A treatment system passes feed water containing a contaminant such as perchlorate through a bed of strong base anion exchange resin that has been placed in a form (e.g., in sulfate form) to selectively capture the contaminant while passing other ions (e.g., nitrate) that may also be present in the water. The bed may include a carousel, and the exhausted upstream portion of the resin may efficiently be disposed of by incineration, or may be rotated out for regeneration.

The present invention relates to water treatment, and has as a primary goal the treatment of waste water or of ground water, for environmental remediation or for the production of a higher grade water, for example, to produce water that is useful directly or with blending to produce an industrial, agricultural or potable product water. The invention particularly addresses processes for removal of perchlorate from a water source. The perchlorate may be present in the source either alone or in conjunction with other contaminants or native impurities.
Perchlorate is largely a man-made contaminant, typically found in ground water near munitions depots and firing ranges, rocket launch or test sites, fireworks, munitions and fertilizer factories, rocket fuel manufacturing plants and other military or industrial sites. The material is persistent in the environment, and in many cases has accumulated or has been accumulating in ground water without oversight or regulation for decades. In the United States, high levels of perchlorate have been found at hundreds of sites in more than twenty states, sometimes in a contaminated ground water plume that extends for miles from a site or originating locus of a contaminating activity. Commonly, perchlorate is present as an ammonium, sodium or potassium perchlorate, or a combination thereof; nitrates may also be present, either naturally, or from the same initial contaminating activity or its metabolites; other dissolved or suspended solids characteristic of the underlying ground water may also be present.
In the United States, perchlorate contamination is estimated to threaten or actually impinge upon the drinking water supplies of over fifteen million people in a few western states, and occurrences of less immediate health concern are found in many states from Massachusetts to Texas. Much remains to be elucidated about the effects of perchlorate exposure on human health; uptake and long term risk modeling are not well developed, and a federal maximum contaminant level (MCL) has yet to be set for drinking water, effluent discharge or remediation. Interim standards or state-imposed limits or recommendations for public water supplies have tended to follow the advance of measurement technology and the development of assays with lower detection limits; scientific studies elucidating health effects at these low levels will necessarily lag behind the relatively recent enhancements of measurement capability. Meanwhile, however, some sites or regions with extremely high concentrations in groundwater have been identified, and plumes with clearly unacceptabe high perchlorate concentrations have entered or currently threaten a number of wells in municipal water systems, thus requiring closure of the wells and/or remedial treatment of the groundwater at and/or upstream of the affected well.
Some treatment processes have been instituted since the late 1990s at a number of affected locations, generally operating to achieve perchlorate removal down to the range of 1.5-10 ppb in a (possibly blended) product water. At other sites where there is no threat to drinking water supplies, different limits may be applied when the goal of treatment is to treat and re-inject groundwater to decontaminate a plume, or to supply water of a quality suitable for certain agricultural uses.
At the present time it appears likely that a range of adverse health effects of perchlorate will soon be documented, and that fairly stringent regulatory thresholds will be established for consumption or discharge of this material. Applicant anticipates that, once perchlorate becomes regulated, treatment will be needed for a number of industrial water uses (such as make-up boiler or cooling water) which have little apparent connection with human exposure, but which result in a waste stream having the existing contaminants concentrated many-fold over that of the source water. These applications may require initial perchlorate removal from the raw feed stream, or may later require decontamination of their waste fields, when the source water itself contains even small amounts of perchlorate.
In view of the scale of the problem, it would be highly desirable to identify effective treatment protocols and apparatus for removal of perchlorate.
A number of methods have seen some use.
One technology for remediation of perchlorate in ground water is to pump the water from suitably-positioned wells, pass it through one or more anion exchange resin beds, and either return the treated product to the ground or pass the product to an intended use, while the perchlorate and any other contaminants are captured in the exchange resin, which may then be discarded or regenerated. When the exchange beds are periodically regenerated, the accumulated perchlorate enters the regeneration waste fluids. The spent regeneration fluids may then be disposed of as a solid or otherwise concentrated waste, or may be broken down in a bioreactor or composting process, or may be incinerated on-site. Incineration may be preferred, because this eliminates the possibility of downstream legal liability that might arise if the waste were to be sent elsewhere, and also because, as a practical matter, concentrated perchlorate waste may be highly unstable or explosive. Spent perchlorate-loaded brine from a resin regeneration facility may also be discharged at sea, but it is widely expected that permits to continue such disposition will may not be available in the future.
As a removal tool, ion exchange beds may offer a highly effective treatment, which may, depending on concentration and the other ions that are present, may potentially treat thousands of bed volumes of the feed water between bed regeneration. However, the specific operating characteristics of an ion exchange resin will depend upon the amount and concentrations of components that are present in the water being treated, upon the extent of any pretreatment, and upon the exchange endpoints that are required in view of the intended use and/or the further processes that are to be applied downstream. In the western United States, much of the perchlorate contamination is present in highly mineralized groundwater, for which additional or coordinated treatments would be required to allow perchlorate to be treated efficiently or economically. Typically, different perchlorates—ammonium, sodium and potassium salts—and potentially nitrate, sulfate, and/or other native or contaminant species may be present in a contaminated groundwater plume, and the distribution of these components may influence the capture characteristics, regenerability and overall capacity and aging characteristics of the bed.
The effectiveness of the capture and the regeneration processes and the cost of necessary regeneration chemicals (as well as cost of disposal of spent chemicals) constitute substantial variable factors affecting the commercial feasibility or even the utility of ion exchange treatment. It is therefore desirable to make capture as efficient as possible. Operation should also be stable and predictable. However, western groundwaters may possess relatively high concentrations of sulfate and nitrate, making it difficult to effectively capture perchlorate at the low ppb concentrations required for drinking water standards.
One recent tool developed for such treatment tasks is an anion exchange resin that has been bifunctionalized, for example with two different tertiary amines, to introduce controlled hydrophobicity and limited steric hindrance such that the resin has high selectivity for the less hydrated anions—perchlorate, pertechnate or iodide—over more highly hydrated ions such as nitrate, while still having high overall capture capacity and/or capture rate. One such resin, described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,059,975, has been commercialized as a specialty resin now often cited as suitable for use in site remediation of perchlorate-contaminated plumes. A related multi-step sequential chemical replacement regeneration process has also been developed to optimize use of the bifunctional resin for removal of these ions, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,448,299 of the same inventors. These resins are, however, relatively expensive.
Generally, one may expect treatment with any anion exchange resin to effect some degree of perchlorate removal. However, at low concentrations, large residence time in the bed—a ong path length or low flow rate—would seem to be necessary. Moreover, if one runs the feed through a standard anion exchange resin bed, the removal is not selective; nitrate, sulfate and other ions will be taken up to a much greater extent than occurs with the bifunctional specialty resin, reducing bed lifetime and capture efficiency. Any of these ionic species may also later be released or displaced in quantity when other species are presented in the feed, reducing the quality of the product. For example, a sulfate spike in the feed would displace accumulated nitrate from the bed. This possibility is especially to be considered when the concentration of these other co-ions in the ground water is already high. For example, with a groundwater sulfate concentration of 1000-2000 ppm range, the bed will saturate with sulfate, and subsequent operation, while capturing perchlorate, will pass the sulfate; a sulfate spike in the feed will release captured nitrate. More generally, the competitive or multivariate nature of ion-exchange processes does not allow perchlorate removal to be considered in isolation from other aspects of water treatment. When treating water to high purity for potable or industrial use, and one must address the problem of removing all contaminants down to an effective level; when treating solely to remediate perchlorate-laden groundwater on must remove perchlorate efficiently in the presence of other dissolved solids.
There has been relatively little commercial experience with complete or integrated treatment systems, and possible treatment modalities and their operating parameters remain to be explored. To move beyond feasibility studies, or highly subsidized pilots designed to clean up a particular site, it would be desirable to identify further methods or apparatus capable of removing perchlorate, and which may be dependably added to or integrated with a water treatment line of general utility without unexpectedly introducing or impairing the removal of other species.
It would also be desirable to provide an inexpensive yet effective method of removing perchlorate from a source water.
It would further be desirable to provide a well-quantified unit process that may be provided and predictably scaled to dependably pretreat water from a perchlorate-contaminated well, as a front-end treatment such that the product water is treatable by an existing treatment plant or a new plant of conventional design.
It would also be desirable to provide a dependable front end treatment for industrial water that dependably and predictably produces water substantially purer than a specified limit, such that the treated water may be applied to a given use, concentrated and ultimately discharged without exceeding such limit.
It would also be desirable to provide a perchlorate removal treatment that results in a small or limited waste stream or solid waste residue.


A magnetic element is provided, including a magnetic core set, a bobbin, at least a wire, and an insulating base. The bobbin has a channel and a plurality of conductive pins, wherein the channel penetrates through the bobbin, and the magnetic core set is coupled with the channel. The wire is wound around the bobbin and connected to the conductive pins. The insulating base is connected to a bottom surface of the magnetic core set after the wire is wound around the bobbin and connected to the conductive pins, wherein the insulating base includes a plurality of protrusions adjacent to the conductive pins, respectively.

1. Technical Field
The present application relates to a magnetic element, and in particular, relates to a magnetic element having an insulating base.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional electronic devices usually include many magnetic elements, such as transformers. A transformer is a magnetic element capable of Electro-Magnetic Energy Conversion (EMEC) for adjusting voltage signal into a suitable range. Conventional transformers usually comprise at least a coil wound on a bobbin and a magnetic body.
With the increase in labor costs, assembly of the transformers may now be performed by automated machines. However, due to limited assembly precision of the automated machines, the distance between the pins of the bobbin usually has to be increased, thus the dimensions of the magnetic element are inevitably enlarged.


A small animal harness comprising an elastically deformable chest piece that attaches at its upper portion to a pair of flexible shoulder straps and attaches at its lower portion to a pair of flexible brisket straps, the unattached ends of the shoulder and brisket straps being interconnected over the withers of the animal so that the brisket straps are slidable in the connection and adapted to be connected to a leash for control of the animal.

The prior art has seen a large number of innovative designs for pet harnesses and restraints. All of the designs attempt to provide comfort for the animal consistent with adequate control. Many of the designs utilize a chest pad or chest strap in combination with shoulder straps and girths that converge over the withers to form a connection point for a leash or other type of securing device.
Typical of patents disclosing such apparatus are the following:                U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,335 for Dog Car Restraint, issued Jun. 29, 1999;        U.S. Pat. No. 6,101,979 for Adjustable Safety Pet Harness issued Aug. 15, 2000; and        U.S. Pat. No. 6,694,923 for Pet Harness With Quick Connect Stand-Up Leash.
The apparatus disclosed by these patents, as well as other known prior art, are constructed from flexible but non-elastic straps and pads that, even though adjusted to fit a particular animal, inherently impose elements of discomfort and undue restriction during certain movements or animated motion of the animal.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of the present invention to provide a harness for small animals that will accomplish the traditional control objectives while at the same time providing the resilience necessary to eliminate body pressure points and relieve needless restriction of movement when the animal is active.


A portable artificial campfire device is disclosed. The device includes a receptacle having upper and lower portions, an open top defined by a peripheral edge of the upper portion, and an interior bottom surface. A burner is positioned above the interior bottom surface and is adapted to provide a flame of variable height. A pressurized fuel source is positioned exterior to the receptacle, and a control member couples the fuel source with the burner for controlling the flow of fuel to the burner and the size of flame emitted by the burner. A plurality of artificial refractory log members are secured to each other in crisscross fashion to form a log cluster. A structure is provided for supporting the log cluster within the receptacle. Finally, a mechanism is provided for selectively adjusting the vertical position of the log cluster in the receptacle to vary the vertical position of the log cluster relative to the plane the open top.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to gas burner devices and, more particularly, to devices using compressed gas and artificial logs. Specifically, the present invention relates to portable devices utilizing compressed gas for cooking and alike.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Portable fireplaces and fire pits are used by campers and homemakers to provide outdoor heat, cooking as well as the pleasant appearances of a campfire. In addition, portable devices using compressed gas, such as bottled propane, have often been used as cooking devices in the outdoors. There are many examples of such devices. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 254,709, U.S. Pat. No. 3,593,647 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,413,087 all disclose portable cooking devices that are operated utilizing pressurized fuel such as pressurized white gas and propane gas.
Other portable devices utilize compressed gas in combination with other fuel sources. These devices are generally intended to be utilized in the outdoors. U.S. Pat. No. 4,903,683 illustrates a system which incorporates charcoal in conjunction with pressurized gas. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 5,094,223 discloses a portable fire pit grill device that combines pressurized gas with the burning of real wood.
Unfortunately, all of the above noted devices are specifically cooking devices adapted for portability to enable cooking in the outdoors. None of these devices utilize artificial or refractory logs. U.S. Pat. No. 3,362,395, U.S. Pat. No. 3385,651 and U.S. Pat. No. 5, 421,321 all disclose artificial fireplaces utilizing refractory logs and natural gas. These systems are designed to provide the pleasant appearance of fireplaces without the mess and difficulty of using real wood. However, they are all permanent installations generally designed for use indoors and are certainally not adaptable for portable use in the outdoors
A traditional and almost essential part of camping in the outdoors, however, is having a wood burning campfire, particularly in the evening. An open campfire provides both warmth as well as pleasant visual experiences. Unfortunately, there are many times that wood burning and open campfires are prohibited due to dry forest or environmental conditions. When such dry conditions prevail, fire danger is high. In such instances, the Forest Service restricts and even prohibits the burning of wood of any sort, and particularly open campfires. When such prohibitions are in force, traditional gas stoves such as described above may be utilized for cooking. However, there is to date no device which can substitute for an open campfire when such prohibitions are in force. Moreover, there is certainly no device which combines both the usefulness of a gas cooking stove with the beauty and enjoyment of an open campfire without requiring the burning of wood.


A fluorine-containing polyquinazolone polymer having a bisquinazolone unit represented by Formula 1 as the repeating unit is used for a gas separation membrane so that great chemical and heat resistance is provided. The membrane also has great permeability and effective separability, as well as excellent mechanical strength. ##STR1## where R.sub.1 indicates a tetravalent organic group, R.sub.2 respectively indicate an alkyl group or an aromatic group, R.sub.3 indicates a divalent organic group, and R.sub.1 and/or R.sub.3 indicates an organic group having at least one fluorine atom.

Polyimide is well known as a separation membrane material which is excellent in heat resistance, chemical resistance and other properties, since polyimide has a high glass transition point and a rigid molecular chain structure. Separation membranes using various kinds of polyimides have been disclosed. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,151 discloses aromatic polyimide using biphenyltetracarboxylic acid dianhydride. Published Unexamined Japanese Patent Application (JPA) No. 5-7749, U.S. Pat. No. 5,042,992 and others disclose fluorine-containing aromatic polyimide. Polyimides using aliphatic and alicyclic tetracarboxylic acid dianhydride are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,964,887 and 4,988,371.
Polyquinazolone polymers are also developed in order to improve the performance of polyimides (see Published Examined JPA No. 61-51934, Published Unexamined JPA No. 60-75310, and Journal of Polymer Science Vol. 60, 1962). A polyquinazolone polymer material is excellent in chemical and heat resistance, mechanical strength, and film-forming property. However, permeability of such a conventional polyquinazolone polymer was too low to be used for a separation membrane, and thus, such a separation membrane did not reach the level of a practical separation performance.
Poly(dimethylsiloxane), which is a highly permeable membrane material, has an oxygen permeability coefficient of about 10.sup.-8 cm.sup.3 (STP)cm/cm.sup.2 /sec/cmHg!, and is the best of the known polymer membranes. This membrane, however, is inferior in separability, and unpractical in view of its equipment and cost. This membrane must be made comparatively thick since it is not mechanically strong. Therefore, permeation speed cannot be improved by providing a thinner membrane. Though Published Examined JPA No. 47-51715 discloses an oxygen enrichment membrane comprising poly(vinyl trimethylsilane) for a highly permeable membrane material, the membrane is inferior in chemical resistance and it easily deteriorates due to air pollutants, pump oil etc., and its heat resistance is not satisfactory either.
As mentioned above, a membrane comprising a polyquinazolone polymer has chemical resistance, heat resistance, mechanical strength and film-forming property as much as a polyimide separation membrane has. However, a conventional polyquinazolone polymer does not have properties applicable for a separation membrane. That is, its permeability is too low for a practical use.

Fluorine-containing polyquinazolone polymer and separation membrane using the same


A vehicle surroundings display unit, including: 1) a pick-up unit for picking up a video of vehicle surroundings; 2) an approaching vehicle sensor for sensing, based on the video picked up by the pick-up unit, an approaching vehicle which is approaching a subject vehicle; 3) a display processor for displaying the approaching vehicle sensed by the approaching vehicle sensor while distinguishing the approaching vehicle from an obstacle which is not approaching the subject vehicle; 4) a display unit for displaying the video which has undergone the displaying operation by the display processor; and 5) a frequency decomposing unit to make the following operations: decomposing a time-varying component of a pixel of the picked-up video for each frequency, extracting the pixel having a frequency of the time-varying component higher than a certain frequency, and of the thus extracted pixels of the picked up video, displaying the pixels in a vehicle area.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a unit for picking up and displaying a video of surroundings of a vehicle. Moreover, the present invention relates to a method of displaying the vehicle surroundings.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2004-173048 (=JP2004173048) discloses a conventional technology. Based on a plurality of picked-up videos of surroundings of a vehicle, the above conventional technology obtains an optical flow through template matching, detects other vehicle on the picked-up videos and displays the other vehicle on a monitor.
However, the conventional method according to JP2004173048 has the following inconvenience (paragraphs [0016] and [0017]): For selectively displaying a mobile body approaching a subject vehicle, a speed vector of each pixel in the video is calculated by taking a frame-to-frame difference, sensing the following video area as one mobile body: a video area having speed vectors which are different from those of the subject vehicle and which are same as each other. Thereby, the video processing is complicated, increasing operation (calculation) quantity.

Vehicle surroundings display unit and a method of displaying vehicle surroundings


A vehicle such as a wheelchair having wheels by which the vehicle is propelled and steered and castors which support a proportion of the vehicle's weight, has its castors provided with biasing means which resists swivelling movement of the castors from the straight-ahead position thereby resisting an oversteer condition of the vehicle.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to castors and to vehicles which have castors. More particularly, the invention relates to a vehicle which has wheels by which the vehicle is propelled and steered, and castors which support a proportion of the vehicle's weight and which swivel to appropriate orientations in accordance with the direction of travel of the vehicle. Preferably the wheels are at the front of the vehicle and the castors at the rear.
It is to be appreciated that when we refer to a castor, we mean an assembly in which a ground-engaging wheel is supported not only for rotation but also for swivelling movement about an axis, herein called a swivel axis, which is substantially vertically oriented in use and which is offset from the rotational axis of the wheel.
The invention has been devised in relation to a vehicle which is intended to be occupied by one person, to give mobility to that person if he or she is disabled or infirm. Such a vehicle is commonly known as a wheelchair, and for convenience will herein be referred to thus.
2. Description of Prior Art
Wheelchairs are known in which the front wheels provide for driving of the wheelchair but do not take any part in the steering thereof, whilst rear castors have their swivelling controlled by a servomechanism in order to steer the wheelchair. The front wheels may be driven by a common motor and a transmission arrangement which includes a differential to permit the wheels to rotate at different speeds when the wheelchair is cornering. Such known wheelchairs have a disadvantage in that the angle to which the castors can be swivelled in order to steer the chair is limited; if the castors are swivelled to too great an angle the castor wheels just skid sideways and have little or no influence on the direction of travel of the wheelchair. Thus there is a limit on manoeuvrability of the wheelchair: to turn the chair to face in the opposite direction requires a "three (or more) point turn" to be executed.
It is known in wheelchairs generally to provide for steering by differential driving of the driving wheels of the wheelchair. For example, the driving wheels may have separate electric driving motors and the wheelchair may be provided with a control system which is arranged appropriately to control the supply of electrical power to the two motors for steering the wheelchair. If a wheelchair of this type had the driven wheels at the front and castor wheels at the back, the position of the centre of gravity of the wheelchair with its occupant, usually is such that when the vehicle is steered while travelling forwardly an "oversteer" condition tends to exist, in which the rear end of the vehicle, unconstrained by the castor wheels, swings outwardly on a corner relative to the front of the wheelchair. Further, the directional stability of the wheelchair is such that very careful operation of the controls is necessary for the vehicle to run straight ahead, as the rear castors do not contribute to the directional stability of the wheelchair. Nevertheless, steering by differential driving of front wheels which do not undergo any steering pivotal movement is advantageous, because driving one front wheel forwardly while the other either is not driven at all or possibly even is driven rearwardly enables the vehicle to be turned in little more than its own length.
Wheelchairs with wheels and castors are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,614,246 and GB-2,275,029. In the latter, the castors have their swivelling axes inclined for restraining their swivelling movement. A further wheelchair with wheels and castors is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,248. Castors with means for controlling or biasing their swivelling movement are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,924,292, EP-0,625,434 and DE-3,136,203, while a shock absorbing wheel suspension assembly is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,392,668.


The invention provides a backboard which is mountable on any wall surface, and which may be readily removed from the wall surface without leaving a mark or disfiguring the surface. The backboard is made of a thin, flexible sheet of material with a rear surface which firmly attaches to a wall, is held against the wall and is removable from the wall without marking the wall. A basketball rim and support is mounted on a lower position on the backboard material by a double-stick foam tape. One side of the foam tape adheres to the backboard in a pre-marked space. A vertical member of a support is attached to the other face of the foam tape, and a horizontal hoop is cantilevered from the support. A fabric net hangs down from the hoop to slow the descent of a ball which is used with the backboard. The net may be formed of lightweight flexible plastic filaments. The plastic rim and support may be molded of a high strength, lightweight reinforced plastic material. The double-stick foam tape is of a type used permanently to adhere trim signs on automobiles. The backboard is made of a flexible rollable plastic sheet material which is capable of self-sustaining on a wall, and which may be held against a wall through repeated usage over long periods of time, and which may be peeled from a wall, leaving no marks.

It is popular to use lightweight, soft foam plastic balls to shoot baskets in an interior of a house. Basketball backboard are often hung on hooks which extend over the tops of doors so that the backboard hangs down along the door. A rim and mount are fixed to the backboard, such as by screws.
Such a backboard and rim cannot be mounted anywhere in the room, and mounting of the backboard may cause disfigurement of the finish on the door, and the hooks may show on the other side of the door.
Needs exist for better backboard, hoops and mounts which may be mounted anywhere within a room.


An optical pickup can be inverted accurately and smoothly regardless of the skew operation of the optical pickup. The present invention is directed to a disc player in which a single optical pickup (37) is inverted in an opposing relation to both surfaces of a disc (D) at the same time when it is elevated so that both surfaces of the disc (D) can be reproduced. As an inverting mechanism (79) of the optical pickup (37), an inverting gear (80) is attached to a supporting shaft (53) on which the optical pickup (37) is supported. On the other hand, an inverting rack (81) which is meshed with the inverting gear (80) so as to invert the optical pickup (37) is attached through a supporting frame (82) to a lower chassis (4) which is skewed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to disc players for a laser disc or the like and, more particularly, to a pickup feeding apparatus for a double-sided reproducing disc player.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is widely utilized an optical disc player which plays back a video signal or the like by using an optical disc such as a laser disc or the like as a recording medium. In this kind of disc player, an optical pickup device is generally opposed to a disc that is rotated at high speed by a spindle motor, and this optical pickup device is translated in the diametrical direction of the disc, whereby a signal recorded on the recording track of the disc is read out and then reproduced.
While a digital signal is generally recorded on both surfaces of the disc that is used by such disc player, the disc player includes a single optical pickup device that is opposed to only one side surface of the disc. Accordingly, as a method for reproducing both surfaces of the disc by using a single optical pickup head, it is proposed that, after one side surface of the disc, for example, is played back, the disc is once ejected from the disc player, turned over and then again loaded onto the disc player so that the other side surface of the disc is reproduced. Recently, a so-called double-sided reproducing disc player is proposed, in which, after the playback of one side of the disc is finished, the optical pickup device is inverted and moved to the opposite side surface of the disc so as to reproduce the other side surface of the disc (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2-66744 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 5,097,465).
However, in the above conventional optical disc player which plays both side surfaces of the optical disc, such a double-sided disc player is not yet proposed, in which a transporting shaft (guide shaft) of an optical pickup is rotatably adjusted and the optical pickup is skewed in order to adjust the optical axis of a so-called optical pickup in accordance with the flexure of the disc to be perpendicular to the disc surface. For this reason, in the prior art, the skew adjustment mechanism based on the transport shaft of the optical pickup is disposed within a pickup supporting member on which the optical pickup is mounted.
Therefore, in the optical disc player for playing the double-sided disc, a weight of the pickup supporting member is increased so that the optical pickup cannot be moved smoothly and that the mechanism of the pickup supporting member becomes complicated. Further, when the guide shafts disposed on the upper and lower surface sides of the disc are respectively movably adjusted, the following problems arise. That is, when the optical pickup is inverted after one side surface of the disc is played by the optical pickup, or the optical pickup is moved to the inverting mechanism side, depending on the skew operation position of the optical pickup, a positional displacement occurs between the guide shaft and the inverting mechanism so that the optical pickup cannot be accurately and smoothly moved. As a result, the optical pickup cannot be inverted or the attitude of the inverted optical pickup cannot be brought in the correct one.
In addition, in the optical disc player for playing the double-sided disc, the inverting mechanism is rotatably moved in an arc fashion so that the inverting operation distance of the optical pickup is increased, which needs a lot of time for the optical pickup to move from one side surface to the other side surface of the disc.

Pickup feeding apparatus for a double-sided reproducing disc player


In many environments, rules are trained on historical data to predict an outcome likely to be associated with new data. Described is a ruleset which predicts the probability of a particular outcome. Roughly described, an individual identifies a ruleset, where each of the rules has a plurality of conditions and also indicates a rule-level probability of a predetermined classification. The conditions indicate a relationship (e.g. ‘<’ or ‘!<’) between an input feature and a corresponding value. The rules are evaluated against input data to derive a certainty for each condition, and aggregated to a rule-level certainty. The rule probabilities are combined using the rule-level certainty values to derive a probability output for the ruleset, which can be used to provide a basis for decisions. In an embodiment, the per-condition certainty values are fuzzy values aggregated by fuzzy logic. A novel genetic algorithm can be used to derive the ruleset.

The invention relates generally to data mining, and more particularly, to the use of genetic algorithms to extract useful rules or relationships from a data set for use in controlling systems.
In many environments, a large amount of data can be or has been collected which records experience over time within the environment. For example, a healthcare environment may record clinical data, diagnoses and treatment regimens for a large number of patients, as well as outcomes. A business environment may record customer information such as who they are and what they do, and their browsing and purchasing histories. A computer security environment may record a large number of software code examples that have been found to be malicious. A financial asset trading environment may record historical price trends and related statistics about numerous financial assets (e.g., securities, indices, currencies) over a long period of time. Despite the large quantities of such data, or perhaps because of it, deriving useful knowledge from such data stores can be a daunting task.
The process of extracting patterns from such data sets is known as data mining. Many techniques have been applied to the problem, but the present discussion concerns a class of techniques known as genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms have been applied to all of the above-mentioned environments.
The basic elements of an evolutionary algorithm are an environment, a model for a genotype (referred to herein as an "individual"), a fitness function, and a procreation function. An environment may be a model of any problem statement. An individual may be defined by a set of rules governing its behavior within the environment. A rule may be a list of conditions followed by an action to be performed in the environment. A fitness function may be defined by the degree to which an evolving ruleset is successfully negotiating the environment. A fitness function is thus used for evaluating the fitness of each individual in the environment. A procreation function generates new individuals by mixing rules with the fittest of the parent individuals. In each generation, a new population of individuals is created.
At the start of the evolutionary process, individuals constituting the initial population are created randomly, by putting together the building blocks, or alphabets, that form an individual. In genetic programming, the alphabets are a set of conditions and actions making up rules governing the behavior of the individual within the environment. Once a population is established, the rules of each individual are run over a common set of training data, and the performance of each individual is evaluated using the fitness function. Individuals with the highest fitness are then used to create the next generation in a process called procreation, and individuals with the lowest fitness may be removed from the candidate pool. Through procreation, rules of parent individuals are mixed, and sometimes mutated (i.e., a random change is made in a rule) to create a new ruleset. This new ruleset is then assigned to a child individual that will be a member of the new generation. In some incarnations, known as elitist methods, the fittest members of the previous generation, called elitists, are also preserved into the next generation.
Logic-based rulesets may determine which rules may contribute to the output of the individual based on satisfying the conditions of the rule. When a rule includes multiple conditions, each and every condition may need to be satisfied for the rule to fire, and only fired rules contribute to the individual's output. Thus a binary decision is made with respect to each condition. No partial credit is given for the data being close to satisfying a condition, and rules having conditions for which the data is very far away from satisfying the condition has no opportunity to contribute a lack of confidence for predicting membership in the class.
In addition, some decisions are not amenable to being made on the basis of hard thresholds generated by a ruleset.

Distributed rule-based probabilistic time-series classifier

Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation


A keyboard saddle which sits on a user's legs while the user is using a keyboard, and which comfortably and reliably holds the keyboard in place while it is being used. The keyboard saddle includes a pillow-like container formed of a material that is essentially non-slippery when placed on the user's legs or clothing and which is filled with a stuffing material which has sufficient weight to cause the pillow-like container to assume a weighted, malleable character so that it will conform to the user's legs when placed thereon. Hook and loop fasteners are secured directly to the top of the pillow-like container so that the keyboard can be selectively and easily attached or detached therefrom.

For many years personal computer input devices such as keyboards, game-pads and mice have been connected via cable to the functional components of the computer. This configuration provides the computer user with substantial flexibility in locating such devices and thereby makes data entry more comfortable and efficient. Moreover, in recent years, corresponding to an increased use of wireless technology in the computer industry, input devices are frequently physically detached from the rest of the computer altogether with an infared data connector, allowing the user substantially more leeway in choosing an area in which to operate the computer.
The most common problem associated with this detached design is that the preferred areas of operation often do not provide adequate structural support for input devices. This is also a problem familiar to laptop users who commonly use their laptops outside of the office. Consequently, such users are often forced to operate keyboards, mice, game-pads and notebook computers directly on their laps. When doing so, they invariably must use one hand to hold the device steady and keep it from sliding around. This leaves only a single hand free for data input--clearly an inefficient and unnecessarily burdensome exercise.
Wireless input devices pose an additional problem. In order for such a device to communicate with its computer (or other data processor), its transmitter must be positioned properly so that the communication signal is not blocked. That is, when a keyboard is operated from a person's lap, that person must make an extra effort to keep the transmitter unobstructed and pointed in the right direction. Considering the ever-increasing use of both laptops and wireless input devices in businesses and homes, a more stable implementation is warranted.


A novel type of dye systems comprises a selection of 10H-indolo[1,2-a]indole compounds (henceforth abbreviated as IO compounds) and (5H,7H)-indolo[1,2-a]quinoline compounds (henceforth abbreviated as IQ compounds) showing a solvatochromic effect and exhibiting strong fluorescence in a variety of materials such as polypropylene, polyethylene, oils, various solvents, emulsions. Also disclosed are various methods how the IO/IQ compounds can be administered, especially how they can be produced and administered in situ from a precursor, responding to external stimuli such as enzyme activity, temperature and so forth. The response of a precursor to external stimuli can also be used to determine the presence or absence of such stimuli.

Dyes are compounds used to add color or fluorescence to any kind of material or matrix, e.g. textiles, paper, plastics, biological molecules, cellular structures and so forth. To be suitable for a given application a dye not only needs to have certain chromophoric properties but has also to interact with the matrix in a certain manner. One example is the hematoxylin-eosin stain in histology. This staining method takes advantage of the different staining properties of hematoxylin and eosin towards cellular structures. Hematoxylin stains mainly the cell nuclei blue, whereas eosin stains mainly the cytoplasmic proteins red.
Another important property of dyes is that feasible methods must be present to apply the dye to the matrix. An example is the application of vat dyes to fabrics. Vat dyes are a class of water insoluble dyes that can be made soluble by chemical reduction. Fabric is then immersed in a solution of the reduced form, which is then oxidized in the fabric back to the insoluble dye. Thanks to this application method vat dyes are very color fast. The reduced form of a vat dye is a dye precursor that is transformed into the dye upon a given stimulus at a desired location. In such a case the type of stimulus is not of primary concern as long as it does not have any negative side effects on the dyeing process. However, the formation of the dye from the dye precursor through an external stimulus can also be used to specifically detect said external stimulus. In this case a dye precursor functions as an indicator and the type of stimulus transforming the dye precursor into the dye is of primary interest. We will use the term dye precursor as a general term and the term dye indicator for all kinds of dye precursors when the detection of the said stimulus is of primary interest. Transformation of the precursor typically involves the chemical removal or modification of a labile group ("LG") of the precursor in a process mediated by the experience of said stimulus. Such stimuli typically include temperature, light (photo-labile or photochromic indicators), electric field (electrochromic indicators), pressure (piezoelectric indicators), ion concentration (e.g. pH indicators) and biochemical reactivity (e.g. enzyme indicators).
Fluorogenic enzyme indicators based on resorufin, fluorescein or umbelliferone derivatives are well known in the art. Although umbelliferone indicators are most widely used, they show various disadvantages. For example, umbelliferones are blue fluorescent under UV light. This is often undesirable because most media exhibit themselves a natural blue fluorescent background. Accordingly, an emission shifted to green, yellow or red would offer an advantage over umbelliferone indicators.
Because umbelliferone (pKa 7.8) only shows significant fluorescence in the deprotonated state, reading of assays only works satisfactorily at alkaline pH, thus limiting the use of these indicators.
Moreover, some indicators, especially ester type indicators (e.g. acetate, nonanoate, inositol phosphate) of umbelliferone and also fluorescein and resorufin are not very stable in aqueous solutions, so that most assays have to be carried out in a relatively short time frame. More stable indicators would also allow performing assays that need longer incubation times, such as enrichment broths. Also, in certain media fluorescence detection might be difficult due to turbid or quenching components in the media. A method for separating the signal from the interfering media would clearly improve the use of such assays.
WO 2010/128120, which was published on 11 Nov. 2010, i.e. after the priority date claimed by the present application, discloses 10H-Indolo[1,2-a]indole staining of bacterial colonies, e.g. in Agar, but not in a low-polarity host with a room-temperature dielectric constant ∈≦10.0.
The publication by Crawford L. A. et al., "Isoindolo[2,1-a]indol-6-one—a new pyrolytic synthesis and some unexpected chemical properties", Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, Royal Society of Chemistry, GB, Vol 6, (2008 Jan. 1), pp. 2334-2339, discloses another class of compound, namely iso-indoloindoles. Merely Compound 13 is an indoloindole, but it was only detected as minor product or impurity, and no indications whatsoever are given about its color properties or suitability as a dye.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Applications of Indoloindole and Indoloquinoline dyes


There is read information on a system indicative of how to reach at least one pre-configured, pre-designated application in the system. The information is used to build at least one software button in at least one group of software buttons that allows launching of the pre-configured, pre-designated application.

A product such as Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (™) (offered by Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Wash. 98052-6399, USA, http://www.microsoft.com) allows software vendors to write applications that can be installed to launch from a shortcut within Media Center. Media Center supports independent software vendor (ISV) software shortcuts to be installed under only a single subcategory called "More Programs." This makes difficult the navigation of the installed Media Center applications by shortcut because the shortcuts are grouped by title and by date.
Microsoft Corporation suggests that software vendors install their Media Center applications to launch within the "More Programs" area of the Media Center user interface. As one shortcoming, following the suggestion results in having large numbers of shortcuts under the "More Programs" area, which makes difficult searching for particular applications or features since one lacks exact identification of the choices for a particular class of features.
Some application vendors have links to other parts of their program on the user interface launched when the user clicks the "More Programs" shortcut. One design hard codes the shortcuts on the Media Center application page.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


An apparatus for controlling the rotational speed of a motor. The apparatus comprises a subtracter for subtrating a speed error signal corresponding to a frequency signal generated from a frequency generator from a period deviation signal between the frequency signal and a predetermined reference frequency signal to produce a primarily compensated speed error signal; a first adder for adding the primarily compensated signal and the period deviation signal to produce an added signal; a delay circuit for delaying the output signal of the first adder, wherein the delay circuit comprises a first to an Nth delay cells, wherein each of the delay cells latches the output signal of the first adder entering the first delay cell and serially shifts the latched signal in each of the delay cells toward the Nth delay cell by one signal at a time whenever the output of the first adder is supplied to the delay circuit and wherein the output of the delay circuit is supplied to the subtracter and to the first adder; a summation circuit for summing up all of the signals being shifted from the respective delay cells to produce a sum period deviation signal; an averaging circuit for averaging the sum period deviation signal to produce an averaged deviation signal; and second adder for adding the primarily compensated signal and the averaged deviation signal to produce the motor speed control signal with a compensated period deviation. A method is also provided for controlling the speed of the motor.

In general, a VCR is provided with a drum motor to rotate the rotary head drum, a capstan motor to transfer a video tape and a servo circuit for controlling the rotational speed of these motors.
In a typical prior art servo system such as the one illustrated in FIG. 1, a frequency generator 4 is adapted to periodically generate a frequency signal FG corresponding to the rotational speed of the motor 2 each time the motor is rotated by a predetermined angle (for example, 30.degree.). The frequency signal from the frequency generator 4 is supplied to a circuit 12 for detecting the speed error of the motor 2 by comparing the frequency signal with a predetermined reference frequency or speed signal to produce a speed error signal. The speed error signal is provided to a PID (Proportional Integration Differential) controller 16 and then to an amplifier 18 for driving the motor. The output of the amplifier 18 is used as a speed control signal and the speed of the motor is thereby controlled.
However, since most frequency generators have certain degrees of manufacturing tolerance, a deviation between the reference signal and the periodic frequency signals generated by the frequency generator may cause the production of a speed error signal in spite of a constant rotational speed of the motor. Consequently, it is rather difficult to precisely control the rotational speed of a motor.
In recent years, a repetitive learning servo system for controlling the rotational speed of the motor has been proposed. One of such systems is described in an article by Makoto Gotou, et. al., entitled Development of Multirate Sampling Repetitive Learning Servo System and its Application to a Compact Camcorder, IEEE/RSJ International Workshop on Intelligent Robots and Systems IROS '91, Nov. 3-5, 1991, Osaka, Japan, IEEE Cat. No. 91TH0375-6.
This repetitive learning servo system compensates repetitively the period deviation of the periodic frequency signals to make it zero after the lapse of a certain period. The compensated signal may be used as a speed control signal comparable to the speed control signal which is employed in the typical system shown in FIG. 1.
However, control through the use of the repetitive learning servo system may entail a worse result than that of the traditional servo system in certain situations. For instance, in the event that the rotational speed of the motor is changed by certain external factors so that it is constantly maintained for a long time at the state of the changed speed, the repetitive learning servo system will fail to correctly control the rotational speed of the motor because the average period deviations would become zero at the changed speed.

Apparatus and method for controlling the rotational speed of a motor


Systems and methods are provided for resource access control in computer systems. Our approach includes new techniques for composing and authenticating principals in an access control system. Our principals may comprise information that identifies the role of the user of a computer system, the mechanism by which the user was authenticated, and program execution history. Thus, when a principal makes a request, access control determinations can be made based on the principal's identity. Access control lists may provide patterns that are used to recognize principals, thereby ensuring a level of security without enumerating precise identifiers for all of the possible principles that may request a particular resource.

Access control is an important aspect of secure computing. In general, access control involves deciding whether to permit access to a resource. The entity that requests access is referred to as a principal. A resource may be anything that can be accessed from a computer: data, a database, objects, hardware, programs, and so on. Often, the access determination may go beyond simply granting or denying access by determining a form of access. Thus access may be restricted in various ways, so that some principals are granted only limited access.
The access permission logic that determines whether to grant access, and what form of access to grant to a particular principal is sometimes referred to as a "reference monitor." The reference monitor is typically a trusted piece of code that makes all access decisions. The reference monitor is presented with the identity of a principal making a request, the identity of a resource, and the specific form of access desired. The reference monitor then makes the access control decision by deciding whether to accept the proffered identity, and by consulting access control information associated with the resource.
Present access control systems use an arrangement whereby each human user, after login, is identified by a small identifier. Such an identifier may be a Services Set Identifier (SSID) in WINDOWS®, or a User Identifier (User ID) in UNIX-based systems. The access control data for an operation is an access control list kept with a resource, and takes the form of a set whose members are either principals or identifiers for groups. A group, in turn, is a set whose members are either principals or identifiers for further groups. Access is permitted or denied based on the presence of the proffered principal in the closure of the access control list and its constituent groups.
Thus, a user directs an automated process, such as MICROSOFT WORD®; to access a resource, such as a document. The automated process makes such a request by passing the small identifier associated with the user to the reference monitor. Upon receiving the access request from an automated process initiated by a user, the reference monitor will consult the access control list associated with the resource. It will determine if the requesting user is identified. If the user's small identifier can be found on the list—either directly or as part of a group—then the automated process initiated by the user may be allowed to access the requested resource.
The above described access control design unfortunately has many limitations and drawbacks. These have become increasingly critical in recent years as the diversity of the programs installed in computer systems, and the diversity of attacks on computer systems, have increased.
For example, the notion that the principal is identified solely with a logged-in user doesn't allow for expression of important real-world security situations. The human user is not really the entity making an access request. The request is being made by a program. Present designs assume that every program executing in a user's session is acting on the user's behalf and with the user's full trust. That might have been true historically, but it is certainly not true today. For example, while modern computer users most likely approve when MICROSOFT WORD® performs operations on resources that are WORD® documents, but would disapprove if some ad-ware program was doing so. Similarly, the modern user might reasonably object if WORD® was spontaneously accessing the user's QUICKEN® database.
A second example of the limitations and drawbacks of the above-described access control systems stems from the fact that the classical notion of "logged-in" is inflexible. It is all or nothing, and implies that all mechanisms for authenticating a user are equally trusted. Equivalently, it requires that all authentication mechanisms are part of the trusted computing base. In reality, there may be various routes for logging into a computer system, and not all are created equal. Users who log in via a less secure path may not be trusted to access resources to which they might otherwise be entitled.
In view of these and other deficiencies in present access control technologies, the invention herein provides improved systems and methods for making access determinations in computer systems.

Systems and methods for pattern matching on principal names to control access to computing resources


An apparatus and method for signal optimization is disclosed. This disclosure relates to improved device and method for improving performance and reducing cosite interference for an antenna array. More particularly, this description relates to a device and method for equalizing signals for communication receivers, and more particularly, to a device and method for matrixed adaptive equalizing configured to a plurality of antennas for receiving one or more signals each designated for one of a plurality of receivers.

Operational requirements for increased communication needs are currently met by adding "stovepipe" circuits. To increase bandwidth for increasing communication needs are generally met by merely adding independent apertures, each aperture including an antenna configured to one receiver. One aperture works independently from another. Accordingly, with the increase in the number of these independent apertures, each aperture transmitting and receiving signals independently, cosite interference from one or more aperture to another is increased. The cosite interference is further aggravated where the physical proximities of the independent antennas are close together. Accordingly, device and method for improving performance and reducing cosite interference are desirable.

Device and method for matrixed adaptive equalizing for communication receivers configured to an antenna array


A process for a combustion of sulfur with an oxygen-containing gas to produce sulfur dioxide. The process includes introducing the sulfur and the oxygen-containing gas to a furnace. The sulfur is evaporated and subsequently a portion of the sulfur is oxidized to sulfur dioxide under sub-stoichiometric conditions in a first portion of the furnace. The sulfur dioxide formed in the first furnace portion is introduced together with any unoxidized sulfur to a second portion of the furnace which is disposed adjacent to the first furnace portion. The sulfur dioxide and unoxidized sulfur are subjected to post-combustion with the oxygen-containing gas in an inlet of a downstream waste heat boiler.

Sulfur dioxide may be used for producing sulfuric acid or liquid sulfur trioxide and generally is produced by calcining/smelting sulfur-containing ores or by combustion of elementary sulfur. The combustion generally is effected with atmospheric air, but air enriched with oxygen or even pure oxygen are used as well. For cost reasons, however, the use of pure oxygen for the combustion of sulfur mostly may not be expedient. Nowadays, sulfur itself is used almost exclusively in liquid form and in general is supplied as a liquid and stored temporarily. The liquid sulfur is supplied to the combustion furnace with temperatures of 140 to 150° C., at which its viscosity is low enough to provide for injection via nozzles. In order to optimize the combustion, the liquid sulfur is atomized in the furnace and is thoroughly mixed with the combustion air.
The combustion of sulfur requires equal molar quantities of sulfur and oxygen. With ambient air, which contains 20.95 vol-% of O2, an SO2 gas with a maximum of 20.5 vol-% of SO2 can theoretically be obtained with a stoichiometric combustion of sulfur. To ensure a complete combustion of sulfur, an excess of air is usually supplied. Problems resulting from unburnt sulfur, which is condensed and deposited in colder parts of the plant, thus can be avoided. The hyperstoichiometric combustion is described for instance in Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, 5th edition, 1994, vol. A25, p. 574 f. The combustion is effected in a horizontally arranged cylindrical furnace, which has a refractory lining and on its end face includes a centrally arranged system of burners. The liquid sulfur is atomized and mixed with the combustion air and burns at temperatures of 600 to 1,600° C. in dependence on the desired sulfur dioxide concentration. Subsequent to the sulfur furnace, a waste heat boiler is provided, before the gas is supplied to a sulfuric acid contact plant. The converter of the contact plant generally employs initial concentrations of sulfur dioxide of 10 to 12 vol-%, which must possibly be adjusted by means of further equipment.
EP 0 762 990 B1 also describes the hyperstoichiometric combustion of sulfur.
A method and an apparatus for the combustion of liquid sulfur into sulfur dioxide in a burner furnace is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,879,530. The liquid sulfur and the primary combustion-supporting air are injected concurrently in a first part of the combustion furnace. A secondary combustion-supporting gas is introduced further downstream of the furnace in the combustion chamber prior to the outlet of the burned gases containing sulfur dioxide into an adjoining boiler.
At combustion temperatures above 1,100° C., the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) increases strongly, even if less free oxygen is available for the formation of nitrogen oxides due to the higher sulfur dioxide concentration. Only above a sulfur dioxide concentration of 18 vol-% does the formation of NOx decrease again due to the lack of oxygen. The formation of nitrogen oxides therefore limits the preheating of the combustion gases in conventional sulfur combustion systems, as the combustion temperature increases. This impairs the economy of the plants.
For producing gases with high sulfur dioxide concentrations and very low NOx content, a two-stage plant is proposed as described in DE 1 948 754, in which the elementary sulfur is first burnt under substoichiometric conditions (oxygen debt). Upon passing through a heat exchanger, the produced gases containing sulfur dioxide and sulfur are then subjected to post-combustion with oxygen-containing gases in a further apparatus at about 1000° C. In terms of plant construction, however, this multistage installation is quite complex and hence expensive.

Process and apparatus for the combustion of sulfur


A front-haul transport network and a data transmission method, the front-haul transport network including: an access type front-haul transport node (FTN-ACC), used for connecting to a remote radio unit (RRU); an aggregate type front-haul transport node (FTN-AGG), one end of which is connected to the FTN-ACC and the other end of which is connected to baseband processing units (BBUs); at least two transmission channels having different transmission delays are established between the FTN-ACC and the FTN-AGG, the FTN-ACC and/or the FTN-AGG being specifically used for selecting a corresponding transmission channel for carrying out transmission according to time delay requirements for data.

The FTN is a transport network between a remote radio unit (RRU) and a base band unit (BBU). A front end of the FTN is connected to the RRU, and a back end of the FTN is connected to a BBU pool consisted of multiple BBUs.
In the related art, the FTN is connected to the RRU and the BBU pool in the following several ways.
In a first way, a manner of an optical fiber direct connection is used. Each RRU and the BBU pool are connected by using a pair of optical fibers. In this case, the number of pairs of the optical fibers used in the FTN is large, and an effective utilization rate of a single pair of the optical fibers is low.
In a second way, a manner of a color optical fiber direct connection is used. Multiple RRUs share a pair of optical fibers that can transmit different wavelengths, and are connected to the BBU pool. The manner of color optical fiber direct connection requires each base station to allocate different wavelengths, which makes it difficult to satisfy the transmission requirements of certain services with high transmission delay requirements.
In a third way, a scheme to provide a front-haul transport bearer based on an existing transport network, such as an optical transport network (OTN) or a packet transport network (PTN) is used. At present, the OTN or PTN node has a processing delay above 50 us, but a desired end-to-end delay of the most sensitive service in the FTN is less than 100 us. Apparently, it is difficult to satisfy such low delay requirements in multi-hop networking.
Therefore, providing an FTN that can satisfy the transmission delay requirement and reduce cost of fault location and/or maintenance is a problem to be solved in the related art.

Front-haul transport network, data transmission method, apparatus and computer storage medium

CHINA MOBILE COMMUNICATION CO., LTD RESEARCH INSTITUTE

CHINA MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP CO., LTD.


A portable surgical workstation for implant formation comprising a base with a central planar section. The central planar section has a plurality of tracks and a throughgoing slot with a recessed stepped surrounding surface formed on a bottom surface of the central planar section. A vise assembly mounted to the base comprises a fixed jaw member secured to the base, a traveling jaw member moveably mounted to the base and a fixed drive housing mounted to the base. The traveling jaw member has a plurality of rail members adapted to be slidably mounted in the central planar section tracks. The fixed drive housing has a threaded longitudinal bore which receives a threaded drive shaft, one end of the drive shaft being secured in the traveling jaw member to transport the traveling jaw members.

1. Field of Invention
The present invention is generally directed toward an implant workstation and is more specifically directed toward a surgical workstation for producing an allograft cartilage implant plug having a cartilage face and bone body.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Articular cartilage injury and degeneration present medical problems to the general population which are constantly addressed by orthopedic surgeons. Every year in the United States, over 500,000 arthroplastic or joint repair procedures are performed. These include approximately 125,000 total hip and 150,000 total knee arthroplastics and over 41,000 open arthroscopic procedures to repair cartilaginous defects of the knee.
In the knee joint, the articular cartilage tissue forms a lining which faces the joint cavity on one side and is linked to the subchondral bone plate by a narrow layer of calcified cartilage tissue on the other. Articular cartilage (hyaline cartilage) consists primarily of extracellular matrix with a sparse population of chondrocytes distributed throughout the tissue. Articular cartilage is composed of chondrocytes, type II collagen fibril meshwork, proteoglycans and water. Active chondrocytes are unique in that they have a relatively low turnover rate and are sparsely distributed within the surrounding matrix. The collagens give the tissue its form and tensile strength and the interaction of proteoglycans with water give the tissue its stiffness to compression, resilience and durability. The hyaline cartilage provides a low friction bearing surface over the bony parts of the joint. If the cartilage lining becomes worn or damaged resulting in lesions, joint movement may be painful or severely restricted. Whereas damaged bone typically can regenerate successfully, hyaline cartilage regeneration is quite limited because of it's limited regenerative and reparative abilities.
Articular cartilage lesions generally do not heal, or heal only partially under certain biological conditions due to the lack of vascularity. The limited reparative capabilities of hyaline cartilage usually results in the generation of repair tissue that lacks the structure and biomechanical properties of normal cartilage. Generally, the healing of the defect results in a fibrocartilaginous repair tissue that lacks the structure and biomedical properties of hyaline cartilage and degrades over the course of time. Articular cartilage lesions are frequently associated with disability and with symptoms such as joint pain, locking phenomena and reduced or disturbed function. These lesions are difficult to treat because of the distinctive structure and function of hyaline cartilage. Such lesions are believed to progress to severe forms of osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability and impairment in middle-aged and older individuals, entailing significant economic, social and psychological costs. Each year, osteoarthritis accounts for as many as 39 million physician visits and more than 500,000 hospitalizations. By the year 2020, arthritis is expected to affect almost 60 million persons in the United States and to limit the activity of 11.6 million persons.
There are many current therapeutic methods being used. None of these therapies has resulted in the successful regeneration of hyaline-like tissue that withstands normal joint loading and activity over prolonged periods. Currently, the techniques most widely utilized clinically for cartilage defects and degeneration are not articular cartilage substitution procedures, but rather lavage, arthroscopic debridement, and repair stimulation. The direct transplantation of cells or tissue into a defect and the replacement of the defect with biologic or synthetic substitutions presently accounts for only a small percentage of surgical interventions. The optimum surgical goal is to replace the defects with cartilage-like substitutes so as to provide pain relief, reduce effusions and inflammation, restore function, reduce disability and postpone or alleviate the need for prosthetic replacement.
Lavage and arthroscopic debridement involve irrigation of the joint with solutions of sodium chloride, Ringer or Ringer and lactate. The temporary pain relief is believed to result from removing degenerative cartilage debris, proteolytic enzymes and inflammatory mediators. These techniques provide temporary pain relief, but have little or no potential for further healing.
Repair stimulation is conducted by means of drilling, abrasion arthroplasty or microfracture. Penetration into the subchondral bone induces bleeding and fibrin clot formation which promotes initial repair, however, the tissue formed is fibrous in nature and not durable. Pain relief is temporary as the tissue exhibits degeneration, loss of resilience, stiffness and wear characteristics over time.
Transplantation of cells grown in culture provides another method of introducing a new cell population into chondral and osteochondral defects. Carticel® is a commercial process to culture a patient's own cartilage cells for use in the repair of cartilage defects in the femoral condyle marketed by Genzyme Biosurgery in the United States and Europe. The procedure uses arthroscopy to take a biopsy from a healthy, less loaded area of articular cartilage. Enzymatic digestion of the harvested tissue releases the cells that are sent to a laboratory where they are grown for a period ranging from 2-5 weeks. Once cultivated, the cells are injected during a more open and extensive knee procedure into areas of defective cartilage where it is hoped that they will facilitate the repair of damaged tissue. An autologous periosteal flap with cambium layer is sutured around the defect to seal the transplanted cells in place and act as a mechanical barrier. Fibrin glue is used to seal the edges of the flap. This technique preserves the subchondral bone plate and has reported a high success rate. Proponents of this procedure report that it produces satisfactory results, including the ability to return to demanding physical activities, in more than 90% of patients and that biopsy specimens of the tissue in the graft sites show hyaline-like cartilage repair. More work is needed to assess the function and durability of the new tissue and determine whether it improves joint function and delays or prevents joint degeneration. As with the perichondrial graft, patient/donor age may compromise the success of this procedure as chondrocyte population decreases with increasing age. Disadvantages to this procedure include the need for two separate surgical procedures, potential damage to surrounding cartilage when the periosteal patch is sutured in place, the requirement of demanding microsurgical techniques, and the expensive cost of the procedure which is currently not covered by insurance.
Osteochondral transplantation or mosaicplasty involves excising all injured or unstable tissue from the articular defect and creating cylindrical holes in the base of the defect and underlying bone. These holes are filled with autologous cylindrical plugs of healthy cartilage and bone in a mosaic fashion. The osteochondral plugs are harvested from a lower weight-bearing area of lesser importance in the same joint. Reports of results of osteochondral plug autografts in a small numbers of patients indicate that they decrease pain and improve joint function, however, long-term results have not been reported. Factors that can compromise the results include donor site morbidity, effects of joint incongruity on the opposing surface of the donor site, damage to the chondrocytes at the articular margins of the donor and recipient sites during preparation and implantation, and collapse or settling of the graft over time. The limited availability of sites for harvest of osteochondral autografts restricts the use of this approach to treatment of relatively small articular defects and the healing of the chondral portion of the autograft to the adjacent articular cartilage remains a concern.
Transplantation of large allografts of bone and overlying articular cartilage is another treatment option that involves a greater area than is suitable for autologous cylindrical plugs, as well as for a non-contained defect. The advantages of osteochondral allografts are the potential to restore the anatomic contour of the joint, lack of morbidity related to graft harvesting, greater availability than autografts and the ability to prepare allografts in any size to reconstruct large defects. Clinical experience with fresh and frozen osteochondral allografts shows that these grafts can decrease joint pain, and that the osseous portion of an allograft can heal to the host bone and the chondral portion can function as an articular surface. Drawbacks associated with this methodology in the clinical situation include the scarcity of fresh donor material and problems connected with the handling and storage of frozen tissue. Fresh allografts carry the risk of immune response or disease transmission. Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) has preserved fresh allografts in a media that maintains a cell viability of around 50% at 35 days for use as implants. In the current technology frozen allografts lack cell viability and have shown a decreased amount of proteoglycan content, however, they are commonly used for large defects.
A number of United States patents have been specifically directed towards the manufacture of plugs or cores which are implanted into a cartilage defect. U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,591 issued Jul. 15, 2003 describes a precut bone plug for use in allograft core transplantation surgery which has a tissue bank harvest the graft using a coring trephine with teeth having an inner diameter between 0.5 mm to 0.1 to create a bone core with a hyaline cartilage layer in approximately 7.9 mm, 9.9 mm, 11.9 mm diameters. Alternatively a donor harvester having a cutter tube with a straight cutting edge windows and depth markings with a torque handle on the proximal end may be used to obtain an allograft core as is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,919,196 issued Jul. 6, 1999. U.S. Pat. No. 6,592,588 issued Jul. 15, 2003 discloses instruments for cutting a bone core by cutting or punching having collared pins disposed within the harvester for removal of the harvester cores.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,192 issued Jan. 21, 1986 shows a multi-plate device with fixed pins and movable pins for cutting a portion of a patella during knee surgery. U.S. Pat. No. 5,092,572 discloses an allograft vise with a "V" shaped vise face and moveable vise plates. The vise is affixed to a table and can be provided with spherical vise plates having a sharp tripod support for a femur.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,488,033 and 6,852,114 (a divisional application of the '033 patent) issued respectively Dec. 3, 2002 and Feb. 8, 2005 are directed toward an osteochondral transplant workstation for cutting a core out of an allograft bone held in an adjustable vise with a lubricated rotary cutting bit. The core is removed from the bit, held in a specially designed set of pliers, and cut to size by a saw blade to fit into a blind bore which has been oriented and drilled into the patient's arthritic defect area. This workstation while an improvement over existing procedure is cumbersome to use and requires experience and training use.
The present invention was designed to overcome prior art implant workstations and provide a simple to use portable core preparation workstation which allows a surgeon to custom cut the allograft core so that it snugly fits in the particular defect area of the patient being operated on.


A mullite ceramic composition comprises mullite powder as a raw material; at least one of a rare earth element compound and an alkaline earth element compound; and at least one of a Group 6B vanadium compound, niobium compound and a tantalum compound, and the mixture is fired.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mullite ceramic composition, and more particularly, to a mullite ceramic composition suitable for use as a material for electronic parts, such as a circuit board or a ceramic package for a semiconductor device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current requirements for a high signal propagation speed in electronic parts, high-density packaging, and low cost, mean that a package and a substrate material which form the electronic parts must have a low dielectric constant, a thermal expansion coefficient close to that of a semiconductor element, a high mechanical strength, a high thermal conductivity, and a low production cost.
To satisfy these requirements ceramics such as an aluminum nitride ceramic, a silicon carbide ceramic, a low-temperature-fireable ceramic and a mullite ceramic have been developed.
The mullite ceramic is fired (or sintered) by adding in solid solution an alkaline earth element compound such as magnesium oxide to mullite powder as a sintering aid, but in a flattering process using a reburning step to straighten a bent fired ceramic, a problems arises in that flecks or spots are generated on the surface of or within the ceramic.
Particularly, in a white mullite ceramic, the generation of flecks greatly deteriorates the value thereof as a commercial product, and even if a coloring agent is added to the mullite ceramic, inhomogeneity of color occurs due to the generated flecks.
The present inventors have developed a mullite ceramic composition using a rare earth element compound such as yttrium oxide as a substitute for the alkaline earth element compound, as a sintering aid, to improve the mechanical strength of the above-mentioned conventional mullite ceramic, as disclosed in JP-A-62-140444.
Nevertheless, although this mullite ceramic has a high mechanical strength (flexural strength) flecks are still generated on the surface of or within the ceramic.
Further, to obtain a strong brazing adhesion to a metallized layer formed on a mullite ceramic surface, a large amount of the rare earth element compound is required, but this inclusion of a large amount of the rare earth in the compound causes flecks to be generated in a firing step before the flattering process. Further, even if the amount of rare earth contained is reduced, although flecks are not generated in the first firing step, such flecks are generated in the flattering step using a second firing process.
Further, flecks are easily generated when the firing temperature is relatively low, and therefore, it is difficult to set the most suitable firing conditions.
Furthermore, even if a coloring agent is added to the ceramic, the same problem arises, i.e., inhomogeneity of color caused by the flecks.


Then circuit includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC); and one or more switched capacitor amplifier stages connected together in series with a first switched capacitor amplifier stage for receiving the analog input signal, and a last switched capacitor amplifier stage connected to the ADC. Moreover, each of the plurality of switched capacitor amplifier stages preferably has a selectable gain to permit control of an overall gain of the analog input signal upstream of the ADC. In addition, the first stage may also serve as a sample and hold circuit for the ADC. In one embodiment, the circuit may comprise an integrated circuit substrate on which the ADC and the plurality of switched capacitor amplifiers are formed so that the analog-to-digital converter is a monolithic integrated circuit. The circuit may also control the gain of each of the plurality of switched capacitor amplifier stages based upon a digital gain control word. A clock is preferably operatively connected to the ADC and the plurality of switched capacitor amplifier stages. Accordingly, gain control word changes cause relatively rapid changes in the overall gain.

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are widely used to process electrical signals in many electronic applications. An integrated circuit ADC typically accepts an analog input voltage signal and converts the signal into a digital form as the output. A modern digital communication system, such as for a cellular telephone base station, for example, may often require an ADC with a high resolution of greater than 12 bits, a bandwidth greater than 200 MHz, and low power consumption and low distortion for improved overall system performance.
A pipelined ADC includes a series of subconverter stages with each stage including a flash analog-to-digital converter, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and an interstage amplifier connecting the DAC to an adjacent stage. The last stage typically includes only a flash ADC. A multi-step ADC may include one or more similar subconverter stages which are sequentially reused in generating the digital output signal.
The analog signal which is input to an ADC may have different ranges. For example, for communications applications, the analog input signal may cover only a portion of the range of the ADC. In other words, a large portion of the available resolution of the ADC may be wasted. To address such a shortcoming, a prior art circuit 10 as shown in FIG. 1 may be used which includes an integrated circuit programmable gain amplifier (PGA) 11 connected to the input of an ADC chip 12 to thereby control the level of the input analog signal for full resolution by the ADC. As shown, the PGA 11 is also typically a separate integrated circuit from the integrated circuit ADC 12. Accordingly, the overall circuit 10 is relatively large. U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,311 to Buhler et al. also discloses a similar circuit including a portion which comprises an ADC with an optional PGA for adjusting the input level to the ADC.
The gain of a typical PGA 11 as used in the illustrated prior art circuit 10 is either voltage-controlled, or controlled by a digital word including gain setting bits. Of course, such a typical PGA 11 has a limited gain-bandwidth product. Accordingly, as shown in the plots 14, 16 of FIGS. 2 and 3, respectively, the prior art circuit 10 may have a relatively slow response time to change the gain setting. The gain change may be slow as compared to the conversion cycle time of the ADC 12. In other words, the gain cannot be quickly changed, and accuracy is therefore sacrificed.

Processor controlled analog-to-digital converter circuit


The solid-state imaging device of the present invention includes: a floating diffusion capacity unit which is formed on a semiconductor substrate, and is operable to hold signal charges derived from incident light; an amplifier which is operable to convert the signal charges held in the floating diffusion capacity unit into a voltage; the first wire which connects the floating diffusion capacity unit to an input of the amplifier; and a second wire which is made of the same material as the first wire, formed in the same layer as the first wire, arranged around the first wire at least along long sides of the first wire, and electrically insulated from the first wire.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solid-state imaging device, and more particularly to a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) solid-state imaging device, a signal charge detection device, and a camera.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there has been increasing demand for solid-state imaging devices as imaging devices in digital still cameras, digital video cameras, and the like. Further, portable terminal devices represented by a portable telephone are required to have a camera function, so that the demand for the solid-state imaging device has also been growing for imaging devices in such portable terminal devices. Furthermore, with the aim of realizing high-resolution image, the number of pixels in the solid-state imaging device tends to be increased year by year. Still further, with the requirement for high sensitivity of the digital still cameras, the digital video cameras, the portable terminal devices, and the like, high sensitivity and high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio of the solid-state imaging device have been also required.
The conventional solid-state imaging device is described herein below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 3. Firstly, a schematic structure of the conventional solid-state imaging device is described. FIG. 1 is a schematic plane view showing a structure of the conventional CCD solid-state imaging device. As shown in FIG. 1, the CCD solid-state imaging device has a semiconductor substrate 101. On the semiconductor substrate 101 are formed: a plurality of light receiving units 102 which are arranged two-dimensionally; vertical transfer units (vertical CCDs) 103 each of which is arranged along each column of the light receiving units 102 in a vertical direction; and a horizontal transfer unit (horizontal CCD) 104 which is arranged adjacent to the final row of the light receiving units 102. Each of the light receiving units 102 is a photodiode for accumulating electric charges (or simply "charges") corresponding to intensity of received light. Note that one light receiving unit 102 and a part of a vertical CCD 103 adjacent to the light receiving unit 102 form one pixel 108.
As shown by arrows of FIG. 1, the charges accumulated in each of the light receiving units 102 are read out and provided to the vertical CCD 103, and transferred in a vertical direction by the vertical CCD 103. The charges transferred by each of the vertical CCDs 103 are transferred in a horizontal direction by the horizontal CCD 104, then amplified by an amplifier 105, and eventually outputted to the outside. This is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-252179, for example.
Next, a structure of the amplifier 105 is described in detail with reference to FIG. 2. FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram showing an example of the amplifier unit 105. FIG. 2 shows an amplifier having three-stage source followers. The source follower at the first stage includes a driver transistor Tr1D and a load transistor Tr1L. The driver transistor Tr1D converts the charges transferred by the horizontal CCD 104 into a voltage. The load transistor Tr1L supplies a constant current. The source follower circuits at the second and third stages have the same structure as described for the first-stage source follower, except that an input is a voltage outputted from a prior stage.
Furthermore, the horizontal CCD 104 and the driver transistor Tr1D are described in more detail below.
FIG. 3 is an enlarged plane view showing a part enclosed by a dashed line a1 in the solid-state imaging device of FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 3, a floating diffusion region 201 of FIG. 3 is a triangle region surrounded by an output gate (OG) 202 and a reset gate (RG) 203 at the end of the horizontal CCD 104. The driver transistor Tr1D of FIG. 2 is a Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor (MOSFET) 207. A drain 207a of the driver transistor Tr1D is connected to a power voltage Vdd and a source 207c of the driver transistor Tr1D is connected to the load transistor Tr1L of FIG. 2 which is a load MOSFET and a power source of constant current. The floating diffusion region 201 and the driver transistor Tr1D at the first stage of the amplifier 105 are electrically connected to each other by the first wire 205.
The signal charges in the horizontal CCD 104 are transferred to the floating diffusion region 201 via the output gate 202. Depending on the signal charges transferred to the floating diffusion region 201, an electric potential of the first wire 205 is varied. The amplifier 105 outputs this potential as a voltage. Furthermore, the floating diffusion region 201 drains the signal charges to a reset drain (RD) 204 by a pulse applied to the reset gate 203, so that the signal charges become equivalent to the power voltage.
Moreover, the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-252179 discloses a solid-state imaging device in which a shield wire for electrically shielding the floating diffusion region is arranged between the floating diffusion region and a region which a pulse is applied to and exists at the periphery of the floating diffusion region. Thereby, a coupling capacity of the floating diffusion region and the region which a pulse is applied to and exists at the periphery of the floating diffusion region is reduced, which makes it difficult for the pulse noises to be induced from the periphery to a signal output outputted from the signal charge detection device. As a result, waveform distortion of the above signal output is reduced.

Solid-state imaging device, signal charge detection device, and camera


A bridge rectifier for an alternator comprises a first heat sink for being secured to a frame of an alternator; a second heat sink disposed on top of the first heat sink; an electrical insulator disposed between the first and second heat sinks; a first group of diodes operably secured to the first heat sink; a second group of diodes operably secured to the second heat sink; an insulating support operably secured to the second heat sink, the support including a plurality of legs adapted to be received in respective holes in the second heat sink; a plurality of screws adapted to be received axially by respective legs, the screws being adapted to expand the legs radially, thereby to lock the legs in respective holes; and a plurality of electrical connectors each being operably connected to a respective pair of diodes, each pair comprising a diode from the first group and a diode from the second group, each of the plurality of electrical connectors for being operably connected to the alternator, each of the plurality of electrical connectors being secured to the insulating support.

Bridge rectifiers for automotive-type alternators are well known in the art. An example of a bridge rectifier is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,606,000. Generally, a bridge rectifier comprises two metallic heat sinks that are electrically insulated from a each other. Each heat sink carries a plurality of semiconductor diodes such that the heat sinks form respective positive and negative direct voltage output terminals. The diodes are grouped in pairs and are connected to respective output phase windings of the alternator.

Bridge rectifier with insulating support having expandable legs