire, comprising a tread surface divided into a plurality of land portions by at least one circumferential groove extending along a tire equator and tread edges, wherein at least an outline on one side of the tire equator of the tread surface comprises a plurality of arcs each having a different radius of curvature in a width direction cross-sectional view of the tire; an arc having a minimum radius of curvature among the plurality of arcs lies in a land portion having a maximum tread width direction length among the plurality of land portions; and an arc having a larger radius of curvature is disposed on a tread edge side of the arc having the minimum radius of curvature.

For so-called high performance tires to be used for high speed running, in addition to performance for straight running at high speed, excellent turning performance in a high speed region is also strongly demanded. In anticipation of improving, particularly the turning performance of such high performance tires, PTL 1 proposes to make the curvature of the outline shape of the tread surface different on both sides of the maximum diameter point so as to be asymmetric, and form the tread surface outline shape on one side of the maximum diameter point by arcs having three or more radii of curvature that decrease from the maximum diameter point toward a shoulder edge, thereby improving the lateral grip performance and handling performance particularly during turning of the vehicle.


An electronic device comprises one or more functional units, each functional unit being clocked by a respective clock signal. The electronic device further comprises a monitoring unit for providing a real-time estimate of an electrical current consumed by the functional units. The monitoring unit provides the real-time estimate on the basis of characteristic signals. The characteristic signals may comprise one or more of said clock signals, or one or more clock generating signals used to generate said clock signals. The electronic device may further comprise a power regulator responsive to the real-time estimate. A method of estimating in real-time an electrical current consumed by one or more functional units is also described.

Clock disabling provides an effective method of dynamic power saving in an electronic device. The technique may, however, cause sudden changes in the electrical current drawn by the electronic device, which may, in turn, cause variations of the supply voltage applied across the electronic device. It can be necessary or advantageous to maintain a supply voltage level that fluctuates as little as possible.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,882,458 and 7,900,172 describe methods of analyzing power consumption of a simulated electronic device in a design phase before manufacture.


Computer implemented methods and systems to provide self-care and acclimation recommendations to a client device based on a unique health profile and environmental conditions.

Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to providing self-care recommendations to a person experiencing a change in environmental conditions, and more particularly, to provide such recommendations based in part on the person's unique health profile.
Related Art
Environmental conditions have long been known to affect human health. Extreme weather such as hurricanes, tornados, and floods are most commonly associated with threats to human life yet more common and subtle environmental conditions have a significant impact on human health, especially for people suffering from chronic diseases.
Human adaptation to a changing climate system is essential for promoting healthy and productive societies. Since our adaptation capacity is a function of age, health condition, and also the rate of environmental change, there is a need to inform individuals on how to thrive amid current shifts in our planet's fluid systems (e.g., climate, weather, and water). It is known that these systems are in state of unusual imbalance due to both natural and anthropogenic influences. Based on physics, these inputs into the system can generate more frequent and/or intense extreme weather events (e.g., excessive heat or cold temperatures, lower cloud levels that trap pollutants, rise in algal blooms, etc) in order to restore balance within Earth's fluid bodies. With the driving force of planetary dynamics being balance, the more disequilibrium that is present in a system means that there will be more restoring forces (e.g., extreme or anomalous weather) in order to bring about that balance.
The balance restoring force manifests as weather, which today is changing on time and space scales that humans have not yet experienced. During previous climatic shifts, humans were able to migrate away from such changes, lacked a protective built environment (e.g., heated or air conditioned homes) and their environmental changes tended to be more gradual in onset. Today, we live in non-migratory societies where we are subject balancing forces. Healthy individuals can take up to a decade to adapt to seasonal shifts, so when they travel or move to a new location it will take time to acclimate to the new environment. Chronically ill individuals have more challenges to adaptation because the range of environmental supports (e.g., clean air, mild temperatures, etc) are lacking.

Methods and systems for providing self-care and acclimation recommendations to a client device based on environmental conditions


A method for refining domestic edible oils by membrane separation technology involves treating such oils in a membrane module system which provides optimal separation performance and service life. The described process simplifies edible oil processing and permits the attainment of the desired product in an essentially single step operation.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for refining domestic edible oils using non-aqueous membranes. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for refining edible oils by membrane separation technology using a polyetherimide membrane.
During the past decade, considerable interest has been focused upon the processing of edible oils such as soybean oil, cotton seed oil, corn oil and the like. In the processing of such oils, it has been common to treat the oil with an organic solvent such as hexane to obtain miscella. Following, the organic solvent is removed, so yielding a crude glyceride oil composition. Unfortunately, the crude oils so obtained typically comprise up to 10%, by weight, of impurities including phospholipids, organic sulfur compounds, waxes, dye compounds and the like. These impurities typically have adverse affects and it is necessary to remove them from the crude oil to enhance the usefulness and marketability of the product.
Workers in the art discovered that these impurities could be effectively removed from the crude oil by means of different types of industrial membranes, selection of a particular membrane being dependent upon the materials to be separated. Thus, for example, microfiltration involves the membrane separation of macro molecules ranging from 500 to 2 million Angstrom units, ultra filtration with molecules ranging is size from 40-2,000 Angstroms and reverse osmosis with ions and molecules ranging in size up to 20 Angstroms.
In accordance with the ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis process, a crude glyceride oil composition is diluted with an organic solvent such as hexane and contacted with an ultrafiltration reverse osmosis membrane, typically selected from among polysulfones, polyacrylonitriles, and various polyamides which remove the solvent and yields a membrane permeable solution containing a degummed oil. Although, such techniques have met with a certain degree of success, inherent limitations have precluded the total exploitation thereof. More specifically, the complete removal of phospholipids from the crude oil is impeded by the characteristics of the membrane employed, so necessitating the use of a plurality of processing steps including, degumming, refining, bleaching and deodorizing to remove free fatty acids, phosphatides, particulates, chlorine materials and the like. Considerable amounts of energy in the form of steam or electricity are required in effecting these processes, each of which is required to obtain properly processed crude oil. Accordingly, workers in the art have focused their interest upon the development of alternate methods for refining the edible oils.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Typical prior art references describing methods for effecting this end are as follows:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,370,102 describes a process for separating a feed into a permeate stream and a retentate stream and utilizes a sweep liquid to remove the permeate from the face of the membrane to thereby maintain the concentration gradient driving force. The process can be used to separate a wide variety of mixtures including various petroleum fractions, naphthas, oils and hydrocarbon mixtures. Expressly recited is the separation of aromatics from kerosene.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,958,656 teaches the separation of hydrocarbons by type, i.e., aromatic, unsaturated, saturated, by passing a portion of a mixture thereof through a non-porous cellulose ether membrane and removing permeate from the permeate side of the membrane using a sweep gas or liquid. Feeds include hydrocarbon mixtures, naphtha (including virgin naphtha, naphtha from thermal or catalytic cracking, etc.).
U.S. Pat. No. 2,930,754 teaches a method for separating hydrocarbons e.g. aromatic and/or olefins from gasoline boiling range mixtures, by the selective permeation of the aromatic through certain cellulose ester non-porous membranes. The permeated hydrocarbons are continuously removed from the permeate zone using a sweep gas or liquid.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,465 teaches the use of polyurethane membranes to selectively separate aromatics from saturates via pervaporation.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,366,062 teaches reverse osmosis using a composite isocyanurate membrane. The method selectively separates at least one water soluble material from an aqueous solution. The membrane comprises a microporous substrate and a barrier layer about 0.01 to 0.1 micron thick. It is composed of a cross-linked polymeric material having an isocyanurate structure and substituents appended thereto selected from among hydrogen, glycidyl groups and alkyl radical groups having from 2 to 5 carbon atoms which may also contain functional hydroxyl groups or glycidyl groups. The crosslinked polymeric material has ester or ether linkages or combinations thereof connecting the isocyanurate structures to each other. There are no urethane groups present.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,949 teaches a method for making the reverse osmosis semipermeable membrane disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,366,062.
European Application 0044872 teaches selectively separating water soluble materials from a solution under reverse osmosis conditions using a membrane having a porous support layer carrying a barrier layer of cross-linked isocyanurate polymer.
Japanese Application 81/160960 teaches an isocyanurate network terpolymer useful for the production of a selective permeation membrane. A polymer having hydroxyl groups and tertiary amine groups in the side chain is reacted with cyanuric chloride and subjected to terpolymerization by reacting the tertiary amine groups with the resultant hydrochloride to give a polymerized polyisocyanurate. A polymer made using glycidyl methacrylatestyrene copolymer, diethyl amine in benzene and methanol was produced having a 2-hydroxy-3-diethylaminopropyl group. This (polytetra fluorethylene) polymer was crosslinked with cyanuric chloride and cast on a PTFE plate and kept for 24 hours at 40.degree. to give a 44 .mu. membrane. This membrane was used to separate a mixture of cyclohexane and benzene under pervaporation conditions. A permeate gas which was 100% benzene was recovered at a rate 0.0025 g/m.sup.2 -hr.
U.S. Pat. 4,787,981 (Tanashi, et al.) which issued on Nov. 29, 1988, discloses a process for the purification of crude glyceride oil compositions which comprises diluting a crude glyceride oil containing gums and waxes with an organic solvent and contacting the diluted crude oil composition with a semipermeable membrane comprising a polyimide. The resultant semipermeable membrane permeable liquid is then bleached with a clay and deodorized to obtain a purified glyceride oil.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,929,357 (R.C. Schucker) discloses the use of a non-porous isocyanurate-crosslinked polyurethane membrane for separating aromatic from non-aromatic hydrocarbons.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,929,358 (B.A. Koenitzer) discloses the separation of aromatic hydrocarbons from non-aromatics by permeation of the aromatic compound through a polyurethane-imide membrane under pervaporation or reverse osmosis conditions.
Although each of the foregoing processes has advanced the art, the search has continued for the development of membrane separation technology of enhanced energy efficiency which enables workers in the art to economically isolate edible oils.

Membrane technology for edible oil refining


In a filing system, a data processing apparatus is connected to a file server via a transmission path. Image data of a document is captured into the data processing apparatus. The captured image data is stored onto an image storage medium. A plurality of owner identifications are acquired when the image data is captured. The owner identifications are correlated with the image data stored on the image storage medium, and the stored image data is allowed to be accessed when any of the owner identifications correlated with the image data is verified. The image data is output in a readable manner by retrieving the stored image data of the image storage medium when the access to the image data is allowed.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a filing system including a data processing apparatus which captures image data, stores it on a storage device, transmits it to another data processing device, and copies it onto a copy sheet. The present invention also relates to a data processing method and a computer readable medium which are incorporated into the data processing apparatus in the filing system.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Recently, a number of centralized mainframe computers are shared by all users in an organization, and supplemented by workstations and personal computers located in departmental user rooms and private offices. With the increased number of machines has come the need to move data and files from one machine to another. A filing system is one approach to solving the file transfer problem. In the filing system, shared data is placed on a file server, and, when needed, individual machines are made to access data files located on the remote file server. This approach works well when the number of files that needs to be exchanged is not small.
In a conventional filing system, a data processing device (for example, a personal computer) is provided with a scanner, and the scanner captures image data by optically scanning the document to be copied or transmitted. However, when the number of documents that need to be exchanged between authorized users is large, the data capturing using the scanner becomes a considerably time-consuming task, and the access to the image data on the remote file server from the data processing device becomes a burdensome operation. This causes the delay of implementation of the conventional filing system. In addition, the contents of documents having confidential data, such as a password for the file access, may be revealed to the operator of the data processing device during the data capturing. The conventional filing system has such a problem of data security.
By taking account of the above-described problems, the inventors of the present invention have noted that image data of documents, which need to be stored in a filing system, are always first captured using scanners of copiers or facsimiles for corporate meeting uses or business purposes, and subsequently translated into usable signals using analog-to-digital converters. Hence, in order to eliminate the above-described problems, the inventors have designed a data processing apparatus and method, for use in the filing system, which creates identifications of the authorized users for such documents when the image data are first captured, and has the image data and the identifications stored on a storage medium of the filing system in a such a manner that the stored image data are subsequently accessible by the authorized users using the identifications. Further, the filing system must be designed to ensure security of the image data stored therein.

Filing system which provides increased availability of image data stored therein