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This invention relates to remediation of environmental contamination. More particularly, the invention relates to methods for accelerating or enhancing in situ dehalogenation of nonaqueous halogenated solvents in ground water. These methods involve adding to the contaminated ground water a composition of matter that both functions as an electron donor for halorespiration processes carried out by indigenous or exogenously supplied bacteria, wherein the nonaqueous halogenated solvents are dehalogenated and degraded to innocuous compounds, and promotes mass transfer of the nonaqueous halogenated solvents from a source into the ground water where such solvents can be broken down.
For many years little care was taken in the handling of organic solvents and other materials that were used in industry and at government installations, such as military bases. Because of poor handling techniques and, occasionally, intentional dumping, many industrial sites and military bases now have contaminated areas containing relatively high concentrations of these contaminants. Chlorinated solvents, such as trichloroethylene (TCE), perchloroethylene (PCE), and other types of liquids, are common at such sites, and if not removed can infiltrate groundwater supplies, rendering the water unfit for consumption and other uses.
A variety of techniques have been used to promote the removal of such chemical contaminants, both from the soil and from the ground water. The principle method of ground water remediation currently used where dense, non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs) are involved is what is commonly referred to as “pump-and-treat” remediation. According to this method, wells are drilled into the contaminated area and contaminated ground water is pumped above the surface, where it is treated to remove the contaminants.
The limitations of the pump-and-treat method have been documented in articles such as D. M. Mackay & J. A. Cherry, Groundwater Contamination: Pump and Treat Remediation, 23 Environ. Sci. Technol. 630-636 (1989). The authors of this article concluded that pump-and-treat remediation can only be relied on to contain ground water contamination through the manipulation of hydraulic gradients within an aquifer. The reasons for the failure of the pump-and-treat method to decontaminate aquifers are rooted in the limited aqueous solubility of many DNAPLs in ground water and other processes involving contaminant desorption and diffusion. Because of the low aqueous solubility of most DNAPLs, their removal by ground water extraction requires exceptionally long periods of time.
Due to the general impracticability of the pump-and-treat method, considerable attention has been paid recently to other methods for effecting remediation. One such process is commonly referred to as enhanced solubilization. This method uses micellar surfactants to increase the effective solubility of the DNAPLs to accelerate the rate of removal. The mechanism of solubilization displayed by surfactants arises from the formation of microemulsions by the surfactants, water, and the solubilized DNAPLs. For example, Table 1 shows solubilization of PCE by various nonionic and anionic surfactants. These data indicate that even dilute surfactants can significantly increase the aqueous solubility of PCE.
TABLE 1SurfactantPCESurfactantConcentrationSolubilized (mg/l)Water0%240Nonylphenol ethoxylate and2%11,700its phosphate ester (1:1)Sodium diamyl and dioctyl4%85,000sulfosuccinates (1:1) in 500 mgCaCl2/lNonylphenol ethoxylate1%1,300
A serious drawback with the surfactant-enhanced aquifer remediation is that the vertical mobility of the solubilized DNAPLs substantially requires that an aquiclude be present to catch any solubilized contaminant that migrates vertically. Many aquifers, however, lack such an aquiclude. If the traditional surfactant-enhanced aquifer remediation method were to be used with an aquifer lacking an aquiclude, there is a significant risk that the solubilized DNAPLs will spread vertically and contaminate an increasingly large volume. Another drawback of surfactant-enhanced aquifer remediation is the need to pump high concentrations of contaminated water above ground, which results in exposure risks to workers and the environment, and the need to dispose or recycle the surfactant.
Another method for effecting remediation of ground water contaminated with DNAPLs is known as enhanced bioremediation. Enhanced bioremediation, as opposed to intrinsic bioremediation, of halogenated solvent-contaminated ground water falls into the two broad categories of aerobic and anaerobic bioremediation. The aerobic processes, regardless of whether they are carried out in situ or in a bioreactor, require addition of (1) oxygen as the electron acceptor for catabolism of the halogenated solvents, and (2) a carbon source, such as methane, propane, phenol, toluene, or butane. The utilization of an appropriate carbon source induces an enzyme that fortuitously degrades many halogenated solvents, but without any immediate benefit to the microorganisms involved. This process has been applied in situ to aqueous contamination in several instances, and at least one patent has been granted for this approach (U.S. Pat. No. 5,384,048). It has also been used to treat aqueous contamination in above-ground bioreactors with numerous variations, especially using proprietary microorganisms and nutrient mixes. Many patents have been granted in this area, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,057,221; 5,962,305; 5,945,331.
Anaerobic bioremediation of halogenated solvents is a fundamentally different process than aerobic bioremediation. Under appropriate anaerobic conditions, chlorinated solvents can be used directly by some microorganisms as electron acceptors through a process that has come to be known as “chlororespiration,” or, more generally, “halorespiration.” D. L. Freedman & J. M. Gossett, Biological Reductive Dechlorination of Tetrachloroethylene and Trichloroethylene to Ethylene Under Methanogenic Conditions, 55 Applied Environ. Microbiol. 2144-2155 (1989), first published the complete degradation pathway for chlorinated ethenes to ethene. In the following years, several publications reported evidence that the degradation could be achieved through microbial respiration, indicating that the microorganisms could actually grow by using chlorinated solvents directly as electron acceptors. The primary requirement to facilitate this process is the addition of a suitable electron donor or carbon source. Many electron donors have been described in the literature, including acetate, lactate, propionate, butyrate, formate, ethanol, hydrogen, and many others. U.S. Pat. No. 5,277,815 issued in 1994 for in situ electron donor addition along with control of redox conditions to effect the desired end products. U.S. Pat. No. 5,578,210 issued later for enhanced anaerobic in situ bioremediation using “biotransformation enhancing agents,” i.e., electron donors such as propylene glycol, glycerol, glutamate, a mixture of proteose peptone, beef extract, yeast extract, malt extract, dextrose, and ascorbic acid, and mixtures thereof. Based primarily on what was publicly available in the scientific literature, studies of enhanced anaerobic in situ bioremediation of chlorinated solvents began in the mid-1990s. This approach generally includes electron donor addition, sometimes with other micronutrients, to facilitate biotransformation of aqueous-phase contaminants. To date, only a few large-scale studies have been published in the peer-reviewed literature, but environmental consulting companies and remediation contractors are increasingly using the general approach.
With one very recent exception, discussed below, all of the work done in this area to date has focused on the biodegradation of aqueous contaminants, because microorganisms cannot directly degrade nonaqueous contaminants. Consequently, bioremediation is not generally thought to be applicable to sites with residual DNAPLs in the subsurface. Therefore, the technologies currently in use include thermal technologies such as steam stripping, in situ chemical oxidation, surfactant flushing, or co-solvent flushing. Surfactant (or co-solvent) flushing, briefly described above, is a chemical process that aims to facilitate transport of nonaqueous contaminants, but without attention to biodegradation. At many sites, however, the pump-and-treat process continues to be used to hydraulically contain residual source areas although it is almost universally accepted that these systems will have to operate in perpetuity because of their inefficient removal of nonaqueous contaminants.
The notable recent exception to the focus of bioremediation on aqueous contaminants away from residual source areas is a study by C. S. Carr et al., Effect of Dechlorinating Bacteria on the Longevity and Composition of PCE-Containing Nonaqueous Phase Liquids under Equilibrium Dissolution Conditions, 34 Environ. Sci. Technol. 1088-1094 (2000), demonstrating that anaerobic bioremediation of tetrachloroethene (PCE) enhanced mass transfer from the nonaqueous phase to the aqueous phase and significantly shortened the longevity of the nonaqueous source. The mechanisms identified were (1) enhanced dissolution of PCE resulting from the continuous removal of the compound from the aqueous phase by bacteria, and (2) increased solubility of the intermediate chlorinated ethenes relative to PCE, allowing the total moles of chlorinated ethenes in the aqueous phase to increase due to biotransformation. This study is important because it identifies some of the advantages of enhancing mass transfer from the nonaqueous phase to the aqueous phase.
In view of the foregoing, it will be appreciated that providing methods for accelerating or enhancing in situ bioremediation of halogenated solvents in ground water would be a significant advancement in the art. | {
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Hydraulically actuated transmissions have sealed cavities for actuating the shift mechanism. Rod seals are provided that engage longitudinally shifted shift rails to maintain the hydraulic pressure within the sealed cavities. The rod seals are received within a bore and have a seal lip that engages the shift rail. Prior rod seals included a seal case that had a cylindrical outer surface that could be properly installed in the housing bore with the end face of the seal case engaging the end wall of the housing bore or improperly installed with the end face of the seal facing away from the housing bore. If the rod seal is improperly installed, an insufficient hydraulic seal is provided by the seal lip and hydraulic pressure within the sealed cavities is reduced.
This disclosure is directed resolving the above problem and other problems as summarized below. | {
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1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to displays such as those used to provide digital signage, and, more particularly, to systems and methods for enhancing backlighting levels (or illumination levels) and/or content provided (e.g., display content or displayed content) with digital signs (or signage) including, but not limited to, digital signage in which a display device or source of the content is camouflaged or disguised to limit or eliminate detection by a viewer (e.g., a translucent texture layer, a thematic overlay, a monitor-camouflaging sheet, or the like may be positioned over a monitor or display screen to hide its presence to viewers).
2. Relevant Background
In many settings, information and images are continuously being presented to viewers or people passing by a location. For example, shopping malls and airport terminals are filled with displays providing information and advertisements. Many of these displays are built up around conventional television monitors and displays such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and plasma display devices. These displays have become a standard tool for advertisement, reprogrammable signage, information stations, and menu boards (which together may be called “digital signage”).
One of the reasons these display devices have become ubiquitous is the ease of changing content and/or messaging on the display quickly and effortlessly, which may equate to reduced costs, efficiencies in providing new and changing content, and up-to-date information. Further, the costs of LCDs and other display devices have continued to decrease over time while the size of such displays can range from very small screens to many square feet so that these devices are desirable and useful in many business models.
However, in many settings, the use of conventional displays such as an LCD is undesirable. For example, theme parks and other settings such as restaurants often would prefer not to use an LCD or similar device due to the conventional television (TV)-based aesthetics. These settings may have taken considerable effort to provide a thematic decorative scene and simply placing an LCD or similar display in these spaces would spoil the desired effect. For example, a television simply looks out of place in a colonial village or in a wizard's store front. Similarly, it would not be theme-appropriate to use an LCD as a menu board in a “wild west” restaurant or in a renaissance fair booth.
To address these problems, digital signage systems have been developed that provide a thematic or camouflaging overlay over a digital display such as an LCD to provide eye-catching digital signage. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 9,013,515, issued on Apr. 21, 2015 and incorporated herein in its entirety, teaches a system that combines an emissive or transmissive display with a thematic overlay to hide or disguise the presence of the display by setting the display's illumination levels to blend its output with diffuse reflection of environmental light off the thematic overlay.
In this way, the output of the display (e.g., an LCD or other display device) can appear to be writing, artwork, or the like on or in the surface of the thematic overlay, and this overlay may appear to be a chalkboard, a piece of wallpaper, a wood, stone, or other material wall, and so on to fit into a particular display environment to appear “natural” to observers or viewers of this digital signage. The effect provided by such digital signage systems has been received with a great deal of excitement by developers and users of digital signage as it transforms mundane digital signage into a display that is surprising and eye catching.
With increased use of digital signage such as emissive and/or transmissive displays blended with diffuse reflection, a number of problems with their installation and extended use have been identified that may reduce the effectiveness of these display systems or at least reduce the eye-catching ability of such digital signage. For example, one difficulty with deploying such digital signage has been that setup and maintenance can require relatively careful light balancing, e.g., balancing the illumination level of the display device and light in the environment. The effect involves projecting content from a display through a semi-opaque overlay such that front lighting reflects off the overlay material so as to hide the presence of the display when it is off but to allow the display to overpower or match the front lighting when it is turned on or illuminated.
Balancing the emissive, transmissive, and/or reflective components of light observed by the viewer has typically been done manually by manipulating ambient light and display brightness (e.g., changing the illumination level of the LCD or other transmissive or emissive display). This may be effective in applications where the environmental lighting does not change or can be tightly controlled, but there are many applications where light levels in the viewer space change over time (e.g., an outdoor digital sign may be used over the day with a wide range of ambient light). A light sensor can be used to measure illumination levels or brightness of ambient light and the display may be operated in response to vary its illumination level. However, the initial tuning or settings for these adjustments typically have not taken into account component aging and other environmental factors. Additionally, conventional light sensors do not provide any or adequate resolution of a number of display operation parameters such as brightness and chromaticity to effectively control many display systems.
For example, the display's output based on an illumination level setting may vary with age (e.g., the output may become less bright over time at a particular illumination level setting). As another example, shadowing onto the display may develop over time or change throughout a day and such shadowing of the actual output from the display may not be sensed by a simple light sensor. As a further example, the thematic overlay may fade over time so as to become more translucent to light from the display such that previously well-balanced illumination levels for a particular ambient light level may now appear to be too bright (e.g., reveal the presence of the LCD or other emissive or transmissive display) while dust or other environmental objects may cause the thematic overlay to become less translucent such that the display's output may become out of balance over time (e.g., be at an illumination level that is too low to overpower or match diffuse reflection of ambient light off the thematic overlay's surfaces).
Hence, there remains a need for improved digital signage systems that can readily be changed and updated, such as menu boards, advertisements, information signage, and the like that are configured to eliminate the need for manual management or operation of the outputs of the display element(s) to suit varying environmental lighting conditions and/or changing physical characteristics of display components (e.g., changes due to aging of display components such as lower lighting output, changes in reflection characteristics of any overlaying elements, and so on). | {
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It is generally known to treat the surfaces of metals, such as zinc, cadmium, or aluminum with aqueous solutions that include hexavalent chromium, which contain chemicals that dissolve the surface of the metal and form insoluble films known as “chromate conversion coatings.” These hexavalent chromium-containing coatings are corrosion resistant and protect the metal from various elements which cause corrosion. In addition, it is known that chromate conversion coatings generally have good paint bonding characteristics and, therefore, provide an excellent base for paint or other finishes.
Although the aforementioned coatings enhance corrosion resistance and paint bonding properties, the coatings have a serious drawback, i.e., the toxic nature of the hexavalent chromium constituent. This is a serious problem from two viewpoints, one being the handling of the solution by operators and the other, the disposal of the used solution. Therefore, it is highly desirable to have coating solutions and coatings that are substantially free of hexavalent chromium, but at the same time capable of imparting corrosion resistance and paint bonding properties which are comparable to those imparted by conventional hexavalent chromium-containing coatings.
Of particular interest is the use of chromate conversion coatings on aircraft aluminum alloys due to excellent corrosion resistance and the ability to serve as an effective base for paint. Conventional baths used to develop these coatings contain hexavalent chromium, and it is the residual chromates in the coating that are largely responsible for the high degree of corrosion inhibition. However, these same chromates are highly toxic and their presence in waste water effluents is severely restricted. It would therefore, be desirable to provide a coating for aluminum and its alloys and for sealing of anodized aluminum utilizing relatively less toxic chemicals that could serve as an alternative to the toxic hexavalent chromate coatings. Trivalent chromium has been used in conversion coatings in addition to and instead of hexavalent chromium in an attempt to produce replacements for hexavalent chromium-containing coatings, but to date, these attempts have been only somewhat successful.
Current trivalent chromium corrosion preventive coatings are applied using chromium sulfate and potassium fluorozirconate in a working solution at a ratio of chromium:zirconium of about 0.4:1 to about 0.6:1. One drawback of this prior art solution is that the working bath is not as stable as desired. The chromium sulfate and potassium fluorozirconate-based composition is not storage stable in that, upon aging for about 1-2 weeks, a precipitate begins to form, even in unused compositions. In use, the working bath generates a significant amount of sludge that must be removed, which results in costly down-time for the processing line and disposal issues. The onset of precipitation in the bath also has a negative impact on the conversion coating formed. The conversion coatings from aged baths of the prior art have reduced corrosion resistance. Thus there is a need for an improved trivalent chromium corrosion preventive coating that overcomes these and other drawbacks of the prior art. | {
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Many compounds having basic skeleton of pyridonecarboxylic acid are known to be useful synthetic antibacterials for their excellent antibacterial properties and wide antibacterial spectrum. Among such compounds, norfloxacin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 53-141286), enoxacin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 55-31042), ofloxacin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 57-46986), ciprofloxacin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 58-76667), tosufloxacin (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 60-228479), and the like are widely used in clinical practice for treating infections.
These compounds, however, need further improvements in antibacterial activities, intestinal absorption, metabolic stability, and side effects, and in particular, in phototoxicity, cytotoxicity.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide novel compounds which are sufficient in such aspects. | {
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The prior art golf bag carriers generally disclose dual bag carriers, however, the carriers are not interchangeable for either one bag or two bags.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,360 of Evans et al discloses a collapsible golf bag cart for two golf bags, but it does not swing back from a carrier for two bags to a carrier for a single golf bag.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,142,736 of Ackerfeldt et al discloses a golf cart with a chassis accommodating two bags, but does not adapt for use with a single golf club bag.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,341 of Lai discloses a collapsible golf cart with a one step folding operation with a telescoping shaft between the wheels, but does not accommodate two golf club bags.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,998,743 of Thielen discloses a wheeled cart with a rack with small clips to hold golf clubs on a wall of the rack, but not an adjustable golf club carrier for one or more bags.
British patent no. 733,631 of Healey discloses a wheeled box container for golf clubs.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,985,462 of Stamp discloses a golf club carrier with a plurality of non-adjustable pockets for golf clubs.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,328,043 of Johnson discloses a belt coupling for attaching a golf cart to a wearer's belt for pulling the bag behind the wearer.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,723,864 of Schierman discloses a hand cart for transporting two cylinders. However, it is built as either a single cylinder can carrier or a dual cylinder can carrier, but is not convertible between a single and a double carrier.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,911,465 of Hauer discloses a single golf club carrier with a plurality of tubes to hold the golf clubs therein.
Non-patented literature references include a two page advertisement entitled "Caddies of the Future", of Golf Cart Supplies, describing a golf cart entitled "Kaddie Kart", for a wide golf cart carrier with a wide non-adjustable base to hold more than one golf club bag.
However, none of the above listed prior art patent references disclose an adjustable golf bag carrier cart which has a plurality of removably adjacent C-shaped clamps and a plurality of generally disk shaped base portions which hold one bag when the clamps and bases are in respective positional register with each other clamp or base, or which can alternatively accommodate two bags when the C-shaped clamps or bases are rotated approximately 90 degrees away from each other. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical card connector mounted onto a printed circuit board (PCB), and particularly to an electrical card connector having an improved shell.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As the popularity of notebook computers increases, integrated circuit (IC) cards are becoming more common for increasing storage capacity or for interfacing the notebook computers with other devices. Electrical card connectors are commonly used to connect motherboards of the computers with the cards. Most current IC cards and card connectors conform to the standard of Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA). Usually, the electrical card connector includes a shell which can electrically connect with the outer face of the IC card and perform electrostatic discharge (ESD) function.
Referring to FIG. 4, a conventional electrical card connector 1 includes an insulative housing 2, a plurality of terminals 3 received in the insulative housing 1, a grounding 4, a rejecter 5 and a shielding 6. The shielding 6 includes a body 66 and a pair of sidewalls 60 extending vertically from opposite sides of the body 60. The front of each side wall 60 defines an opening 62 and a spring arm 64 extending from a front peripheral edge of the opening 62 in a rearward direction into the opening 62 so that, when IC card is inserted into the electrical card connector 1, the free end 68 of the spring arm 64 can electrically connect the outer face of IC card to effectuate electrostatic discharge (ESD) function.
However, a large gap is present between the free end 68 of the spring arm 64 and a rear peripheral edge of the opening 60 such that the free end 68 of the spring arm 64 is easily hitched by something extending into the opening occasionally and becomes deformed. In this situation, the deformed spring arm 64 will not be able to perform its intended function.
Hence, an improved electrical card connector is desired to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art card connector.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electrical card connector whose spring arm can electrically connect the outer face of IC card and perform ESD reliably.
An electrical card connector in accordance with the present invention comprises an insulative housing having a base and a pair of side arms parallelly extending forward from two sides of the base, a plurality of terminals received in the base of the insulative housing, a shell covering the insulative housing and comprising a body and a pair of sidewalls extending vertically from opposite sides of the body, and an ejector mounted to one of the two sidewalls of the shell and a grounding plate. Each sidewallintegrally forms an opening and a stamped spring arm connected with two opposite peripheral edges of the opening and bent inward to extend as a crossbeam therebetween so as to electrically connect with IC card which inserts in the electrical card connector and perform ESD function.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present embodiment when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and, more particularly, to an image forming apparatus which has a plurality of image carriers and is capable of superimposing and forming images (e.g., images for each color), which are formed on each of image carriers, on a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus has been proposed which has a plurality of recording units (for example, laser beam printers) in which each recording unit irradiates a laser beam modulated in accordance with record information onto a photosensitive drum, develops an electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive drum by an electrophotographic process, and transfers the image to a transfer paper. Each color image is transferred and superimposed during transport of the transfer paper through the recording units by means of a transfer belt, thereby making it possible to form a multi-color image.
In this type of image forming apparatus, if there are mechanical mounting errors between the photosensitive drums, optical path length errors between the light beams, or changes in the optical path between the light beams, the images for each color formed by forming electrostatic latent images on the various photosensitive drums, and then developing and transferring them on the recording paper on the transfer belt, will not be registered correctly. For this reason, a pattern image for registration correction is read by an image sensor such as a CCD sensor, and the pattern image is transferred onto a transfer belt from the various photosensitive drums. The position of the registration correction pattern for each color is determined on the basis of the density values of the read data. Registration deviations on the photosensitive drum respectively corresponding to each of the colors are detected on the basis of the thus determined position. Image signals to be recorded are subjected to electrical corrections in accordance with the detected deviations, and/or a reflection mirror disposed in the optical path of the light beams is driven to correct changes in the optical path length or the optical path.
The image processing section of the image forming apparatus may read out data which has been written in a memory in block units (for example, block unit compression). The relative position of the blocks to be read is not varied in accordance with the amount of deviation in a plurality of image forming means.
However, since registration corrections are performed at set timings (such as at fixed time intervals or when a fixed number of images have been formed), the above-described image forming apparatus has a problem in that it does not account for cases in which, for example, the temperature of the machine increases when the machine is powered on or when the machine is moved. Since changes in registration deviations are large in such conditions, temporary registration variations occur.
In a case in which pattern images for registration correction, which are transferred on a transfer belt from the respective corresponding photosensitive drums, are read by a CCD sensor or the like, the read pattern images are stored in a memory, and the positions of the registration correction patterns for each color are determined on the basis of the density values of the read data in accordance with pattern image data read out sequentially from the memory. In such a case, when the transferred registration correction pattern image cannot be formed clearly due to changes in the environment, or changes in the process conditions such as latent imaging, development or transfer of images, or when an image is formed on scratches or contaminants on the transfer belt, the central position of the registration correction image is erroneously computed on the basis of the read data. As a consequence, an error occurs in the computation of registration deviations of each color, causing the registration to deviate.
For example, when an image is formed normally on the transfer belt, the histogram data of the density additions regarding a pattern image in the main-scanning and sub-scanning directions is distributed as shown in FIG. 8. The position of the maximum value of the histogram data matches the central position of the histogram, making it possible to easily compute the central value. However, when the transfer conditions vary as shown in FIG. 30, for example, when data is lost during transfer, causing the density in the central portion to be higher than that in the edge portion of the image pattern, or when a scratch is present on the transfer belt as shown in FIG. 31, the maximum value of the histogram does not match the central value of the image pattern. Therefore, the central position of the registration correction image is erroneously computed on the basis of the read data.
In addition, when data written in a memory in block units is read out in block units by the image processing section of the above-described image forming apparatus, and when the image forming section has a plurality of image forming means as described above, registration deviations cannot be adjusted in pixel units since the registration deviations are only adjusted in block units. | {
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Decrease in life of an optical apparatus such as LCD panels and polarization plates has become increasingly a serious problem in recent years as they are used in LCD projector operated at high brightness and high contrast. To cope with this problem, each of the polarization plates is supported by a transparent substrate having an anisotropic refractive-index, such as a single-crystalline sapphire substrate or quartz substrate that has a good thermal conductivity (heat dissipation property).
Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2001-272671 discloses an LCD projector equipped with an optical system for providing illumination light, an electrooptic apparatus for modulating the light provided by the optical system based on picture information, and a projection system for projecting beams of light modulated by the electrooptic apparatus. The electrooptic apparatus has a substantially rectangular single-crystalline sapphire substrate and a polarization plate mounted on the single-crystalline sapphire substrate on at least the light incidence side or light emitting side of the electrooptic apparatus. The single-crystalline sapphire substrate, substantially rectangular in shape defined by substantially two orthogonal sides, has an optically anisotropic crystalline axis known as C axis that is substantially parallel with a substrate surface and inclined at an angle of about 3 to 7 degrees with respect to one of the two substantially orthogonal sides. Said one side is called a reference side.
In order to extend the life of these polarization panels that constitute the electrooptic apparatus together with the LCD panels, it may be considered useful to provide a highly transparent auxiliary polarization plate between each LCD panel and the polarization plate on the light emitting side of the LCD panel.
Unfortunately, however, inclination of C axis (or Z axis in the case of sapphire single crystal) of a highly transparent auxiliary polarization plate on the light emitting side has more influence on the display performance of the LCD panel than that of the aforementioned ordinary polarization plate. For example, the inclination is often a source of color irregularity on a supposedly black screen and/or a source of contrast loss of a picture. | {
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Fluid streams derived from natural gas reservoirs, petroleum or coal, often contain a significant amount of acid gases, for example carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon disulfide (CS2), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), carbonyl sulfide (COS), or mercaptans as impurities. Said fluid streams may be gas, liquid, or mixtures thereof, for example gases such as natural gas, refinery gas, hydrocarbon gasses from shale pyrolysis, synthesis gas, and liquids such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and natural gas liquids (NGL).
Various compositions and processes for removal of acid gasses are known and described in the literature. It is well-known to treat gaseous mixtures with aqueous amine solutions to remove these acidic gases. Typically, the aqueous amine solution contacts the gaseous mixture comprising the acidic gases counter currently at low temperature and high pressure in an absorber tower. The aqueous amine solution commonly contains an alkanolamine such as triethanolamine (TEA), methyldiethanolamine (MDEA), diethanolamine (DEA), monoethanolamine (MEA), diisopropanolamine (DIPA), or 2-(2-aminoethoxy)ethanol (sometimes referred to as diglycolamine or DGA). In some cases, an accelerator, is used in combination with the alkanolamines, for example piperazine and MDEA as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,336,233; 4,997,630; and 6,337,059. Alternatively, EP 0134948 discloses mixing an acid with select alkaline materials such as MDEA, to provide enhanced acid gas removal. However, EP0134948 teaches that only a select class of alkaline materials mixed with an acid is useable in aqueous alkaline solutions to provide increased acid gas removal.
Tertiary amines, such as 3-dimethylamino-1,2-propanediol (DMAPD), have been shown to be effective at removing CO2 from gaseous mixtures, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,116 or DMAPD in conjunction with piperazine, see WO2014/004019, or DMAPD in conjunction with an acid, see WO 2014/004020. Further, in specific processes, e.g., the Girbotol Process, tertiary amines have been shown effective in removal of H2S, but show decreased capacity at elevated temperatures, for examples see “Organic Amines-Girbotol Process”, Bottoms, R. R., The Science of Petroleum, volume 3, Oxford University Press, 1938, pp 1810-1815.
While the above compounds are effective, they each have limitations which detract from their universal use. In particular, it would be desirable to have an aqueous composition comprising an alkanolamine for removing H2S from a gaseous mixture and/or an aqueous alkanolamine solution which is efficient at removing acid gases at a commercially viable capacity when the aqueous solution is used at an elevated temperature, for example above 140° F.
As such, there is a need for an aqueous alkanolamine solution and method to use said solution, which is effective at removing hydrogen sulfide from gaseous mixtures and/or removing hydrogen sulfide at elevated operating temperatures. | {
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An envelope is a container, usually made of folded paper, which is designed to enclose documents or other substantially flat objects for the purposes, among others, of keeping these contents together and preventing their inspection by others during transmission to a recipient. The most commonly used envelopes, such as the COM-10 business envelope, are made of a single sheet of paper folded along four lines to form a front panel, side flaps, a back panel, and a closure flap. The side flaps are adhesively secured to the back panel. A sealing edge on the interior surface of the closure flap is usually provided with adhesive for the purpose of sealing the closure flap to the back panel after the envelope has received its contents in the pocket formed by the front panel, side flaps, and back panel.
This design of envelope is simple and inexpensive. The procedures for removing the contents of an envelope of this design, however, usually involve cutting or tearing the closure flap or other portions of the envelope, separating the front panel from the back panel, and reaching inside to remove the contents.
A need exists for an envelope that has opening means situated so as be readily operable without tools and accessible to the user. It should be designed to expose the contents of the envelope in order to facilitate removal of those contents. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an internal sealing assembly for sealingly connecting a pair of pipes and, in one embodiment, relates to a secondary sealing assembly that can be installed within an existing pipeline about an existing pipe-to-pipe connection to seal a leak.
2. Description of the Related Art
Underground pipes which are used in municipal water and sewer systems, for example, typically include bell and spigot ends that are attached to one another in a sealed manner. Typically, either the spigot end or the bell end of such pipes includes a rubber seal which is compressed between the ends of the pipes to provide a sealed joint when the spigot end of one pipe is inserted into the bell end of another pipe. Occasionally, these primary joint seals between adjacent pipes may leak after installation in the field, requiring a secondary sealing assembly to seal the connection.
What is needed is an improved sealing assembly for sealing pipe-to-pipe joints. | {
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The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard specification defines the physical (PHY) layer and Media Access Control (MAC) layer for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), cf. IEEE Standard for Information technology—Tele-communications and information exchange between systems. Local and metropolitan area networks—Specific requirements. Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, a Wi-Fi may be defined as any WLAN products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards. Thus, in this document the terms Wi-Fi and WLAN will be used interchangeably.
WLAN is based on a technology that currently mainly operates on the 2.4 GHz or the 5 GHz band. The IEEE 802.11 specifications regulate the physical layer, MAC layer and other aspects of one or more access points and mobile terminals comprised in the WLAN in order to secure compatibility and inter-operability between access points and mobile terminals. The mobile terminal is herein sometimes also referred to as a User Equipment (UE). The WLAN is generally operated in unlicensed bands, and as such, communication in the WLAN may be subject to interference sources from any number of both known and unknown devices. The WLAN may be used as a wireless extension to fixed broadband access. For example, this may be the case in domestic environments and hotspots, like airports, train stations and restaurants.
The WLAN technology relies on Carrier Sensing Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) in order to effectively and fairly share the wireless medium among different WLAN entities and even among different Radio Access Technologies (RATs). CSMA/CA applied by the WLAN system demands that a node, e.g. an access point or a station, that wishes to send data senses the common communication channel before carrying out a transmission in order to avoid duplicate transmissions on the common communication channel. The reason or this is that duplicate transmission on the common communication channel usually results in loss of data and the need of retransmissions. In order for a node to deem the channel busy, it has to detect a transmission, the received signal strength level of which surpasses a pre-determined threshold, referred to as the Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) Threshold (CCAT). An exemplary relation between the coverage area of a Basic Service Set (BSS) and the CCAT is schematically depicted in FIG. 1.
In current systems, one common CCAT is defined for all nodes operating in the WLAN and this common CCAT is to be used by all nodes when they perform channel sensing for transmission to and from any other node in the WLAN.
FIG. 2 schematically illustrates a WLAN protocol stack. As illustrated, the IEEE layer specification comprises a Data Link Layer comprising a Medium Access Control (MAC) sublayer, and a Physical Layer comprising a Physical Layer Convergence Procedure (PLCP) sublayer and a Physical Medium Dependent (PMD) sublayer. The PLCP sublayer performs the CCA and reports the results to the MAC layer, therefore the CCA threshold is set in the PLCP sublayer.
US 2014/0286203 A1 discloses a wireless communication device that includes communication interface configured to receive and transmit signals and a processor configured to generate and process such signals. The communication interface of the wireless communication device is configured to receive a first signal from a first other wireless communication device, and the processor of the wireless communication device is configured to process the first signal to determine one or more concurrent transmission parameters. The processor of the wireless communication device is configured to generate the second signal based on the one or more concurrent transmission parameters and direct the communication interface to transmit the second signal to a second other wireless communication device during receipt of the first signal from the first other wireless communication device. The wireless communication device may be configured to make such concurrent transmissions based on one or more considerations such as the power level of the first signal.
The state of the art WLANs are associated with some drawbacks such as the suboptimal usage of the transmission medium. | {
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Some applications require the use of electrical equipment in hazardous locations where exposure to chemical, flammable and/or combustible conditions is likely. Electrical equipment used in such hazardous locations requires construction to, and compliance with, exacting standards to lessen the chance of electrical equipment malfunction and failure.
Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) is an independent product safety certification organization that has been testing products and writing safety standards for over a century. Underwriters Laboratories, Inc has written safety standard UL 674 “Standard for Electric Motors and Generators for Use in Division 1 Hazardous (Classified) Locations”. Electrical equipment such as motors, generators, panels, raceways and junctions used under hazardous conditions can be constructed in accordance to the UL 674 standard. Equipment used in such conditions typically must be approved under this standard. Approval under a UL standard can require testing of the system and/or system components to ensure compliance with that UL standard.
One part of the UL 674 standard requires that openings in electrical equipment be potted or sealed with an approved material that can meet specific performance criteria for resistance to chemicals. These criteria are specified in UL standard 674, section 45. UL standard 1203, “Tests On Sealing Materials”, is similar to UL 674, section 45. This standard specifies resistance to damage and degradation of a sealant material after exposure to vapors from a number of specified chemicals. Approved sealant materials must retain at least 85% of their compressive strength after 168 hours exposure to saturated vapors in air of each of the specified chemicals and must not shrink, swell, crack or lose or gain more than 1 percent of their weight.
Most epoxy compositions will degrade substantially when exposed to one or more of the test chemical vapors and therefore can not meet the chemical resistance requirements of UL 674. Retention of at least 85% compression strength after exposure to glacial acetic acid is especially difficult for most epoxy compositions.
There are very few materials alleged to be approved for use under the UL 674 standard. One material is CHICO available from Crouse Hinds Cooper. CHICO is an inorganic cementitious material that is mixed with water and poured into a fitting or aperture to form a seal. More recently, CHICO SPEEDSEAL available from Crouse Hinds Cooper has been approved. CHICO SPEEDSEAL is believed to be polyurethane that expands during curing to form a seal in a fitting or aperture. Other useful sealants are KNEADASEAL and KNEADASEAL SL available from Polymeric Systems, Inc. of Pennsylvania, USA. KNEADASEAL is a solid epoxy putty stick that is kneaded between a user's fingers to mix and subsequently forced into a fitting or aperture to form a seal that subsequently cures. Forcing the dense, solid putty into a small aperture to form a seal is difficult, especially if wires penetrate the aperture. KNEADASEAL SL is a pourable epoxy compound. Technical literature notes that KNEADASEAL SL contains bisphenol A epoxy resins. | {
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The present invention relates to an in-line roller skate.
Conventional skates are substantially constituted by a rigid shoe associated with a frame for supporting either wheels or an ice-skating blade.
The main drawback of conventional skates is the fact that the rigidity of the shoe or of the frame for supporting the wheels or the ice-skating blade prevent the normal articulation of the foot during skating.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,603,588 discloses a soft shoe having a sole associated with either a blade, constituted by two separate components which are mutually articulated approximately in the region below the plantar arch, or with a wheel supporting frame, which is again composed of two parts which are mutually hinged in the region below the plantar arch.
Although the above skate allows the articulation of the shoe and therefore of the foot during skating, a considerable drawback is constituted by the fact that the hinge for the mutual articulation of the parts of the blade or of the wheel support is far backward and entails a difference in the position of the rotation axis of the foot with respect to the shoe and the frame or blade.
In this manner, the natural rotation of the metatarsal region is compromised because the sole of the shoe is rigid at this region of the foot, while the sole of the shoe moves with respect to the foot, thus reducing its sensitivity with respect to said shoe and accordingly compromising optimum control and steering of the skate.
EP-0 686 412 discloses a roller skate with improved fit which is constituted by a first front body, for supporting and securing the front part of the foot, and by a second rear body, for supporting and securing at least the heel; said bodies are transversely and rotatably associated with each other, and each body is provided with a frame for supporting one or more wheels.
The two elements are rotatably connected to each other by means of studs or pivots and the movement is guided by a tab which protrudes from the front element and is arranged on the front part of the sole and of the shell.
In the above skate, the studs or pivots that are fixed to the side walls of the shell are subjected to a large number of movements and stresses caused by sports practice. In the course of time, these movements can compromise the efficiency and in particular the alignment of the first front body and of the second rear body.
It is also noted that the limited length of the elements for mutually connecting the first body and the second body tends to compromise the torsional properties of the entire skate and does not ensure the performance required for correct and comfortable use.
CA-2,155,444 discloses a skate which comprises a shoe whose sole has one or two transverse hinges formed approximately at the region where the foot flexes. In order to allow articulation, below the region of the tip of the shoe there is an additional hinge for an ice-skating blade which is associated, in a rear region, with the sole of the shoe so as to allow the articulation of said shoe.
A similar configuration is provided if the shoe is associated with a frame for supporting in-line wheels.
The above skate follows the natural movement of the foot, but at the same time it does not ensure the adequate technical characteristics required for sports practice, because, for example, the seat for the frame or blade provided in the rear region of the shoe is formed with plays which allow it to perform a combined rotary and translatory motion. This in no way ensures adequate lateral support and torsional strength, particularly during side-slip braking, which is notoriously the most trying step for the rear region of the skate.
EP-0 774 282 discloses a skate with in-line wheels which comprises a shoe associated a wheel supporting frame which has, approximately in a median region, a cutout which divides the frame into two components and forms a deformable region which allows the articulation of the two components of the frame. An elastic element is interposed between said components and is adapted to improve their return to the horizontal position.
In the above skate, it is noted that the deformation region, and therefore the corresponding flexing region of the shoe, do not meet the anatomical requirements of the foot because it is observed that the position of the rotation axis is distinctly too far back with respect to the natural axis of rotation of the metatarsus.
WO-97/18019 discloses a skate which is again composed of a shoe associated with a wheel supporting frame which is composed of two half-frames frames which are mutually rotatably connected by means of a common mechanical hinge which is located approximately in the vicinity of the axis of the second wheel starting from the front end of the shoe.
An elastic element is inserted approximately in the region located directly above the hinge, and its ends rest at the two half-frames, so as to facilitate the return of said two half-frames to the initial position.
One drawback that can be noted is the position of the elastic element which, by being very close to the hinge, considerably reduces the sensitivity of said hinge to small movements or depressions in the ground, thus making the skate very rigid and in practice limiting the flexing of the foot considerably.
An aim of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems, eliminating the drawbacks of the cited prior art by providing a skate which allows the foot to perform, as much as possible, a natural movement while skating.
An object of the invention is to provide a skate which effectively follows the natural flexing of the foot during skating.
Another important object is to provide a skate which allows to accumulate, during the flexing of the foot, energy which then be returned during the final step of thrusting.
Another important object is to provide a skate which maintains its rigidity characteristics, which are necessary for its correct use.
Another object is to provide a skate which is structurally simple and can be manufactured with conventional machines and equipment.
In accordance with a preferred aspect of the invention, there is provided an in-line roller skate which comprises:
one single front wheel, one single intermediate wheel, and one or more rear wheels, in which the intermediate wheel is arranged between the front and rear wheels;
a first front frame which rotatably supports the front wheel about a front pivot axis lying in a front vertical plane, and the first front frame rotatably supports the intermediate wheel about an intermediate pivot axis lying in an intermediate vertical plane; and
a second rear frame which rotatably supports the one or more rear wheels about one or more rear pivot axes lying in respective one or more rear vertical planes;
the first and second frames being connected to a sole of the skate and said skate being pivotable about a skate pivot axis which is located at the sole of the skate in a region that lies approximately below the metatarsus of the foot, and the skate pivot axis lying in a vertical plane which extends between the front vertical plane and the intermediate vertical plane. | {
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1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to integrated circuit layouts and design, and more particularly to methods, systems, and products for generating an area efficient power switch cell of a cell library and for generating an integrated circuit layout for fabrication.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers have become increasingly sophisticated. In addition to supporting telephone calls, many mobile devices now provide access to the internet, email, text messaging, and navigation using the global positioning system (GPS). Mobile devices that support such sophisticated functionality often include many components. To remain a mobile, physical size of such components of a mobile device is a design concern. Designers of such mobile devices, often attempt to reduce the size of components or modify the components to provide greater functionality without increasing the size of the components. Such reductions or modifications may be carried out any level of the mobile device, including the layout of the integrated circuits of the components themselves.
Integrated circuit layout designers, however, are often faced with challenges that limit the amount reduction in size of components or modifications to components to increase functionality without increasing the size of the components. FIG. 1, for example, sets forth a line drawing of a birds-eye view of a prior art integrated circuit layout.
The example integrated circuit layout of FIG. 1 includes a p-type substrate 116 interleaved with parallel rows of n-wells 118. The integrated circuit layout also includes three columns of pMOS power switch cells 102. The first column includes three pMOS power switch cells 102, the second column includes two pMOS power switch cells 102, and the third column includes three power switch cells 102.
FIG. 1 also depicts an expanded view of one of the pMOS power switch cells 102 and a standard cell 108. The pMOS power switch cell 102 includes pMOS logic 110 (transistors, MOSFETs, and the like). The example pMOS power switch 102 cell includes a cell boundary 104. The cell boundary 100 equivalent (or nearly so) to double the height of the standard cell 108. The height of the standard cell 108 is equivalent (or nearly so) to the height of an n-well 118.
The pMOS power switch cell 102 is positioned with the top and bottom portion and the cell boundary 104 approximately centered in the p-type substrate 116. The pMOS power switch cell 102 is also positioned to straddle the n-well.
The standard cell 108 includes nMOS logic 112 and pMOS logic 114. The nMOS logic 112 of the standard cell 108 is positioned on the p-type substrate 116 and the pMOS logic 114 of the standard cell is position on an n-well 118.
Because the nMOS portion 112 of the standard cell ‘faces’ or, said another, is adjacent to, the pMOS logic 110 of the power switch cell 102, a spacing tolerance is required. That is, a predefined amount of space is required between the pMOS logic 110 of the power switch cell 102 and the nMOS portion 112 of the standard cell 108. Such a spacing requirement is described here as a ‘P/N spacing tolerance’ 106. In this example, the tolerance is implemented within the power switch 102 cell itself. Given a power switch cell boundary 110 of double height, the area of the internal pMOS logic 110 of the power switch cell 112 is constrained due to the required P/N spacing tolerance 106. The power switch cell, then, does not utilize the area of the cell boundary 110 efficiently.
Although the example integrated circuit layout of FIG. 1 includes a pMOS-based power switch cell 102, a p-type substrate 116, n-wells 118, and the nMOS portion 112 of the standard cell 108 facing the power switch cell 102, it is noted that the required P/N spacing tolerance is also present in other embodiments. For example, in embodiments in which the power switch cell 102 is an nMOS cell, the substrate is an n-type substrate, and the rows of wells include p-wells, a similar P/N spacing tolerance is required. In such an embodiment, the nMOS power switch is positioned with the top and bottom cell boundaries on the n-type substrate and straddling a p-well. Further, the pMOS portion 114 of the standard cell 108 faces the nMOS power switch, resulting in the required P/N spacing tolerance.
It is also noted that similar P/N spacing requirements exist when a power switch is not double height, but rather single height. In such embodiments, the single-height power switch may be positioned with the top of the cell boundary centered (or approximately centered) on a well and the bottom of the cell boundary on the substrate. When a standard cell is place below and adjacent to the power switch cell, the portion of the standard cell facing the power switch cell includes complimentary logic to that of the power switch cell. Thus, a P/N spacing tolerance is required between the two portions of complementary logic. | {
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Field of Invention
The present invention generally relates to data migration. More specifically, the present invention relates to determining mail archive ownership.
Description of the Related Art
Data migration can be viewed as a process for transferring data between one or more computer systems and storage devices. Data migration may be performed for several reasons including providing backup copy of the data and consolidating data over different systems and devices into one central location. Data migration may also be performed to provide information from one computer system to a new computer system so that the new computer system also has access to the migrated data.
Generally, data migration is performed through the use of a processor and corresponding data migration software run on the processor. The data migration software allows the data migration to be performed in an automated fashion. To achieve an effective data migration, the data migration software also maps between locations where the data is originally stored (e.g., a source system) and where the data will be written (e.g., a target system). The data migration software further evaluates the format of the data being extracted from its original storage location (e.g., the source system) and a requested format of the data corresponding to the location where the data will be written to (e.g., the target system).
One type of data that may be migrated are personal storage table (PST) data. PSTs correspond to an archived version of electronic mail (e-mail) that is stored locally on a user computing device (e.g., laptop, desktop). With the computing device, ownership of the PST may be clear. For example, the PST data on the computing device may be labeled with the owner of the computing device or associated with a particular mailbox. There may be situations where this PST data may be migrated from one location (e.g., source system) to a new location (e.g., target system). For example, the owner would like to have access to the emails stored in one computing device on other computing devices.
There may be situations, however, where the chain of ownership for the PST data may not be clear or may be lost during data migration. In one situation, it is possible that ownership of the PST data can be modified during data migration. For example, an administrator (an individual other than the original owner of the PST data) can become the current owner of the archived data when the PST data is stored (temporarily or long term) in a device (e.g., storage device, computing device) associated with the administrator. Given that a plurality of the PST data can be migrated and stored within the same space (e.g., storage device), differentiating which PST belong to which original owner may be difficult.
It is desired that a method for determining who the original owner for a particular PST data be provided. The PST data, although temporarily controlled by an administrator, may be migrated to another device associated with the original owner. As noted above, the user (e.g., original owner) may wish to migrate PST data associated with one email account on one device to a different email account on a different device. Therefore, determining who the owner is of the PST may be necessary to ensure that the correct PST data is provided to the correct owner on the new device through the use of data migration. | {
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(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor integrated circuit. More particularly, the present invention relates to the power supply path for a semiconductor integrated circuit.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
FIG. 1 is a circuit diagram illustrating the structure of a memory cell of a static memory comprising an insulated gate field effect transistor (hereinafter referred to as "MOS transistor"), which is one example of a conventional semiconductor integrated circuit. The memory cell circuit shown in FIG. 1 comprises as a main member a flip-flop circuit in which a polycrystalline silicon layer of a high resistivity of 10.sup.10 to 10.sup.12 .OMEGA. is used as the load resistance. Referring to FIG. 1, the memory cell comprises MOS transistors T1 and T2 for switching the flip-flop circuit, resistances R1 and R2 for supplying a current to the MOS transistors T1 and T2 from a power supply line 1, a ground line 2 connected to sources of the MOS transistors T1 and T2, gate-switching transistors T3 and T4 connecting data lines 3 and 4 to the flip-flop and a word line 5 connected to gates of the MOS transistors T3 and T4. In the conventional cell where polycrystalline silicon layers of a high resistivity of 10.sup.10 to 10.sup.12 .OMEGA. are used as the resistances R1 and R2, as shown in FIG. 2, a polycrystalline silicon layer 8 (i-layer) of a high resistivity is formed over a silicon substrate 6 on an SiO.sub.2 film 7, and one end of this layer 8 is connected to a predetermined region of substrate 6 through a layer 9 of the n.sup.+ type and the other end of the layer 8 is connected to a power supply line 1 through a layer of the n.sup.+ type. By virture of a current flowing through the high-resistivity polycrystalline layer 8, destruction of memory information by leakage currents of the MOS transistors T1 and T2 shown in FIG. 1 is prevented. In the conventional memory cell shown in FIG. 1, there are one power supply line, one ground line, a total of two data lines and one word line, that is, five lines. Disposition of these many lines results in an increase in the area of the memory cell and is not preferred from the viewpoint of packing density. Furthermore, the presence of the high-resistivity polycrystalline silicon layer is another cause of an increase in the area of the memory cell. | {
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This invention relates to an improved process for reducing sulfur content of solid carbonaceous fuels, such as coal and lignite, to provide gas, liquid, and solid fuel products which can be burned without further treatment or use of special devices to produce stack gases which meet pollution regulations regarding sulfur emissions. More particularly, it relates to the removal of pyritic and organic sulfur from coal without added hydrogen.
Coal constitutes the largest single fossil fuel source of the United States. Nevertheless, its use has been restricted because of environmental regulations and the availability of petroleum and natural gas as alternative sources of energy. However, to achieve the national goal of energy self-sufficiency it is now apparent that coal must play a major role in meeting our expanding energy requirements. A principal drawback to the use of United States coal is the sulfur content, which can range up to 5 percent or more; large quantities of sulfur compounds, which have been found to be environmentally hazardous, are discharged into the atmosphere when coal is burned to produce energy.
A variety of methods have been suggested to reduce the discharge of such sulfur compounds into the atmosphere when sulfur-containing fuels such as coal are burned. Two general methods have been tried. One method involves removing sulfur from stack gases after the sulfur-containing fuel is burned, whereas the other method removes sulfur from the fuel before it is burned. While numerous methods have been tried for stack gas cleaning, none appear to be simple or low cost. The inherent difficulties of such an approach are the enormous volumes of stack gas that must be processed and the low concentration of sulfur in these gases.
It is desirable to reduce the sulfur content of the coal initially. If this is successful, then the fuel can be burned as it has been in the past -- i.e. without material change in the operation of furnaces, boilers, and utility plants. Moreover, sulfur removal may be accomplished at one location without the need to provide extensive sulfur removal facilities at each location. Accordingly, it is very desirable to be able to substantially reduce the sulfur content of a coal before it is burned as a fuel or otherwise gasified and/or liquified for further processing into specific fuels.
The solvent-refined coal or coal extraction process reduces the sulfur content of coal by first dissolving the coal in a suitable solvent to produce a mixture of liquid and undissolved solids from which the solid may be removed by filtration or other conventional solids -- liquid separation processes. The dissolution step is often carried out under hydrogen pressure. Solvent is recovered from the filtrate by means such as vacuum distillation. The distillation residue can be handled in either solid or liquid form and is a low ash, low sulfur material known as solvent refined coal or coal extract. However, such a process has relatively expensive and complex equipment requirements. Furthermore, considerable difficulty has been encountered in the solvent-extract/undissolved residue separation step. Finally, although such a process converts a majority of the coal feed to a low-sulfur fuel product, the process is inefficient in terms of the quantity of incoming hydrocarbonaceous material converted. For example, extract yields normally approach 80 percent of the moisture and ash-free coal feed.
A variation of the solvent refined coal process is the coal liquefaction process which is characterized by the attempt to completely hydrogenate or liquify coal to produce an oil-like product very low in sulfur. The process is subject to the same disadvantages as the solvent refined coal process, referred to above; and, in addition, the operating costs of the process are exceptionally high because of the large hydrogen requirements.
The use of fluidized systems wherein a fluidized stream of finely divided coal particles and/or heated char particles is formed in a carrier stream to pyrolyze the coal particles, extracting the volatiles therefrom, is well known in the art. The heated char particles and/or the carrier gas stream are utilized to provide the requisite heat of pyrolysis to the coal particles. A supply of heated char is continuously produced upon pyrolysis of the coal in the system. Sulfur contaminants may be removed by the addition of sulfur acceptors such as iron oxides or lime to the particulate coal prior to processing or by heating the products to high temperatures in the presence of hydrogen upon removal of the products from the pyrolysis zone. Alternatively, desulfurization may be achieved during pyrolysis by enriching the carrier gas stream with hydrogen, which may be generated within the process by known gasification methods. Exemplary of such systems are: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,007,849; 3,702,516; 3,736,233. Additional references relating to the pyrolysis method which are considered of some pertinency are found in Coal Processing Technology, Vol. 2, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, N.Y. (1975), pp. 83-93, 119-120.
Another method employed to reduce the sulfur content of high-sulfur coal is the gasification of coal with steam and air or oxygen to produce fuel gas which must then be desulfurized prior to combustion. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,634,286, teaches hydrogenation of coal in the dry state by passing a stream of heated, hydrogen-containing gas upwardly through a reaction zone containing a mass of the substantially dry coal particles at a velocity sufficient to fluidize the mass. The reaction zone is maintained under an elevated temperature (450.degree. to 650.degree. C.) and pressure (250 to 1500 psi). The hydrogen and the coal react to produce a major proportion of liquid hydrocarbons and a minor proportion of gaseous hydrocarbons together with a finely-divided, solid, low-sulfur content char. Processes similar to U.S. Pat. No. 2,634,286 are also discussed in Coal Processing Technology, Vol. 2, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, N.Y. (1975), pp. 88-93 and 119-120.
The present invention differs from the gasification process referred to above in that the production of gaseous fuels is not maximized. Rather, only a minimum amount of coal is gasified and converted to liquid and gas products.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,909,212 issued to Schroeder discloses the concept of producing a low-sulfur solid fuel from coal with minimum chemical change in the coal without added hydrogen. The primary fuel product is not a coke or char; the feed coal is carbonized only to the extent necessary to remove a substantial amount of the sulfur from the coal. The desulfurized coal still contains sufficient volatile matter to be a satisfactory fuel for combustion purposes. The process comprises reacting particulate coal under a pressure of at least two atmospheres with an oxygen-containing gas and steam in a reaction zone. The amount of oxygen-containing gas is just sufficient to burn that portion of the particulate coal which will raise the temperature of the coal in the reaction zone to about 1100.degree. to 1500.degree. F. The amount of steam is sufficient to react with the fuel particles to generate nascent hydrogen which reacts with the sulfur in the fuel particles to form hydrogen sulfide. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the amount of hydrogen, including that generated by the steam reaction and that present in the coal, is about 4 to 5 times that theoretically required for reaction with all of the sulfur in the coal to produce H.sub.2 S. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to techniques for signal processing and has been developed with particular but not exclusive attention paid to possible applications in the framework of systems which envisage reduction in the quantity of data required for representing, in a digital format, an image (still picture) or a sequence of images (video sequence).
2. Description of the Related Art
Known to the art are various solutions for efficient compression of digital images. These solutions are usually characterized by a high computational complexity and are not easily integratable in the solutions commonly referred to as System on a Chip (SoC).
The techniques of compression of digital images can be classified in two fundamental groups.
A first group comprises the so-called lossless compression techniques i.e., techniques without loss of quality, which can be used also for processing other types of digital data. The purpose of this type of compression is to remove the statistical redundancy of the data.
To each digital datum there is assigned a variable number of bits, which depends upon the statistical frequency of the particular datum in question.
With reference, by way of example, to the so-called Huffmann compression, to each digital datum there is assigned a variable integer number of bits according to the following rule: short binary codes are assigned to the more frequent data, whereas long binary codes are assigned to less frequent data.
Also known are techniques of arithmetic compression, in which to each digital datum there is assigned a variable and fractional number of bits. The criterion of assignment of the bits is similar to the one used for the Huffmann compression.
Other compression methods are based upon the use of dictionaries. The sequences of the digital data to be compressed are reduced to words of variable length of a dictionary. Corresponding to each word is an appropriate binary code of a fixed or variable length. Belonging in this context is the algorithm for identification of the optimal dictionary due to Lempel and Ziv.
A second group of known compression techniques comprises the lossy compression techniques i.e., techniques with loss of quality.
The purpose of this type of compression is to remove the perceptive redundancy in the data. The image is modified by eliminating what cannot be perceived, or is perceived less, by the human visual system (HVS). The characteristic that is most widely exploited by the visual system amounts to the fact that the sensitivity to low frequencies is higher than the sensitivity to high frequencies. In addition, the perception of the spatial resolution of brightness information is more marked than the perception of chromaticity information.
The representation of the chromaticity information may therefore be less precise, in the sense that the spatial resolution may be lower. The chrominance is, therefore, under-sampled as compared with the brightness. The loss of quality which derives therefrom is practically not perceived by the human eye.
By way of example, for the ITU-R BT.601 standard, the under-sampling ratio between the luminance signal (Y) and the two color differences (CbCr or UV or IQ or DbDr) is 4:2:2. For the well-known MPEG standard the ratio is 4:2:0, where 0 indicates that under-sampling is both vertical and horizontal.
Likewise, the representation of the other sequences may be less precise, in the sense of a coarser quantization, with consequent saving in bits. The loss of perceived quality that derives therefrom is, however, low on account of the lower sensitivity of the visual system to these frequencies.
The splitting into high and low frequencies can be done only after having passed from the spatial domain to the frequency domain by means of the transformation operation. The most widely used transformations are, by way of example, the discrete cosine transform (DCT) and the discrete wavelet transform (DWT). | {
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CGRP (Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide) is a naturally occurring 37-amino acid peptide that is generated by tissue-specific alternate processing of calcitonin messenger RNA and is widely distributed in the central and peripheral nervous system. CGRP is localized predominantly in sensory afferent and central neurons and mediates several biological actions, including vasodilation. CGRP is expressed in alpha- and beta-forms that vary by one and three amino acids in the rat and human, respectively. CGRP-alpha and CGRP-beta display similar biological properties. When released from the cell, CGRP initiates its biological responses by binding to specific cell surface receptors that are predominantly coupled to the activation of adenylyl cyclase. CGRP receptors have been identified and pharmacologically evaluated in several tissues and cells, including those of brain, cardiovascular, endothelial, and smooth muscle origin.
Based on pharmacological properties, these receptors are divided into at least two subtypes, denoted CGRP1 and CGRP2. Human α-CGRP-(8-37), a fragment of CGRP that lacks seven N-terminal amino acid residues, is a selective antagonist of CGRP1, whereas the linear analogue of CGRP, diacetoamido methyl cysteine CGRP ([Cys(ACM)2,7]CGRP), is a selective agonist of CGRP2. CGRP is a potent vasodilator that has been implicated in the pathology of cerebrovascular disorders such as migraine and cluster headache. In clinical studies, elevated levels of CGRP in the jugular vein were found to occur during migraine attacks (Goadsby et al., Ann. Neurol., 1990, 28, 183-187). CGRP activates receptors on the smooth muscle of intracranial vessels, leading to increased vasodilation, which is thought to be the major source of headache pain during migraine attacks (Lance, Headache Pathogenesis: Monoamines, Neuropeptides, Purines and Nitric Oxide, Lippincott-Raven Publishers, 1997, 3-9). The middle meningeal artery, the principle artery in the dura mater, is innervated by sensory fibers from the trigeminal ganglion which contain several neuropeptides, including CGRP. Trigeminal ganglion stimulation in the cat resulted in increased levels of CGRP, and in humans, activation of the trigeminal system caused facial flushing and increased levels of CGRP in the external jugular vein (Goadsby et al., Ann. Neurol., 1988, 23, 193-196). Electrical stimulation of the dura mater in rats increased the diameter of the middle meningeal artery, an effect that was blocked by prior administration of CGRP (8-37), a peptide CGRP antagonist (Williamson et al., Cephalalgia, 1997, 17, 525-531). Trigeminal ganglion stimulation increased facial blood flow in the rat, which was inhibited by CGRP (8-37) (Escott et al., Brain Res. 1995, 669, 93-99). Electrical stimulation of the trigeminal ganglion in marmoset produced an increase in facial blood flow that could be blocked by the non-peptide CGRP antagonist BIBN4096BS (Doods et al., Br. J. Pharmacol., 2000, 129, 420-423). Thus the vascular effects of CGRP may be attenuated, prevented or reversed by a CGRP antagonist.
CGRP-mediated vasodilation of rat middle meningeal artery was shown to sensitize neurons of the trigeminal nucleus caudalis (Williamson et al., The CGRP Family: Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide (CGRP), Amylin, and Adrenomedullin, Landes Bioscience, 2000, 245-247). Similarly, distention of dural blood vessels during migraine headache may sensitize trigeminal neurons. Some of the associated symptoms of migraine, including extra-cranial pain and facial allodynia, may be the result of sensitized trigeminal neurons (Burstein et al., Ann. Neurol. 2000, 47, 614-624). A CGRP antagonist may be beneficial in attenuating, preventing or reversing the effects of neuronal sensitization.
The ability of the compounds of the present invention to act as CGRP antagonists makes them useful pharmacological agents for disorders that involve CGRP in humans and animals, but particularly in humans. Such disorders include migraine and cluster headache (Doods, Curr Opin Inves Drugs, 2001, 2 (9), 1261-1268; Edvinsson et al., Cephalalgia, 1994, 14, 320-327); chronic tension type headache (Ashina et al., Neurology, 2000, 14, 1335-1340); pain (Yu et al., Eur. J. Pharm., 1998, 347, 275-282); chronic pain (Hulsebosch et al., Pain, 2000, 86, 163-175); neurogenic inflammation and inflammatory pain (Holzer, Neurosci., 1988, 24, 739-768; Delay-Goyet et al., Acta Physiol. Scanda. 1992, 146, 537-538; Salmon et al., Nature Neurosci., 2001, 4(4), 357-358); eye pain (May et al. Cephalalgia, 2002, 22, 195-196), tooth pain (Awawdeh et al., Int. Endocrin. J., 2002, 35, 30-36), non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (Molina et al., Diabetes, 1990, 39, 260-265); vascular disorders; inflammation (Zhang et al., Pain, 2001, 89, 265), arthritis, asthma (Foster et al., Ann. NY Acad. Sci., 1992, 657, 397-404; Schini et al., Am. J. Physiol., 1994, 267, H2483-H2490; Zheng et al., J. Virol., 1993, 67, 5786-5791); shock, sepsis (Beer et al., Crit. Care Med., 2002, 30 (8), 1794-1798); opiate withdrawal syndrome (Salmon et al., Nature Neurosci., 2001, 4(4), 357-358) morphine tolerance (Menard et al., J. Neurosci., 1996, 16 (7), 2342-2351); hot flashes in men and women (Chen et al., Lancet, 1993, 342, 49; Spetz et al., J. Urology, 2001, 166, 1720-1723); allergic dermatitis (Wallengren, Contact Dermatitis, 2000, 43 (3), 137-143); encephalitis, brain trauma, ischaemia, stroke, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative diseases (Rohrenbeck et al., Neurobiol. of Disease 1999, 6, 15-34); skin diseases (Geppetti and Holzer, Eds., Neurogenic Inflammation, 1996, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla.), neurogenic cutaneous redness, skin rosaceousness and erythema. Of particular importance is the acute or prophylactic treatment of headache, including migraine and cluster headache.
The present invention relates to compounds that are useful as ligands for CGRP receptors, in particular antagonists for CGRP receptors, processes for their preparation, their use in therapy, pharmaceutical compositions comprising them and methods of therapy using them. | {
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The lead-acid battery is the oldest and most popular type of rechargeable energy storage device, dating back to the late 1850's when initially conceived by Raymond Gaston Plante. Despite having a very low energy-to-weight ratio and a low energy-to-volume ratio, the lead-acid battery can supply high-surge currents, allowing the cells to maintain a relatively large power-to-weight ratio. These features, along with their low cost, make lead-acid batteries attractive for use in motor vehicles, which require a high current for starter motors. A lead-acid battery is generally composed of a positive electrode and a negative electrode in an electrolyte bath. Typically, the electrodes are isolated by a porous separator whose primary role is to eliminate all contact between the electrodes while keeping them within a minimal distance (e.g., a few millimeters) of each other. A separator prevents electrode short-circuits by containing dendrites (puncture resistance) and reducing the Pb deposits in the bottom of the battery.
A fully charged, positive lead-acid battery electrode is typically lead dioxide (PbO2). The negative current collector is lead (Pb) metal and electrolyte is sulfuric acid (H2SO4). Sulfuric acid is a strong acid that typically dissociates into ions prior to being added to the battery:H2SO4→H++HSO4−
As indicated in the following two half-cell reactions, when this cell discharges, lead metal in the negative plate reacts with sulphuric acid to form lead sulphate (PbSO4), which is then deposited on the surface of the negative plate.Pb(s)+HSO4−(aq)→PbSO4(s)+H+(aq)+2e− (negative-plate half reaction)PbO2(s)+3H+(aq)+HSO4−(aq)+2e−→PbSO4(s)+2H2O (positive-plate half reaction)
During the discharge operation, acid is consumed and water is produced; during the charge operation, water is consumed and acid is produced. Adding the two discharge half-cell reactions yields the full-cell discharge reaction:Pb+PbO2+2H2SO4→2PbSO4+2H2O (full-cell discharge equation)
When the lead-acid battery is under load, an electric field in the electrolyte causes negative ions (in this case bisulfate) to drift toward the negative plate. The negative ion is consumed by reacting with the plate. The reaction also produces a positive ion (proton) that drifts away under the influence of the field, leaving two electrons behind in the plate to be delivered to the terminal.
Upon recharging the battery, PbSO4 is converted back to Pb by dissolving lead sulphate crystals (PbSO4) into the electrolyte. Adding the two charge half-cell reactions yields the full-cell charge reaction.PbSO4(s)+H+(aq)+2e−→Pb(s)+HSO4−(aq) (negative-plate half reaction)PbSO4(s)+2H2O→PbO2(s)+3H+(aq)+HSO4−(aq)+2e− (positive-plate half reaction)PbSO4(s)+H+(aq)+2e−→Pb(s)+HSO4−(aq) (full-cell charge equation)
When the battery repeatedly cycles between charging and discharging, the efficiency of dissolution of PbSO4 and conversion to Pb metal decreases over time. As a result, the amount of PbSO4 continues to increase on the surface of negative plate and over time forms an impermeable layer of PbSO4, thus restricting access of electrolyte to the electrode.
Over the years, several additives including expanders have been used in an attempt to lessen the growth of lead sulphate and improve battery performance. Expanders act as anti-shrinkage agents and are an important component of lead/acid batteries because they prevent performance losses in negative plates that would otherwise be caused by passivation and structural changes in the active material. To make a negative plate spongy and prevent the solidification of lead, expanders were developed from a mixture of carbon black, lignin derivatives (e.g., lignosulphate, lignosulfonates), and barium sulphate (BaSO4). These expanders can be incorporated into a battery's negative plates in several ways, including adding the individual components to a paste mix and adding a pre-blended formulation.
Carbon black is typically added to the negative active material (NAM) to increase: (i) electrical conductivity; (ii) surface area of the NAM; and (iii) nucleating PbSO4 crystals. Carbon black is substantially pure elemental carbon, typically in the form of colloidal particles produced by an incomplete combustion or thermal decomposition of gaseous or liquid hydrocarbons under controlled conditions. It is a black, finely-divided pellet or powder.
The presence of lignin derivatives (e.g., lignosulphate, lignosulfonates, and other complex aromatic polyethers) helps prevent the formation of an obstructive PbSO4 layer on the electrode surface and facilitates the formation of a porous layer built up of individual PbSO4 crystals. Lignin derivatives have the property of being strong antiflocculents (e.g., they prevent colloids from coming out of suspension in the form of flocs or flakes) and are composed of a large hydrophobic organic part (R+) and a small hydrophilic inorganic fraction (SO3−). As a result, lignin derivatives are water soluble. For example:RSO3Na→RSO3−+Na+
The hydrophobic part of the RSO3− anion will be adsorbed on the surface of the lead particles, and thus the hydrophilic part of the anion will phase-out to the aqueous electrolyte phase. This results in an increase in the repulsion potential, which prevents the particles from coalescing or sintering. Many different lignosulfonates have been used in expanders; however, their effects on the performance of lead/acid batteries varies dramatically based on the expander formula and battery type application (e.g., Starting, Motive, Standby).
Barium sulfate, being isomorphic to PbSO4, acts as a nucleation agent and ensures uniform distribution of PbSO4 crystals throughout the active mass volume. The ability of barium sulfate to act as a site for lead sulfate precipitation is due to the similar structures of the two compounds. Strontium sulfate has also been shown to be an effective expander. The inert barium sulfate provides a large number of sites for the precipitation of lead sulfate crystallites and thereby prevents its deposition as a thin, impermeable, passivating PbSO4 film.
A notable difference between expanders used in automotive and industrial applications is the ratio of barium sulfate to carbon. For example, in automotive batteries, a high fraction of lignosulfonate (25-40%) may be used, whereas in industrial batteries a smaller percentage of lignosulfonate may be used (0-10%). The higher percentage of lignosulfonate in automotive plates may be useful in producing high cold-cranking amperes, whereas a larger amount of barium sulfate in industrial plates may help prevent passivation during deep cycling and provide greater durability.
Conductive additives in positive plates, such as BaPbO3 (Barium metaplumbate); Pb3O4 (Red lead), Titanium based compounds (e.g., Ti4O7, TiSi2, TiO2), and graphite have been used to improve the power density and corrosion resistance in lead-acid batteries. Similarly, higher surface area additives (e.g., glass microspheres, particulate silica, zeolite, and porous carbons) have also been added to negative paste to improve electrolyte access and enhance cycle life.
For several decades, carbon has been a popular additive to the NAM in lead-acid batteries. Although the role of carbon in NAM may be generally unclear, several beneficial effects have been identified. For example, carbon nucleates the PbSO4 crystals, resulting in smaller crystals that may be more easily dissolved into the electrolyte during charging processes. This restricts the progress of plate sulfation (e.g., formation of a PbSO4 layer) and increases the useful life of the battery in high-rate, partial state-of-charge (HRPSoC) duty. High surface-area carbons can act as a reservoir for electrolyte within NAM, thus reducing the possibility of plate dry-out.
A combination of highly conductive graphite, high surface area carbon black and/or activated carbon is often used in NAM. In graphite, the atoms are typically arranged in planar hexagonal networks (e.g., graphene layers) held together by strong sp2 bonds resulting in high in-planar electronic conductivity. A disordered carbon typically arises when a fraction of carbon atoms is sp3 hybridized rather than sp2. The electronic conductivity of mixed carbon depends on the distribution of sp3 carbon in sp2 domains. Although graphite additives in active material decrease the resistivity of the paste by forming a conductive path around the PbSO4 crystals, they are reported to have lower surface areas (typically in the order of 10-30 m2/g). A second carbon additive is generally required to increase the total surface area of the NAM to improve the accessibility of electrolyte. Carbon blacks and activated carbons with surface areas between 200-2000 m2/g may be added in conjunction with graphite to improve surface area as well as electronic conductivity. Activated carbon is a form of carbon that has been processed to greatly increase porosity, thus greatly increasing its surface area (e.g., 1 gram of activated carbon may have surface area in excess of 500 m2).
Numerous attempts have been made to overcome the above-mentioned problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,548,211 to Kamada, et al., discloses the addition of graphite powder having a mean particle size smaller than 30 μm added in the range of about 0.3% to 2% by weight. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0015531 to Dickinson, et al., discloses a paste for negative plate of lead acid battery having a activated carbon additive loadings of 1.0% to 2.0% by weight. The activated carbon additive, taught by Dickinson, has a mesopore volume of greater than about 0.1 cm3/g and a mesopore size range of about 20-320 angstroms (Å) as determined by the DFT nitrogen adsorption method. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0040950 to Buiel, et al. describes a negative electrode having a mixture of activated carbon (˜5-95% by weight), lead (5-95% by weight), and conductive carbon (5-20% by weight). U.S. Pat. No. 5,547,783 to Funato, et al., describes various additives, including carbon, acetylene black, polyaniline, tin powder, and tin compound powder having an average particle diameter of 100 μm or less. U.S. Pat. No. 5,156,935 to Hohjo, et al., describes electro-conductive whiskers made of carbon, graphite or potassium titanate—useful as additives for the negative plate of a lead-acid battery—having a diameter of 10 μm or less, aspect ratio of 50 or more, and a specific surface area of 2 m2/g (21). Unfortunately, none of these previous attempts have been able to achieve the benefit of both higher surface area and higher electronic conductivity in a single carbon material.
Carbon blacks and activated carbons have the ability to accept a higher charge because of their higher surface areas and enhanced electrolyte accessibility. Unfortunately, because of their porous structures, carbon blacks and activated carbons have poor retention on particle size during paste mixing and cycling. As a result, carbon blacks and activated carbons often disintegrate, causing the carbon to bleed out of the plate over period of time, resulting in active material shedding from the grids.
Graphites, by contrast, with ordered structures, are advantageous because they are both inert to electrochemical reactions during charge-discharge cycles and resist disintegration during cycle life tests over an extended period. Unfortunately, graphites have lower surface areas, thus restricting electrolyte access and resulting in an active material with lower charge acceptance.
Despite the numerous existing battery additives, there is a need for an improved battery additive that. (i) is inert to electrochemical reactions during charge-discharge cycles; (ii) resists disintegration during cycle life tests over an extended period; and (iii) yields an increased charge acceptance. | {
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Vehicles require a transmission to convert rotational forces as well as rotational speeds. The purpose of a vehicle transmission is to transfer the tractive force of a drive unit. The present invention pertains to a method for operating an automatic transmission. In terms of the present invention, all transmissions with automatic gear changers will be addressed under the term automatic transmission and are also described as phase automatic transmissions.
A method is known from DE 100 35 479 A1 for operating an automatic transmission in which shifts are realized in an interlaced manner for the purpose of improving the shift speed of successive upshifts and/or successive downshifts. For this purpose, during each first upshift and/or downshift, a shift element needed for the successive second upshift and/or downshift is prepared during the ongoing first upshift and/or downshift in such a manner that upon realization of a synchronous speed of the ongoing first upshift and/or downshift, the immediate completion of the successive upshift and/or downshift is possible.
Moreover, according to DE 100 35 479 A1, only single shifts are overlapped with each other, which means that each completed first upshift and/or downshift, as well as each successive second upshift and/or downshift, is a single shift between two immediately successive gears.
Especially when the number of gears in automatic transmissions increase and the gear ratio phases between the immediately successive gears decrease, the preparation of shift elements for a second upshift and/or downshift during the first upshift and/or downshift in the sense of overlapped single shifts causes difficulties since the time needed for the preparation of the shift elements for the second upshift and/or downshift during the first upshift and/or downshift is then no longer available.
Proceeding from this, the present invention is based on the problem of creating a new method for operating an automatic transmission. According to the present invention, depending on a gear change, which is to be completed from an actual gear into a nominal gear as first upshift and/or downshift, a multiple shift is preferred over a single shift. | {
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Embodiments described herein relate generally to alternative fuels, chemicals, and engineered fuel feedstocks, and in particular, to systems and methods for producing an engineered fuel feedstock having significantly reduced chlorine content. The engineered fuel feedstock may include additives to control emissions, prevent corrosion, and/or improve operational performance during combustion or gasification applications. The feedstocks described herein include at least one component of processed municipal solid waste, an additive, and optionally other components.
Sources of fossil fuels useful for heating, transportation, and the production of chemicals as well as petrochemicals are becoming increasingly scarce and costly. Industries such as those producing energy and petrochemicals are actively searching for cost-effective engineered fuel feedstocks for use in generating those products and many others. Additionally, due to the ever increasing costs of fossil fuels, transportation costs for moving engineered fuel feedstocks for production of energy and petrochemicals is rapidly escalating.
These energy and petrochemical producing industries, and others, have relied on the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas, for use in combustion and gasification processes for the production of energy, for heating and electricity, and the generation of synthesis gas used for the downstream production of chemicals and liquid fuels, as well as an energy source for turbines.
One potentially significant source of feedstock for production of an engineered fuel is solid waste. Solid waste, such as municipal solid waste (MSW), is typically disposed of in landfills or used in combustion processes to generate heat and/or steam for use in turbines. The drawbacks accompanying combustion include the production of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, particulates and products of chlorine that are damaging to the environment. In particular, incomplete combustion of chlorinated plastics is especially hazardous since it can lead to the formation of dioxins. To reduce the formation of dioxins, it is desirable to remove the chlorine from plastics prior to combustion.
Thus, there is a need for alternative fuel feedstocks that burn cleanly and efficiently, and that can be used for the production of energy and/or chemicals. There is, at the same time, a need for waste management systems that implement methods for reducing green house gas emissions of waste in utilizing such wastes. In particular, there is a need for improved systems and methods for sorting waste material and reclaiming a resource value from components of the waste material. By harnessing and using the energy content contained in waste, it is possible to reduce green house gas emissions and/or otherwise reduce emissions generated during the processing of wastes thereby effectively using the waste generated by commercial and residential consumers. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a longitudinal adjuster on the core or shaft of an actuating-pull mechanism, preferably for gear-shift cables of motor vehicles, in accordance with the first patent claim.
The invention can be used wherever it is intended to transmit forces or movements between components by means of actuating-pull mechanisms and the components vary slightly in length in relation to one another, with the result that the length of the actuating-pull mechanism has to be corrected. This can be the case in all types of vehicles and the actuating means thereof, such as shifting mechanisms, in particular gear-shift mechanisms or clutches. Furthermore, wear on the connecting parts of the actuating-pull mechanism or of the components makes it necessary to correct the actuating-pull mechanism. This can be done in a known manner by correcting the length of the sheathing or correcting the effective length of the core.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
European reference EP 0 619 437 discloses a device which is intended for adjusting the length of a core of a cable and in the case of which two toothing arrangements interengage. An adjustable resilient element acts transversely with respect to the axis of the core. As a result, the effective length of the core can be changed as desired. In the operating state, automatic readjustment and securing do not take place. Furthermore, the system does not appear to be suitable for the purpose of transmitting relatively large forces.
A further system is known, having an inner shaped part and an outer shaped part with teeth that interengage. The inner shaped part is fixedly connected to the core and the outer shaped part is pushed over the inner shaped part in a wedge-like manner. The outer shaped part in each case has to be disengaged to an extent where a surface without any toothing arrangement is reached, whereupon the outer shaped part can be displaced with respect to the inner shaped part until the two parts latch into one another again and thus produce a corresponding connection. This longitudinal adjuster has the disadvantage that the toothing arrangements have to be released from one another over their entire length, with the result that a long displacement path is required for the disengagement of the toothing arrangements. Furthermore, problems may arise during the engagement of the toothing arrangements if the latter strike against one another by way of their tips and jam. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to inkjet printers and, more particularly, to an improved method and system for guiding recording media, such as paper, through a printer.
2. Description of the Related Technology
In typical inkjet printing processes, droplets of ink are emitted from ink jet nozzles, or apertures, onto a recording medium, such as paper, which is fed through a printing area of the inkjet printer. The pattern in which the droplets of ink are "sprayed" onto the recording medium is typically directed by computer control.
In many prior art printers, most commonly large format printers, a plurality of single wheel pinch rollers are spread across the width of a printing surface to assist in the guidance of recording media, such as paper, across the platen of the printer during the printing process. Often, however, the alignment of one or more of the rollers in a prior art printer is slightly skewed from the direction of motion of the paper from the feeder apparatus. This can cause a misalignment of the paper as it is fed through the printer and, consequently, can detrimentally affect the printing quality of the printer. In some cases, noticeable wrinkling of the paper may result. | {
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Many types of meters have been developed for measuring the flow of a medium within a pipe or other flow passage. One common type of flow meter uses a sensor external to the flow passage for responding to movement of a part within the flow passage to produce an electrical signal from which a representation of flow rate is developed.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,729,996 discloses a flow meter that includes a shaft which rotates within the flow passage at a rate proportional to the rate of fluid flow. A second shaft outside the flow passage and magnetically coupled to the first shaft rotates with the first shaft. An electrical circuit converts the rotation rate of the second shaft into a visual output.
In another type of flow meter, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,507,976, Hall effect sensors respond directly to displacement of a magnet within the flow passage. The Hall effect sensor develops a signal based on the magnitude of the component of magnetic flux perpendicular to the face of the sensor, which varies with displacement of the magnet. As with the prior art discussed above, the design of this flow meter includes electrical circuitry which converts the output of the sensor into a visual representation of flow rate. | {
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Face-to-face conversation is universally recognized as the preferred form of human communication. For decades this fact has been the impetus for the development of video teleconferencing systems. In a typical teleconferencing system, a pair of terminals, each with a video camera and a video display device, a microphone and a speaker, are connected by a telecommunications link to permit face-to-face communications at a distance.
However, such systems as have been developed to date have failed to address the fact that communication is best when video conference participants have eye contact with each other.
In a typical teleconferencing terminal, the video camera and the video display device are not in line with one another, but are so disposed that a communicant in a teleconference has the choice of facing the camera and not directly facing the display device or--the usual choice--facing the display device, with the result that the camera captures a face seemingly staring off into space, no eye contact then being possible with the other communicant in the teleconference.
One prior art attempt to alleviate this problem has been to place within a teleconferencing terminal a half-silvered mirror with a camera behind it and the display device off to one side. In this case, the image from the display device is reflected by the half-silvered mirror toward the local communicant while the camera scans the local communicant head-on through the half- silvered mirror, thus providing eye contact with the remote communicant. One problem with this terminal arrangement is that the video display device no longer offers a front-surface view, but an image recessed into the terminal. The loss of the sense of immediacy, of presence, is felt at once, vitiating much of the eye-contact gain that was the aim of the design.
This half-silvered mirror arrangement, often used for teleprompting, is a purely mechanical one--a half-silvered mirror in a box--at which both the video camera and the video display are pointed. The camera and the display work independently of each other, no attempt being made to coordinate their operation.
In view of the shortcomings of the above-described conventional teleconferencing terminals, it is an object of the present invention to provide a teleconferencing terminal which enables communicating parties to have eye contact with each other, and enjoy a heightened sense of each other's presence, with improved image quality. | {
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This invention relates to feedback networks for linear amplifiers. One of the major disadvantages of linear solid state amplifiers is that intermodulation distortion performance is poor in comparison to their vacuum tube counterparts. It is generally difficult to apply RF feedback around multiple stage of broadband solid state linear amplifiers. The phase shift associated with these amplifiers varies too widely to consider any type of phase compensation network in the feedback loop. Without feedback, of course, the amplifier performance is limited to the capabilities of the transistors or tubes in the amplifier gain chain. The performance of an amplifier, in the Radio Frequency (RF) range, is measured by the intermodulation distortion produced by the application of two equal amplitude signals or tones, generally separated in frequency by 1 KHz, to the amplifier. Acceptable performance of the amplifier is when the intermodulation distortion is greater than 25 to 35 db below either tone and gain variation on the order of 6 db. It is generally accepted that application of feedback will improve the performance and reduce gain variation depending upon the amount of feedback employed. Traditionally, 10 db of feedback should improve the intermodulation distortion level by 10 db.
The problem was addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,777,275 in which non linear amplifying devices were used to produce bandpass linear amplification of a signal having amplitude variation. The input signal was transformed into two constant amplitude phase modulation components which together contain in their phase fluxuation the total information content of the input signal. The components were amplified separately by devices which preserved phase, and the recombination of the amplified components reproduced a linear amplified replica of the original signal input. This technique was primarily useful at high frequency, but also could be modified to provide a frequency translation.
Similarly in U.S. Pat. No. 3,909,742, hybrid combiners, nonlinear amplifying devices, phase varying devices and an attenuator were used to produce a linear amplified replica of a bandpass analog signal having amplitude variations. The original analog input signal and a feedback signal are applied to a hybrid combiner which subtracts the feedback signal from the original input signal to produce one of two components of equal amplitude and adds a feedback signal to the original input signal to produce the other component. The components are amplified separately by nonlinear amplifying devices and the amplified components then are recombined by a second hybrid combiner which produces two outputs. One output, the difference between the two components is the linearly amplified replica of the original signal. The other output, the sum of the two components, is the feedback signal which is applied through a series combination of the phase varying devices and the attenuator to the first hybrid component.
The problem of distortion in the use of feedback circuits to reduce or eliminate distortion was discussed for tube type amplifiers in Chapters 13 and 14 of the book entitled, "Signal Sideband Principles And Circuits" by E. W. Pappenfus, W. B. Bruene and E. O. Schoenike, published by McGraw-Hill. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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A gel base prepared by increasing the viscosity of an aqueous carboxyvinyl polymer solution with a basic viscosity-increasing agent such as sodium hydroxide, triethanolamine, diisopropanolamine, etc. has such excellent characteristics that (i) since the stock polymer has a high purity and uniform quality, it can give a topical preparation with a high reproducibility, (ii) it shows almost a constant viscosity in the range of a temperature of from 10.degree. to 70.degree. C., (iii) it is hardly decomposed with microorganisms such as bacteria, (iv) the gel is stable in a wide range of pH, and the like, and hence, it has been used for preparing various topical preparations such as medicines, cosmetics, etc. However, the gel base has such defects that the viscosity thereof is decreased by irradiation with a light (ultraviolet light), and it shows low storage stability, and further that it is restricted in the utility. When the above-mentioned conventional basic viscosity-increasing agents are used, it must be adjusted to pH 10 or higher in order to eliminate the above defects. An ointment having pH 10 or higher shows high irritation to mucous membranes and skin which is not tolerable. | {
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Bath towels, beach towels, washcloths or the like are typically produced from fabric that is stored in roll form on a spool. The fabric is unrolled from the spool in a machine direction, cut into sections, and bonded in the machine direction and a cross direction to form at least partially finished products.
The web is sometimes formed using fabric from multiple spools, such that the web is made up of multiple layers of material that must be bonded together. As used herein, the term “layer” when used in a singular form may refer to a single layer element or multiple layer elements.
In some processes, the web is bonded in the machine direction (often manually) and then cut into sections, so that the cut edges of the sections can be manually bonded in the cross direction. In other processes, the web is cut into sections without any type of bonding, such that each section must be manually bonded in both the machine and cross directions.
As used herein, the term “machine direction” refers to along the length of a material, fabric, or web, in the direction in which it moves as it is produced. The terms “cross-machine direction” or “cross direction” refer to along the width of a material, fabric, or web (i.e., a direction generally perpendicular to the machine direction).
The labor associated with manually bonding the web or web sections adds unwanted production costs, especially bonding in the cross direction. Bonding in the cross direction is cumbersome, because the web must be cut into sections, and then each of the sections maneuvered to permit access to the cut edges for manual bonding in the cross direction.
The web and/or cut out web sections are typically bonded near the perimeter. In some processes, interior areas of the web or web sections are manually bonded for stability and/or decorative effect. The edges of the web are also often folded over and manually bonded to form hems along the web edges. Forming hems along the cut edges of web sections is even more problematic because of the work required to manipulate the cut web sections for folding and then bonding.
There is a need for an apparatus, seaming assembly and method that effectively places seams in a continuously moving web of fabric in a cross direction, or in both machine and cross directions. The apparatus, seaming assembly and method should make it less expensive to produce bath towels, beach towels, washcloths or the like by efficiently bonding portions of a web that is formed from at least one spool of fabric. | {
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The present invention relates to FM stereo, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for reproducing FM stereo sounds in a manner to reduce noise and distortion, while preserving the quality of the reproduced stereo sounds.
It is well known that when FM radio transmission is reproduced in the mono mode, there is a relatively high quality of sound reproduction, with little background noise and relatively little distortion. However, it is also well known that when there is FM transmission of a stero signal, there is much greater noise and distortion. More specifically the L-R sound is quite susceptible to multipath distortion. This occurs when the FM signal is reflected off the side of a building, hill, or even by a bridge, so that there is a second or third delayed signal reaching the receiver. When these delayed signals are superimposed on the main signal transmitted directly to the receiver, there is distortion in the combined signal that is reproduced.
The common method of producing FM stereo is to transmit an L+R signal (which is a combination of the left stereo signal and the right stereo signal) as a frequency modulation on the radio frequency carrier, which, when demodulated, has signals in the band from 0 to 15 kHz. There is also an L-R signal component (which is the difference between the left stereo signal and the right stereo signal), and this is transmitted in a band width which is centered on a 38th kHz subcarrier, with the range of this band being from about 23 kHz to 53 kHz. These two sets of signals are separated in the receiver, then fed to a decoding matrix which combines these signals so as to provide separate L and R outputs that correspond to the original left and right stereo signals, and are in turn fed to left and right speakers to produce the stereo sound.
The L+R signal is, of itself, of high quality, while most of the random noise and multipath distortion is attributable to the L-R signal. There have been attempts in the prior art to somehow mask or eliminate the random noise and distortion in the L-R signal. It has been recognized in the prior art that most of the undesirable noise and distortion is present in the higher frequency range of the L-R signal, and for this reason, one approach has been to mute the high frequency part of the L-R signal component, particularly where there is low signal strength so that the noise and distortion is more noticeable. Such an approach is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,943,293, Bailey. However, by so muting or eliminating the L-R information, much of the stereo effect is lost, with the L+R signal being transmitted from both speakers so that, in effect, there is produced a more mono-like sound rather than a full stereo sound.
The overall effect is that when the music is playing loudly, the sound moves out to the speakers for the stereo effect. However, when the music begins to be less loud, it moves from the location of the speakers to a center location. Likewise, when a single instrument is playing loudly, it appears to come from the speaker location, but then move to a location between the speakers when that same instrument is playing more softly.
Another consideration is that many of the prior art approaches have failed to recognize the significance or role of what might be termed the "ambient" sounds in a stereo recording. The quality of a stereo recording is affected by sounds which are reflected at the recording location and then picked up by the recording microphones. While these sounds may or may not be directional, when added to the main musical sound, they produce a certain fullness of the sound which is more representative of a live performance. Such reflected or delayed sounds are the "ambient" sounds referred to above.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to reproduce FM stereo sound in a manner to minimize random noise and distortion, while preserving the directional information and fullness of the original stereo signal. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Test tools are used to verify the correct functioning of software and modifications to existing software. Verifying the correctness of software may involve numerous tasks, including the testing of concurrency. Concurrency testing is a core requirement in the software industry and is accomplished through the execution of testcases. A testcase is a set of conditions under which a tester will determine whether an application or software system is working correctly. However, the writing of effective concurrency testcases is outside the programming skills of most testers. The concurrency test requirements instead are often assigned to specialized developers. This leads to other problems, such as the unproductive expense of waiting on a developer to program a testcase, and the risk of losing test requirements in translation.
Traditional programming languages like C, Java, and Perl offer an interface for concurrency testing. Unfortunately this interface requires a steep learning curve to master. The concurrency enablement in these languages is a thread which is the smallest unit of processing that can be scheduled by an operating system. The threading model for these languages is complex due to the number of concepts that have to be mastered, including a deep understanding of the thread model, thread pools, thread life cycle, critical sections, semaphores, synchronizing threads, race conditions, memory usage, etc. During testcase maintenance, the testers further have to depend on the same developers to fix defects and to change test coverage. These costs and risks multiply when the test requirements result in multiple test products, each involving concurrency. | {
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Bio-threat detectors are used to monitor the ambient air to detect the presence of potentially harmful pathogens. In general, air is drawn into a detection apparatus, or trigger, where the particulates in the air are evaluated. Airflow into the detection apparatus is typically generated by a fan within the apparatus. The trigger continuously monitors the air and the individual molecules within a given airflow. Some triggers use lasers to scan the air path to interrogate the particles passing through. A harmless particle, such as a dust particle, can be discriminated from a harmful particle, for example an anthrax spore, because each different type of particle reflects a different wavelength of light. The laser light reflected of the passing particles is matched to database of known harmful wavelengths. When a harmful wavelength is detected, the trigger signals that a potential pathogen is present. However, the specific type of particle is not identified by the trigger.
A confirmation module takes over once the trigger signals the presence of a possible pathogen. The trigger signal initiates the confirmation module into action. The confirmation module identifies the particles detected by the trigger. Conventionally, when the trigger goes off, the potential pathogen is collected and taken to a lab where the confirmation module performs the analysis. Some detection apparatuses are configured with a secondary fan assembly, such as a muffin fan, such that the potential pathogens collect on the fan blades of the secondary fan assembly as the air flows through the detection apparatus. In such configurations, the secondary fan assembly is activated via the trigger signal. The fan blades or the fan assembly is removed from the detection apparatus and taken to a laboratory for analysis. At the lab, a swab is used to wipe the particles from the fan blade surface, or a solution is manually applied to the fan blades to elute the particles off the fan blade surface. This is a time-consuming process that is impractical for real-time threat assessment. | {
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Acyltransferases comprise a large family of enzymes that regulate biological processes by catalyzing the transfer of acyl groups to a wide variety of biological and chemical substrates, including proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids (E. C. Webb ed., Enzyme Nomenclature, pp. 178-201, ©1992 Academic Press, Inc. San Diego, Calif.).
The biosynthesis of complex lipids involves specific acylation reactions catalyzed by acyltransferases. Lipids are ubiquitous biomolecules that play a critical role in cell structure and metabolism. For example, triacylglycerols are the principal storage form of energy; cholesterol is a component of cell membranes and a precursor of steroid hormones and bile acids; glycolipids and phospholipids are major components of biological membranes; and arachidonate is a precursor of pleiotropic intercellular mediators including the prostaglandins, prostacyclins, thromboxanes, and leukotrienes.
The de novo biosynthesis of glycerophospholipids, which include phospholipids and triacylglycerol, involves the esterification of glycerol-3-phosphate with a fatty acyl-CoA in the sn-1 position by glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) to form 1-acylglycerol-3-phosphate (lysophosphatidic acid). Lysophosphatidic acid is then esterified in the sn-2 position with a fatty acyl-CoA by 1-acylglycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (AGPAT) to form 1,2-diacylglycerol-3-phosphate (phosphatidic acid). Ultimately, phosphatidic acid can be converted to phosphatidylinositol, phosphatidylglycerol and cardiolipin via a CDP-diacylglycerol intermediate. Alternatively, phosphatidic acid can be dephosphorylated to form diacylglycerol, which is used for the synthesis of triacylglycerol, as well as phospholipids including phosphatidylcholine and phosphatidlyethanolamine.
Glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) is the first committed, and presumably rate-limiting, step in glycerophospholipid biosynthesis (Wilkison, WO and Bell, R M (1997) Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1348:3-9; Dircks, L and Sul H S (1999) Prog. Lipid Res. 38:461-479). Two isoforms of this enzyme have been detected in mammals, a mitochondrial and an endoplasmic reticulum isoform, which can be distinguished by differential sensitivity to N-ethylmaleimide (NEM). Treatment of mitochondrial GPAT with arginine-modifying agents, phenylglyoxal and cyclohexanedione, incativated the enzyme (Dircks, L et al. (1999) J. Biol. Chem. 274:34728-34). The expression of mitochondrial GPAT is under nutritional and hormonal control in lipogenic tissues such as liver and adipose tissue, as is regulated during adipocyte differentiation (Yet, S-F et al. (1993) Biochemistry 32:9486-91; Yet, S-F et al. (1995) Biochemistry 34:7303-10).
Acyltransferases also play an important role in the fatty acid remodeling of phospholipids, as well as the metabolism of bioactive lipids (Yamashita, A et al. (1997) J. Biochem. 122:1-16). Fatty acid remodeling is central to physiological processes including the regulation of the physiochemical properties of membranes, e.g., membrane fluidity, and the regulation of the distribution and accumulation of biologically active fatty acids, e.g., arachidonic acid. The phospholipid bilayer of biological membranes serves as a permeability barrier to compartmentalize specialized functions in the cell, and mediates cellular functions such as ion and metabolite transport, electron transport, and signal transduction. Moreover, fatty acylation of cellular proteins may have important functional consequences such as the modulation of subcellular localization (e.g., membrane targeting) and signaling. Therefore, acyltransferases contribute to the ability of the cell to grow and differentiate, to proliferate, to adhere and move, and to interact and communicate with other cells. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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It is known that a plasma can be ignited by subjecting a gas to a sufficient amount of microwave radiation. Plasma ignition, however, is usually easier at gas pressures substantially less than atmospheric pressure. However, vacuum equipment, which is required to lower the gas pressure, can be expensive, as well as slow and energy-consuming. Moreover, the use of such equipment can limit manufacturing flexibility. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid crystal display, and more particularly to an array substrate for a liquid crystal display and a fabricating method thereof.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Generally, a liquid crystal display (LCD) controls a light transmittance using an electric field to display a picture. To this end, the LCD includes a liquid crystal panel having liquid crystal cells arranged in a matrix form, and a driving circuit for driving the liquid crystal panel. The liquid crystal panel is provided with pixel electrodes and a common electrode for applying electric fields to the respective liquid crystal cells. Typically, for each liquid crystal cell, the pixel electrode is provided on a lower substrate, whereas the common electrode is formed on the entire surface of an upper substrate. Each of the pixel electrodes is connected to a thin film transistor (TFT), which is used as a switching device. The pixel electrode, along with the common electrode, drives the liquid crystal cell in accordance with a data signal applied to the TFT.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, an array substrate 1 of an LCD includes a TFT arranged at an intersection between a data line 13 and a gate line 11, a pixel electrode 23 connected to a drain electrode 7 of the TFT, a data pad portion DP connected to the data line 13, and a gate pad portion GP connected to the gate line 11.
The TFT includes a gate electrode 3 connected to the gate line 11, a source electrode 5 connected to the data line 13, and a drain electrode 7 connected, via a drain contact hole 19b, to the pixel electrode 23. Further, the TFT includes semiconductor layers 15 and 17, which define a channel between the source electrode 5 and the drain electrode 7 when a gate voltage is applied to the gate electrode 3. Such a TFT responds to a gate signal from the gate line 11 to selectively apply a data signal from the data line 13 to the pixel electrode 23.
The pixel electrode 23 is positioned at a cell area divided by the data line 13 and the gate line 11, and is made from a transparent conductive material having a high light transmittance. The pixel electrode 23 is electrically connected, via the drain contact hole 19b, to the drain electrode 7. The pixel electrode 23 generates a potential difference relative to a common transparent electrode (not shown) provided at an upper substrate (not shown) by a data signal applied via the TFT. By this potential difference, the liquid crystal molecules in the liquid crystal positioned between the array substrate 1 and the upper substrate are rotated due to its dielectric anisotropy. Due to this rotation, the liquid crystal allows selective transmission of light emitted from a light source through the pixel electrode 23 and the upper substrate.
The gate pad portion GP transmits a scanning signal, i.e., a gate pulse, which is generated from a gate driving integrated circuit (IC) (not shown), to the gate line 11. A gate pad terminal electrode 28 of the gate pad portion GP electrically contacts a gate pad 25 via a gate contact hole 19c.
The data pad portion DP transmits a data signal from a data driving IC (not shown) to the data line 13. A data pad terminal electrode 29 electrically contacts a data pad 27 via a data contact hole 19a.
Hereinafter, a method of fabricating the liquid crystal display device having the above-mentioned configuration will be described.
First, as shown in FIG. 3A, a gate metal layer is deposited on array substrate 1 of the LCD, and is patterned to form a gate pad 25 and a gate electrode 3. As shown in FIG. 3B, a gate insulating film 9 is formed on the entire surface of the array substrate 1, which has been provided with the gate pad 25 and the gate electrode 3. First and second semiconductor layers are deposited on the gate insulating film 9, and patterned to form an active layer 15 and an ohmic contact layer 17.
Subsequently, a data metal layer is deposited over the gate insulating film 9 and patterned to form a data pad 27, a source electrode 5 and a drain electrode 7, as shown in FIG. 3C. After the source electrode 5 and the drain electrode 7 are patterned, a portion of the ohmic contact layer 17 that is positioned over the gate electrode 3 is removed to expose the active layer 15. A portion of the active layer 15 corresponding to the gate electrode 3 between the source electrode 5 and the drain electrode 7 forms a channel.
Then, an insulating material is deposited over the gate insulating film 9 and patterned to form a protective layer 21, as shown in FIG. 3D. A data pad contact hole 19a and a drain contact hole 19b are formed in the protective layer 21 to expose the data pad 27 and the drain electrode 7, respectively. Also, a gate pad contact hole 19c is formed through the protective layer 21 and the gate insulating film 9 to expose the gate pad 25.
Subsequently, as shown in FIG. 3E, a transparent conductive material is deposited on the protective layer 21 and patterned to form a pixel electrode 23, a gate pad terminal electrode 28, and a data pad terminal electrode 29. The pixel electrode 23 electrically contacts the drain electrode 7 via the drain contact hole 19b. The gate pad terminal electrode 28 electrically contacts the gate pad 25 via the gate contact hole 19c, and the data pad terminal electrode 29 electrically contacts the data pad 27 via the data contact hole 19a.
The data pad 27, the source electrode 5 and the drain electrode 7 provided on the array substrate 1 of the LCD are formed of a single layer of chrome (Cr) or molybdenum (Mo), etc., and are collectively referred to as “data metal layer.” As the trends of the LCD technology move towards finer device structures, a three-layer structure of first to third metal layers 6a, 6b and 6c (FIG. 4) has been proposed as the data metal layer. Here, the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c are made of a transparent conductive material and Mo, which is electrically stable, respectively, and the second metal layer 6b is made of aluminum (Al) or an aluminum alloy.
When such a three-layer structure of the data metal layer is patterned by a wet etching technique, the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c are likely to be ionized by an etchant liquid much more than the second metal layer 6b due to an electrode potential difference created between the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c and the second metal layer 6b. In other words, the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c are oxidized by the second metal layer 6b, and the second metal layer 6b is deoxidized by the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c. For this reason, the first and third metal layers 6a and 6c are more undercut than the second metal layer 6b, as illustrated in the circled magnified view designated by letter A in FIG. 4. When the protective layer 21 is deposited thereafter, the second metal layer 6b, which has a high reactivity, collapses. The collapsed second metal layer 6b becomes in contact with active layer 15, resulting in an increased leakage current of the TFT. Furthermore, since a deposition process of the data metal layer having such a three-layer structure requires three steps, the process is complex and incurs additional costs.
In order to overcome these problems, it has been proposed that the data metal layer be formed into a two-layer structure of first and second metal layers 6a′ and 6b′, as shown in FIG. 5. Here, the first metal layer 6a′ is made of Al or an Al alloy while the second metal layer 6b′ is made from Mo.
A method of fabricating the array substrate of the LCD having the data metal layer with such a two-layer structure includes the steps of substrate cleaning, substrate patterning, alignment film formation, annealing, substrate joining, liquid crystal injection and packaging processes. During these processes, a protective film patterning process, an annealing process, an alignment film process, and a seal-curing process are performed at temperatures greater than about 200° C. The second metal layer 6b′ of the two-layer data metal layer collapses when it undergoes a heat treatment at about 200° C. or higher, thereby causing infiltration into the active layer 15, diffusion, spark phenomena, etc. In other words, the active layer 15 becomes in contact with the second metal layer 6b′, resulting in characteristic deterioration and degradation of the TFT, such as presence of a large leakage current, etc.
In order to reduce such a leakage current, an attempt was made in that the data metal layer of two-layer structure is formed in such a sequence that the second metal layer 6b′ is formed first and the first metal layer 6a′ is formed subsequently. In this case, because the second metal layer 6b′ (bottom layer) is made from Mo, a leakage current can be somewhat suppressed. However, there occurs a disadvantage of an increased contact resistance between the first metal layer 6a′ made of aluminum and the transparent electrode formed subsequently. | {
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Semiconductor devices are commonly found in modern electronic products. Semiconductor devices vary in the number and density of electrical components. Discrete semiconductor devices generally contain one type of electrical component, e.g., light emitting diode (LED), small signal transistor, resistor, capacitor, inductor, and power metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET). Integrated semiconductor devices typically contain hundreds to millions of electrical components. Examples of integrated semiconductor devices include microcontrollers, microprocessors, charged-coupled devices (CCDs), solar cells, and digital micro-mirror devices (DMDs).
Semiconductor devices perform a wide range of functions such as high-speed calculations, transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals, controlling electronic devices, transforming sunlight to electricity, and creating visual projections for television displays. Semiconductor devices are found in the fields of entertainment, communications, power conversion, networks, computers, and consumer products. Semiconductor devices are also found in military applications, aviation, automotive, industrial controllers, and office equipment.
Semiconductor devices exploit the electrical properties of semiconductor materials. The atomic structure of semiconductor material allows its electrical conductivity to be manipulated by the application of an electric field or base current or through the process of doping. Doping introduces impurities into the semiconductor material to manipulate and control the conductivity of the semiconductor device.
A semiconductor device contains active and passive electrical structures. Active structures, including bipolar and field effect transistors, control the flow of electrical current. By varying levels of doping and application of an electric field or base current, the transistor either promotes or restricts the flow of electrical current. Passive structures, including resistors, capacitors, and inductors, create a relationship between voltage and current necessary to perform a variety of electrical functions. The passive and active structures are electrically connected to form circuits, which enable the semiconductor device to perform high-speed calculations and other useful functions.
Semiconductor devices are generally manufactured using two complex manufacturing processes, i.e., front-end manufacturing, and back-end manufacturing, each involving potentially hundreds of steps. Front-end manufacturing involves the formation of a plurality of die on the surface of a semiconductor wafer. Each die is typically identical and contains circuits formed by electrically connecting active and passive components. Back-end manufacturing involves singulating individual die from the finished wafer and packaging the die to provide structural support and environmental isolation.
One goal of semiconductor manufacturing is to produce smaller semiconductor devices. Smaller devices typically consume less power, have higher performance, and can be produced more efficiently. In addition, smaller semiconductor devices have a smaller footprint, which is desirable for smaller end products. A smaller die size may be achieved by improvements in the front-end process resulting in die with smaller, higher density active and passive components. Back-end processes may result in semiconductor device packages with a smaller footprint by improvements in electrical interconnection and packaging materials.
Many semiconductor packages use stacked semiconductor die for vertical integration. The stacked semiconductor die are electrically connected with bond wires, bumps, or conductive vias formed through the encapsulant. The vertical interconnect between semiconductor die consumes space and increases the overall height of the package, as well as imposing higher manufacturing costs. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of weighing powder/chip and, more particularly, it relates to a method of feeding powder/chip to a weighing vessel efficiently and accurately.
2. Prior Art
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 55-22178, a method is known in which cereal grains are weighed using a vertically shiftable conduit provided with an open end and arranged above a weighing vessel. The cereal grains fed in through the other end are mostly made to fall by gravity into the weighing vessel by tilting the conduit with the open end facing downward and then the conduit is turned to become horizontal and vibrated to let the residual grains spin out and fall into the vessel so that the grain may be weighed in an efficient way.
With the above described known weighing method, the conduit is tilted with the open end facing downward to dump a large volume of grains from the conduit at a time. However, the volume of grains discharged from the conduit by a single dumping motion varies depending on the state of the conduit and that of the object to be dumped and this variation in the dumped volume inevitably affects the subsequent vibration step of discharging the residual grains to give rise to fluctuations in the weighing accuracy and the weighing speed. Additionally, the step of discharging the residual grains by vibration is apt to be affected by external factors including ambient temperature and humidity to make the fluctuations in the weighing accuracy and the weighing speed even more remarkable, causing problems in efficiency and accuracy.
In view of the above identified problems of the prior art, it is therefore the object of the present invention to provide a method of weighing powder/chip that can feed the powder/chip from the conduit into the weighing vessel accurately and efficiently without being affected by the state of the conduit, that of the weighing vessel and that of the ambient air. | {
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The present invention relates to a shredder for shredding documents or the like.
Documents or the like bearing confidential matters are, after their utilization, shredded so as to make the contents of the documents or the like illegible so that disclosure of the contents of the documents or the like is prevented.
Conventionally, in order to shred documents or the like, apparatuses have been employed in which the documents or the like bearing confidential matters are fed in between upper and lower rotating cutters from a document loading aperture so as to be shredded into pieces by the upper and lower rotating cutters. If another person, other than the operator wishes, while the operator is continuously shredding a large quantity of first documents, to urgently shred second documents urgently, one of the following three methods (1) to (3) would be adopted. Namely, in the method (1), the operator suspends shredding of the first documents and then, shreds the urgent second documents. In the method (2), the other person shreds the second documents by himself immediately after completion of the shredding of the first documents. On the other hand, in the method (3), the other person requests the operator to shred the second documents immediately after completion of the shredding of the first documents.
However, in the case where the method (1) in which the operator shreds the second documents by suspending the shredding of the first documents or the method (2) in which the other person shreds the second documents by himself after the operator has shredded the first documents undesirable, waste of time occurs. Meanwhile, in the case for the method (3) in which the other person requests the operator to shred the urgent second documents after shredding of the first documents, there is a possibility of an undesirable disclosure i.e. a leak of the confidential contents of the second documents.
Furthermore, installation of a plurality of the apparatuses for shredding the confidential documents leads to waste of cost and space. | {
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Not applicable.
Not applicable.
1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is flexible pipe for conducting petroleum or other fluids subsea or on land and the method of forming same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional bonded flexible pipe is described in American Petroleum Institute document API Specification 17J. These types of pipe are typically used for both xe2x80x9csweetxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9csourxe2x80x9d service production, including export and injection services. Fluids transported include oil, gas, water and injection chemicals and gas. A typical construction is made up of a plurality of tubular layers, starting with an interlocking metal carcass and followed by a liner tube of plastic to retain the fluid within the pipe. Hoop strength armor reinforcement in the hoop direction is provided by helical metal wires which may be in several layers and wound in opposite helical directions. Additional layers may also be used, with a final jacket extrusion to complete the assembly, with a tough wear resistant material.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,261,462 and 5,435,867, both issued to Donald H. Wolfe, et al., are examples of tubular composite pipe in the prior art. Those patents relate to tubular structures having a plastic tube for the fluid conductor, which has an outer layer formed form alternating spirally wound strips of composite and elastomer. It is believed that the prior art composite pipes, such as disclosed in the above patents, have been limited to relatively short commercial lengths, by reason of the method by which such tubular structures have been made.
Typically, composite flexible pipes are made by filament winding, which involves turning the pipe while feeding and moving resin impregnated fibers from bobbins back and forth along the length of the pipe. Such technique limits the length of the reinforced flexible pipe which can be manufactured because of the number of bobbins required for the large number of fibers that are used in each pass. As a practical matter, it was not known how to make relatively long lengths of composite pipe sufficient for subsea use because of such problem.
In single bobbin machines, unloading and reloading time is a function of the time taken to thread each end of the fibers, the number of bobbins, and the time required to replace each bobbin. Also, due to the material payload requirements, a single bobbin-type machine will require each end to travel some distance from its bobbin over rollers, sheaves, eyelets, etc., through the machine to the closing point on the pipe, thus creating a time-consuming task. Because of the hundreds, and even thousands of bobbins, extremely large machines would be required to make a composite reinforced pipe in long lengths by such prior art techniques, consequently, the industry has not had available composite flexible pipes in long lengths suitable for subsea production and well operations. Multiple fiber tows are also not practical for long pipe lengths because of the fiber loading times required.
With the present invention, discrete tapes are first formed from the fibers and resin or the like, so that the tapes are wound on spools which reduces the number of bobbins required as compared to the number of bobbins required for single fiber filaments, whereby it is possible to manufacture long lengths of composite flexible pipe. The tapes are initially formed and then are fed from tape spools rather than the fiber bobbins in the prior art. Also, each tape is composed of a plurality of superimposed thin tape strips formed of predominantly, unidirectional fibers, which are impregnated with an epoxy or other suitable bonding resin which cures with heat, cold, ultraviolet (UV) or other curing methods. The multi-layer tapes are wrapped with a polyethylene or similar plastic or thin metallic strip or covered by thermoplastic extrusion to confine them as a unit together, with bonding adhesive between the tape strips being prevented from escaping from the wrap. Each tape thus made is fed from a tape spool to the tubular core as the tubular core is rotated, or as the spools are rotated relative to the core, which produces helical wraps of each of the tapes on the tubular core in the same or opposite helical directions for reinforcement of the core. | {
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This invention relates to an improvement in conventional wet-spinning processes for producing acrylic filaments whereby improved spinning performance (e.g. less filament breaks and wraps) and increased productivity in terms of pounds of filaments per hour are obtained. The term "acrylic", as used herein, means any long chain synthetic fiber forming polymer comprising acrylonitrile units, --CH.sub.2 --CH(CN)--. Acrylic polymers of particular commercial importance are those consisting of at least 85% by weight of acrylonitrile units with the balance comprising either vinylacetate, methyl methacrylate, or vinylacetate and methylvinylpyridine units.
Conventionally, wet-spinning processes for producing acrylic filaments comprise the coupled steps of extruding a solution of acrylic polymer in a suitable solvent therefor (i.e. dope) through one or more spinnerets immersed in a coagulation bath for the polymer to form filaments. Each spinneret typically has at least 20,000 (e.g. 60,000 to 100,000) orifices. The coagulation bath comprises water and solvent for the polymer. Normally, the solvent used in the coagulation bath is the same as that used in the dope. Typical solvents include organic solvents, such as dimethylacetamide (DMAc) and dimethylformamide (DMF), and inorganic solvents, such as an aqueous solution of sodium thiocyanate or nitric acid. The as-spun filaments are withdrawn from the bath, washed with water to remove solvent, wet-stretched several times their as-spun length in a hot (60.degree. to 100.degree. C.) water bath to impart molecular orientation to the filaments and then dried on a drying roll train. The term "drying roll train", as used herein, means a plurality of at least 20 rotatable rolls arranged serpentinely in series over which filaments are passed sequentially from roll to roll and over each roll with a partial wrap and under sufficient tension to prevent slippage of the filaments on the rolls. At least some of the rolls are heated by means of pressurized steam which is circulated internally through the roll(s). The processing conditions (including composition of the dope and coagulation bath, the amount of wet-stretch, temperatures and filament speeds) are correlated to provide useful filaments of a desired denier. Following the drying step, the filaments are further processed in a conventional manner, for example, crimped, annealed and cut to staple or collected as tow.
In the past, acrylic filaments were typically produced in the denier range of 3 to 18 denier and, accordingly, the diameter of the spinneret orifices of existing conventional wet-spinning processes are of an appropriate size to produce filaments having such deniers. However, recently, finer dpf acrylic filaments have gained importance. Unfortunately, such finer denier filaments cannot be economically and feasibly produced using the existing wet-spinning equipment. For example, attempts to provide finer deniers by increasing the wet-stretch imparted to the filaments significantly reduces the spinning performance of the process. On the other hand, replacing the existing spinnerets with spinnerets having smaller orifices is costly. Also, attempts to provide the finer denier filaments by hot-stretching the filaments, for example, on the last rolls of the drying roll train has not proven successful because the filaments cannot be heated to a sufficient temperature on the drying rolls to endure the drying roll stretch, that is, filaments break and the spinning performance of the process is reduced. (Finer dpf filaments have more surface area per pound than larger dpf filaments and require more drying). While more drying rolls could be added, doing so, even if space permitted, would add considerably to the overall cost of the process. Also, for this same reason, the productivity of existing equipment is limited because of its drying capacity, that is, if more pounds of filaments are added to the drying rolls or if the rate, in terms of pounds per hour, at which the filaments are processed is increased, the existing drying roll train simply cannot dry the filaments. | {
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Cleaning is a task that has been with people for many centuries and it seems probable that people have searched for new and improved cleaning tools just about as long as they have been involved in cleaning processes. However, there remains a need for a new and improved cleaning tool particularly well adapted to cleaning toilets.
One cleaning task which is important for maintaining a healthy environment but nevertheless is disliked by many people is the task of cleaning a toilet. Even flushable toilets often require that someone clean urine and/or fecal matter from the toilet bowl, rim or seat. Of course, numerous toilet cleaning tools already exist for this purpose, Most tools consist of a durable handle with a brush or sponge part. Some tools include a durable handle with a flushable cleaning surface. The tools are usually used in conjunction with a cleaning chemical provided separately from the tool or incorporated into a sponge part of the tool. Chemical products are also available to help maintain a clean toilet between manual cleanings by incorporating chemicals into the toilet water.
Common cleaning tools are intended for use to thoroughly and completely clean the toilet. However, many times there is a need only for a spot cleaning of urine or fecal matter between thorough cleanings. Thus, there is a need for a toilet cleaning tool especially designed for use to quickly spot clean a toilet bowl, rim or seat. Just such a tool is provided in accordance with the present invention which provides a small, fully flushable cleaning unit which has been designed for use between complete toilet cleanings. The spot cleaning device or tool of this invention can be used to remove soiled spots as they are discovered on an otherwise clean toilet without the need to use the full accompaniment of the usual devices and chemicals. The tool of this invention can be made inexpensively and is inexpensive to use, thus facilitating its use as a spot cleaning device. Furthermore, the tool of the present invention is intended to be disposed immediately after use to eliminate any need to store a contaminated durable cleaning implement near the toilet.
Further understanding of the present invention will be had from the following disclosure and claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. | {
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A tunneling technology is a manner of transferring data between networks through Internet infrastructure, and the data transferred by using a tunnel may be a data frame or a data package of different protocols. The tunneling technology obtains a tunnel packet by encapsulating a tunnel packet header on an outer layer of the data frame or data package of different protocols on a tunnel ingress device, and forwards the tunnel packet between devices at two ends of the tunnel through a public Internet. Once the tunnel packet arrives at an egress device of the tunnel, the tunnel packet is decapsulated and forwarded to a final destination. In a whole transfer process, a logical path through which the tunnel packet is transferred in the public Internet is referred to as the tunnel. The tunneling technology is a whole process including encapsulation, transmission and decapsulation of the data.
However, compared with the original data frame or data package, length of the tunnel packet is increased. When forwarded in the tunnel, if a MTU of an intermediate link of the tunnel is smaller than the tunnel packet, the tunnel packet is fragmented. Fragmented packets need to be reassembled when arriving at a tunnel egress device after being forwarded, so as to obtain the complete tunnel packet and then perform tunnel decapsulation. Generally, when the fragmented packets are reassembled, an associated fragmented packet is identified according to a triplet formed of a source Internet Protocol (Internet Protocol, IP for short) address, a destination IP address and an identifier in the packet header. Because tunnel packets forwarded by the same tunnel are all added with the same tunnel packet header, their triplets are the same, so that when the fragmented packets are reassembled, the associated fragmented packet cannot be correctly identified. Therefore, when the fragmented packets are reassembled, mismatching is generated, resulting in an error tunnel packet. | {
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The present invention is directed to an equalizer that substantially eliminates ghosts in signals processed by a receiver.
Ghosts are produced in a receiver usually because a signal arrives at the receiver through different transmission paths. For example, in a system having a single transmitter, the multipath transmission of a signal may occur because of signal reflection. That is, the receiver receives a transmitted signal and one or more reflections of the transmitted signal. As another example, the multipath transmission of a signal may occur in a system having plural transmitters that transmit signals to the same receiver using the same carrier frequency. A network which supports this type of transmission is typically referred to as a single frequency network.
When a signal reaches a receiver through two or more different transmission paths, an interference pattern results. In the frequency domain, this interference pattern is manifested by a variable signal amplitude along the frequency axis. The worst case interference pattern results when the ghost is 100% and is shown in FIG. 1. This interference pattern has amplitude nulls or near amplitude nulls at certain frequencies. Therefore, any information contained in the received signal at these frequencies is likely lost because the signal to noise ratio near these frequencies is below a usable threshold.
A variety of systems have been devised to deal with the problems caused by ghosts. For example, spread spectrum systems deal very adequately with the problem of a 100% ghost by spreading the transmitted data over substantial bandwidth. Accordingly, even though a 100% ghost means that some information may be lost at the frequencies corresponding to amplitude nulls, a data element can still be recovered because of the high probability that it was spread over frequencies which do not correspond to amplitude nulls. Unfortunately, the data rate R associated with spread spectrum systems is typically too low for many applications. (The data rate R is defined as the number of data bits per Hertz of channel bandwidth.)
It is also known to use a matched filter in a receiver in order to deal with the problem of a ghost. In this approach, data is transmitted as a data vector. The matched filter correlates the received data with reference vectors corresponding to the possible data vectors that can be transmitted. Correlation of the received signal to the reference vector corresponding to the transmitted data vector produces a large peak, and correlation of the received signal to the other possible reference vectors produces small peaks. Accordingly, the transmitted data vector can be easily determined in the receiver. Unfortunately, the data rate R typically associated with the use of matched filters is still too low for many applications.
When high data rates, such as Rxe2x89xa71, are required, equalizers are often used in a receiver in order to reduce ghosts. A classic example of a time domain equalizer is an FIR filter. An FIR filter convolves its response h(t), shown generally in FIG. 2, with the received signal and produces a large peak representative of the main received signal. Ghosts have small components in the output of the FIR filter. However, as shown in FIG. 2, the values a1, a2, a3, . . . of the taps of an FIR filter depend on the value of a and, in order to perfectly cancel a 100% ghost using an FIR filter, the value a of the FIR filter response must approach 1. As the value a approaches 1, the values of the taps of the FIR filter do not asymptotically decrease toward zero. Therefore, the FIR filter becomes infinitely long if a 100% ghost is to be eliminated, making the FIR filter impractical to eliminate a 100% ghost.
Also, another problem with the use of an FIR filter is noise enhancement. If the transmitted signal picks up noise Nc in the channel, this noise is enhanced by the FIR filter so that the noise N0 at the output of the FIR filter is greater than the channel noise Nc. Also, if the channel noise Nc is white, the noise N0 at the output of the FIR filter is non-white, i.e., bursty.
An example of a frequency domain equalizer 10 is shown in FIG. 3. The frequency domain equalizer 10 includes a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) module 12 which performs a Fast Fourier Transform on the received signal in order to transform the received signal to the frequency domain. A multiplier 14 multiplies the frequency domain output of the FFT module 12 by a compensation vector which includes a row of coefficients bi. An inverse FFT module 16 performs an inverse FFT on the multiplication results from the multiplier 14 in order to transform the multiplication results to the time domain.
It should be noted that, when the frequency domain equalizer 10 is used to eliminate ghosts, the frequency domain equalizer 10 must be included in every receiver. In order to reduce receiver cost, therefore, it is known to incorporate the inverse FFT module 16 into the transmitter so that the receivers require only the FFT module 12 and the multiplier 14. A consequence of moving the inverse FFT 16 to the transmitter is that data is transmitted in many discrete frequency channels. Accordingly, in the presence of a 100% ghost, the transmitted data is not recoverable around the null frequencies of FIG. 1.
FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary set of coefficients bi which may be used by the frequency domain equalizer 10. In order to derive the coefficients bi, an estimator may be used at the output of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) module 12. This estimator models FIG. 1 and inverts this model in order to produce the coefficients bi of FIG. 4. Accordingly, the coefficients bi are chosen so that, when they and the FFT of the received signal are multiplied by the multiplier 14, the coefficients bi cancel the ghost. It should be noted that the coefficients bi should have infinite amplitudes at the frequencies where the interference pattern has a zero amplitude. However, the coefficients bi cannot be made infinite as a practical matter. Accordingly, the coefficients bi are cut off at these frequencies. An advantage of cutting off the coefficients bi is that noise enhancement at the frequencies where the coefficients bi are cut off is materially reduced. Thus, noise enhancement is lower at the output of the frequency domain equalizer 10 than would otherwise be the case. However, a disadvantage of cutting off the coefficients bi is that information in the received signal is lost at the cut off frequencies so that the output of the inverse FFT module 16 becomes only an approximation of the transmitted data.
Moreover, it is known to use empty guard intervals between the vectors employed in the frequency domain equalizer 10 of FIG. 3. The guard intervals are shown in FIG. 5 and are provided so that received vectors and ghosts of the received vectors do not overlap because such an overlap could otherwise cause intersymbol interference. Thus, the guard intervals should be at least as long as the expected ghosts. It is also known to use cyclic extensions of the vectors in order to give the received signal an appearance of periodicity. Accordingly, a Fast Fourier Transform of the received signal and a Fourier Transform of the received signal appear identical.
The present invention is directed to an equalizer which overcomes one or more of the above noted problems.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a receiver receives a signal containing data distributed in both time and frequency. The receiver comprises a vector transform and a vector adjuster. The vector transform is arranged to perform a transform on the received signal using a plurality of transform vectors. The vector adjuster is responsive to the transform of the received signal in order to adjust the transform vectors so that the data can be recovered even in the presence of a strong ghost.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a receiver receives a signal containing data distributed in both time and frequency. The receiver includes a vector transform that is arranged to perform a transform on the received signal using a plurality of receiver transform vectors. The receiver transform vectors are based upon a corresponding plurality of transmitter vectors and channel effects so that the data can be recovered by the vector transform even in the presence of a strong ghost.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, a receiver receives a signal from a channel. C* designates the channel with interference. The signal contains data, and the data has been processed by a transmitter transform so that the data is distributed in both time and frequency. A designates the transmitter transform. The receiver includes a receiver transform arranged to perform a transform on the received signal using a plurality of receiver transform vectors so as to recover the data even in the presence of a strong ghost, and T* designates the receiver transform. The receiver transform vectors are arranged so that the following equation is satisfied: Axc3x97C*xc3x97T*=I, wherein I is substantially the identity matrix.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the present invention, a communication system includes a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter includes a transmitter transform A arranged to randomly distribute data to be transmitted in both time and frequency, and the transmitter is arranged to transmit a signal including the distributed data into a channel. The channel with interference is represented by C*. The receiver is arranged to receive the signal, and the receiver includes a receiver transform T* arranged to perform a transform on the received signal so as to recover the data even in the presence of a strong ghost. The receiver transform is arranged so that the following equation is satisfied: Axc3x97C*xc3x97T*=I, and I is substantially the identity matrix.
In accordance with a further aspect of the present invention, a transmitter includes a transmitter transform which is arranged to randomly distribute data to be transmitted in both time and frequency. The transmitter is arranged to add a guard interval to the randomly distributed data. The guard interval is known, is non-empty, and is non-related to the randomly distributed data. The transmitter is arranged to transmit the randomly distributed data and guard interval. | {
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VECSELs typically comprise a first end mirror and an active region formed in a layer sequence, and a second end mirror arranged separated from the layer sequence and forming an external cavity of the laser. In standard setups the external cavity is composed of macroscopic optical elements, which are very bulky and need involved adjustment. By realizing the external optical components from a wafer and bonding this wafer to the wafer carrying the layer sequence, which is typically a GaAs wafer, it is possible to manufacture many thousands of micro-VECSELs in parallel and test them directly on the wafer like VCSELs (vertical cavity surface emitting laser diodes).
Known optically-pumped VECSELs need separated mounting and alignment of the pump lasers to the resonator or cavity of the VECSEL. This requires time-consuming production and bulky modules.
US 20100014547 A1 discloses a device for longitudinal pumping of a solid state laser medium. This device comprises several pump laser diodes which are mounted on side faces of a cooling device of the laser medium. The pump radiation emitted by the laser diodes is reflected by several parabolic mirrors toward one of the end faces of the solid state laser medium. In this device the several parabolic mirrors have to be precisely aligned in order to achieve the desired intensity distribution of the pump radiation at the entrance of the solid state laser medium. | {
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I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for surveilling articles and in particular to improvements in a method and apparatus for detecting or preventing the theft of articles and more particularly it concerns the method and apparatus capable of distinguishing labels from all other objects within an oscillating electromagnetic field and a new type of label with a recognizably different signature from all other ferromagnetic labels.
II. Description of the Prior Art
In the art of antishoplifting machinery and labeling, the most successful developments have been those which correspond with labels carrying a code capable of being electromagnetically altered to designate the labeled article as being sold or checked out. Illustrative of this in the commercially available systems is the labeling and detecting arrangement offered to libraries by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) under the trademark Tattletape. This group of devices includes a plurality of patents by Edward R. Fearon and one by Robert E. Fearson.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,631,442; 3,747,086; 3,754,226; 3,790,945 and 3,820,103 are illustrative of the antishoplifting machinery and labeling systems which illustrate a number of alternate proposals and shall serve as background for this particular invention. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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This invention relates to a steering mechanism for use with medical catheters or other devices which need to be positioned in difficult locations.
In many medical procedures, it is necessary to position a catheter at a location within a patient's body. A typical emplacement for the distal end of a catheter might be within a ventricle of the heart, by way of the femoral vein. In so passing a catheter through the femoral vein, it is necessary to avoid obstructions, vessel junctions and the like, and to make sharp turns to position the distal end of the catheter within the ventricle. Other medical procedures involve similar difficulties in placing a catheter.
In conventional catheters used today, the tip of the catheter may be bent, or may include a stylet which is bent, such that a semipermanent curve is given to the distal end of the catheter so that a physician may guide the distal end thereof towards the treatment location. A disadvantage with this type of apparatus is that the curvature of the bend is not adjustable while the catheter is in the body, and any change in the curvature requires the physician to remove the catheter and reshape the distal end.
There is a need for a steering mechanism for catheters and other devices wherein the distal end of the device can be manipulated at will from a location outside the patient's body or outside the apparatus in which the device is placed. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide such a steering mechanism, and in particular to provide such a mechanism which provides a wide range of steerability.
It is another object of the invention to provide such a mechanism which may be completely manipulated with one hand.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such a steering mechanism wherein the distal end of the mechanism may be bent into varying shapes for placement in different positions while the mechanism is in use.
Other objects and advantages will more fully appear in the course of the following discussion. | {
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It is desirable to be able to move a mirror head, which holds a mirror, with respect to a mounting bracket on a motor vehicle away from or back towards the mounting bracket. This enables the mirror head to be positioned either close to the side of the motor vehicle, or to be extended away from the motor vehicle. In its extended position, an improved field of view behind the vehicle can be provided, particularly where a rear view may be obstructed by a load on the vehicle or a trailer behind the vehicle.
Powered telescoping mirrors have been developed to allow the mirror head position to be extended or retracted remotely as desired without the need to exit the vehicle (for manual mirror adjustment).
Power telescoping mirrors are provided both as original equipment on vehicles (OEM) and as after market accessories. In either case, the optimum extended position for the mirror head will vary according to a number of factors. For instance, very wide vehicles will not require as much extendability as less wide vehicles. The requirements of particular vehicle owners will also vary depending upon what loads and or trailers they carry or tow.
Power telescoping and conventional fixed width vehicle external mirrors are often fitted with a “spotter” mirror in addition to the main mirror. The spotter mirror generally has a convex surface and provides a broader view of the rear and side of the vehicle. The spotter mirror is particularly useful for covering the so called “blind spot” which is a region at the side of the vehicle which is not visible through the normal plain mirror and is not visible to the driver casting a brief glance to the side of the vehicle. These spotter mirrors are usually not readily adjustable requiring a vehicle occupant to physically manipulate the mirror angle.
Power telescoping mirrors are currently known where the vehicle operator must manually control the telescoping of the mirror until it reaches the desired degree of extension with respect to the vehicle side.
A further problem with existing power telescoping mirrors is that as the mirror head is extended away from the vehicle side, the reflected image presented to the driver changes both in size and in general direction. As a result, the vehicle operator often needs to adjust the angular position of the mirror with respect to the mirror head when the mirror has been shifted from its fully retracted position to a partially or fully extended position to obtain an optimum field of view.
It is an object of the invention to provide a vehicle external mirror that overcomes at least some of the above stated problems. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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This invention relates to a process for the preparation of actinide dioxides, especially uranium dioxide, plutonium dioxide and neptunium dioxide as well as to a novel composition of matter resulting from this process. Those concerned with the production of nuclear fuel have been constantly searching for processes for the production of uranium dioxide which are cheaper, less complex, result in the production of uranium dioxide in a pure state and further result in the production of ceramically active forms of actinide dioxides, e.g. uranium dioxide (i.e. the physical form of the uranium dioxide must be such as to permit sintering thereof which is a necessary step in the preparation of uranium dioxide pellets for use in nuclear fuel rods.
The present invention accomplishes all of the results set forth above by a process which permits the direct conversion of an actinide nitrate, a hydrate thereof or a tetrahydrofuranate thereof to the actinide dioxide. Actinide compounds, such as uranyl nitrate hexahydrate, are available commercially (and may be used as is, or dehydrated or converted to the ditetrahydrofuranate); uranyl nitrate hexahydrate is commonly produced during the process in which uranium is extracted from the ores, converted by a series of steps ultimately to "yellow cake" which consists principally of UO.sub.3, other oxides of uranium, and associated impurities. Following purification, usually by appropriate solvent extraction processes, the last step involves extraction of the uranium from an organic solvent into nitric acid solution; from this solution, pure uranyl nitrate hexahydrate is separated as a solid. This product is calcined to yield UO.sub.3, which is reduced to UO.sub.2 and thereafter fluorinated in two steps to obtain uranium hexafluoride and treated with nitric acid to obtain uranyl nitrate hexahydrate, calcined to yield UO.sub.3, reduced to yield UO.sub.2, and thereafter fluorinated into two steps to obtain uranium hexafluoride. The uranium hexafluoride in turn is purified by successive distillations so as to yield a product with impurities in the parts per million range and the purified uranium hexafluoride may then be used in isotope enrichment processes, reduced with calcium to provide uranium metal of sufficient purity for use in the production of "weapons grade" plutonium or subjected to further purifications to result in the production of uranium dioxide in a degree of purity suitable for use as fuel for nuclear power reactors.
The present invention eliminates the need for many of the complexed purification steps which would otherwise be required after uranium has been extracted from ores and has been converted to uranyl nitrate hexahydrate. If plutonium dioxide is available as the "enriched" fuel, the uranium dioxide produced by the present process may be admixed with the plutonium dioxide and thereafter used in nuclear fuel rods. Alternatively, only a small fraction of the enormous quantities of uranium hexafluoride presently processed need be purified and subsequently enriched in the U.sup.235 isotope (in the form of U.sup.235 F.sub.6 which is then converted to U.sup.235 O.sub.2) and the bulk of the U.sup.238 O.sub.2 required for nuclear fuel materials may be made by the process of this invention and thereafter admixed with the enriched U.sup.235 O.sub.2 material to obtain a blend suitable for use as pellets in nuclear fuel rods.
In recent years, efforts have been made to reduce the complexity of processes for the production of uranium dioxide in order to reduce fuel costs. For example, J. Belle ("Uranium Dioxide: Properties and Nuclear Applications", USFC, 1961) atomized a solution of uranyl nitrate hexahydrate in the high temperature reducing atmosphere of a flame to produce uranium dioxide; however, this process provided no selectivity of reaction and impurity levels in the final product were essentially the same as in the feed liquor. Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory, in 1963, converted UF.sub.6 directly to UO.sub.2 by a high temperature gas phase reaction of UF.sub.6 with H.sub.2 O and H.sub.2, but the resultant product still contained intolerable fluoride ion levels. In 1962, R. S. Wilkes (J. Nucl. Mat., Vol. 7, page 157 (1962)) prepared uranium dioxide by electrolysis of a solution of uranyl chloride (UO.sub.2 Cl.sub.2) in a molten salt bath, but the resultant product contained higher oxide impurities. | {
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Waste and water companies and municipalities often install buried components accessible from roadways. Buried valves, pipes, and lines are often accessed via access pipes that extend downwardly from street surfaces. Removable debris caps at the ends of the access pipes protect the buried components from dirt, rocks, debris, and water. To operate a buried valve, a debris cap can be removed from an access pipe, and a tool can be inserted into the open access pipe to engage the valve. The tool can then be used to open or close the valve (e.g., gas valves, water valves, etc.) to, for example, isolate breaks in mains. Removable caps often cover the access ports and pipes for other systems, such as sewer systems and other municipal systems.
Debris caps are often generally flush with surrounding surfaces. Unfortunately, debris caps are not securely held to the ends of the access pipes and are frequently damaged and/or dislodged. For example, debris caps may turn upside down or pop off completely and can cause damage to vehicles traveling along the roadway. If a debris cap pops off from an end of an access pipe located along a crosswalk or a sidewalk, an individual may inadvertently step into the open end of the access pipe and sustain injuries. Additionally, debris, water, and other contaminates can fall through the access pipe and can damage and/or impair operation of buried parts. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Providing radiation therapy to patients diagnosed with cancer includes creating a radiation treatment plan. Often, where the cancer is localized in the patient's anatomy, such as in a tumor, the creation of the radiation treatment plan involves participation by medical personnel for solving a difficult geometric problem and/or making judgment calls related to the total radiation dose or total dose received by the tumor and nearby healthy tissue, including organs at risk (OARs). Creating the radiation treatment plan can be a time consuming process that involves multiple medical personnel providing multiple iterations of the treatment plan over many days, which may increase the time from diagnosis of the cancer to treatment of the cancer.
In an example of a conventional process for the diagnosis and treatment of tumors, a diagnostic scan, such as a computed tomography (CT) scan, is taken of the patient to localize a tumor and a biopsy of the tumor is taken to histologically verify that the tumor is malignant. Next, treatment contours of the three dimensional envelope defined by the tumor's shape and the shape of the OARs are drawn up and a treatment prescription is developed by a clinician or an oncologist. The treatment prescription prescribes a total radiation dose to be delivered to the tumor over the course of treatment and a maximum level of radiation to be absorbed by the OARs. Next, the treatment prescription is provided to medical personnel, such as a dosimetrist, and a radiation delivery plan is developed by the medical personnel. The radiation delivery plan includes radiation beam orientations, shapes, and fluences using a given radiation type and delivery method to achieve the radiation levels, including the total dose levels, defined by the treatment prescription. Treatment constraints, including at least the treatment prescription and the radiation delivery plan, are iteratively changed by the medical personnel to meet minimum standards and to satisfy the oncologist. The final iteration of the radiation delivery plan is used to treat the patient.
This process for developing a radiation treatment plan can take many days, especially in cases in which the medical personnel, including the dosimetrist and/or the oncologist, change the treatment constraints over a number of iterative cycles. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information reproducing apparatus for reproducing digital information recorded on a recording disk such as a DVD, and more particularly to an information reproducing apparatus capable of prohibiting reproduction of digital information that has been illegally or unfairly copied.
2. Description of the Related Art
A DVD is a recording medium having a large recording capacity, and can record, for example, digital video information equivalent to one volume of moving picture film. Because of this large capacity, a DVD has come to be distributed as an image recording medium for replacing a video cassette of VHS system. A DVD exists in two types; a DVD onto which a recording or a rewriting cannot be done (It is referred to as a xe2x80x9cread-only DVDxe2x80x9d, hereinafter.), and a DVD onto which a recording or a rewriting can be done (It is referred to as a xe2x80x9crecordable DVDxe2x80x9d, hereinafter.). When a recordable DVD is used, it is possible to digitally copy the whole content of a moving picture recorded on the DVD.
Along with the distribution of the recordable DVD, there has been developed a system for digitally transmitting a moving picture or the like from a broadcasting station to general subscribers. When this system has been achieved, it becomes possible for subscribers to not only enjoy watching a high-definition moving picture at home but also digitally record the moving picture transmitted from the broadcasting station onto a DVD and prepare a replica disk in an easy manner.
On the other hand, the act of copying a moving picture or the like without permission is restricted by the copyright law, etc. Particularly, when a moving picture or the like is copied digitally, there occurs no quality degradation in the moving picture copied. Accordingly, it is necessary to severely restrict the copying of digital video information using a DVD in order to promote the distribution of DVD as well.
In order to restrict the recording or copying of digital video information, various methods have been proposed. For example, there is proposed a method of embedding identification information for restricting the copying into digital video information at the time of recording the digital video information onto a DVD. Such a system is generally called a CGMS (Copy Generation Management System). This identification information represents one of the following: (1) prohibiting the copying (hereinafter to be referred to as xe2x80x9cNever Copyxe2x80x9d), (2) permitting the copying only once (hereinafter to be referred to as xe2x80x9cOne Copyxe2x80x9d), and (3) permitting the copying without restriction (hereinafter to be referred to as xe2x80x9cCopy Freexe2x80x9d). When digital video information embedded with this kind of identification information is copied onto other DVD, a recording apparatus reads out the identification information from within the digital video information, and if this identification information shows Never Copy, the recording apparatus does not record this digital video information.
Further, there is also proposed a method of restricting the copying of a picture or a video image by embedding identification information having a function similar to the above into the display range of the image or the video image as a watermark.
Meanwhile, since the DVD is an optical recording medium, a light beam is used in recording and reading the digital video information. Because of this, when recording the digital video information onto the DVD, the digital video information is converted into an RF (Radio Frequency) signal and then recorded onto the DVD. That is, the digital video information is actually recorded onto the DVD as the RF signal.
When reproducing the digital video information from the DVD, the RF signal is read from the DVD and then converted into the digital video information with a decoder.
It is possible to detect the CGMS and the watermark from the digital video information. However, it is not possible to directly detect them from the RF signal. This means that the restriction of the illegally or unfairly copying of the digital video information using the CGMS and the watermark is effective only after the RF signal is converted into the digital video information.
Therefore, the restriction of the copying of the digital video information using the CGMS and the watermark is not effective in an act of copying the RF signal from one DVD to another. If an act of reading the RF signal from the DVD and directly recording it onto another DVD is done, the CGMS and the watermark is not useful.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an information reproducing apparatus capable of prohibiting reproduction of digital information which has been copied by copying an RF signal from one recording disk to another.
An information reproducing apparatus in accordance with the present invention is an apparatus for reading record information from a recording disk and outputting the read record information in order to reproduce the record information recorded on the recording disk.
The record information includes: image information which represents an image or a picture; identification information which represents any one of at least never copy and copy free.
The never copy indicates that copying of the record information is prohibited. The copy free indicates that the copying of the record information is permitted.
The information reproducing apparatus comprises: a read device for reading the record information from the recording disk; a first determination device for determining whether the identification information included in the read record information indicates the never copy or the copy free; a second determination device for determining whether the recording disk is a recording disk of a recordable type or a recording disk of a read-only type; an output control device for determining on the basis of determinations of the first determination device and the second determination device whether outputting the read record information is permitted or prohibited; and an output device for outputting the read record information in accordance with a determination of the output control device.
As stated above, the identification information indicates any one of the never copy and the copy free. For example, two different values may be used as the identification information. One is used as a value indicating the never copy. The other is used as a value indicating the copy free. Alternatively, only one value may be used as the identification information. In this case, when the value is included in the record information, it may be determined that the record information is the never copy. When the value is not included in the record information, it may be determined that the record information is the copy free.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the read device reads the record information from the recording disk. The first determination device determines whether the identification information included in the record information indicates the never copy or the copy free. Therefore, a copy restriction status of the record information can be determined.
The second determination device determines whether the type of recording disk is a recordable type or a read-only type. Therefore, the type of the recording disk can be determined. In addition, the recording disk of the recordable type is a recording disk that information can be recorded thereon once or many times. Both a rewritable disk and a recordable disk are included in the recording disk of the recordable type.
The output control device determines on the basis of the identification information and the type of recording disk whether outputting the read record information is permitted or prohibited. The output device outputs the record information in accordance with a determination of the output control device.
For example, when the identification information indicates the copy free and the type of recording disk is the recordable type, it is recognized that the record information that is allowed the copying has been recorded on the recordable type disk. This is normal. At this time, the output control device determines that outputting the record information is permitted. The output device therefore outputs the record information.
On the other hand, when the identification information indicates the never copy and the type of recording disk is the recordable type, it is recognized that the record information that is prohibited the copying has been recorded on the recordable type recording disk. This is abnormal. It can be expected illegal or unfair copying. If an RF signal is directly copied from one disk to another, this case occurs. In such a case, the output control device determines that outputting the record information is prohibited. The output device therefore does not output the record information. Thus, reproduction of an illegally or unfairly copied record information can be prevented.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the second determination device may includes: a detection device for detecting a form of a track formed on a surface of the recording disk; and a disk determination device for determining on the basis of a detection of the detection device whether the recording disk is the recording disk of the recordable type or the recording disk of the read-only type.
The recordable type recording disk and the read-only type recording disk are different from each other in physical structure. The second determination device determines the type of recording disk by detecting a difference in physical structure of the recording disk.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the second determination device may includes: a detection device for detecting a wobble of a track formed on a surface of the recording disk; and a disk determination device for determining on the basis of a detection of the detecting device whether the recording disk is the recording disk of the recordable type or the recording disk of the read-only type.
In the recordable type recording disk, the track has the wobble. In the read-only type recording disk, the track does not have the wobble. The second determination device determines the type of recording disk by detecting presence or absence of the wobble.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the second determination device may includes: a detection device for detecting a loop track formed on the surface of the recording disk; and a disk determination device for determining on the basis of a detection of the detecting device whether the recording disk is the disk of the recordable type or the disk of the read-only type.
Each of the recording disk of the recordable type and the recording disk of the read-only type has a spiral track. The spiral track is formed on a surface of the recording disk. The record information is recorded on the spiral track. Only the recording disk of the recordable type further has a loop track. The loop track is formed on the surface of the recording disk together with the spiral track. The loop track is different from the spiral track in form. The second determination device determines the type of recording disk by detecting presence or absence of the loop track.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the second determination device may includes: a detection device for detecting the disk information from the recording disk; and a disk determination device for determining on the basis of a detection of the detecting device whether the recording disk is the recording disk of the recordable type or the recording disk of the read-only type.
The recording disk has disk information. The disk information is recorded on the recording disk as digital data. The disk information indicates the type of the recording disk. The second determination device determines the type of recording disk by detecting the disk information.
In the above-stated information reproducing apparatus, the second determination device may includes: a detection device for detecting the standard information from the recording disk; and a disk determination device for determining on the basis of a detection of the detecting device whether the recording disk is the recording disk of the recordable type or the recording disk of the read-only type.
The recording disk has standard information. The standard information is recorded on the recording disk as digital data. The standard information indicates a standard of the recording disk. The standard of the recording disk is different depending on the type of recording disk. The second determination device determines the type of recording disk by detecting the standard information. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of sound mixing and in particular to methods and apparatus for mixing sound, such as music, in a distributed network environment such as the internet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional sound or music studio includes sound recording rooms where artists create live music in solo or in groups and equipment which records the music or sounds in separate tracks with or without electronic signal conditioning and with or without added special effects. Whatever track is recorded can be then mixed with one or more other prerecorded tracks, including variable signal processing of each of the tracks, to present a mixed track which comprises the final recording. Thus, a musical soloist may perform against himself or herself in prerecorded tracks or against an instrumental background and/or one or more prerecorded tracks to provide the input data from which a final mixed recording is produced. Performers of any one of the tracks can be rerecorded and remixed with differing signal processing or differing digital input, if the live performer or performers are present. Very often, instrumental tracks, rhythm tracks or special effect tracks will have been prerecorded at a prior time or at a different place while later tracks are added to the final mixed recording. In conventional studios it is necessary to have each of the tracks physically present in the studio in a tape form, regardless of when recorded. This means that media must be physically shipped to the sound studio in order for mixing to occur.
The sound recording mixing equipment is often complex and requires the services of a highly skilled and highly compensated sound recording engineer. Thus, the hourly cost of sound recording studios can be high because of the requirement of the assistance of a skilled sound recording engineer as well as the cost of expensive equipment, which must be amortized over the limited number of recording hours which the studio has available and is being operated. All of these factors make sound recording studios not only non-interactive with the performer, but completely out of economical reach from all of the professional performers and thus limited even within the class of professional performers to those who have some type of financial backing or recording contract. The use of sound recording studios for amateur performers for their own enjoyment is thus almost always economically ruled out.
Therefore, what is needed is some type of apparatus and method which will allow the benefits of a sound recording studio to be made available to everyone, including amateur performers, over the entire globe and in a manner which is arbitrarily displaced in time and at an economical level. | {
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A conventional umbrella as shown in FIG. 1 includes: a rib means 2 having a top rib 21 pivotally secured to an upper notch 11 fixed on an upper portion of a central shaft 1, a stretcher rib 22 pivotally secured to a runner 12 slidably held on the central shaft 1, whereby upon opening of the umbrella, a bottom periphery 121 of the runner 12 will be retained on an upper spring catch 13 resiliently protruding externally through an upper slot 131 cut in the central shaft; and upon closing of the umbrella (as shown in dotted lines of FIG. 1), a lower spring catch 14 as resiliently protruding externally on the central shaft 1 through a lower slot 141 cut in the shaft 1 will engage a runner slot 122 cut in the runner 12 for locking the runner 12 and the rib means 2 at a folded or closed state.
However, such a conventional umbrella will have the following drawbacks:
1. For cutting the slots 131, 141 for resiliently holding the spring catches 13, 14 in the central shaft 1, a strength of the shaft 1 will be greatly reduced, causing deformation of the shaft and influencing the opening and closing operation of the umbrella.
2. The spring catch 13, 14 is made of thin metal plate and will easily cause injury to an umbrella user when depressing the catch 13, 14 inwardly for opening or closing the umbrella.
3. If the central shaft 1 is made of metalic materials, a serious corrosion will occur at the slots 131, 141 especially after being penetrated with raindrops therein in a rainy days to easily damage the umbrella.
4. The contact area between the catch and the runner is limited to a "single spot" to easily cause wearing between the catch and the runner, possibly influencing a smooth operation of the umbrella. Meanwhile, a poor quality control for making the umbrella, such as unprecise installing of the catch in the shaft or a misalignment between the catch 14 and the runner slot 122 cut in the runner 12, may even deteriorate the umbrella.
The present inventor has found the drawbacks of the conventional umbrella, and invented the present invention by eliminating any spring positioning means externally extended on the shaft. | {
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Dynamic Random Access Memory utilizes capacitors to store bits of information within an integrated circuit. A capacitor is formed by placing a dielectric material between two electrodes formed from conductive materials. A capacitor's ability to hold electrical charge (i.e., capacitance) is a function of the surface area of the capacitor plates A, the distance between the capacitor plates d, and the relative dielectric constant or k-value of the dielectric material. The capacitance is given by:
C = κɛ o A d ( Eqn . 1 ) where ∈o represents the vacuum permittivity.
The dielectric constant is a measure of a material's polarizability. Therefore, the higher the dielectric constant of a material, the more electrical charge the capacitor can hold. Therefore, for a given desired capacitance, if the k-value of the dielectric is increased, the area of the capacitor can be decreased to maintain the same cell capacitance. Reducing the size of capacitors within the device is important for the miniaturization of integrated circuits. This allows the packing of millions (mega-bit (Mb)) or billions (giga-bit (Gb)) of memory cells into a single semiconductor device. The goal is to maintain a large cell capacitance (generally ˜10 to 25 fF) and a low leakage current density (generally <10−7 A cm−2). The physical thickness of the dielectric layers in DRAM capacitors cannot be reduced without limit because leakage current caused by tunneling mechanisms exponentially increases as the thickness of the dielectric layer decreases.
Traditionally, SiO2 has been used as the dielectric material and semiconducting materials (semiconductor-insulator-semiconductor [SIS] cell designs) have been used as the electrodes. The cell capacitance was maintained by increasing the area of the capacitor using very complex capacitor morphologies while also decreasing the thickness of the SiO2 dielectric layer. Increases of the leakage current above the desired specifications have demanded the development of new capacitor geometries, new electrode materials, and new dielectric materials. Cell designs have migrated to metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) and now to metal-insulator-metal (MIM) cell designs for higher performance.
Typically, DRAM devices at technology nodes of 80 nm and below use MIM capacitors wherein the electrode materials are metals. These electrode materials generally have higher conductivities than the semiconductor electrode materials, higher work functions, exhibit improved stability over the semiconductor electrode materials, and exhibit reduced depletion effects. The electrode materials must have high conductivity to ensure fast device speeds. Representative examples of electrode materials for MIM capacitors are metals, conductive metal oxides, conductive metal silicides, conductive metal nitrides (i.e. titanium nitride), or combinations thereof. MIM capacitors in these DRAM applications utilize insulating materials having a dielectric constant, or k-value, significantly higher than that of SiO2 (k=3.9). For DRAM capacitors, the goal is to utilize dielectric materials with k-values greater than about 40. Such materials are generally classified as high-k materials. Representative examples of high-k materials for MIM capacitors are non-conducting metal oxides, non-conducting metal nitrides, non-conducting metal silicates or combinations thereof. These dielectric materials may also include additional dopant materials.
A figure of merit in DRAM technology is the electrical performance of the dielectric material as compared to SiO2 known as the Equivalent Oxide Thickness (EOT). A high-k material's EOT is calculated using a normalized measure of silicon dioxide (SiO2 k=3.9) as a reference, given by:
EOT = 3.9 κ · d ( Eqn . 2 ) where d represents the physical thickness of the capacitor dielectric.
As DRAM technologies scale below the 40 nm technology node, manufacturers must reduce the EOT of the high-k dielectric films in MIM capacitors in order to increase charge storage capacity. The goal is to utilize dielectric materials that exhibit an EOT of less than about 0.8 nm while maintaining a physical thickness of about 5-20 nm.
There is a need to develop processes that allow the formation of a metal oxide-based electrode material that can serve as a template for the high-k phases of subsequently deposited dielectric layers, that contributes to lower leakage current, and has low resistivity, which contributes to higher device speed and lower power usage. | {
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This disclosure relates to a gas turbine engine, and more particularly to a vane for cooling thermal protection of a blade outer air seal (BOAS).
Gas turbine engines typically include a compressor section, a combustor section and a turbine section. During operation, air is pressurized in the compressor section and is mixed with fuel and burned in the combustor section to generate hot combustion gases. The hot combustion gases are communicated through the turbine section, which extracts energy from the hot combustion gases to power the compressor section and other gas turbine engine loads.
A typical turbine section includes at least one array of stator vanes and one array of BOAS each arranged circumferentially about an engine central longitudinal axis to define an outer radial flow path boundary for the hot combustion gases passing across exposed surfaces of the BOAS. Thus, the BOAS are prone to thermal distress due to the hot combustion gases. Each of the stator vanes includes an airfoil which communicates a relatively high pressure fluid downstream of the airfoil and onto an exposed surface of one of the BOAS, making a portion of the exposed surface especially prone to thermal distress.
Typically, BOAS are cooled by communicating bleed air from the compressor section to an inner plenum of the BOAS, which results in a parasitic loss due to gases being heated by the compressor section but not being combusted. The BOAS are cooled along the entire circumferential direction because the relative circumferential position of each of the upstream vane airfoil segments and relative position of combustor fuel nozzle locations may be unknown. Accordingly, a localized cooling feature is desirable to minimize parasitic losses. | {
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a. Field of the Invention
The present application claims the benefit of priority to United Kingdom Application No. 0417765.5 filed Aug. 10, 2004, hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
This invention relates to a well casing straddle assembly, that is to say an assembly comprising a liner and at least one packer/seal at the top and at the bottom of the liner so that the assembly can be set in a well casing to isolate a length of the casing from the well bore. A straddle assembly is typically used to repair defective casing or to isolate openings in the casing (for example perforations or window openings) from the well bore.
b. Description of Related Art
The use of straddle assemblies is well known in the oil industry. A typical straddle assembly is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,948,321 and comprises a packer/seal assembly located at both the top and the bottom end of a length of liner. In use, the assembly is run into a well and the packer/seal assemblies are set to hold the straddle assembly in place and provide a fluid tight seal between the assembly and casing at the top and bottom of the assembly.
In general, it is desirable for the inside diameter of the assembly to be as large as possible relative to the inside diameter of the casing in which it is set and to this end the packer/seal assemblies are designed to provide the maximum available internal diameter.
In many applications it would be desirable to have more than one packer/seal assembly at the top and/or at the bottom of the straddle assembly. Typically, in many applications it would be desirable to have two packer/seal assemblies at the top of the straddle assembly and two packer/seal assemblies at the bottom of the straddle assembly. However, attempts to implement designs using a total of four packer/seal assemblies have not been entirely satisfactory. The problem arises from the method which is used to set the packer/seal assemblies. In the prior art, a setting tool is deployed within the straddle assembly and latched onto a suitable collar provided at the lower end of the assembly. Means are provided on the setting tool adjacent the upper end of the assembly to provide a reaction surface against which the straddle assembly could be pulled by the setting tool. Once movement of the upper end of the straddle assembly had been arrested, continued action of the setting tool applies an axially compressive force to the straddle assembly to set the packers. Although all four packers would, theoretically, have equal setting forces, in practice manufacturing tolerances, wear, well conditions, etc. mean that the packers set in an order which could not be predicted. If, in fact, the packers nearest the top and bottom of the assembly set before the packers nearer the centre of the assembly, further movement of the setting tool was arrested and the packers nearer the centre of the tool were not, in fact, set at all. This was obviously highly undesirable. Although it would be possible, in theory, to devise a setting tool which could selectively set each of the packers in turn, such a design would be complex and difficult to operate under field conditions.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a well casing straddle assembly having a plurality of packer/seal assemblies in which the sequence of setting of the packer/seal assemblies can be selected, thereby allowing optimum setting.
The ability to select the setting order is particularly critical in a straddle assembly of the type which includes two or more packer/seal assemblies at the top of the straddle assembly and a further two or more packer/seal assemblies at the bottom of the straddle assembly. However, it should be understood that the ability to select the setting order may be of significant utility even in designs in which there is only one packer/seal assembly at each end of the straddle assembly. In particular, the ability to set the packer at the end of the straddle assembly which is fixed relative to the well casing during the setting procedure, before setting the packer/seal assembly at the other end of the straddle assembly, is highly desirable since it avoids the possibility of the packer/seal assembly at the moveable end of the straddle assembly being set prematurely and thereby resisting further movement of the setting tool. | {
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This invention relates to breathing apparatus and is especially but not exclusively concerned with diving headgear for use in return-line or push-pull diving systems in which pressurized breathable gas is fed to the headgear through a supply hose, used gas is withdrawn from the headgear through an exhaust hose and pressurized, and the pressurized gas is recycled to the headgear through the supply hose. Such headgear usually comprises a helmet, an oral nasal mask in the helmet, a continuous free-flow supply valve on the helmet, and an exhaust regulating valve on the helmet actuable by the breathing of the diver to permit the withdrawal of the used gas by suction through an outlet opening in the helmet.
As the breathable gas is usually a helium/oxygen mixture, return-line diving systems have the considerable economic advantage of allowing re-use of expensive helium. However, existing return-line or push-pull diving systems have serious disadvantages. Thus, with reduced pressure in the exhaust hose to ensure efficient removal of the used gas from the helmet, failure of the exhaust regulating valve due say to jamming arising from close tolerances or to failure of sliding seals will cause lung "squeeze" which can prove fatal. Moreover, the valve systems on the helmets have hitherto been unable to meet the criteria of (a) adequate safety back-up combined with high gas-flow rates for good lung ventilation and (b) high mechanical advantage with consequent low sensitivity to across-the-valve pressure fluctuations, since the provision of large openings required for high flow rates normally results in a reduction in the mechanical advantage of the valve system.
The object of the present invention is to provide diving headgear with a valve system by virtue of which the aforesaid disadvantages in the existing return-line or push-pull diving systems are obviated or mitigated. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to pseudonoise (PN) spread spectrum communication systems, and, more particularly, to apparatus and a method for generating very long composite PN codes and a method and apparatus for minimizing the time of acquisition of such very long composite codes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The present invention may be considered to be an improvement of our U.S. Pat. No. 4,225,935. The system referenced therein combines individual PN component codes to provide a PN composite code having a code length equal to the product of the individual PN component code lengths.
The advantage in creating a composite PN code from individual component PN codes is during acquisition. The system of acquisition permits the acquisition of the first, which is usually the shortest, PN component code first. After lock-on employing code locked loops the next, which is usually the next shortest, PN component code is acquired. Thus, sequentially each of the PN component codes may be acquired until all PN component codes are acquired so as to reproduce the PN composite code.
While our previous U.S. Pat. No. 4,225,935 discloses and teaches that more than three PN component code generators may be employed in a practical PN composite code generator, theoretically the number of code generators is limited. The number of input PN code generators is limited by two factors. First, when there are three PN component code generators, the full power signal available at the receiver is not available during acquisition. It is only after acquisition and lock-on of all three component codes that the full power of the composite code is available for tracking and lock-on. For three PN component code generators, only one-half of the voltage of the receiver signal is available, thus, only one-fourth the power. This equates to a 6 dB loss and severely limits the expansion of the component PN code system beyond three. For example, it can be shown that when five component PN code generators are employed, the power is only 1/16th and the power loss attenuation has increased by a factor of 4 or is now down 12 dB.
Secondly, in our previous system it was explained that the output of the majority vote combiner (MAJ) possesses correlation component properties wherein the individual PN component codes C.sub.1, C.sub.2 and C.sub.3 each correlate with the MAJ (C.sub.1, C.sub.2, C.sub.3) composite code with a 50% correlation factor and that a composite code derived by a modulo two addition combining rule (MOD) has no correlation with the individual PN component codes.
The significance of this characteristic of MAJ and MOD composite codes is important in that while the composite code is a MAJ code it is more easily acquired by those who already know the component codes. However, it is also more easily acquired or deciphered by unfriendly forces who are reconstructing the component codes. The longer the transmitted signal is in the MAJ mode the more easily it is that it may be intercepted.
It would be extremely desirable to provide a PN composite code of any desired length without limitation which has no greater power loss during acquisition than if the code had been derived from three PN component code generators, and does not inordinately increase the acquisition time of the very long code and yet does not create a composite code more susceptible to interception. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical rotating machine, and more specifically, to an improved electrical rotating machine in which a local rise of temperature in a stator core is reduced.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrical steel sheets are die-cut into substantially sector shapes as shown in FIG. 2 and arranged in a circumferential direction to form circular sheets which are stacked in an axial direction to form a stator core of a large size electrical rotating machine.
In FIG. 2, a sheet segment in a substantially sector shape includes teeth 1 between which there is provided a slot 3 where a coil is inserted, and a yoke 2 which forms a peripheral part of the sheet segment.
As shown in FIG. 3, several to several dozens of electrical steel sheets area stacked to form a block 4 and a cooling duct 5 is provided between blocks 4 to cool down an inside of a large size electrical rotating machine. The coil 6 and rotator 7 illustrate the relative position of the teeth region.
Among electrical steel sheets used for a stator core in an electrical rotating machine are non-grain oriented steel sheets in which a direction of easy magnetization is random and grain oriented steel sheets in which a direction of easy magnetization is aligned with a rolling direction of a steel band.
To reduce iron losses, grain oriented steel sheets are used as steel sheets for an iron core and circumferential directions of segment sheets are aligned with a rolling direction of a steel band as shown in FIG. 2 so that magnetic flux in a circumferential direction of a yoke 2 passes in a direction of easy magnetization. Moreover, circumferential directions of sheet segments of non-grain oriented steel sheets are also aligned with a rolling direction of a steel band since magnetic flux tends to pass more easily in the rolling direction of the steel band.
In teeth of end regions of a stator core, local overheating of the stator core becomes a problem since magnetic flux comes in an axial direction as well as radial directions. Thus, in a stator core using grain oriented steel sheets, magnetic flux cannot easily pass compared with in a stator core using non-grain oriented steel sheets, in the teeth 1 where magnetic flux passes mainly in the radial directions, since a direction of easy magnetization is aligned with a circumferential direction, and accordingly high heat is generated caused by iron losses. Local overheating in a stator core may damage insulation and form short circuits, causing a burnout of the stator core.
Therefore, as a solution for preventing local overheating in teeth of end regions of a stator core, a slit 8 is provided to each of teeth 1 as shown in FIG. 4 to narrow a flow path of eddy current in each of the teeth 1 and reduce eddy current loss caused by axial magnetic flux. Moreover, blocks 4 in each of end regions of a stator core are formed in a stepped taper shape as shown in FIG. 5 to prevent magnetic flux from locally concentrating.
However, losses caused by radial magnetic flux also greatly contribute to heating upon high densities of radial magnetic flux in teeth. Therefore, it is effective to reduce losses caused by radial magnetic flux to prevent local overheating.
The prior art described above is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publications JP 2000-50539A and JP 63-217940A and The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan; “Improvements and Problems for Use of Silicone Steel Sheets”, Technical Report of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan, Part II, No. 85, in 1979. | {
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Convenience packaging, particularly for foodstuffs and bulk materials, frequently involves the use of bags or pouches. These bags can be advantageously constructed with side or bottom gussets to make them able to be set upright on a horizontal supporting surface, for filling, display or storage. It is common to refer to bags with bottom expansion panels and sealed side and top edges as ‘pouches’.
More recently, bags have been produced with expansion panels at both top and bottom, and vertical side seals. Examples of these bags are marketed under the trade name “Flex-Can”, for example, and are known for their ability to be conveniently stacked one on top of another, like cans. Both the top and bottom panels of these bags expand substantially and simultaneously as the bags are filled, such that the sides of the bag separate at both top and bottom, in some cases remaining generally parallel and vertical. As filled, the bag and its contents can exhibit significant structural stability, enabling stacking and convenient handling, with very little head space above the contents. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a lens structure for a vehicle radio or the like which includes a clear lens surrounded by an opaque field.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Lens structures of the type to which the present invention appertains are in common use for vehicle radios. The lens structure is a plate-like element and includes a clear lens portion surrounded by an opaque field. The lens portion is for the display of information generated by the radio. This information may include, for example, the station to which the radio is tuned, whether the radio is set for AM or FM, and the time of day.
In the past, such lens structures have been manufactured by first molding or otherwise preparing a clear plate of a scratch resistance glassy plastic material such as an acrylic resin. The rearward surface of this plate was then painted an opaque color, usually black, leaving a central clear lens area for the display of information.
This method of fabricating the lens structure has certain drawbacks. Firstly, the painted surface is easily scratched, thus necessitating very careful handling of the lens structure from the time it is painted to the time when it is installed. This results in costly procedures which are, however, not entirely effective, there being a relatively high scrap rate of such lens structures as a result of inadvertent scratching of the painted surface.
Additionally, it is difficult to properly paint such lens structures. In the painting process, a mask must be used to prevent painting the portion which is to remain clear. The mask gets paint on it and must be cleaned often to prevent making paint marks on the clear portion. Overall, this painting process also involves a relatively high scrap rate.
In accordance with the present invention, instead of painting the rear surface of the lens structure, a layer of opaque pigmented plastic material is heat molded onto the rear surface of the glassy panel (or the reverse process). A clear lens portion projects through this opaque layer forming the desired lens.
Such a lens structure offers the advantage of ready quality control, there being no liquid paint to contend with. Additionally, the opaque layer, being pigmented and relatively thick, is not subject to easy scratching thereby resulting in a lower scrap rate and less expensive handling procedures. A further advantage of this construction is that a cheaper plastic can be used for the opaque layer than is used for the clear glassy layer. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to free wheeling tires particularly useful in a gravity roller conveyor, and the like having the ability to retard accelerated movement of the load carried by the wheels.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
In many instances it is desireable to prevent increased rotational velocities of free-wheeling tires, wheels, or rollers. For example, in applications such as in mining operations, it is necessary that means be provided to guard against ore-bearing carts from running away and endangering property and personnel. Similarly, in applications where pallets and cargo are moved down an inclined path of free-wheeling rollers such as in gravity conveyors, the need to prevent high speeds of the pallet is always present.
Various devices to accomplish the above are found in the prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,621,960 describes a gravity conveyor having rollers to retard the speed of the load. Each is provided with a tire formed of a polymer having a certain durometer hardness range. Durometer itself is only a measurement of the hardness of an elastomeric material and provides little insight into the appropriateness of that material under various temperatures or even at later times after extended operations. For example, since the elastic moduli of elastomers generally decreases as temperature increases, the durometer of a material at an initial time and temperature is of little value in predicting how an elastomer might perform under load at a later time where the temperature is elevated. It is also known that durometer readings may not accurately reflect the behaviour of elastomers throughout a tensile test.
The patentee points out that the surface material has high hysteresis properties, i.e., the ability to absorb energy upon deformation and convert it to heat. In other words, the energy lost in generating heat is derived from the energy used to rotate the tire. In applications where gravity is acting upon the loaded tire, the tire would otherwise steadily increase in rotational speed. The hysterisis characteristic of the tire offsets the affect of gravity such that the tire rotates at a constant speed. Hysterisis measurements of an elastomer, however, involve a complex set of variables. However, for purposes here, it can be said that hysterisis (H) and resilience (R) have the following relationship: EQU R=1-H
thus, the larger hysterisis of a material becomes, the less resilience it has. The heat generated must be dissapated quickly or ultimately the heated material behaves in a manner different than its initial behavior. The prior art, as for example the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,621,960, does not appear to have recognized the problem of excess heat generation which deleteriously affects the operation of constant speed wheels. It follows that no solution has been sought, much less found.
As mentioned before, resiliency and hysterisis of elastomeric materials are inversely related. Although neither can be determined exactly, emperical relationships can be employed which adequately predict the values at a particular temperature. A tire, wheel, or roller designed to maintain essentially constant rotational speeds under various loads must necessarily have a higher hysterisis value. It is desireable that the resiliency value throughout operation be essentially the same as the initial resilience value. This also fixes the hysterisis value.
Thus, it becomes a paramount object of the present invention to provide a rotating element structure which maintains essentially constant rotational speeds under load and which readily dissapates heat generated by deformation during operation.
Because it is necessary for apparatus such as gravity conveyors to control the speed of the descending load, still another object of the present invention is to provide a device which will limit the speed of an object moving thereover to a predetermined terminal velocity.
Applications employing speed control wheels have additionally been limited to using wheels of various compositions, each composition designed for a specific hysterisis effect and therefore a different speed control effect. From an economic standpoint, it would be highly desireable to have wheels which provide the desired speed control effects but where the composition of material remains unchanged. Thus, it is still further important object of the present invention to provide for rotating element structures where the hysterisis behaviour characteristics can be varied without changing the composition of the structure. | {
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The present invention relates to a vacuum processing apparatus; and more particularly, the invention relates to a vacuum processing apparatus which is suitable for performing treatment, such as etching, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), spattering, ashing, rinsing or the like, on a sample of a semiconductor substrate, such as a Si substrate, and to a semiconductor manufacturing line for manufacturing semiconductor devices using the vacuum processing apparatus.
Basically, a vacuum processing apparatus is composed of a cassette block and a vacuum processing block. The cassette block has a front facing the bay path of the semiconductor manufacturing line and extending toward the longitudinal direction of the semiconductor manufacturing line, an alignment unit for aligning the orientation of a cassette for a sample or the orientation of a sample, and a robot operating under an atmospheric pressure environment. The vacuum block has a load lock chamber in the loading side, a load lock chamber in the unloading side, a processing chamber, a post treating chamber, a vacuum pump and a robot operating under a vacuum environment.
In the vacuum processing apparatus, a sample extracted from the cassette in the cassette block is transferred to the load lock chamber of the vacuum processing block by the atmospheric transfer robot. The sample is further transferred to the processing chamber from the load lock chamber by the atmospheric transfer robot and is set on an electrode structure body to be subjected to processing, such as plasma treatment. Then, the sample is transferred to the post treating chamber to be processed, if necessary. The sample having been processed is transferred to the cassette in the cassette block by the vacuum transfer robot and the atmospheric transfer robot.
Vacuum processing apparatuses for performing plasma etching on a sample are disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Publication No. 61-8153, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 63-133532, Japanese Patent Publication No. 6-30369, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-314729, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-314730, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,509.
In the above-referenced conventional vacuum processing apparatuses, the processing chambers and the load lock chambers are concentrically arranged or arranged in rectangular shape. For example, in the apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,314,509, a vacuum transfer robot is arranged near the center of the vacuum processing block with three processing chambers being concentrically arranged around the vacuum transfer robot, and a load lock chamber in the loading side and a load lock chamber in the unload side are provided between the vacuum transfer robot and the cassette block. In these apparatuses, there is a problem in that the required installation area of the whole apparatus is large since the rotating angles of the transfer arms of the atmospheric transfer robot and the vacuum transfer robot are large.
On the other hand, the processing chamber in the vacuum processing block and the vacuum pump and other various kinds of piping components of the vacuum processing apparatus require maintenance, such as scheduled and unscheduled inspection or repairing. Therefore, in general, there are provided doors around the vacuum processing block so that inspection and repairing of the load lock chamber, the un-load lock chamber, the processing chamber, the vacuum transfer robot and the various kinds of piping components can be performed by opening the doors.
In the conventional vacuum processing apparatus, there is a problem in that the installation area is large even though the sample to be handled has a diameter d smaller than 8 inches (nearly 200 mm) and the outer size of the cassette Cw, is nearly 250 mm. Further, in the case of handling a large diameter sample having a diameter d above 12 inches (nearly 300 mm), the size of the cassette Cw, becomes nearly 350 mm. Accordingly, the width of the cassette block containing a plurality of cassettes becomes large. If the width of the vacuum processing block is determined based on the width of the cassette block, the whole vacuum processing apparatus requires a large installation area. Considering a cassette block containing four cassettes as an example, the width of the cassette block cannot help but increase at least by nearly 40 cm when the diameter d of a sample increases from 8 inches to 12 inches.
On the other hand, in a general semiconductor manufacturing line, in order to process a large amount of samples and employ various kinds of processes, a plurality of vacuum processing apparatuses performing the same processing are gathered in a bay, and transmission of samples between bays is performed automatically or manually. Since such a semiconductor manufacturing line requires a high cleanness, the whole semiconductor manufacturing line is installed in a large clean room. An increase in the size of a vacuum processing apparatus due to an increase in diameter of a sample to be processed results in an increase in the required installation area of the clean room, which further increases the construction cost of the clean room, which by its nature already has a high construction cost. If vacuum processing apparatuses requiring a larger installation area are installed in a clean room having the same area, a reduction in the total number of the vacuum processing apparatuses or a decrease in the spacing between the vacuum processing apparatuses becomes inevitable. A reduction in the total number of the vacuum processing apparatuses in the clean room having the same area decreases the productivity of the semiconductor manufacturing line and increases the manufacturing cost of the semiconductor devices as an inevitable consequence. On the other hand, a decrease in the spacing between the vacuum processing apparatuses decreases the maintainability of the vacuum processing apparatus due to lack of maintenance space for inspection and repair.
An object of the present invention is to provide a vacuum processing apparatus which is capable of coping with larger diameter samples while keeping the manufacturing cost to a minimum.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a vacuum processing apparatus which is capable of coping with larger diameter samples and at the same time having a better maintainability.
A further object of the present invention is to provide semiconductor manufacturing line which is capable of coping with larger diameter samples while keeping manufacturing cost to a minimum by keeping the necessary number of vacuum processing apparatuses, through more economical use of space and at the same time not decreasing the maintainability.
In order to attain the above objects, the present invention provides a vacuum processing apparatus composed of a cassette block and a vacuum processing block, and the cassette block has a cassette table for mounting a cassette containing a sample, and the vacuum processing block has a processing chamber for treating the sample and a vacuum transfer means for transferring the sample. In the vacuum processing apparatus, both of the plan views of the cassette block and the vacuum processing block are nearly rectangular and the relation W1xe2x88x92W2xe2x89xa7Cw is satisfied, where W1 is the width of the cassette block, W2 is the width of the vacuum processing block, and Cw is the width of one cassette.
Another characteristic of the present invention is that the width of the cassette block is designed to be larger than the width of the vacuum processing block, and the plan view of the vacuum processing apparatus is formed in an L-shape or a T-shape.
A further characteristic of the present invention is that a semiconductor manufacturing line comprising a plurality of bay areas having a plurality of vacuum processing apparatuses composed of a cassette block and a vacuum processing block are arranged in the order of the manufacturing process, and the cassette block has a cassette table for mounting a cassette containing a sample, and the vacuum processing block has a process chamber for performing vacuum processing on the sample and a vacuum transfer means for transferring the sample. In the semiconductor manufacturing line, at least one of the vacuum processing apparatuses is designed so that the cassette block is capable of containing a sample having a diameter not less than 300 mm, and the relation W1xe2x88x92W2xe2x89xa7Cw is satisfied, where W1 is the width of the cassette block, W2 is the width of the vacuum processing block, and Cw is the width of one cassette.
A still further characteristic of the present invention is that a method of constructing a semiconductor manufacturing line which comprises a plurality of vacuum processing apparatuses composed of a cassette block capable of containing a sample having a diameter not less than 300 mm, and a vacuum processing block for performing vacuum processing on said sample. In the method of constructing a semiconductor manufacturing line, at least one of the vacuum processing apparatuses is designed so that the width of the cassette block is larger than the width of the vacuum processing block; the plane view of the vacuum processing apparatus is formed in an L-shape or a T-shape; and a maintenance space is provided between the L-shaped or the T-shaped vacuum processing apparatuses and the adjacent vacuum processing apparatus.
According to the present invention, the plan view shapes of the cassette block and the vacuum processing block are rectangular, and the cassette block and the vacuum processing block are designed so that the relation W1 greater than W2 is satisfied, where W1 is the width of the cassette block and W2 is the width of the vacuum processing block. Thereby, the plan view of the whole of the vacuum processing apparatus becomes L-shaped or T-shaped. In a case of arranging many such vacuum processing apparatuses, a sufficient space can be provided between the vacuum processing blocks positioned adjacent to each other, even if the interval between the vacuum processing blocks is made small. For example, when W1 is 1.5 m and W2 is 0.8 m, a maintenance space of 0.7 m can be provided between the vacuum processing apparatuses located adjacent to each other.
Therefore, in spite of a larger diameter sample, the number of vacuum processing apparatuses installed in a clean room, having the same area as a conventional clean room, does not need to be reduced. Accordingly, the productivity of the semiconductor manufacturing line does not decrease. Thus, it is possible to provide a vacuum processing apparatus which can cope with a larger diameter sample and, at the same time, can suppress any increase in the manufacturing cost, and has better maintainability.
Further, by employing the vacuum processing apparatus according to the present invention in a semiconductor manufacturing line, it is possible to provide a semiconductor manufacturing line which can cope with a larger diameter sample while keeping manufacturing cost to a minimum by keeping the necessary number of vacuum processing apparatuses, through more economical use of space and, at the same time, without decreasing the maintainability. | {
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Electronic devices can enable computer vision by duplicating the abilities of human vision by electronically perceiving and understanding an image. In some cases, the electronic device will follow or track the movements of a set of interest points or objects in an image sequence. In particular, the electronic device can track the movements of a human hand to implement a user-interface with the electronic device. The ability to provide a hand-tracking mechanism is fundamental in implementing a natural user interface based on hand gestures. This is especially true in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications. A gesture recognition mechanism is crucial to enabling a natural user interface in such applications.
The same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and the figures to reference like components and features. Numbers in the 100 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 1; numbers in the 200 series refer to features originally found in FIG. 2; and so on. | {
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Lignite having high moisture content has been treated by immersion in steam or hot water under pressure and had its moisture content reduced to from 16% to 20%. Lignite so treated does not slack, but has never been used in blast furnaces to produce pig iron, it has only been used in a single water gas plant in Europe. | {
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Networks can be comprised of a multiplicity of network devices such as servers, routers, hosts, switches, repeaters, hubs, encryption devices and backup devices such as media libraries.
In many systems, data may be sent over a network from multiple hosts on the network to a library for storage. Such hosts may include computers, servers or other devices. In many instances, the data is routed to the library through a multiplicity of network devices which may include one or more switches, routers, servers, hubs, encryption devices or other network devices. A host or other device may also request data from a library and this data may be routed to the host or other device through the network.
One example of a library commonly used for data storage is a magnetic tape library. A magnetic tape library can comprise components such as tape cartridges (containing magnetic tape), robots, tape slots and tape drives. A typical magnetic tape library contains multiple cartridge slots in which tape cartridges can be stored. Tape cartridges, commonly referred to as tapes, are physically moved between cartridge slots and tape drives by a robot. The robot is controlled by commands received from the host devices on the network. When data is to be written to or read from the library, a host device determines which cartridge slot contains the tape cartridge that is to be written to or read from. The host device then transmits a move-element command to the robot and the robot moves the tape cartridge to a tape drive which reads the desired data from the tape cartridge.
A tape drive in a library reads from or writes to magnetic tape contained in a cartridge utilizing a sensor which may comprise a read head and a write head. In one embodiment of a drive, magnetic tape is pulled past the sensor comprising the read head and the write head such that the read head can read data from the tape and the write head can write data to the tape.
Reading and writing to a cartridge inherently causes the degradation of the tape comprising the cartridge because the tape is pulled past the read and write heads. Pulling the tape past the read and write heads may strain the tape and the tape may collide with the read or the write heads at read or write speed. Especially deleterious to tape life is starving a drive of data to write to a tape. In particular, if data is received at a drive at below the drive's ability to write data (i.e. at below the drive's streaming rate), then the movement of magnetic tape may have to be slowed or reversed in order to write data with the necessary density, wearing the tape. Such back and forth pulling of tape past the read and write heads of a drive is referred to as “shoe-shining” and has the potential to accelerate tape degradation. Consequently, bottlenecks or other decreases in data transfer rates caused by network devices can have a deleterious effect at the library. | {
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It is known in the art to maintain state machines, typically consisting of state tables, defining the states of elements associated with a system. An example of such a state machine is the collection of state tables forming Postal State Tables (PSTs) stored in flash memory and utilized in postal printing devices. The PSTs maintain data related to the status of purchased postal indicia.
As noted, such state tables are typically stored in flash memory. It is an unfortunate attribute of flash memory that such memory possesses a relatively limited number of erase cycles. For example, flash memory internal to a processor may only allow one hundred erase cycles. The actual number of erase cycles that may be performed before experiencing a significant degradation in the operation of the memory varies. However, when such degradation does occur, the result is an increase in the amount of time to write to the flash memory and to retrieve data from the flash memory. As a result, it is desirable to minimize the number of erase cycles.
In a typical erase cycle, each bit in the flash memory device is set to logical “1”. In order to limit the number of erases performed on a flash memory, it is noted that any bit can be transitioned from a one to a zero between erase cycles (or from a zero to a one depending on the flash part). This fact allows multiple writes to occur in a flash memory device between erases. It is therefore preferable to manipulate data stored on a flash memory in a manner requiring only the transition of bits from one to zero. By so doing, one decreases the frequency with which the flash memory requires erasing.
In addition, it is preferable to employ an algorithm to efficiently clean the non-volatile memory (NVM), such as flash memory, such that erases occur only when required. When an erase cycle is needed, it is further preferable to engage in erasing flash memory in such a way that the entire flash memory experiences a generally uniform application of memory erasing. | {
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Charged particle beam columns are typically employed in scanning electron microscopy (SEM), which is a known technique widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor wafers, being utilized in a CD metrology tool, the so-called CD-SEM (critical dimension scanning electron microscope), and a defect review SEM. In a SEM, the region of a sample to be examined is two-dimensionally scanned by means of a focused primary beam of electrically charged particles, usually electrons. Irradiation of the sample with the primary electron beam releases secondary (and/or backscattered) electrons. The secondary electrons are released at that side of the sample at which the primary electron beam is incident, and move back to be captured by a detector, which generates an output electric signal proportional to the so-detected electric current. The energy and/or the energy distribution of the secondary electrons is indicative of the nature and composition of the sample.
SEM typically includes such main constructional parts as an electron beam source (formed with a small tip called “electron gun”), an electron beam column, and a detector unit. The detection unit may be located outside the path of the primary beam propagation through the column, or may be located in the path of the primary beam (the so-called “in-column” or “in-lens” detector). The electron beam column includes inter alia a beam focusing and collecting arrangement formed by a lens arrangement and a deflector. The deflection of the primary beam provides for scanning the beam within a scan area on the sample, and also for adjusting incidence of the primary beam onto the sample (an angle of incidence and/or beam shift).
One of the common goals of all imaging systems consists of increasing the image resolution. In SEM, in order to reduce the “spot” size of the electron beam up to nanometers, a highly accelerated electron beam is typically produced using accelerating voltages of several tens of kilovolts and more. Specifically, the electron optic elements are more effective (i.e. produce smaller aberrations) when the electrons are accelerated to high kinetic energy. However, in order to avoid damaging a sample (resist structure and integrated circuit) that might be caused by such a highly energized electron beam, the electron beam is decelerated just prior to impinging onto the specimen. Deceleration of the electrons can generally be accomplished by selectively creating a potential difference between the pole piece of a magnetic objective lens and the specimen. Alternatively, the same effect can be achieved by actually introducing electrodes having selective potential applied thereto.
Another known problem of the inspection systems of the kind specified is associated with locating defects (foreign particles) on patterned surfaces. The pattern is typically in the form of a plurality of spaced-apart grooves. To detect the existence of a foreign particle located inside a narrow groove, it is desirable to tilt the scanning beam with respect to the surface, which tilting should be applied to selective locations on the specimen. A tilt mechanism may be achieved by mechanically tilting the sample holder relative to the charged particle beam column, and/or by electronically tilting the primary beam propagation axis. | {
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A number of systems and programs are offered on the market for the design, the engineering and the manufacturing of objects. CAD is an acronym for Computer-Aided Design, e.g. it relates to software solutions for designing an object. CAE is an acronym for Computer-Aided Engineering, e.g. it relates to software solutions for simulating the physical behavior of a future product. CAM is an acronym for Computer-Aided Manufacturing, e.g. it relates to software solutions for defining manufacturing processes and operations. In such systems, the graphical user interface (GUI) plays an important role as regards the efficiency of the technique. These techniques may be embedded within Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems. PLM refers to a business strategy that helps companies to share product data, apply common processes, and leverage corporate knowledge for the development of products from conception to the end of their life, across the concept of extended enterprise.
The PLM solutions provided by Dassault Systemes (under the trademarks CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA) provide an Engineering Hub, which organizes product engineering knowledge, a Manufacturing Hub, which manages manufacturing engineering knowledge, and an Enterprise Hub which enables enterprise integrations and connections into both the Engineering and Manufacturing Hubs. All together the system delivers an open object model linking products, processes, resources to enable dynamic, knowledge-based product creation and decision support that drives optimized product definition, manufacturing preparation, production and service.
Such systems allow defining surfaces representing modeled objects or parts of modeled objects in an interactive way for designers. A famous method frequently used in CAD systems is the boundary representation (B-Rep) model using parametric surfaces, including e.g. planes, quadrics such as cylinders, spheres, cones or even torus, procedural surfaces such as fillets, sweeps, or revolve surfaces, and/or non-uniform rational B-Spline surfaces (NURBS). Representing complex object with this technology may be performed via the widely known concept of trimmed surfaces. Trimmed surfaces allow designing any kind of surface and solid models. A trimmed surface is a parametric surface delimited by boundaries. A trimmed surface may typically be associated to a portion of the 2D domain of a respective parametric surface. For example, referring to FIG. 1, four surfaces 31-34 are trimmed resulting in four new delimited (or “trimmed”) respective surfaces 36-39.
In other words, some known CAD systems allow designers to interactively define a B-Rep of a modeled object, the boundary representation comprising geometrical data including parametric surfaces and topological data including a set of faces each defined as a portion of the 2D domain of a respective parametric surface.
Once (or while being) defined by designers, such surfaces often need to be rendered, e.g. in order to be displayed. Systems offering rendering functionality may indeed for example display surfaces e.g. during the modeling or for the purpose of review/modification by designers. Today, a computer's Graphic Processor Unit (GPU) can display thousands of triangles really efficiently. However, a GPU cannot display a surface provided as a B-Rep directly. Such surfaces must be transformed into a set of primitives that can be handled by the GPU. This is also the case for geometric operators (i.e. operators performing geometric or Boolean operations on several surfaces, e.g. for collision tests). Such transformation is called tessellation. Known tessellation methods approximate a surface by covering said surface with a pattern of flat polygons, usually triangles, with no gaps or overlaps, so as to fit as best as possible the mathematical definition of that surface, and sometimes by associating normal vectors to the pattern of flat polygons equal to corresponding surface normal vectors (i.e. vectors normal to the initial surface at corresponding positions) for the purpose of surface shading.
Thus, a surface of a modeled object can be processed via two different models. The first model is the exact model, which stands for the mathematical definition of surfaces. With the exact model, a user can design the surface and apply, on the surface, operators such as trim, bevel, or fillet operators. The second model is an approximated model, which is a geometric representation of the exact model usually used for visualization and geometric operations. Approximating smooth surfaces with flat geometry leads to discretization problems. This is a well-known problem in CAD applications. The smallest subset of triangles must be found to approximate surface curvature as best as possible. In order to determine if the approximation is acceptable in relation to the exact surface, an error bound tolerance is usually defined by the user.
Two approaches to tessellation exist nowadays.
The first approach is called “static” tessellation. Static tessellation comprises directly transforming a surface into a set of flat triangles approximating the surface. Vertices constituting such triangles are determined from the exact model of the surface, and sometimes normal vectors are also computed from the exact model and associated to the vertices or the triangles. Systems offering static tessellation functionalities usually provide the possibility to the user to define a maximum deviation or error value. The tessellation is then performed so that the distance from the triangles to the original surface does not exceed the error bound tolerance or deviation defined by the user. FIGS. 2 and 3 schematically illustrate deviation between a surface 20 and its approximation with triangles 22. The deviation is larger on FIG. 2 than on FIG. 3 (the deviation is here represented as chordal deviation on a circle), because FIG. 3 uses more triangles 22 to approximate surface 20. Generally, given a maximum deviation (i.e. a constraint that the deviation must be inferior to a certain value called “maximum deviation”) provided by the user, fewer triangles are needed in a flat area unlike in high curvature region where a higher density of triangles is needed to satisfy the given tolerance.
Static tessellation produces a heavy mesh with an average accuracy for vertices and normals and consumes huge memory for high curvature models, which is an issue when the approximate model is placed on persistent memory. Another issue with static tessellation appears when the accuracy needs to be increased. First of all, this is not always possible, because the exact model may have been previously discarded. Indeed, the exact model usually consumes a lot of memory space and may either be deleted, or discarded when the designer wants to send the modeled object elsewhere, e.g. for displaying and/or for geometric operations, e.g. to another user and/or another client system. With static tessellation and in such a case, only the approximated model consisting of the set of flat triangles respecting a maximum deviation pre-provided by the user is kept or sent, and a higher accuracy can never be reached (the exact information being lost). Second of all, in cases that the exact model is nevertheless kept, an issue is that, when demanding a higher accuracy, the tessellation has to be performed from scratch, i.e. from the exact model of the surface. This takes a lot of time.
In order to alleviate these issues, another approach to tessellation called “PNT tessellation” has been developed. The idea behind PNT tessellation is to use a multi-resolution model called “PNT”. More precisely, the idea behind PNT tessellation is to parameterize a three-dimensional modeled object for tessellation, i.e. prepare the object for tessellation, so that less time is needed when the tessellation needs to be performed. As a result, re-doing the tessellation e.g. in order to increase the accuracy of the approximated model is less time-consuming than in the case of static tessellation (in the case when the exact model is available).
Specifically, PNT tessellation produces a piecewise approximation of a surface with a set of triangular patches (possibly non-flat). This results in a lightweight intermediate model representation called the “base mesh”. FIG. 4 shows an example of a base mesh 40, with triangular patches 42, in bold, that are not (necessarily) flat, tessellated with smaller flat triangles 44. These triangular patches 42 approximate the exact surface e.g. using a cubic Bezier formulation. PNT tessellation is a good trade off in terms of memory and computation. Instead of keeping exact surfaces, this lightweight model is the entry point for visualization, and/or geometric operators. As it is a lightweight coarse approximation, a pre-compute, i.e. parameterization, step is needed where triangular patches are used to fit the surface definition for any kind of purpose. Then, in order to perform the actual tessellation starting from the model parameterized for the tessellation (i.e. the base mesh), each patch may be refined following a subdivision pattern (simpler and faster than the tessellation from scratch). The subdivision may be made on demand according to any required chordal deviation, in order to add more triangles where they are needed. These refined triangles are evaluated from the previous triangle formulation. The PNT approach thus allows to increase accuracy on demand even if the exact model is discarded (but under the condition that the base mesh is kept), in a relatively fast way. Also, the memory consumption is improved, as the base mesh generally consumes less memory space than the tessellated model.
However, PNT tessellation also presents issues. For example, the possibility to increase accuracy (without using the initial exact model, which may have been discarded) still has a limit, because the base mesh is only an approximation of the initial surface. Furthermore, the base mesh approximates the surface in terms of positions, but computing normal vectors from the base mesh may prove relatively inaccurate. As a cubic Bézier is used for vertices computation, normals are computed with a linear or quadratic interpolation. As a result, visualization artifacts happen while rendering the final mesh. For instance, surface representation and shading are deteriorated.
The above information is discussed in a number of papers, of which a list is provided below: P. Bezier. Definition numerique des courbes et surfaces I. Automatisme, XI:625-632, 1966; P. Bezier. Mathematical and practical possibilities of UNISURF. In R. Barnhill and R. Riesenfeld, editors, Computer Aided Geometric Design, pages 127-152. Academic Press, 1974; C. de Boor A Practical Guide to Splines, Springer, 1978; P. de Casteljau Courbes et surfaces à pôles. Technical report, A. Citroen, Paris, 1963; P. de Casteljau. Le Lissage. Hermes, Paris, 1990; G. Farin. Curves and Surfaces for CAGD: A Practical Guide, Fifth Edition. Academic Press, San Diego, 2002 Vlachos, J. Peters, C. Boyd, and J. L. Mitchell. Curved PN triangles. In Symposium; on Interactive 3D Graphics, pages 159-166, 2001; Guthe M., Balázs Á., and R. Klein, GPU-based Trimming and Tesselation of NURBS and T-Spline; and Surfaces, ACM SIGGRAPH conference proceedings, 2005.
The existing solutions mentioned above thus lack efficiency. Within this context, there is still a need for an improved solution for the tessellation of a 3D modeled object. | {
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This invention relates to power transmission systems and more particularly to a continuously variable transmission (CVT) of the hydraulic type.
A CVT system allows an engine to operate at its optimal fuel consumption point. The standard transmission is capable of a predetermined number of gear ratios as the torque demand for the vehicle is high or low, generally three or four gear ratios in automatic transmissions up to five in manual transmissions. A CVT system, on the other hand, transfers power in a continuously changeable power ratio between the high and low torque demands. The speed ratio in a CVT can be varied in exact accordance with torque demand rather than varied approximately as in standard transmission systems.
Interest is increasing in the efficiency of operation of motor vehicles. The long history of CVT research, however, has not provided a fully practical transmission for motor vehicles except for certain compact and subcompact cars and for small vehicles, such as snowmobiles and lawnmowers. The CVT provides better fuel economy, is lighter and has a lower manufacturing cost than the standard three-speed automobile transmission. The reason for the latter advantage is that the CVT has about a third fewer parts than the standard transmission.
CVT systems can be classified as belt and pulley, traction drive, and fluid or hydraulic power. The hydraulic power CVT generally uses a pump as a part of the system. This latter type of CVT is used in certain types of off-road vehicles but, because of high cost, weight, limited range of efficiency, and noisy operation, it is not used for common motor vehicles.
Most CVT systems, including the hydraulic CVT, are adapted for use with the internal combustion engine, that is, with a power shaft that varies in rotational speed. They are not generally adapted for use with constant speed power shafts, such as those driven by electric motors. | {
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This invention relates to a method for production of catalyst compositions useful for addition reactions of olefinically unsaturated monomers, e.g., polymerization. The invention is particularly useful in coordination polymerization processes that utilize supported compounds for slurry or gas phase polymerization of olefinically unsaturated monomers, and those processes themselves. The ionic catalyst compositions comprise the final product of the interaction between an aluminum alkyl, a metallocene, an anionic activator, and a support.
Coordination catalyzed polymerization of olefinically unsaturated monomers is well known and has led to the proliferation in modern society of elastomeric and plastic compositions of matter, such as polyethylene, polypropylene, and ethylene propylene rubber. Early pioneers utilized transition metal compounds the ligands of which were non-organic moieties, such as halides, with activators such as aluminum alkyls. Later development extended this work to bulky organo ligand-containing (e.g., eta5-cyclopentadienyl) transition metals (xe2x80x9cmetallocenesxe2x80x9d) with activators such as alumoxanes (a partial hydrolysis product of an aluminum alkyl). More recent developments have shown the effectiveness of ionic catalysts comprised of metallocene cations activated by non-coordinating anions, see for example EP-A-277,004 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,198,401. These references described protonation of metallocene compounds by anion precursors to form stable xe2x80x9cionicxe2x80x9d catalysts.
Such ionic catalysts have shown to varying degrees significant sensitivity to catalyst poisons present in monomer feed streams, or in recycled fluid streams, in the polymerization process and have posed problems for use with inert oxide supports that typically have either or both of retained moisture or polar hydroxyl groups. Accordingly, processes have been developed to utilize poison scavenging compounds, as for example alkyl aluminums or alumoxanes, for solution polymerization and to remove or neutralize polar groups retained in or on inert oxide supports. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,153,157, describing Group-IIIA metal scavenger compounds, and WO-A-91/09882, WO-A-94/00500 and WO-A-94/03506 describing supporting techniques utilizing similar compounds. U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,197 describes enhanced polymerization of styrene where the ionic catalyst systems include a metal hydrocarbyl, and, which may be supported. All such documents are referred to herein for their description of metallocene compounds, ionic activators, and useful scavenging compounds.
Whereas these ionic catalyst in unsupported form exhibit acceptable levels of productivity, as measured by a part per million (ppm) content of the transitional metal retained as a residue in the polymer product of about 1 to 1.5 ppm, when placed on a support such as silica, for use in a gas phase polymerization procedure, the productivity of these ionic catalyst often drops to an unacceptable, level i.e., the ppm content of transition metal retained as a residue in the polymer product becomes greater than about 1 to 1.5 ppm.
It is desirable to develop a process for producing a supported form of ionic transition metal catalyst that allows it to maintain its high productivity under gas phase polymerization conditions.
This invention comprises a process for the production of an ionic transition metal catalyst in supported form than is highly productive under gas phase polymerization conditions. In the process of the invention an aluminum alkyl is added to a suitable solvent after which a neutral metallocene compound is added to the aluminum alkyl solution under stirring in a quantity that provides for a ratio of Al to transition metal of 2:1 to 200:1, preferably at least 25:1, and more preferably at least 50:1 and stirring is continued until substantially all material is dissolved. To this metallocene-aluminum alkyl solution is next added an ionic compound the anionic portion of which is a non-coordinating anion (NCA) as hereafter defined, under stirring until all materials are substantially dissolved. The ionic compound is preferably added in a quantity that provides for a ratio of NCA to transition metal of at least 1:1. Next the support particles are added to the solution and thereafter the solution is heated to at least 40xc2x0 C., and preferably 90xc2x0 C., and held at this elevated temperature for at least 0.50 hour, and preferably for at least one hour. Thereafter the solvent is removed and the supported catalyst is dried, preferably under vacuum. A supported ionic catalyst produced in this manner is at least about 150% to 350% more productive under gas phase polymerization conditions than an otherwise identical supported metallocene catalyst that is co-catalyzed with methyl alumoxane.
The supported catalyst formed by the process of this invention comprises the product of a sequence of reaction steps wherein first there occurs in a suitable solvent a reaction between a metallocene and an aluminum alkyl to produce a first reaction product that in turn is reacted with an ionic compound that provides a non-coordinating anion (NCA) to the transition metal of the first reaction product after which the resulting transition metal-NCA reaction product is exposed to a support material that is added to the solvent mixture which then elevated in temperature for a period of time before removal of the solvent to recover the catalyst as a free flowing powder.
The Transition Metal Component of the Catalyst
Any catalytically active transition metal compound is suitable in accordance with the invention, including the known transition metal compounds useful in traditional Ziegler-Natta coordination polymerization and, as well, the metallocene compounds similarly known to be useful in coordination polymerization, when such compounds are capable of catalytic activation by an anionic activator. These will typically include transition metal compounds where the metal is in a d0 oxidation state, that is where the metal has its highest oxidation number, and wherein at least one metal ligand can be protonated by the anionic activator, particularly those ligands including hydride, alkyl and silyl. Ligands capable of protonation and transition metal compounds comprising them include those described in the background art, see for example EP-A-277,003, EP-A-277,004 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,198,401. Synthesis of these compounds is well known from the published literature.
Additional metallocene compounds appear in the patent literature, for example EP-A-0 129 368, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,871,705, 4,937,299, 5,324,800 EP-A-0-418 044, EP-A-0 591 756, WO-A-92/00333 and WO-A-94/01471. Such metallocene compounds can be described for this invention as mono-, bis, or tris-cyclopentadienyl substituted Group 4, 5, 6, 9, or 10 transition metal compounds wherein the cyclopentadienyl substituents themselves may be substituted with one or more groups and may be bridged to each other, or may be bridged through a heteroatom to the transition metal. The size and constituency of the cyclopentadienyl substituents and bridging elements are not critical to the preparation of the ionic catalyst systems of the invention but should normally be selected in the literature described manner to enhance the polymerization activity and polymer characteristics being sought. Preferably the cyclopentadienyl (or substituted cyclopentadienyl, such as indenyl or substituted indenyl) rings, when bridged to each other, will be lower alkyl-substituted (C1 to C6) in the 2 position additionally and comprise alkyl, cycloalkyl, aryl, alkylaryl and or arylalkyl substituents, the latter as either of fused or pendant ring structures including multi-ring structures, for example, those of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,278,264 and 5,304,614. Such substituents should each have essentially hydrocarbyl characteristics and will typically contain up to 30 carbon atoms but may be hetero-atom containing with not more than 1-3 non-hydrogen/carbon atoms, e.g., N, S, O, P, and Si.
Metallocene compounds suitable for the preparation of linear polyethylene or ethylene-containing copolymers (where copolymer means comprising at least two different monomers) are essentially any of those known in the art, see again EP-A-277,004, WO-A-92/00333 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,198,401, 5,001,205, 5,324,800, 5,308,816, and 5,304,614 for specific listings. Selection of metallocene compounds for use to make isotactic or syndiotactic polypropylene, and their syntheses, are well-known in the art, specific reference may be made to both patent literature and academic, see for example Journal of Organmetallic Chemistry 369, 359-370 (1989). Typically those catalysts are stereorigid asymmetric, chiral or bridged chiral metallocenes. See, For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,892,851, 5,017,714, 5,296,434, 5,278,264, WO-A-(PCT/US92/10066) WO-A-93/19103, EP-A2-0 577 581, EP-A1-0 578 838, and the academic literature xe2x80x9cThe Influence of Aromatic Substituents on the Polymerization Behavior of Bridged Zirconocene Catalystsxe2x80x9d, Spaleck, W., et al, Organometallics 1994, 13, 954-963, and xe2x80x9cansa-Zirconocene Polymerization Catalysts with Annelated Ring Ligands-Effects on Catalyst Activity and Polymer Chain Lengthsxe2x80x9d, Brinzinger, H., et al, Organometallics 1994, 13, 964-970, and documents referred to therein. Though many above metallocenes are directed to catalyst systems with alumoxane activators, the analogous metallocene compounds will be useful with the activator anions of this invention for active coordination catalyst systems, when at least one of the halogen containing ligands of the metals (where occurring) are replaced with ligands capable of protonation, for example, via an alkylation reaction as described above, and another is a group into which the ethene group xe2x80x94Cxe2x95x90Cxe2x80x94 may insert, for example, hydride, alkyl, or even the less effective silyl.
Non-limiting representative metallocene compounds include monocyclopentadieny compounds such as pentamethylcyclopentadienyltitanium isopropoxide, pentamethylcyclopentadienyltribenzyl titanium, dimethyl-silyltetramethylcyclopentadienyl tert-butylamido titanium dichloride, pentamethyl-cyclopentadienyl titanium trimethyl, dimethylsilyltetramethylcyclopentadienyl-tert-butylamido zirconium dimethyl, Dimethylsilyltetramethylcyclopentadienyl-dodecylamido hafnium dihydride, dimethylsilyltetramethylcyclopentadienyl-dodecylamido hafnium dimethyl, unbridged biscyclopentadienyl compounds such as bis(1,3-butyl, methylcyclopentadienyl) zirconium dimethyl, entamethylcyclopentadienylcyclopentadienyl zirconium dimethyl; bridged bis cyclopentadienyl compounds such as imethylsilyl-bis(tetrahydroindenyl) zirconium dichloride; bridged bisindenyl compounds such as dimethylsilylbisindenyl zirconium dichloride, dimethylsilylbisindenyl hafnium dimethyl, dimethylsilylbis(2 methylbenzindenyl) zirconium dichloride, dimethylsilylbis(2-methylbenzindenyl) zirconium dimethyl; ethylene bridged compounds such as ethylenebis(indenyl)zirconium dichloride; and the additional mono-, bis-, and triscyclopentadienyl compounds such as those listed and described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,800 and EP-A-0 591 756.
Representative traditional Ziegler-Natta transition metal compounds include tetrabenzyl zirconium, tetra bis(trimethylsiylmethyl) zirconium, oxotris(trimethylsilylmethyl) vanadium, tetrabenzyl hafnium, tetrabenzyl titanium, bis(hexamethyl disilazido)dimethyl titanium, tris(trimethyl silyl methyl) niobium dichloride, tris(trimethylsilylmethyl) tantalum dichloride. The important features of such compositions for coordination polymerization are the ligand capable of abstraction by protonation and that ligand into which the ethene (olefinic) group can be inserted. These features enable the protonation of the transition metal compound and the concomitant formation of the ionic catalyst composition of the invention.
Aluminum Alkyl Compounds
As before noted, to prepare the highly productive ionic catalyst in supported form, the metallocene must first be reacted in solution with an aluminum alkyl. For this purpose the aluminum alkyl may comprise any aluminum alkyl within the following formula:
Al(R)3xe2x88x92xXx
wherein R is an alkyl group or aryl group, X is a halogen atom, alkoxy group, or hydrogen atom, x is a number and is 0 1 or 2. Preferred alkyl aluminum compounds and a mixture thereof or complex thereof have 1 to 18 carbon atoms, preferably 2 to 6 carbon atoms, such as trialkyl aluminum, dialkyl aluminum monohalide, monoalkyl aluminum dihalide, alkyl aluminum sesquihalide, dialkyl aluminum monoalkoxide, and dialkyl aluminum monohydride. Examples of such compounds include trialkyl aluminum such as trimethyl aluminum, triethyl aluminum, tripropyl aluminum, triisobutyl aluminum, and trihexyl aluminum; dialkyl aluminum monohalide such as dimethyl aluminum chloride, diethyl aluminum chloride, diethyl aluminum bromide, diethyl aluminum iodide, and diisobutyl aluminum chloride; monoalkyl aluminum dihalide such as methyl aluminum dichloride, ethyl aluminum dichloride, ethyl aluminum dibromide, ethyl aluminum diiodide, and isobutyl aluminum dichloride; alkyl aluminum sesquihalide such as ethyl aluminum sesquichloride; dialkyl aluminum monoalkoxide such as dimethyl aluminum methoxide, diethyl aluminum ethoxide, diethyl aluminum phenoxide, dipropyl aluminum ethoxide, and diisobutyl aluminum phenoxide; and dialkyl aluminum hydride such as dimethyl aluminum hydride, diethyl aluminum hydride, dipropyl aluminum hydride, and diisobutyl aluminum hydride.
Preferred aluminum alkyls for use within this invention are triethyl aluminum, tripropyl aluminum, and tri isobutyl aluminum.
Co-Catalyst Activator Compositions
The supported ionic catalyst composition of the invention can be prepared, for example, by selecting as the Lewis acid which forms the Lewis acid-base complex, one that is capable of serving as a suitable counter anion upon protonation of the transition metal compound with the proton from Lewis acid-base hydroxyl group complex. Activation of the transition metal compound to a catalytic state may be achieved with ionizing compounds which contain an active proton, or some other cation associated with but not coordinated to or only loosely coordinated to the remaining ion of the ionizing compound. Such compounds and the like are described in European publications EP-A-0 570 982, EP-A-0 520 732, EP-A-0 495 375, EP-A-500 944, EP-A-0 277 003 and EP-A-0 277 004, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,153,157, 5,198,401, 5,066,741, 5,206,197, 5,241,025, 5,384,299 and 5,502,124 and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/285,380, filed Aug. 3, 1994, all of which are herein fully incorporated by reference.
A preferred class of compatible non-coordinating anions (NCA) includes chemically stable, non-nucleophilic substituted anionic complexes having a molecular diameter of about 4 Angstroms or more.
Any metal or metalloid compound capable of forming an anionic complex which is resistant to irreversibly transferring a substituent or fragment to the cation to neutralize the cation to produce a neutral molecule may be used as the NCA. In addition any metal or metalloid capable of forming a coordination complex that is stable in water may also be used or contained in a composition comprising the anion. Suitable metals include, but are not limited to aluminum, gold, platinum, and the like. Suitable metalloids include, but are not limited to, boron, phosphorus, silicon, and the like. Compounds containing anions that comprise coordination complexes containing a single metal or metalloid atom are, of course, well known and many, particularly such compounds containing a single boron atom in the anion portion, are available commercially. In light of this, salts containing anions comprising a coordination complex containing a single boron atom are preferred.
In general, preferred NCAs may be represented by the following general formula:
[(Mxe2x80x2)m+Q1. . . Qn]dxe2x88x92
wherein: M is a metal or metalloid; Q1 to Qn are, independently, hydride radicals, dialkylamido radicals, alkoxide and aryloxide radicals, hydrocarbyl and substituted hydrocarbyl radicals, halocarbyl and substituted-halocarbyl radicals and hydrocarbyl and halocarbyl-substituted organometalloid radicals and any one, but not more than one of Q1 to Qn may be a halide radical; m is an integer representing the formal valence charge of Mxe2x80x2; n is the total number of ligands Q, and d is an integer greater than or equal to 1.
It is of course understood that the anions described above and below may be counter balanced with a positively charged component that is removed before the anion reacts with the cation.
In a preferred embodiment Mxe2x80x2 is boron, n=4, Q1 and Q2 are the same or different aromatic or substituted-aromatic hydrocarbon radicals containing from about 6 to about 20 carbon atoms and may be linked to each other through a stable bridging group; and Q3 and Q4 are, independently, hydride radicals, hydrocarbyl and substituted-hydrocarbyl radicals, halocarbyl and substituted-halocarbyl radicals, hydrocarbyl- and halocarbyl-substituted organometalloid radicals, disubstituted pnictogen radicals, substituted chalcogen radicals and halide radicals, with the proviso that Q3 and Q4 will not be halide at the same time.
Illustrative, but not limiting, examples of boron components which may be used as NCAs are: tetra-valent boron compounds such as tetra(phenyl)boron, tetra(p-tolyl)boron, tetra(o-tolyl)boron, tetra(pentafluorophenyl)boron, tetra(o,p-dimehtylphenyl)boron, tetra(m,m-dimethylphenyl)boron, (p-tri-fluoromethylphenyl)boron and the like.
In a particularly preferred embodiment M=boron, n=4, Q1, Q2 and Q3 are each (C6 F5) and Q4 is as defined above. Illustrative but not limiting, examples of these preferred NCAs comprising boron triphenylmethyl salts where Q is a simple hydrocarbyl such as methyl, butyl, cyclohexyl, or phenyl or where Q is a polymeric hydrocarbyl of indefinite chain length such as polystyrene, polyisoprene, or poly-paramethylstyrene. Another preferred class of NCAs is that class comprising those NCA containing a plurality of boron atoms, including boranes and carboranes.
Illustrative, but not limiting, examples of NCAs include carboranes such as dodecaborate, decachlorodecaborate, dodecachlorododecaborate, 1-carbadecaborate, 1-carbadecaborate, 1-trimethylsilyl-1-carbadecaborate; borane and carborane complexes and salts of borane and carborane anions such as decaborane(14), 7,8-dicarbadecaborane(13), 2,7-dicarbaundecaborane(13), undecahydrido-7,8-dimethyl-7,8-dicarbaundecaborane, 6-carbadecaborate(12), 7-carbaundecaborate, 7,8-dicarbaudecaborate; and metallaborane anions such as bis(nonahydrido-1,3-dicarbanonaborato)cobaltate(III), bis(undecahydrido-7,8-dicarbaundecaborato)ferrate(III), bis(undecahydrido-7,8-dicarbaundecaborato) cobaltate(III), bis(undecahydrido-7,8 dicarbaunaborato)nikelate(III), bis(nonahydrido-7,8-dimethyl-7,8-dicarbaundecaborato)-ferrate(III), bis(tribromooctahydrido-7,8-dicarbaundecaborato)-cobaltate(III), bis-(undecahydridodicarbadodecaborato)cobaltate(III) and bis(undecahydrido-7-carbaundecaborato)cobaltate(III).
The NCA compositions most preferred for forming the catalyst system used in this process are those containing a tris-perfluorophenyl boron, tetrapentafluorphenyl boron anion and/or two or more tripentafluorophenyl boron anion groups covalently bond to a central atomic molecular or polymeric complex or particle. A particularly preferred ionic compound utilized to provide the NCA is dimethyl anilinium tetrakis (pentafluorophenyl)borate.
The Support Material
For purposes of this patent specification the terms xe2x80x9ccarrierxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9csupportxe2x80x9d are used interchangeable and can be any support material, preferably a porous support material, such as for example, talc, inorganic oxides, inorganic chlorides, for example magnesium chloride and resinous support materials such as polystyrene polyolefin or polymeric compounds or any other organic support material and the like that has an average particle size greater than 10 xcexcm.
The preferred support materials are inorganic oxide materials, which include those from the Periodic Table of Elements of Groups 2, 3, 4, 5, 13 or 14 elemental oxides. In a preferred embodiment, the catalyst support materials include silica, alumina, silica-alumina, and mixtures thereof. Other inorganic oxides that may be employed either alone or in combination with the silica, alumina or silica-alumina are magnesia, titania, zirconia, and the like.
It is preferred that the carrier of the catalyst of this invention has a surface area in a range of from about 10 to about 700 m2/g, pore volume in a range of from about 0.1 to about 4.0 cc/g and an average particle size in a range of from about 10 to about 500 xcexcm. More preferably, the surface area is in the range of from about 50 to about 500 m2/g, pore volume is of from about 0.5 to about 3.5 cc/g and average particle size is of from about 20 to about 200 xcexcm. Most preferably the surface area range is from about 100 to about 400 m2/g, pore volume is from about 0.8 to about 3.0 cc/g and average particle size is from about 30 to about 100 xcexcm. The carrier of the invention typically has pore size in the range of from 10 to 1000 xc3x85, preferably 50 to about 500 xc3x85, and most preferably 75 to about 350 xc3x85.
Because of availability, both of silica and silica containing metal oxide based supports, for example, silica-alumina, are preferred. Silica particles, gels and glass beads are most typical.
Forming the Supported Catalyst
In the process of the invention an aluminum alkyl is added to a suitable solvent after which a neutral metallocene compound is added to the solution under stirring in a quantity that preferably provides for a ratio of Al to transition metal of at least 50:1. To this metallocene-aluminum alkyl solution is next added an ionic compound the anionic portion of which is a non-coordinating anion (NCA) under stirring until all materials are dissolve. The ionic compound is added in a quantity that provides for a ratio of NCA to transition metal of at least 1:1. Next the support particles are added to the solution and thereafter the solution is heated to at least 40xc2x0 C. and held at this elevated temperature for at least 0.5 hour. Thereafter the solvent is removed and the supported catalyst is dried under vacuum.
For the purposes of this patent specification and appended claims the term xe2x80x9csolutionxe2x80x9d includes a suspension, a slurry or a mixture. Any compatible solvent or other liquid capable of forming a solution or the like with at least one metallocene catalyst component and/or at least one activator of the invention can be used.
As indicated, the improved catalyst compositions of the present invention will be prepared in a suitable solvent or diluent. Suitable solvents or diluents include any of the solvents known in the prior art to be useful as solvents in the polymerization of olefins, diolefins and acetylenically unsaturated monomers. Non-limiting examples of solvents are those aliphatic, aromatic and saturated hydrocarbons and cyclic hydrocarbons, such as isopentane, heptane, toluene, and the like. Suitable solvents, then, include, but are not necessarily limited to, straight and branched-chain hydrocarbons such as isobutane, butane, pentane, hexane, heptane, octane and the like; cyclic and alicyclic hydrocarbons such as cyclohexane, cycloheptane, methylcyclohexane, methylcycloheptane and the like and aromatic and alkyl-substituted aromatic compounds such as benzene, toluene, xylene and the like. The more preferred solvents are the cyclic aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, the most preferred of which is toluene.
In the first step of the process the aluminum alkyl and metallocene may be brought together in the solvent by any convenient means, meaning that each may be separately dissolved in an alloquate of the solvent then these two solvent portions combined, or one or the other of the components may first be dissolved in the solvent and thereafter the other of the components then added to the solvent. The combination of the metallocene and aluminum alkyl in the solvent may be achieved at ambient temperature or at an elevated temperature not exceeding that of the boiling point of the solvent. The quantity of aluminum alkyl compared to the metallocene should be selected so as to achieve a ratio of aluminum to transition metal of the metallocene in the range of 2:1 to 200:1, preferably at least 25:1, and more preferably at least 50:1, there generally be no further advantage to the use of greater quantities of the aluminum alkyl than that of a 200:1 ratio. The ingredients are preferably kept under stirring for about 15 minutes or until no further color change is observed to occur in the solution.
Next, to the metallocene-aluminum alkyl solution the ionic compound is added under stirring in a quantity that puts its non-coordinating anion moiety in a ratio to the transition metal of the metallocene in the range of 0.9:1 to 2: 1, and preferably in the range of 0.9:1 to 1:1.1, most preferably in a range of 1:1 to 1.1:1, and ideally at a ratio of 1:1. This addition of the ionic compound to the solution may be achieved at ambient temperature or at an elevated temperature not exceeding that of the boiling point of the solvent.
Next, to the metallocene-aluminum alkyl-ionic compound solution is added under stirring the support particles in a quantity that will provide the desired loading of transition metal on the support which generally ranges from 0.05 to 0.50 weight per cent of the total dry weight of the catalyst, and is preferably 0.15 to 0.50 weight per cent. Following addition of the support to the solution the temperature of the metallocene-aluminum alkyl-ionic compound-support solution should be elevated to at least 40xc2x0 C., preferably 60xc2x0 C., more preferably 90xc2x0 C., and most preferably to a temperature just below the boiling point of the solvent by a degree or two. The metallocene-aluminum alkyl-ionic compound-support solution is held at this elevated temperature for at least 5 minutes, preferably 15 minutes, more preferably for 30 minutes, and most preferably for 60 minutes. Following this passage of time the solvent may be removed by evaporation or other means to recover a free flowing powder product that is an active catalyst.
Polymerization with the Supported Catalyst
This catalyst of this invention is useful in coordination polymerization of unsaturated monomers conventionally known to be polymerizable under slurry or gas phase coordination polymerization conditions. The supported catalysts of the invention are thus particularly useful in the known operating modes employing fixed-bed, moving-bed, fluid-bed, or slurry processes conducted in single, series or parallel reactors.
Linear polyethylene, including high and ultra-high molecular weight polyethylenes, including both homo- and copolymers with other alpha-olefin monomers, alpha-olefinic and/or non-conjugated diolefins, for example, C3 to C20 olefins/diolefins, are produced by adding ethylene, and optionally the other monomers, to a reaction vessel under low pressure (typically less than 50 bar), at a typical temperature of 20-250xc2x0 C. with the invention catalyst that has been slurried with a solvent, such as heptane, toluene or mineral oil. Heat of polymerization is typically removed by cooling. In slurry phase polymerization the polymer forms as granules that are usually insoluble in the reaction diluent. Termination of polymerization generally occurs via beta hydride elimination resulting in terminal olefinic unsaturation or by the addition of a chain transfer agent such as hydrogen or aluminum alkyl resulting in chain end saturation. The polymer may be filtered or centrifuged off, washed, and dried, i.e., for slurry reactions. As indicated, chain transfer agents should be avoided if chain end unsaturation is to be retained.
Gas phase polymerization can be conducted, for example, in a continuous fluid bed gas-phase reactor operated at 2000-3000 kPa and 60-160xc2x0 C., using hydrogen as a reaction modifier (100-200 ppm), C4-C8 comonomer feedstream (0.5-1.2 mol %), and C2 feedstream (25-35 mol %). See, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,543,399, 4,588,790, 5,028,670 and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/053,067 filed Apr. 26, 1993.
Polypropylene typically can be prepared essentially as described for linear polyethylene above. The reaction diluent is often comprised of liquid propylene monomer in which the supported ionic catalyst is slurried. Other monomers, typically the lower alpha-olefins (e.g., C2 to C10) and/or non-conjugated diolefins, can be introduced into the reaction diluent or solvent when either of polyethylene or polypropylene copolymers are to be prepared. The polymerization reactions for all of linear polyethylene, polypropylene and polyolefin polymers may be conducted in any suitable reactor, for example, in batch, continuous flow, parallel or series reactors.
Ethylene-alpha olefin(-diolefin) elastomers of high molecular weight and low crystallinity can be prepared utilizing the catalysts of the invention by introducing ethylene gas into a slurry utilizing the alpha olefin or mixture thereof with other monomers, polymerizable and not, as a polymerization diluent in which the invention catalyst is suspended. Typical ethylene pressures will be between 10 and 1000 psig (69-6895 kPa) and the polymerization diluent temperature will typically be between xe2x88x9210-100xc2x0 C. The process can be carried out in a stirred tank reactor, or more than one operated in series or parallel. Deashing can be accomplished in accordance with conventional knowledge in the art, or if to be avoided a process using one or more fixed bed or packed column reactors (see below) may be used. See the general disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 5,001,205 for general process conditions and selection of preferred transition metal compounds.
Pre-polymerization of the supported catalyst of the invention may also be used for further control of polymer particle morphology in typical slurry or gas phase reaction processes in accordance with conventional teachings. For example such can be accomplished by pre-polymerizing a C2 to C6 alpha olefin for a limited time, for example, ethylene is contacted with the supported catalyst at a temperature of xe2x88x9215 to 30xc2x0 C. and ethylene pressure of up to about 250 psig (1724 kPa) for 75 min. to obtain a polymeric coating on the support of polyethylene of 30,000-150,000 molecular weight. The pre-polymerized catalyst is then available for use in the polymerization processes referred to above. In a similar manner, the activated catalyst on a support coated with a previously polymerized thermoplastic polymer can be utilized in these polymerization processes.
Additionally it is preferred to avoid the effect of polymerization poisons that may be introduced via feedstreams, solvents or diluents, by removing or neutralizing the poisons. For example, monomer feed streams or the reaction diluent may be pre-treated, or treated in situ during the polymerization reaction, with a suitable scavenging agent. Typically such will be an organometallic compound employed in processes such as those using the Group-13 organometallic compounds of U.S. Pat. No. 5,153,157 and WO-A-91/09882 and WO-A-94/03506, noted above, and that of WO-A-93/14132. Preferably the amount of scavenging agent is minimized, or avoided altogether, during polymerization reactions when it is desired to retain terminal unsaturation since they tend to act as chain transfer agents resulting in terminal saturation.
Other olefinically unsaturated monomers besides those specifically described above may be polymerized using the catalyst according to the invention either by coordination or carbocationic polymerization, for example, styrene, alkyl-substituted styrene, ethylidene norbornene, norbornadiene, dicylopentadiene, cyclopentene, norbornene and other alpha olefinic unsaturated and strained geometry cyclic olefins, isobutylene, isoprene, butadiene, vinyl ethers, vinyl carbazoles, etc. Additionally because of the ability of the catalytically active transition metal based catalysts of the invention to incorporate higher alpha-olefin monomers, alpha-olefinic macromonomers of up to 100 mer units, or more, may also be incorporated by copolymerization. The resulting polymers may be homopolymers or copolymers of more than one monomer, and may be of any of the recognized tacticity forms depending upon the selection of metallocene cation precursor and monomer in accordance with conventional knowledge in the art. See for example: U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,066,741 and 5,206,197, which address the preparation of syndiotactic vinyl aromatic polymers with single eta5-cyclopentadienyl metallocene compounds activated by non-coordinating, compatible anions; U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,278,265, and 5,304,523 addressing preparation of isotactic and syndiotactic polypropylene under low temperature conditions using stereorigid metallocenes with non-coordinating anions; and, U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,801 addressing preparation of cyclic olefin-containing copolymers using specific metallocene compounds as catalysts, each of which can be activated in accordance with this invention.
The alpha-olefin based polymers produced with invention catalyst system have utility according to molecular weight, level of comonomer incorporation, where included, and polydispersity (xe2x80x9cMWDxe2x80x9d), etc. for their conventional and known uses. Thus films, fibers, and moldable thermoplastics by any of the known means of melt processing and subsequent extrusion, and/or, thermoforming are typical applications. In such, inclusion of additives such as processing aids, stabilizers, pigments, fillers as conventionally known can be utilized. High density polyethylene and isotactic polypropylene films, including those that are oriented in one or both axes and those modified with other components such as hydrocarbon tackifier resins are specific examples.
Further, inclusion of other thermoplastic components both in greater and lower amounts will be useful as known for various polymer blends and compositions. Thus the use of elastomeric polyolefins of the invention for impact modification of polar engineering resins or in co-vulcanizable elastomer blends (typically when containing diolefin comonomer and/or further derivatized as by free-radical grafting of polar monomers) is suitable. For a preferred derivatization process see WO-A-93/12148 and equivalent U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,367. | {
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The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling access to and corruption of information in a computer system.
PCT/GB91/00261 (WO91/13403) also by the present inventors (the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference) discloses a method and apparatus particularly concerned with the detection and containment of hostile programs such as xe2x80x9cvirusxe2x80x9d programs within computer systems. In this document there is disclosed a method of (and related apparatus for) controlling access to and modification of information stored on a storage medium forming part of a computer system comprising:
dividing information stored on the storage medium into a plurality of non-overlapping partitions, including a boot partition and a plurality of general partitions, each of the partitions being further divided into a plurality of sectors, any designated subset of the general partitions being active at any given time when the computer system is in use, characterised by
providing supervising means (a Supervisor) separate of a central processing unit (CPU) of the computer system and made inaccessible to the user for controlling the performance of read, write and format operations upon the information stored on the storage medium so as to allow, restrict or prevent such operations depending upon the type of information stored within a sector and type and status of the partition within which the sector is located,
the supervising means causing a reset to be required of the computer system should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation, said reset causing memory to be cleared and the operating system to be loaded.
In the invention disclosed in PCT/GB91/00261 the boot partition becomes xe2x80x9cRead Onlyxe2x80x9d when the system is in Supervised Mode. This prevents attack by a virus, whilst allowing execution of DOS utilities and programs providing they are not self-modifying.
Since the conception of virus isolation according to PCT/GB91/00261 there have been changes and improvements to PC operating systems. These present certain limitations to the scope of the virus isolator invention. For example:
(1) Microsoft Windows, although not strictly self-modifying, does require that certain files located within the Windows directory, can be written to.
(2) A system administrator may install an executable in the boot partition without knowing it is self-modifying. If such an executable is installed in the boot partition self-modification of this program is attempted when the system is in Supervised Mode, the Supervisor will block the write attempt and freeze the system.
(3) Microsoft Windows virtual memory manager may require write access to either or both the Windows directory and the root directory of the boot partition.
(4) Network software may require access to the boot partition.
(5) In general, with a complex operating system, making the boot partition xe2x80x98Read Onlyxe2x80x99 is restrictive and may cause incompatibility and high administration overhead.
It is an object of the present invention to obviate or mitigate the aforementioned problems.
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of controlling access to and modification of information stored on a storage medium forming part of a computer system comprising:
dividing information stored on the storage medium into a plurality of non-overlapping partitions including a boot partition and at least one general partition, characterised by
designating at least one of said partitions a Write Many Recoverable (WMR) partition wherein, in use, if a write command is issued to overwrite any resident information stored in a/the WMR partition by updated information the updated information is written on the storage medium in a location other than where the/any resident information is stored and a (virtual) pointer to the updated information is set up/kept so that the updated information can be accessed, as required during a remainder of a session.
A system reset causes the updated information, together with the list of pointers to this information, to be cleared. This returns the WMR partition to it""s original state as configured in Unsupervised Mode.
Providing such a WMR partition is virus-free to start with it will be virus-free at the start of each new session.
Preferably a boot partition on the storage medium would be WMR protected. A general partition could also be WMR protected should a user require it.
The basis of the method according to the first aspect of the present invention to achieve this is to set up a scheme in which the original information stored in the WMR partition is keep unaltered and that datawhich would normally overwrite it is stored securely elsewhere on the storage medium where it can be accessed as required during the remainder of a session. The scheme defines how this is done efficiently in terms of minimal additional storage space and minimal reduction in throughput time while at the same time providing maximum security.
Preferably according to the method of the first aspect of the present invention there is also provided supervising means (a Supervisor) separate of a central processing unit (CPU) of the computer system and made inaccessible to the user,
said supervising means allowing/restricting/prohibiting read/write operations upon the storage medium depending upon whether information to be read from a sector or written to a sector is operating system information or user information, whether the sector is in the boot partition or in a general partition, and whether the partition is active or inactive,
said supervising means also allowing a format operation only on a general partition which is active and prohibiting a format operation on the boot partition or on a general partition which is inactive,
and causing a warning to be issued to the user should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation.
Preferably, space is reserved on the storage medium which may be accessed only by the Supervisor, referred to as the dedicated area 2. The dedicated area may be a special partition, a range of sectors within the WMR partition, or unallocated sectors withing a dormant partition.
Each WMR partition has a Sector Relocation Table (SRT) associated with it which table is held in Supervisor RAM, each entry in a SRT defining the address of a range of sectors in the WMR partition that have been updated and the address where the updated information is located, this location being within the dedicated area.
According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided an apparatus for controlling access to and modification of information stored on a storage medium of a computer system, the storage medium being divided into a plurality of non-overlapping partitions including a boot partition and at least one general partition, characterised in that
at least one of said partitions comprises a Write Many Recoverable (WMR) partition wherein, in use, if a write command is issued to overwrite (ie, update) any information stored in the WMR partition the updated information is stored elsewhere on the storage medium and a pointer to this information kept so the information can be accessed as required during the remainder of the session, wherein a system reset causes the updated information, together with the list of pointers to this information, to be cleared, thus returning the WMR partition to its original state as configured in Unsupervised Mode.
Preferably the apparatus further comprises a supervising means (a Supervisor) separate of a central processing unit (CPU) of the computer system and made inaccessible to the user,
said supervising means allowing/restricting/prohibiting read/write operations upon the storage medium depending upon whether information to be read from a sector or written to a sector is operating system information or user information, whether the sector is in the boot partition or in a general partition and whether if the partition is a general partition the partition is active or inactive,
said supervising means also allowing a format operation only on a general partition which is active and prohibiting a format operation on the boot partition or on a general partition which is inactive,
the supervising means causes a warning to be issued to the user should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation said operation being prevented by the Supervisor.
According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of controlling access to and modification of information stored on a storage medium forming part of a computer system comprising:
dividing information stored on the storage medium into a plurality of non-overlapping partitions including a boot partition and at least one general partition, characterised by
designating at least one of said partitions a Write Many Recoverable (WMR) partition wherein, in use, if a write command is issued to overwrite any information stored in a/the WMR partition prior to undertaking said write command said information is copied and stored elsewhere on the storage medium to be copied back to said WMR partition when requiredxe2x80x94for example upon a system reset.
It is apparent that according to the third aspect of the present invention a previously xe2x80x9cRead Onlyxe2x80x9d partition, such as the boot partition, is permitted to be written to without limit during a session. At the start of a new session, however, all changes to the partition are undone and the partition is restored to its original state. This partition may, therefore, be called a Write Many Recoverable (WMR) partition. Provided such a partition is virus-free to start with it will be virus-free at the start of each new session.
The basis of the method of the third aspect of the present invention to achieve this is to set up a scheme in which a copy of any xe2x80x9cclusterxe2x80x9d in the WMR partition that is to be over-written is stored securely elsewhere on the storage medium and can be copied back when required. The scheme defines how this is done efficiently in terms of minimal additional storage space and minimal reduction in throughput time while at the same time providing maximum security.
Preferably according to the method of the third aspect of the present invention there is also provided supervising means (a Supervisor) separate of a central processing unit (CPU) of the computer system for controlling the performance of read, write and format operations upon the information stored on the storage medium so as to allow, restrict or prevent such operations depending upon the type of information stored within a sector and type and status of the partition within which the sector is located,
the supervising means causing a reset to be required of the computer system should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation, said reset causing memory to be cleared and the operating system to be loaded.
Preferably, the storage medium provides a special partition (Virus Isolation Space), each WMR partition having a File Allocation Table (FAT) allocated to it which table is held in said special partition, each entry in a FAT defining the address of a cluster that has been altered in the WMR partition and the address of the copy of the information originally held in said cluster.
The information originally held in said cluster may be copied to the special partition.
Alternatively, the information originally held in said cluster may be copied to an inactive partition.
According to a fourth aspect of the present invention there is provided an apparatus for controlling access to and modification of information stored on a storage medium of a computer system, the storage medium being divided into a plurality of non-overlapping partitions including a boot partition and at least one general partition, characterised in that
at least one of said partitions comprises a Write Many Recoverable (WMR) partition wherein, in use, if a write command is issued to overwrite any information stored in a/the WMR partition prior to undertaking said write command said information is copied and stored elsewhere on the storage medium to be copied back to said WMR partition when requiredxe2x80x94for example upon a system reset.
Preferably the apparatus further comprises a supervising means (a Supervisor) separate of a central processing unit (CPU) of the computer system for controlling the performance of read, write or format operations stored on the storage medium so as to allow, restrict or prevent such operations depending upon the type of information stored within a sector and the type and status of the partition within which the sector is located wherein, in use, the supervising means causes a reset to be required of the computer system should an attempt be made to perform a prohibited read, write or format operation.
According to any of the foregoing method aspects of the present invention read operations may be allowed on any information in the boot partition, but an attempt to write or format the boot partition may cause a system reset.
Further, boot sectors of the storage medium may be considered to be part of the boot partition, irrespective of the position of the starting sector of the boot partition as may be defined by the storage medium operating system.
Also, reading of any operating system information sectors or user-generated information sectors in an active general partition may be allowed, writing to such user-generated information sectors may be allowed, and writing to such operating system information sectors may be restricted such that an attempt to modify the size or boundaries of the partition causes a system reset.
Only the reading of information from operating system sectors of inactive general partitions may be allowed, and an attempt to perform any other read, write or format operations on such partitions may be either denied or causes a system reset.
The restriction or prevention of the performance of read, write and format operations can be removed to allow set-up or maintenance of the storage medium and thereafter reinstated.
The storage medium may be selected from any one of a hard disk, a floppy disk, an optical disk or a tape.
Alternatively, the storage medium may be a filesaver, and the computer system is a local area network, and which user computer is using which partition of the fileserver may be determined such that an attempt by a user computer to perform a prohibited operation causes a reset to be required of the user computer.
According to any of the foregoing apparatus aspects of the present invention the apparatus may provide hardware means adapted to be incorporated into the computer system.
Alternatively, the apparatus may provide firmware means adapted to be incorporated into the computer system.
Alternatively, the apparatus may provide a combination of both hardware and firmware means, both being adapted to be incorporated into the computer system.
There may be provided a processor which may be made inaccessible to a user and to any virus and which supervises all data transfers between and within sub-divisions of the storage medium or storage media placed under its control. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a defoaming apparatus for use in the aerobic fermentative production of useful chemical and biological substances, as well as methods of defoaming and controlling aerobic fermentation cultures in the production of useful chemical and biological substances.
2. Discussion of the Background
In the fermentation industry, aerobic microorganisms are generally used for producing useful chemical and biological substances. Such aerobic microorganisms are cultured in a culture tank or fermentation tank, containing a liquid culture medium. Where a large amount of air is blown into a culture liquid, foams are expected to be generated. If the generated foams are not reduced or eliminated during culturing, the tank is filled with the scum of the foams, causing the scum to overflow into the exhaust system of the culture tank. In particular, if the amount of the culture liquid is relatively large compared with the capacity of the culture tank (approximately 70% or more of the tank capacity), then the possibility of scum or foam overflowing into the exhaust system increases dramatically.
In general, methods of defoaming are employed for the purpose of inhibiting foaming during fermentative culturing. In one method, a foam detector is provided in the culture tank, and a defoaming agent (a surfactant or silicone) is added to the tank (for instance, see C. L. Kroll et al.; I.E.C., 48, 2190 (1956)). In accordance with this method, however, the amount of defoaming agent in the tank is difficult to control. Therefore, productivity using this method is low.
Another defoaming method employs defoaming blades disposed above the stirring blades in the fermentation tank, to act on areas or surfaces of vapor (air)-liquid contact. In general, as fermentation progresses, components such as nutrient sources and pH-altering substances are added to the culture medium. In accordance with the defoaming method employing defoaming blades, however, the scum of the foams generated is merely pushed back into the medium as the amount of the culture liquid in the culture tank increases. Using only the device of this method, complete control of the scum surface of the foams generated is impossible.
In fermentative production operations typically used at the commercial plant level, a combined method is used in which the scum surface of the generated foams is detected with an electrode sensor disposed in the upper area of the culture tank (above the surface of the culture medium), and a surfactant and a silicone chemical agent are added to the tank as defoaming agents. The scum surface of the generated foams is thus retained in the lower portion of the culture medium below the defoaming blades (for instance, see Japanese Patent Publication No. 46-30786, and FIG. 4 herein).
In accordance with this combined method, however, the amount of the culture liquid to be charged into the culture tank is limited due to the defoaming blades. Increasing the amount of culture liquid increases the amount of power necessary to turn the stirring and defoaming blades. Generally, when the amount of culture liquid increases to that amount requiring about three times the original power to turn the blades, vigorous foaming occurs. At this point, the power necessary to turn the blades exceeds the maximum capacity of conventional motors. As a result, the space in the upper area of the culture tank is not utilized efficiently. Further, the product output and/or the efficiency of production as a function of energy input is reduced, compared with methods which expend energy to rotate only the stirring blades.
Other defoaming means include a method of removing the scum of foams by providing a separate rotor in the upper area of the culture tank (above the surface of the liquid culture medium), and rotating the rotor by an electric motor at a high speed to remove the scum of the foams generated during fermentation (for instance, see I. H. Muller; Process Biochem., 37 (June, 1972)); and a defoaming tank having horizontally rotating blade propellers disposed at the exhaust outlet (see Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 39-36996).
The methods providing a separate rotor or horizontally rotating blade propellers have a high power cost for the electric motor when the culture tank is of sufficiently large scale. The amount of the culture liquid therein is large, proportionally creating even more foam, thus limiting the allowable amount of culture liquid in the fermentation tank.
Another defoaming method breaks foams generated in a fermentation or culture tank against a cyclone, a baffle, or the like, positioned in a "loop" external to the tank. The culture liquid from which the generated foams have been removed is then re-circulated into the culture tank (see Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 39-29800 and 39-26041). In accordance with this method, however, complete defoaming is impossible. Culture liquid to be re-circulated still contains significant amounts of foam. As a result, the gas hold-up in the culture liquid is not lowered, and the amount of the culture liquid charged into the culture tank cannot be increased, compared to the previously discussed methods. Thus, productivity is also low, as is its utility as a practical production process.
An improved defoamer introduces culture liquid and foams generated therein into one cyclone located externally to the fermentation tank, and the defoamed liquid is then recycled into the culture tank from the top and is brought into contact with a gas fed into the tank from the bottom by countercurrent contact (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Application No. 51-142585). Using this device, however, sterilization of the defoamer is difficult during fermentative production processes, and the feed lines of the device are often clogged due to solids or the like in the culture liquid. Thus, this device is also difficult to use in an actual production process.
A defoaming method is also known in which a part of a culture liquid is "sprinkled" (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Application No. 51-35470). However, the "sprinkling" method is complicated by microbial contamination of the sprinkling device, and complete defoaming is impossible. Thus, the desired effects of the method are not realized.
A defoaming device to be operated by discharging is also known (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open Application Nos. 55-15639). The device is useful on a small scale; for example, less than 1 kiloliter. However, on a large scale (e.g., that used for mass production), problems arise and the equipment for the device is complicated. Thus, the discharging device is not practical.
The above-mentioned known defoaming devices and methods of controlling the scum surface of foams are not applicable to practical production processes. For example, use of amounts of liquid culture media up to 60-70% (or more) of the total capacity of the culture tank is impossible without reducing the yield of the intended products. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to emission control systems mounted in a motor vehicle, and more particularly to a vapor diffusing device which effectively diffuses, into the open air, the vapor which is inevitably drained from a carbon canister mounted in an engine room of the motor vehicle, when the engine stops.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Hitherto, carbon canisters have been widely used in motor vehicles for reasons of antipollution, which contain activated carbon and adsorb evaporated gases or vapor from a fuel tank thereby to prevent emission of the vapor into the open air. However, due to the inherent construction of the conventional carbon canisters, part of the vapor led into the canister is forced to discharge into the open air through a purge air inlet formed in the bottom of the canister, particularly at the time when the engine stops. In view of this phenomenon, some of the carbon canisters are equipped with a drain hose which extends from the bottom of the canister to a vapor diffusing device mounted in an engine room of the motor vehicle.
In order to clarify the task of the present invention, one conventional vapor diffusing device will be outlined with reference to FIG. 15.
Referring to the drawing, there is shown a conventional vapor diffusing device 100 fluidly connected with a carbon canister 10, which are mounted in an engine room E of a motor vehicle.
The carbon canister 10 is of a conventional one which comprises a cylindrical case 12 containing therein activated carbon and filters in a known manner. The carbon canister 10 shown in the drawing is mounted through a bracket 14 to a radiator core support 16 which constitutes a front panel member of the engine room E. Designated by numerals 18, 20 and 22 are respectively an evaporated gas tube from a fuel tank (not shown), a vacuum line from an intake manifold (not shown) and a purge air tube from the intake manifold. A drain hose 24 extends from a purge air inlet formed in the bottom of the canister 10 and leads to the vapor diffusing device 100.
The vapor diffusing device 100 comprises a front side channel member 26 and a hood ridge panel 28 which are assembled together to form an elongate space A therebetween. It is to be noted that the space A extends longitudinally from a front portion of the vehicle toward a passenger room of the same. Designated by numeral 24a is a connector used for connecting the leading end of the drain hose 24 to the channel member 26.
Vapors given off by the fuel in the fuel tank are led into the carbon canister where they are adsorbed. When the engine is restarted, fresh air is drawn through the activated carbon. The incoming fresh air purges or removes the vapors from the activated carbon and carries them into the intake manifold to be burned in the combustion chamber. As is described hereinabove, however, at the time when the engine stops, part of the vapors remaining in the canister is forced to discharge through the drain hose 24 into the space A of the vapor diffusing device 100. The vapors then flow in and along the space A, as shown by the arrow B, toward a longitudinal one perforated end of the device 100 where the vapors are diffused to the open air.
However, the disclosed conventional vapor diffusing device 100 is so constructed and arranged that the perforated end thereof is positioned near the passenger room of the vehicle. Accordingly, foul smelling vapors are often discharged into the passenger compartment. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Scanning probe microscopes (SPMs), such as atomic force microscopes (AFMs) and scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs), are valuable tools for probing the topography and surface properties of materials. At high scan speeds, the scanner that drives the motion of the sample may resonate, causing resonance oscillations to appear in SPM images of the sample. To alleviate these resonance effects, a sensor that directly measures the lateral dynamics of the scanner can be attached to the scanner. A filter accepts the signals from the resonance sensor and employs a full dynamics characterization of the scanner based on the received signals in order to remove the resonance from the scanner motion. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The invention in particular relates to an apparatus and method operating on the line-scan principle, in which three dimensional objects are caused to move through a scanning zone and imaging information collected. This principle is widely employed for example without limitation in the security industry, to scan objects where it is desirable to gain information about their internal contents, and in medical imaging, imaging for quality control purposes or the purposes of determining the integrity of the structure, or the like.
Imaging apparatus which employs the line-scan principle is well known. Typically, such apparatus will consist of an x-ray source, the beam of which may be collimated into a curtain, usually referred to as a “curtain beam”, and is then detected by a linear array detector for example comprising a linear photodiode array. Image information is obtained by having the object of interest move linearly for example at right angles with respect to the beam and storing successive scans of x-ray transmission information derived from the linear array from which a complete image frame can be compiled.
If the object being scanned is heterogeneously transmissive of x-ray radiation, and for example consists of or contains multiple smaller objects and/or components of dissimilar materials, it can be possible to build up an image of the object, and in a particular case of the contents or components. The image may then be displayed on a viewing screen. This image can be useful for example in relation to the possible applications outlined above. In particular, it can be useful in determining the contents of a container or the internal structure of an object or body.
Even so, the image generated by such an x-ray apparatus is limited. At best it constitutes a two dimensional shadowgraph of the object being imaged. This can make it difficult to interpret.
European Patent No. 0610084 describes a method of creating a “2.5D” solid model picture for viewing. A stereoscopic pair of x-ray images is obtained using two diverging curtain beams derived from an x-ray source. These are separated into conjugate slices and the 2.5D image built up from the resulting slice information.
The resultant image is not strictly a three dimensional image (although it is often so referred to) since it is presented on a two dimensional screen rather than by means of full stereoscopic apparatus. Such a 2.5D representation in fact contains psychological cues to depth such as linear perspective, interposition, shading and shadowing rather than the full physiological depth cue known as binocular parallax or stereoscopy which is required for a full three dimensional image.
UK Patent Nos. 2329817 and 2360685 are examples of methods and systems which can be used to produce full stereoscopic image pairs. They derive ultimately from principles set out in European Patent No 0261984. In particular they are subject to the condition set out at column 4 lines 31 to 48 therein which imposes considerable constraints on detector and source beam geometry. Although stereoscopic imaging can be a relatively powerful technique, exploiting full physiological cues in relation to depth information, and thus offering the potential for a user of the x-ray apparatus to identify objects or components much more readily and clearly, it can be complex in practical operation. To exploit the stereoscopic effect, it is necessary for the observer to receive different images at each eye simultaneously. This will necessitate the use of special apparatus. Moreover, a full stereoscopic technique requires precise control of the image collection process having regard to the conditions identified above. If the stereoscopic pair is to be effective, the respective images must be collected with a parallax that closely approximates to that which would be tolerated by the observer's eyes. For these reasons, full stereoscopic imaging has not gained wide acceptance for scanning machines of this type.
Some of these problems are mitigated by PCT publication WO2008/119967 in which the line-scan principle is used to generate successive images as relative movement is effected along a single linear axis between an object and a source/detector arrangement so as to display the monocular movement parallax between such successive images and offer some further three-dimensional cues.
The line-scan x-ray technique might find application in relation to imaging for medical or other investigative examination purposes, quality control etc where it is desirable to view a multi-component target object. A better resolution of the exact shape and location of components of objects in three-dimensional space would be a considerable improvement on present techniques, especially if composition could also better be characterised. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the assembly of sheets to be fabricated into bent laminated windshields. Conventionally, bent laminated windshields for automobiles are fabricated using several separate steps. The first step involves bending a doublet, or a pair of glass sheets, into shapes that conform to the shape desired for the bent laminated windshield. The two sheets are bent as a pair so that their shape conforms to one another throughout the entire extent of the glass sheets. A tunnel-like lehr is used to heat the pair of bent glass sheets in unison to conform to the upwardly facing shaping surface of a bending mold.
Usually a parting material is applied to facilitate separating the sheets after the bending operation is completed. A particularly good technique for supplying the parting material involves spraying an aqueous suspension of fine diatomaceous earth in the manner disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,725,320 to Atkeson and Golightly. The benefit of this patented process is that it is unnecessary to wash the parting material from between the interfacial surfaces of the matching bent glass sheets when the bent glass sheets are separated prior to assembling the sheets with a flexible sheet of interlayer material to form a sandwich.
A second step, which conventionally has taken place in an area remote from the glass bending lehr, involves the assembly of the pair of matched bent glass sheets with a flexible sheet of plasticized interlayer material to form the sandwich to be laminated. An interlayer for laminated safety glass windshields for automobiles presently used commercially is composed of a plasticized polyvinyl acetal resin, preferably polyvinyl butyral prepared in the manner recited in U.S. Pat. No. 2,400,957 to Stamatoff.
The polyvinyl butyrals contain a plasticizer. Generally, the plasticizer used is a water-insoluble ester of a polybasic acid and a polyhydric alcohol. Particularly desirable plasticizers for use with the interlayers assembled between pairs of bent glass sheets of matching curvature are triethylene glycol di(2-ethyl butyrate), dibutyl sebacate, di(beta-butoxyethyl) sebacate, dioctyl phthalate, and di-n-hexyl adipate.
Other interlayer materials include certain polyurethanes, preferably those derived by reacting an organic polyisocyanate with a material having a multiplicity of active hydrogen sites, such as a polyether polyol and/or a polyester polyol or a polyamine. U.S. Pat. No. 3,808,077 to Rieser and Chabal discloses polyurethanes suitable for use as the inner layer of bilayer windshields, which comprise an outer glass sheet and an inner layer of polyurethane. These polyurethane compositions are also useful as interlayers in conventional windshields of two glass sheets and an interlayer.
After the sandwich is assembled, it is laminated. In the manufacture of laminated windshields comprising a pair of matched sheets of bent glass and a thermoplastic interlayer, it is desirable to obtain a complete adhesive bond between the glass sheets and the thermoplastic interlayer. This complete adhesive bond is obtained commercially by subjecting the assembled glass and plastic sheets to heat and pressure while immersed in a hot oil bath while within an autoclave. Unless the marginal edges of the laminated assemblies are sealed by bonding the glass to the thermoplastic interlayer before the assembly is exposed to the oil bath, the oil in the autoclave may penetrate between the two sheets of glass and the interlayer. The assembly being laminated is discolored in the portion where oil penetration takes place.
In preparing assemblies for the autoclave, two bent glass sheets and a plastic interlayer are assembled in the form of a sandwich in an area remote from the bending lehr. The bent glass sheets are usually cooled to a temperature approaching room temperature during their transfer to an assembly area. Therefore, they form a cool sandwich of sheets that are able to slide relative to one another. To avoid sliding, the sandwich must be heated to a temperature at which the interlayer becomes tacky and resists relative sliding.
The heated sandwich is subjected to a preliminary pressing by passing the sandwich between one or more pairs of nipper rolls formed of resilient, yet frictional, contacting material that engage the outer surfaces of the assembly to be laminated. As the sandwich passes through the nipper rolls, air entrapped between the layers of the assembly is forced out. This preliminary pressing, sometimes followed by edge rolling of the margin of the plastic interlayer before the latter cools to room temperature, provides a sufficient seal extending over the entire marginal area of the assembly to prevent oil penetration and the resulting discoloration when the assembly is subjected to its final pressing operation in the oil autoclave. A typical roll pressing apparatus for prepressing glass-plastic sandwiches is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,351,001 to Achkio.
At times, some portion of the plastic sheet adjacent the edge of the laminate is not sealed to the glass after the prepressing operation, so that in the final pressing operation oil can enter the laminate. To alleviate this condition, any portions of the edge that are not sealed after prepressing are manually edge sealed to prevent the oil from entering the laminate during the final pressing operation. This edge sealing is accomplished immediately after prepressing by rolling and compressing the hot interlayer edge, so as to force it between the glass sheets into sealing contact therewith, with a thin metal disc known in the trade as an edge roller. A preferred edge roller is described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,999,779 to Morris.
The usual autoclave treatment utilizes temperatures ranging from about 190.degree. to 325.degree. F. (88.degree. to 163.degree. C.) preferably about 225.degree. to 300.degree. F. (107.degree. to 149.degree. C.) and, simultaneously, elevated pressure in the range of 100 to 250 pounds per square inch (0.7 to 1.7 megapascals) and preferably 175 to 225 pounds per square inch (1.2 to 1.5 megapascals) for a period of ten minutes to more than one hour, preferably 20 to 45 minutes. While oil autoclaves have been used more frequently in the past, final lamination has been accomplished by immersing prepressed assemblies in air autoclaves at approximately the same temperature and pressure conditions as those that prevail in oil autoclaves.
In the past, glass sheets were bent in pairs at one part of a windshield fabrication plant and assembled, prepressed, edge rolled and subjected to autoclave conditions in other parts of the plant. When sandwiches are assembled manually, it is convenient to allow the bent glass sheets to cool to a temperature suitable for handling before performing the sandwich assembly step. Such cooling wastes the residual heat in the bent glass sheets. It would be desirable for the assembly of the sandwich to take place at a time and place such that the energy presently lost through cooling the glass sheets between the bending operation and the assembly of the sandwich is not wasted so that the sandwich can be assembled, prepressed and edge-rolled using as much of the residual heat from the bending operation as possible. If the sandwich assembly is performed automatically there is no need to be concerned with operator discomfort that relates to handling hot glass sheets.
It would be desirable to perform the sandwich assembly step automatically rather than manually to provide a more consistent alignment of the sheets comprising the sandwich prior to their assembly while hot than is possible from assembling the sandwich by hand. When a flexible sheet of interlayer material is assembled between a pair of bent glass sheets at an elevated temperature at which the interlayer surfaces become tacky on contact with hot glass and is unable to slide relative to the hot glass it contacts, the sandwich remains in its originally assembled configuration during subsequent treatment steps incuding the prepressing operation using pressing rolls. Since automatic assembly provides more repetitive alignment than manual assembly, the chance of breakage due to misalignment of the bent glass sheets of the sandwich during roll pressing required for prepressing is minimized provided automatic assembly apparatus is provided with means to align the assembly position of the flexible sheet of interlayer material with those of the two bent glass sheets.
For the sake of this description, the term "bent glass sheet pair" refers to a pair of bent glass sheets without an interlayer sheet, the term "subassembly" is used to identify a partial sandwich of a single glass sheet and an interlayer sheet, the term "sandwich" comprises two matched bent glass sheets and a flexible sheet of interlayer material, the term "assembly" is applied to a sandwich that has been prepressed and is ready for final lamination, and the terms "laminate" and "laminated windshield" are applied to the finally laminated assembly after the latter is subjected to an autoclave operation.
2. Description of Patents of Interest
U.S. Pat. No. 2,920,989 to Cochran et al describes an automatic assembly apparatus for assembling a pair of bent glass sheets to form a sandwich of the glass sheets with a sheet of interlayer material. The bent glass sheets are separated and move at equal velocities along an assembly line where a sheet of interlayer material is applied to the upper surface of the lower bent glass sheet and the upper glass sheet is then pivoted onto the upper surface of the interlayer to assemble a sandwich for lamination. This operation is performed in an area remote from the location where the glass is bent. Consequently, the glass retains little, if any, residual heat from bending to assist in assembling the sandwich. Therefore, the sandwich must be reheated for the prepressing and edge rolling steps.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,205,003 to Walters describes an apparatus for assembling a sandwich of two flat glass sheets and a sheet of interlayer material. The glass sheets are of rectangular outline and are mounted on tables pivotable between a horizontal and a vertical orientation. After the glass sheets are mounted in the horizontal orientation, the tables are pivoted upon pivot axes located at the adjacent ends of the table, a sheet of interlayer material is inserted therebetween and the assembly is formed in a vertical orientation. The assembled sheets are then pivoted in unison beyond the vertical orientation so that the assembly can then be removed. This patent does not treat bent assemblies nor does it treat assemblies in which any of the components remain heated from a previous operating step.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,499,744 to Tolliver suggests using residual heat in recently bent glass sheets to help secure a small metal bracket that supports a rear view mirror to a glass surface. The metal bracket is coated with a thermoplastic adhesive on the surface bonded.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,518,137 to Hamilton discloses apparatus for assembling a safety glass panel, also of flat safety glass, and provides a wedge means that moves in advance of a pair of nipper rolls to insure that air is selectively removed from the interfacial surfaces of the assembly during its fabrication. While the patent refers to the application of heat and pressure when an interlayer is self-securing at elevated temperatures, there is no suggestion in this patent of using the heat remaining from a previous operation, such as shaping the glass sheets, to help bond adjacent layers of an assembled sandwich to one another.
Since a specific embodiment of the present invention involves the use of vacuum supports, a novelty search reported U.S. Pat. No. 2,317,348 to Wekeman, which discloses a vacuum holder in which sheets are supported by vacuum around their perimeter. Another patent cited was U.S. Pat. No. 3,833,251 to Creskoff, which discloses a vacuum lifter to support arcuately shaped objects. The lifter is provided with a pair of flexible sheets, one of which is reinforced with a central stiffening member that helps prevent undesired bending of a flexible sheet having a port through which a vacuum source communicates to provide the vacuum for lifting objects of arcuate shape. Another vacuum suspension device for handling large sized plates is reported in U.S. Pat. No. 4,155,583 to Mikos et al. The apparatus of this patent comprises a vacuum chamber divided into two parts, a larger work chamber forming a vacuum container connected with pumps and a smaller decompression chamber situated below the working chamber. Both chambers are connected together by electromagnetic valves to provide a quicker operation. This vacuum suspension apparatus is particularly useful in handling concrete building parts that are of low strength and brittle.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,638,564 to Prange et al. discloses means to orient and align a flat glass sheet of non-rectangular outline on a conveyor belt. This patent provides side edge engaging discs movable in pairs to engage the opposite side edges of the glass sheet and end edge engaging discs that move in pairs against the opposite end edges of the flat glass sheets in a horizontal plane common to the discs to properly align each sheet both transversely and longitudinally of the conveyor belt at a fixed station. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to display systems for airplane cockpits or other vehicles, and more particularly, to a rear projection digital display system which allows a high level of information to be selectively displayed regarding such data as travel path, travel conditions, vehicle condition, geographical conditions, and hazard or obstruction warnings.
2. Description of the Related Art
The layouts of cockpits for airplanes are regulated by the FAA in the United States. The SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), which acts as a standards writing/recommending body to the FAA, has issued standards for aircraft instruments which are adhered to in aircraft construction. For example, the 3ATI slot standard, which is an ARINC (Aeronautical Radio, Inc.) standard, has been complied with in the vast majority of all aircraft in use today. This standard was developed when electro-mechanical display devices, such as HIS (Horizontal Situation Indicator), were the norm, and only allows a panel area of 3″.times.3″ in dimension.
With the advance of digital technology, there has been a need in the industry to replace these displays with digital versions, to provide increased reliability, accuracy and more functionality. However, the planes cannot be easily retrofited with digital equipment that require a bigger screen, and the required 3.times.3 panel has conventionally proven to be too small for digital displays. The 3″.times.3″ display has been a major impediment to the development of such a digital display.
First, standard direct view LCDs are not mass produced in this size, and therefore a specially made LCD for 3″.times.3″ can cost as much as $10,000 each to produce. Furthermore, due to the construction of the direct view LCD, the outer perimeter of the device cannot be used to display information, as it is used by the drive electronics. As a result, the 3″.times.3″ LCD typically produces a display area of only 2.3″.times.2.3″. This reduced display area impedes the ability to put enough information on the display for it to be useable for many functions.
A second problem addressed by the invention is the growing demand in the avionics industry for more sophisticated “situational awareness for safety” (SAS) technology. This refers to technology which provides the pilot with more easily understandable and more comprehensive information about the immediate surroundings, and any hazards which may be present.
For example, in 1996, there were 246 general aviation airplane crashes in the United States. Of these crashes, 42 were controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). That is, situations in which the airplane was flown into an obstruction such as a mountain, an antenna or the ground under control of the pilot. Typically these instances occur when visibility is very low and the pilot is off course. As a result, the pilot is unaware of the natural obstructions in the flight path because the display devices only provide information on the desired flight course.
It is believed that if the present invention had been available for these planes, a large number of these accidents would have been prevented, and hundreds of lives saved. Thus, there is a need in the industry for (1) technology to effectively collect data on surrounding structures even when the pilot is off path, and (2) hardware to display this information in a simple and direct manner to the pilot, preferably using digital instruments. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to an antenna using stripline for microwaves.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, a stripline antenna for micro waves is electrically fed at the center of an antenna array 1 as shown in FIG. 1. The two feeding points are indicated as 2 and 2' respectively, and the spacing between the points 2 and 2' is limited depending on the wave length of radiating electromagnetic wave. The usual spacing between the feeding points 2 and 2' is selected from a few millimeters to more than ten millimeters in the microwave band, and it is difficult to arrange the feeding elements at the same level with the stripline antenna for micro waves. Accordingly in a conventional antenna system it is an usual method that a coaxial feeder or a wave guide is stereoscopically arranged in the backward space of the antenna to feed the antenna in-phase. This method, however, has structural difficulties since the higher frequency requires a narrow spacing between feeding points 2 and 2' as well as a larger cubic volume of feeding section. Furthermore, the prior art stripline antenna for micro waves has another drawback, which arises more difficult problems, in feeding of plural antenna arrays. | {
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An organic electroluminescence device (hereinafter, occasionally abbreviated as “organic EL device”) using an organic substance is expected to be used as a cost-friendly full-color display device (solid light-emitting device) with a large area and thus many developments thereof have been made. A general organic EL device includes an emitting layer and a pair of opposing electrodes between which the emitting layer is interposed. When an electric field is applied between the electrodes, electrons are injected from a cathode, while holes are injected from an anode. Subsequently, the electrons are recombined with the holes in the emitting layer to generate an excited state and energy generated when the excited state returns to a ground state is emitted in the form of light.
The performance of an organic EL device has been gradually improved by improving an organic-EL-device material. In particular, improvement in the color purity of a blue-emitting organic EL device (i.e., shortening of an emission wavelength) is considered as an important technique for improving the color reproducibility of a display.
Patent Literature 1 discloses that a fused aromatic hydrocarbon group having two amino groups as substituents is used as a dopant material.
Patent Literature 2 discloses a diaminopyrene dopant containing dibenzofuran and a combination of such a dopant material and an anthracene host material.
Patent Literature 3 discloses a diaminopyrene dopant having such a structure that a nitrogen atom is directly bonded to the 2-position or 4-position of each of dibenzofuran and dibenzothiophene. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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There are conventional devices for recognizing character lines printed on media surfaces such as personal checks. For example, well-known are character recognition devices in which a character portion is detected from binary image data, the character portion is segmented along the bounding rectangular frame, character features are extracted from the obtained character pattern, the similarity between the feature vector of the input pattern and a standard vector for each character in the feature dictionary is obtained, and a character candidate is selected according to the degree of similarity.
Among such character recognition devices is one provided with various measures for re-binarization based on the recognition result in order to improve the recognition accuracy (see Patent References 1 through 3, for example).
More specifically described, in the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 1, it is judged according to the result of the character recognition and the counting result of the black points whether it is necessary to re-binarize the gray-scale image; if it is necessary, a threshold different from the original threshold is set and the gray-scale image is binarized using the new threshold. In the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 2, when a correct recognition result could not be obtained under the initial binarization condition, the filter or the threshold is changed based on the result of the total number of pixels having the same value and then the process from the preceding processing to the recognition processing is re-run. In the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 3, when the score which is the basis of the individual pattern comparison result is in a warning judgment frame which is set based on the sequential statistical processing result, the pickup system and the threshold are changed and then the process from the scanning to the recognition processing is rerun. [Patent Reference 1] Japanese Patent Application H09-016715 Unexamined Publication [Patent Reference 2] Japanese Patent Application H10-222602 Unexamined Publication [Patent Reference 3] Japanese Patent Application 2004-118611 Unexamined Publication
However, in the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 1 only those results that do not satisfy the allowance range are re-binarized, but the judgment as to whether the threshold on the whole is appropriate or not is not performed; therefore, a question arises as to whether the recognition result is reliable enough. Also, the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 2 is also locally applied to only the characters that were not read, which is in the same manner as the Patent Reference 1; therefore, it is not sufficient to improve the reliability of the recognition result on the whole. Note that the technology disclosed in Patent Reference 3 re-scans the image, which is contrary to the demand for speedy processing. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention refers to a tank discharge device which has quantified saving of water in toilets, performing a double discharge controlled by only one push button.
This invention is within the water saving systems in toilet deposits and tanks, and within them, among the purely mechanical devices using already known elements for actuating the water shut-off valve. It has a single deposit with two perfectly dosed and measured water lots, which depend on the specific use, in order to first give a determined quantity and subsequently, only in those cases when required by the user, the entire content of the deposit.
2. Description of Related Art
Different water saving devices in toilet tanks are known in the current state of the art. Those having two separated floats or a double water deposit are particularly known, actuated by means of a double push button or pull rod, such that different volumes are removed, depending on which float or deposit is used, which is a function of the actuated push button or pull rod.
Devices with a valve regulation mechanism depending on the pulsation intensity are also known, or with several valve opening diameters and of the regulation of the outlet liquid flow, or with a double water storage system producing a double stage upon actuating the push button, due to which a dragging of mechanical elements occurs once exceeding a certain point, giving way to the complete discharge.
Different types of buoys, adapters, more or less complex electric or electronic systems or other mechanisms regulating the water flow in tanks are also known.
One of the drawbacks that all of these known devices have is the difficulty of being adapted to the different types of existing toilets, so that the tank must incorporate the proposed mechanism in the majority of the cases. This implies a more expensive manufacturing process, in addition to the scarce usefulness of these systems.
On the other hand, other mechanisms do not have any structural consistency, so that even though they are adapted to the existing tanks, they deteriorate in little time. In addition, many of them do not adjust or fix the lid of the tank.
Another drawback of the known devices is that, although a significant water saving occurs by using these systems, the saving normally cannot be quantified. Some examples are those systems in which the water outlet valve is opened by pushing or pulling, and the water constantly flows towards the outlet while the push button or pull rod continues actuating; in other cases, it is necessary to produce a second pulsation in order to stop the outlet flow. Water saving does occur, but, definitively, exactly what quantity is not known, depending on the time it has been actuating in each case.
However, perhaps the biggest drawback of the current systems consists of it being fundamental to carry out a specific actuation in order to achieve a saving:
In single push button mechanisms where one pulsation actuates the water emptying and the second pulsation paralyzes the emptying, producing the saving depends on this second pulsation being carried out. In addition, it is not quantifiable since the amount of water emptied depends on the time elapsed between the first pulsation and the second one, which will be different each time.
In mechanisms of only one push button, which have two positions or a double pulsation run, it is necessary to choose the force or intensity with which the push button is actuated in order to save, or to not exceed a certain run in the pulsation, without being able to therefore ensure that with one push and release action, the force, intensity or run was correct in order to save water.
In mechanisms of a split push button or double push button, it is necessary to choose the part of the push button or which of the existing two must be actuated, saving water if finding the correct push button or the suitable part thereof.
Therefore, it depends on the user""s will to produce the saving, and the second pulsation being carried out or not or correctly actuating the conservation mechanism is at the expense of carelessness, negligence, forgetfulness, unknowing or comfort.
There are even double discharge mechanisms with only one push button, in those which a first pulsation produces a partial discharge regardless of the torrent or pressure with which the water evacuates and therefore a forced and quantifiable water saving, but it is necessary to carry out a second pulsation that must also be maintained or continued for a period of time in order to produce the complete removal from the deposit.
The present invention overcomes the previously mentioned drawbacks in a simple manner, by means of only one water outlet valve, only one push button and one float. With a structurally heavy-duty device adaptable to any type of toilet tank, a measured and fixed volume of water is discharged by the action of pushing or pulling only once, while the complete discharge occurs when the push button or pull rod is actuated a second time in a prolonged manner. The system uses the coupling of simple mechanical devices physically separating on one side the opening and closing of the water outlet valve towards the toilet, and on the other, the filling of water in the system. | {
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In offshore installations, such as subsea production installations, there is an increasing use of electrically powered subsea equipment. Such subsea equipment may include, e.g., compressors, pumps, and any other electrically powered subsea equipment.
The electrical power to be distributed to such subsea equipment may be supplied from land, e.g. an onshore power plant, or from an offshore power generating facility, e.g. on a ship or platform.
Such subsea equipment may have high power requirements, and electric power must usually be transferred across long distances. In order to provide an efficient power transfer across long distances, a high voltage is used for the remote power supply.
The high voltage power supply is connected to subsea power distribution device which includes a transformer that provides a lower voltage power supply which is connected to subsea power consuming devices. The transformer may be accommodated in a watertight housing. The transformer may be a multi-winding transformer, having a primary winding and a plurality of secondary windings. The primary winding is electrically connected to input terminals which are arranged to be connected to the remote, high voltage power supply. The secondary windings are electrically connected to output terminals which are further arranged to be connected to the subsea power consuming devices.
A disadvantage of such an arrangement is that the secondary transformer windings have no protection against a failure in one of the circuits connected to a secondary winding, e.g. a ground fault, an overload or a short circuit in one of the subsea power consuming devices.
Such a failure may therefore result in the shutdown or disconnection of the entire transformer. This has substantial operational consequences, e.g. loss of operational time and costs, and should be avoided when possible. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a system and method for monitoring the performance of fuel cells in a fuel cell stack and, more particularly, to a system and method for monitoring the performance of fuel cells in a fuel cell stack that includes a sensor for detecting an undesirable condition of the fuel cells and a tone generator that generates an AC tone in response to the detected condition that can be detected by suitable circuitry.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Hydrogen is a very attractive fuel because it is clean and can be used to efficiently produce electricity in a fuel cell. A hydrogen fuel cell is an electro-chemical device that includes an anode and a cathode with an electrolyte therebetween. The anode receives hydrogen gas and the cathode receives oxygen or air. The hydrogen gas is dissociated in the anode to generate free protons and electrons. The protons pass through the electrolyte to the cathode. The protons react with the oxygen and the electrons in the cathode to generate water. The electrons from the anode cannot pass through the electrolyte, and thus are directed through a load to perform work before being sent to the cathode.
Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are a popular fuel cell for vehicles. The PEMFC generally includes a solid polymer electrolyte proton conducting membrane, such as a perfluorosulfonic acid membrane. The anode and cathode typically include finely divided catalytic particles, usually platinum (Pt), supported on carbon particles and mixed with an ionomer. The catalytic mixture is deposited on opposing sides of the membrane. The combination of the anode catalytic mixture, the cathode catalytic mixture and the membrane define a membrane electrode assembly (MEA). MEAs are relatively expensive to manufacture and require certain conditions for effective operation.
Several fuel cells are typically combined in a fuel cell stack by serial coupling to generate the desired power. For example, a typical fuel cell stack for a vehicle may have two hundred or more stacked fuel cells. The fuel cell stack receives a cathode input reactant gas, typically a flow of air forced through the stack by a compressor. Not all of the oxygen is consumed by the stack and some of the air is output as a cathode exhaust gas that may include water as a stack by-product. The fuel cell stack also receives an anode hydrogen reactant gas that flows into the anode side of the stack. The stack also includes flow channels through which a cooling fluid flows.
The fuel cell stack includes a series of bipolar plates positioned between the several MEAs in the stack, where the bipolar plates and the MEAs are positioned between the two end plates. The bipolar plates include an anode side and a cathode side for adjacent fuel cells in the stack. Anode gas flow channels are provided on the anode side of the bipolar plates that allow the anode reactant gas to flow to the respective MEA. Cathode gas flow channels are provided on the cathode side of the bipolar plates that allow the cathode reactant gas to flow to the respective MEA. One end plate includes anode gas flow channels, and the other end plate includes cathode gas flow channels. The bipolar plates and end plates are made of a conductive material, such as stainless steel or a conductive composite. The end plates conduct the electricity generated by the fuel cells out of the stack. The bipolar plates also include flow channels through which a cooling fluid flows.
As a fuel cell stack ages, the performance of the individual fuel cells in the stack degrade differently as a result of various factors. There are different causes of low performing cells, such as cell flooding, loss of catalyst, etc., some temporary and some permanent, some requiring maintenance, and some requiring stack replacement to exchange those low performing cells. Although the fuel cells are electrically coupled in series, the voltage of each cell when a load is coupled across the stack decreases differently where those cells that are low performing have lower voltages. Thus, it is necessary to monitor the cell voltages of the fuel cells in a stack to ensure that the voltages of the cells do not drop below a predetermined threshold voltage to prevent cell voltage polarity reversal, possibly causing permanent damage to the cell.
Typically, the voltage output of every fuel cell in a fuel cell stack is monitored so that the system knows if a fuel cell voltage is too low, indicating a possible failure. As is understood in the art, because all of the fuel cells are electrically coupled in series, if one fuel cell in the stack fails, then the entire stack will fail. Certain remedial actions can be taken for a failing fuel cell as a temporary solution until the fuel cell vehicle can be serviced, such as increasing the flow of hydrogen and/or increasing the cathode stoichiometry.
Fuel cell voltages are often measured by a cell voltage monitoring sub-system that includes an electrical connection to each bipolar plate, or some number of bipolar plates, in the stack and end plates of the stack to measure a voltage potential between the positive and negative sides of each cell. Therefore, a 400 cell stack may include 401 wires connected to the stack. Because of the size of the parts, the tolerances of the parts, the number of the parts, etc., it may be impractical to provide a physical connection to every bipolar plate in a stack with this many fuel cells, and the number of parts increases the cost and reduces the reliability of the system.
As discussed above, it is known in the art to process the electric signals of the fuel cells in a fuel cell stack to determine whether the fuel cell stack is functioning as desired. Often, electric signal processing is done every other cell because of the costs associated with monitoring every cell. Furthermore, it can be difficult to provide the necessary components in the space available to monitor every cell. In order to eliminate the necessity to connect fuel cell measurement circuits to a fuel cell stack using a plurality of interconnecting wires, it is desirable to embed such measurement circuits directly within the structure of the fuel cell stack assembly. Such an embedded measurement circuit would not add significant costs, and would allow for every fuel cell to be monitored. | {
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Plasticized polyvinyl chloride (P-PVC) is useful in numerous applications such as film, geomembranes, hose and tubing, and upholstery. Its most important attributes are toughness (high tensile strength), flexibility (low modulus), and elastic recovery (essentially no yield point).
The elastic recovery of a polymer, particularly, can be very important to its end-use application. Thus, a hose should be resistant to kinking when it is bent over a short radius, and it should recover (straighten out) after it is subjected to a permanent set. In the film area, especially in food packaging, e.g., meat wrap, the film should bounce back after it is depressed with a finger or other object.
P-PVC has several shortcomings, however. For example, it has a limited use temperature. P-PVC becomes brittle below 0.degree. C. because of its high glass transition temperature (about minus 10.degree. C.) and becomes too soft above 70.degree. C. because of its low softening point. The plasticizers conventionally used in P-PVC tend to migrate to the surface of the polymer upon aging. This migration results in an increase in modulus and detracts from the long term performance of the P-PVC. Further, P-PVC releases toxic gases when exposed to fire and raises environmental concerns with respect to its disposal. Both the recycling and incineration of P-PVC are difficult undertakings.
The properties of P-PVC, in particular its modulus, vary with the amount of added plasticizer. As this amount is increased, the modulus of the resulting blend decreases. Consequently, P-PVC is classified according to its hardness on an A-scale as per ASTM D-2240. The hardness of the P-PVC on this scale can vary from as low as 40 for very low moduli to as high as 90 for high moduli.
In contrast, polyethylene has a very low glass transition temperature (below minus 100.degree. C.) and a softening point above 70.degree. C. It can be recycled with less difficulty than P-PVC and does not release toxic gases on incineration. Since the flexibility of a polyethylene product is related to its density, a plasticizer is not required for this purpose. By varying the density of the polyethylene, the hardness of any P-PVC can be achieved.
In order to provide a resin composition having physical properties comparable to P-PVC, then, the properties of toughness and recovery have to be addressed. | {
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The present application is directed to a biological treatment system and an assembly for supporting biomass derived from bacteria present in or seeded into the sludge or wastewater for treating the sludge or wastewater. More particularly, the present application is directed to an assembly of generally structural corrugated sheets and generally non-structural intermediate members mounted between pairs of the corrugated sheets wherein the corrugated sheets, when bonded together, provide structural support for the assembly. The assembly typically includes multiple corrugated sheets with an intermediate member preferably sandwiched between each of the corrugated sheets of the assembly.
Treating sludge and wastewater by passing the sludge and wastewater through media having a relatively large surface area with a biomass growing thereon to remove ammonia nitrogen (NH3—N) or other such contaminants from and to reduce the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) of the sludge and wastewater is known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,599,174 ('174 patent), which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a fixed-film biological distribution system wherein contaminated waste is biologically digested by microorganisms retained on corrugated packings or media. The media are typically constructed of structural sheets with bacteria growing thereon, such as is disclosed in the '174 patent, or a non-structural textile material that is mounted to a heavy and relatively expensive stainless steel support structure for immersion in the sludge and wastewater. The sludge and wastewater is exposed to the bacteria growing on the surfaces of the media, which biologically treats the sludge and wastewater, either aerobically, anoxically or anaerobically, depending upon the type of well-known bacteria used in the system.
The non-structural fabric or textile material usually includes multiple loops to increase the surface area for bacteria growth and is typically more efficient in supporting the biomass for treating the sludge and wastewater when compared to the structural sheet material. However, the non-structural fabric or textile material is typically mounted to a relatively high-cost and heavy stainless steel mounting structure. In contrast, the structural sheet material is less efficient in treating the sludge and wastewater than the non-structural fabric or textile material but is comparatively light and less expensive than the stainless steel support structure. In addition, the stainless steel support structure provides little or no surface area for growth of the treatment bacteria. One non-limiting example of a suitable fabric or textile sheet having multiple loops is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,771,716, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
It would be desirable to construct a sludge and wastewater treatment medium having both the advantages of the structural sheet material and the non-structural fabric or textile material in an individual assembly. Specifically, it would be desirable to construct a sludge and wastewater treatment medium having a relatively low cost, a lightweight and having a high relatively efficiency in treating the sludge and wastewater. The present invention generally provides these advantages. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, generally, to therapeutic systems, apparatus and methods. Particularly, the invention relates to occupational and sensory integration therapeutic systems, apparatus and methods for infants and children.
2. Background Information
Existing technology in this field is believed to have significant limitations and shortcomings.
All US patents and patent applications, and all other published documents mentioned anywhere in this application are incorporated by reference in their entirety. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nonwoven fabric for printing, which has good tearing strength and can provide printing finish as good as an art paper at a low cost.
2. Prior Art
Conventionally, various types of nonwoven fabrics have been known as material which could be used in many industrial fields including the civil engineering, carpet and furniture industry, and durable paper products, throwaway materials and coating fabrics. Such nonwoven fabrics are generally classified into a filament nonwoven fabric and a staple nonwoven fabric from the viewpoint of length of fibres which composes the nonwoven fabrics. The filament nonwoven fabric is composed of substantially endless filament fibres which are discharged through a spinning nozzle, whereas the staple nonwoven fabric generally comprises staple fibres of 5-100 mm in length. In respect of the tearing strength, it is preferred to use the filament nonwoven fabric, particularly a high-density filament nonwoven fabric made from synthetic resin such as polyethylene and polypropylene.
On the other hand, to guarantee excellent appearance for products made with such a nonwoven fabric, it is desired to give a high-quality printing process to the nonwoven fabric. Conventionally, for printing onto the filament nonwoven fabric made from polyethylene or polypropylene, there should be required use of expensive special ink such as synthetic-paper ink, ultraviolet-curing ink and electron-beam-curing ink.
However, use of the synthetic-paper ink will greatly impair the printing workability. While, when the UV-curing ink or electron-beam-curing ink is used, an expensive UV-ray generator or electron-beam generator must be employed for curing such ink, so that it becomes difficult to carry out the printing at a low cost. Moreover, in case of UV-curing ink, even after the ink is dried, residual reaction initiator and unreacted monomer smell unpleasantly, thereby deteriorating the working atmosphere.
The offset printing is widely known as a suitable method for attaining a low-cost and high-quality printing. However, such synthetic resin as polyethylene and polypropylene will be affected by a high-boiling-point solvent contained in the offset print ink, so that when the offset printing is carried out onto the nonwoven fabric made from polyethylene or polypropylene, the nonwoven fabric is swelled and unevenness occurs on the surface thereof. Moreover since the nonwoven fabric is originally inferior in the surface smoothness resulting in a poor ink-transfer property, that is, an ink attached to a blanket of an offset printing machine would not readily be transferred to the surface of the nonwoven fabric, the printing quality can not be improved as high as the level of the art papers. The ink-setting property of the nonwoven fabric is also poor so that when a plurality of the printed nonwoven fabric are stacked one another, the ink once transferred to the surface of the underlying nonwoven fabric could be re-transferred to the underside of the overlying one, this being known in general as a matter of set-off. | {
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Test strips (e.g., biosensors) containing reagents are often used in assays for determining the concentration of an analyte in a fluid sample. Testing and self-testing for the concentration of glucose in blood is a common use for test strips. One method of obtaining a blood sample and analyzing the sample for determining the glucose level is with a lancing device and a separate blood collection device. In obtaining a blood sample, a drop of blood is obtained from the fingertip using the lancing device, and the blood is harvested using a test strip, which is then analyzed by a test unit that determines the concentration of glucose in the blood. Test strips are also used for determining the concentration or presence of various other analytes (e.g., fructosamine, hemoglobin, cholesterol, glucose, alcohol, drugs including illegal drugs, etc.) in a variety of body fluids (e.g., blood, interstitial fluid, saliva, urine, etc.).
A drawback associated with the use of physically separate lancing and collection devices is that a patient/user must manipulate two different instruments requiring the user/patient to bring the collection device (e.g., the test strip) to the area of skin that has been lanced to collect the sample. Because the user must align the collection device with the sample to be collected, a larger than necessary amount of sample often is produced and collected to ensure an accurate analysis. In other situations, not enough sample is collected for accurate analysis because the collection device is not properly positioned. This problem can be further compounded if the user has impaired vision or poor dexterity. Because test systems are requiring smaller volumes of blood for analysis, it is difficult to position a collection instrument for proper collection.
The surface condition of the skin affects the formation of a blood droplet at the lancet site on skin. Many individuals use hand lotions, have oily or sweaty skin, or do not dry their hands completely after washing which also affects droplet formation. Often users do not always cleanse the area of skin to be lanced with alcohol. These variations increase the wettability of the skin's surface causing the droplet to spread in an uncontrolled and unpredictable manner making it difficult to harvest the sample.
Further, the collection of blood samples on alternative sites such as the forearm is complicated by the presence of body hair because the sample (e.g., blood) has a tendency to “wick up” the hairs found on these parts of the body. Cleaning the lance site with alcohol does not alleviate this wicking problem. Thus, there exists a need for a lancing and collection device that co-locates the lancet and the collection point to accurately collect a blood sample for analysis. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electro-optical device substrate used for manufacturing an electro-optical device, such as a liquid crystal device, and to an electro-optical device manufactured using the electro-optical device substrate. In addition, the present invention relates to a method of testing the electro-optical device.
2. Related Art
In general, this type of electro-optical device includes an electro-optical panel for displaying images and a driving circuit. The driving circuit is mounted on a substrate having an electro-optical panel thereon.
The electro-optical device (including the driving circuit when the driving circuit is mounted therein) is generally tested to detect defects, for example, during manufacture, after manufacture, prior to shipping, when the device is examined after use, and when the device is out of order. For example, the electro-optical device is driven in an incomplete state, such as before mounting the driving circuit, or in the state of an electro-optical panel to display a testing image, and then the testing is performed based on the suitability of the testing image. Alternatively, a testing circuit is incorporated into the electro-optical device, and signals of the testing circuit are monitored when driving the device, thereby testing the electro-optical device (see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-260391).
However, in the electro-optical device employing, for example, a multiplex method, which is called a hybrid type, it is difficult to perform the testing because the structure of the device becomes complicated.
More specially, in the hybrid-type electro-optical device, a plurality of image signals corresponding to a plurality of data lines in the electro-optical panel are supplied from an external driving circuit. Also, the electro-optical device is driven in the following multiplex method. That is, the image signals are input to each pixel unit of the electro-optical panel, and the input image signals are time-divided into R (red), G (green), and B (blue) components by a demultiplexer. Then, the components are input to three data lines corresponding to three dots constituting one pixel, respectively.
In this case, the number of image signal terminals to which the image signals are input from the outside should be at least a third of the number of the data lines (that is, the number of pixels in the horizontal direction). That is, in the hybrid-type electro-optical panel, in general, the number of image signal terminals is up to several hundreds.
The number of image signal terminals of the hybrid-type electro-optical panel is considerably larger than the number of image signal terminals of an electro-optical device which is driven by so-called serial-parallel expansion (that is, phase expansion). In the serial-parallel expansion, since each group of L data lines is simultaneously driven by the image signals supplied from L image signal lines (for example, 6, 12, or 24 image signal lines), L image signal terminals are required. That is, several or several tens of image signal terminals are required at most.
In the hybrid-type electro-optical device, the number of image signal terminals is relatively large, and gaps between the image signal terminals are relatively narrow. Thus, when the above-mentioned test is performed by bringing a probe into contact with the image signal terminals, the probe should be positioned with high precision. As a result, it is difficult to perform the test with high accuracy, which results in a low degree of manufacturing efficiency and an increase in testing costs. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Adaptive predictive coding (APC) methods are widely used for high quality coding of speech signals. The details are discussed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/603,104 by the present inventor and commonly assigned to COMSAT and which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,884 on Apr. 27, 1993. That application is herein incorporated by reference.
The concept of prediction filtering followed by residual quantization forms the basis for a wide range of coding techniques at various bit rates and quality for voice signals. The most direct implementation of this concept is found in adaptive predictive coding (APC) (B. S. Atal, "Predictive Coding of Speech at Low Bit Rates," IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. Com-30, No 4, April 1982). In APC, signal correlations are significantly reduced by adaptive short and long term prediction filters. The residual signal is then quantized by an adaptive quantizer, inside a quantization noise feedback loop. The adaptation ensures that the parameters of the predictors and the quantizer match the characteristics of the quasistationary input signal, so that the efficiency of these operations is maximized. In forward block adaptation, the signal is processed in blocks and parameters are determined for each block based on the uncoded signal. This form of adaptation requires the transmission of the prediction and quantization parameters along with the transmission of the residual. Backward sample adaptation is also possible, leading to analysis by synthesis schemes such as the low delay code excited linear prediction (LD-CELP). The proposed invention is relevant to the forward adaptive schemes.
The size of the block is highly dependent on signal characteristics and in particular on the quasistationary behavior of the signal. For telephony voice signals, sampling rates are generally in the range 6.4-8 kHz. At these sampling rates, block sizes are in the range 160-256 sample/block. For generality, block size will be denoted by N in the following discussion. | {
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Amyloidosis is a series of diseases where proteins forming a fiber structure are deposited in the whole-body organs to induce functional disturbance and includes various diseases such as Alzheimer dementia and prion disease (Non-patent reference 1).
Familial Amyloidotic Polyneuropathy (FAP) is autosomal dominant, hereditary, systemic amyloidosis caused by point mutation or deletion of genes of TTR, apolipoprotein A1, gelsolin and the like (Non-patent reference 2). Among these, FAP caused by genetic mutation of TTR is most common. It is known that mutant TTRs form amyloid fibril which is normally deposited in almost all the tissues of the whole body such as the peripheral nerve, the heart, the kidney, the digestive tract, the eye, the brain and the meninges after middle age. It is an intractable disease which shows very bad convalescence of patients and is mortal within around 10 years after onset of disease.
Up till the present, more than 100 point mutations and deletions of TTR gene have been reported. In particular, Va130Met mutation (hereinafter referred to as “V30M”), in which the 30th valine in TTR is mutated to methionine, is most common. There are many patients in Portugal, Sweden and Japan. Since more than 6,000 cases of FAP patients have been confirmed in Portugal, there are not a small number of regions where FAP has not yet been investigated and it is expected that worldwide discovery of FAP patients will continue, it is supposed that there are well over 10,000 patients all over the world. It became known from the recent research that the clinical picture (age of onset, deposit organ specificity, etc.) of FAP is greatly affected by the kind of mutation of TTR gene (Non-patent reference 3). For instance, with regard to age of onset of FAP, L55P mutation shows fulminant clinical picture that the disease develops in one's teens whereas with V122I mutation the disease develops at sixty and thereafter. On the other hand, it is known that V30M mutation shows both types of disease where the disease develops at a younger age and at an older age. With regard to deposit organ specificity, D18G mutation causes deposition at the brain and the meninges to cause central nerves disturbance whereas V30M mutation causes deposition in the whole-body tissues to cause peripheral nerves disturbance and myocardial disturbance (Non-patent references 3 and 4).
TTR is a protein that consists of 127 amino acid residues with a molecular weight of 14 kDa and has a structure that eight β-strands present inside form two antiparallel β-sheets (Non-patent reference 5). TTR is produced predominantly in the liver but also in the ventricular choroid plexus, the retinal pigment epithelium cells of retina, the spleen, and the like. TTR usually forms a stable structure by forming a tetramer with a molecular weight of 55 kDa in blood and functions as a carrier of a vitamin A/retinol-binding protein complex and thyroid hormone T4 mainly in blood and cerebrospinal fluid. Its blood level is as high as 200-400 μg/mL but its half-life is as short as 2 days (Non-patent references 2-6). It is known that in the center of a TTR tetramer are present two homologous T4-binding sites to which T4 binds to stabilize the tetramer structure (Non-patent reference 3). There are various reports about another function of TTR such as the insulin secretion promoting activity, the cerebral nerve protecting activity, and the activity relating to lipid metabolism (Non-patent reference 2). On the other, although a blood level of retinol and thyroid hormone decreases in TTR gene knockout mice, no significant change in phenotypes such as a survival rate and fertility property could be seen (Non-patent reference 7) and thus it remains unknown whether TTR is directly essential for maintenance of actual biological activity.
For amyloidogenesis by TTR, dissociation from a tetramer to a monomer and structural change of a monomer are very important steps (Non-patent reference 3). Among these, it has been revealed that dissociation from a tetramer to a monomer is a rate-determining step of the reaction. On the other hand, in the course where TTR forms amyloid that deposits in the tissues and damages the whole-body organs, a molecular form that exerts toxicity to the tissues has not yet been fully elucidated. It is reported that a monomer and a low molecular weight oligomer such as a dimer exhibit cytotoxicity whereas TTR amyloid of 100 kDa or more dose not (Non-patent reference 5) and so it is to be hoped that future research will clarify relationship between toxicity and a molecular form.
Therapeutic strategy for FAP originating from genetic anomaly of TTR is chiefly classified into the following four groups. (1) To suppress a produced level of variant TTRs (2) To stabilize a TTR tetrameric structure containing variant TTRs (3) To prevent amyloid formation of TTR dissociated from a tetramer (4) To remove TTR amyloid deposited in tissues
Since almost all TTRs in blood are produced in the liver (Non-patent reference 2), the most common therapy at present is liver transplantation as classified in (1) above. Although delay in progression of the disease is observed by liver transplantation, it is inevitable to use an immunosuppressant through life with a great burden to donors and patients. Besides, deposition still continues in several organs including the eyes and the heart and thus exacerbation of symptoms in these organs can be seen in not a few cases (Non-patent reference 8). As such, it is problematic and hence development of an effective therapeutic method is earnestly desired.
For other therapeutic methods than liver transplantation, therapeutic methods using siRNA or an antisense oligonucleotide is at a stage of clinical development in case of the strategy (1). However, with all these methods, production of not only variant TTRs but also wild-type TTR is suppressed and thus their safety assessment when used for a long period of time should carefully be done. As for the strategy (2), a medicament has been developed that binds to the T4-binding sites of a TTR tetramer to thereby stabilize the tetrameric structure. The new medicine Vyndaqel® developed in accordance with the strategy has been approved in EU in 2011 and in Japan in 2013. As the result of clinical test for as long as 30 months, Vyndaqel® exhibited the effect to delay peripheral neuropathy in FAP patients but failed to suppress completely the progress of symptoms (Non-patent reference 9). Also for the strategies (3) and (4), although plural kinds of medicaments are at a stage of clinical development, the status quo is that none of the therapies can be a radical treatment. | {
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A liquid crystal display device has two substrates. One is a TFT substrate in which pixel electrodes, thin film transistors (TFTs), and the like are formed in a matrix form. The other is a counter substrate disposed opposite to the TFT substrate, in which color filters and the like are formed at positions corresponding to the pixel electrodes of the TFT substrate. A liquid crystal is interposed between the TFT substrate and the counter substrate. Thus, the liquid crystal display device forms an image by controlling the transmittance of light of the liquid crystal molecules for each pixel.
Along with the demand for reducing the overall size of the liquid crystal display device as a set, there is also a strong demand for reducing the thickness of a liquid crystal display panel of the liquid crystal display device, while the size of the screen remains unchanged. A thin liquid crystal display panel is obtained in such a way that a liquid crystal display panel is produced, and then the outside of the liquid crystal display device is polished to a desired thickness.
The TFT substrate including pixel electrodes, TFTs, and the like, and the counter substrate including color filters, are glass substrates constituting the liquid crystal display device. The two glass substrates are standardized, for example, at a thickness of 0.5 mm or 0.7 mm. It is difficult to obtain such standardized glass substrates from the market. Further, very thin glass substrates have a problem in the production process in terms of mechanical strength and bending or deformation, which reduces the production yield. As a result, a liquid crystal display panel is formed from the standardized glass substrates, and then the outside of the formed liquid crystal display panel is polished to a desired thickness.
When the thickness of the liquid crystal display panel is reduced, the problem of the mechanical strength arises. There is a risk that when a mechanical pressure is applied to a surface of the liquid crystal display panel, the liquid crystal display panel will be destroyed. In order to prevent this, a front window is attached to the screen side of the liquid crystal display panel when the liquid crystal display panel is set into a mobile phone and the like.
The front window may be provided at a distance from the liquid crystal display panel so that the external force applied to the front window has no influence on the liquid crystal display panel. However, such a configuration has a problem that reflection occurs in the interface of the front window, reducing the quality of the image.
In order to solve this problem, for example, JP-A No. 174417/1999 describes a technology in which an adhesive elastomer is interposed between the front window and the liquid crystal display panel. The adhesive elastomer helps not only to protect the liquid crystal display panel from the external force but also to prevent the reflection in the interface of the front window by setting the refractive index of the adhesive elastomer to a value close to the refractive index of the front window.
The liquid crystal display device can have a small size and a reduced thickness, allowing it to be used in various types of applications such as mobile phones. Recently, mobile phones are provided with various applications. Further, input devices are expected to have a function that allows finger input through a touch panel, in addition to the conventional key button operation. In this case, the touch panel is attached to the side of the counter substrate of the liquid crystal display panel.
Even in the liquid crystal display device of such a configuration, the demand for a reduction in the thickness of the liquid crystal display panel still exists. Also the thickness of the touch panel provided on the liquid crystal display panel is expected to be reduced. Thus, even if the touch panel is present, the problem of the mechanical strength of the liquid crystal display panel still remains.
In order to solve such a problem, a window formed from glass or resin is mounted on the upper side of the touch panel. In this case also, when an air layer is present between the liquid crystal display panel and the touch panel, or between the touch panel and the front window, the quality of the image is reduced by the interface reflection. In order to prevent this, JP-A No. 83491/2008 describes a configuration in which an adhesive layer or anti-reflection coating is formed between the liquid crystal display panel and the touch panel, or between the touch panel and the front window.
A liquid crystal display panel can be protected from an external force by providing a front window. However, the strength of the liquid crystal display panel is very different depending on the position of the liquid crystal display panel. In other words, the liquid crystal display panel is formed in such a way that a TFT substrate and a counter substrate are bonded at a peripheral portion thereof by a seal material, with a liquid crystal interposed between the TFT substrate and the counter substrate. The TFT substrate is formed larger than the counter substrate. A terminal portion is formed in the portion of the TFT substrate extending further than the counter substrate, to which an IC driver is mounted and a flexible wiring substrate is attached. Further, an upper polarization plate is bonded to the upper side of the counter substrate while a lower polarization plate is bonded to the lower side of the TFT substrate, which is provided corresponding to the portion to which the upper polarization plate is bonded.
In order to meet the demand for reduction in the thickness of the liquid crystal display panel, the TFT substrate and the counter substrate are polished to a thickness of about 0.15 mm. Each of the upper and lower polarization plates has a thickness of about 0.13 mm. The polarization plate is formed from a resin which is stronger than the glass. Thus, the strength of the portion in which the counter substrate and the TFT substrate are bonded to each other is equivalent to the total thickness of the two glasses and the two polarizations. In contrast, the thickness of the portion of only the TFT substrate is 0.15 mm. Thus, the strength of the portion of only the TFT substrate is one fourth or less of the strength of the portion in which the TFT substrate and the counter substrate are bonded to each other.
Because the liquid crystal display panel has such a configuration, when an external force is applied to the liquid crystal display panel, the stress is concentrated in the portion of only the TFT substrate, in particular at the boundary between the area in which the TFT substrate and the counter substrate overlap with each other and the area of only the TFT substrate. As a result, a crack occurs in the TFT substrate at the boundary region. This problem is encountered both during and after production process of the liquid crystal display panel. | {
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Vehicle control systems may be configured to start an engine assuming a given intake manifold volume. However, interactions between vacuum levels in a brake booster and the intake manifold pressure at engine starts can cause variability in the air charge, and consequently air-to-fuel ratio at the engine starts. As such, this increases exhaust emissions.
One approach to address this variability is shown by Kayama et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,857,415. Therein, a valve is placed between the brake booster and the intake manifold to equalize the (remaining) pressure in the brake booster to atmospheric levels or to remove air from the intake manifold to the brake booster.
However, the inventors herein have identified a potential issue with such an approach. As one example, the valve used in the approach of Kayama et al. does not allow the level of intake manifold pressure (MAP) to be set from one engine start to another engine start. As another example, even with the valve, a consistent MAP level may not be attained at engine starts occurring at high altitudes as well as at sea level. Further, the valve may be controlled by a control system with electric signals which may increase an overall cost of production.
In one example, the issues described above may be addressed by an aspirator system comprising a volute-shaped aspirator with a linear aspirator protruding through a spiral of the volute aspirator, the volute aspirator comprising a first venturi passage and the linear aspirator comprising a second venturi passage and where the passages are fluidly coupled to a brake booster, and where the aspirators are fluidly coupled to front or rear grills with no other intervening components located therebetween. In this way, vacuum may be provided to the brake booster without flowing suck flow from the brake booster to an engine or any components of the engine.
As one example, the aspirators receive motive flow through the front grill and generate vacuum based on geometries of the linear aspirator, the volute aspirator, and a conical aspirator. The vacuum may be provided to the brake booster when the check valve is open based on a vacuum of the brake booster being less than a minimum threshold vacuum. The vacuum draws suck flow from the brake booster to the aspirator system. The suck flows mixes with the motive flow and flows through the aspirators and out the rear grill without flowing through any other components.
It should be understood that the summary above is provided to introduce in simplified form a selection of concepts that are further described in the detailed description. It is not meant to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, the scope of which is defined uniquely by the claims that follow the detailed description. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages noted above or in any part of this disclosure. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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PCR is an efficient and cost effective way to copy or ‘amplify’ small segments of DNA or RNA. Using PCR, millions of copies of a section of DNA are made in just a few hours, yielding enough DNA required for analysis. This method allows clinicians to diagnose and monitor diseases using a minimal amount of sample, such as blood or tissue. Real-time PCR allows for amplification and detection to occur at the same time. One method of detection is done by utilizing oligonucleotide hydrolysis probes (also known as TaqMan® probes) having a fluorophore covalently attached, e.g., to the 5′ end of the oligonucleotide probe and a quencher attached, e.g., internally or at the 3′ end. Hydrolysis probes are dual-labeled oligonucleotide probes that rely on the 5′ to 3′ exonuclease activity of Taq polymerase to cleave the hydrolysis probe during hybridization to the complementary target sequence, and result in fluorescent based detection.
Real time PCR methods can be used for amplifying and detecting sequence variations in target nucleic acids having single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). However, many of the available SNP detection/genotyping assays are based on the assumption that the SNP is biallelic (see, e.g., Morita et al., Mol. Cel. Probes, 2007, 21, 171-176). Detection of SNP with currently existing real time PCR methods lacks sufficient sensitivity and specificity. Hydrolysis probes, such as standard TaqMan® probes, are typically designed to be about 18 to 22 bases in length in order to have 8-10° C. higher melting temperature (Tm) as compared to the primer. Standard TaqMan® probes generally prove to be less specific and sensitive for SNP detection and fail to show complete discrimination between the WT (Wild-type) and the MT (Mutant) targets. Current TaqMan® based SNP genotyping assays involve the use of TaqMan® MGB (Minor Groove Binders) probes that are shorter in length with increased probe-template binding stability for allelic discrimination. Additional base modifications such as stabilizing bases (propynyl dU, propynyl dC) can also be included in standard TaqMan® probe design for improved SNP detection and discrimination. Thus there is a need in the art for a quick and reliable method to specifically detect SNPs in a sensitive manner. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Customers of various services often access information from the service providers via interactive voice response (IVR) systems. For example, a customer may call a particular telephone number, interact with an IVR system via voice communications and obtain the desired information. However, when the desired information is relatively lengthy or involves multiple pieces of information, it is often difficult for the customer to easily obtain all of the desired information via voice responses from the IVR system. Service providers may also send electronic communications, such as email messages or text messages, to customers' mobile devices to provide information of interest. For example, a service provider may send a text message to a customer at the end of a billing cycle with information identifying the amount owed for the month. However, when customers are looking for particular information regarding their account, it is often difficult for the customers to obtain the desired information in an efficient manner via a text message. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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A machine plant, such as for example a power plant for generating electricity, has an electrical generator and at least one turbine, the turbine driving the generator. For this purpose, the turbine and the generator are arranged on a common shaft train. It is possible to provide couplings in the shaft train in order to couple individual turbines into the shaft train or decouple them from the shaft train.
During the operation of the power plant, the generator feeds electricity into a power grid. Electrical disturbances in the power grid may have the effect that a torsional oscillation of the shaft train is induced by the generator. In the worst case, the shaft train may be induced to oscillate at one of its natural frequencies. Being induced to oscillate at a natural frequency has the effect of high torsional stress loading of the shaft train, which may lead to a reduction in its service life or to the formation of stress cracks. It is expected that the disturbances in the power grid will occur more frequently in the future, because the structures of the power grid are changing in the course of the transition to new forms of energy.
Conventionally, the loading of the shaft train is measured, by its rotational speed being measured with high resolution at a number of axial positions of the shaft train. The loading of the shaft train is then concluded from the differences in the rotational speeds at the different axial positions. However, in this method the measuring technique and the associated evaluation are complex. It is alternatively possible to measure oscillations in the electrical energy delivery of the power plant.
In the event that potential oscillations are identified in the energy delivery, no conclusions as to the actual loading of the shaft train can be drawn however.
DE 40 32 299 A1 describes a method for monitoring a rotatable component in which the oscillation excursion of the component in the radial direction in relation to the component and the rotational position of the component are measured time-dependently. EP 0 585 623 A2 describes a method for the early detection of a crack in a rotating shaft. DE 27 34 396 A1 describes a method for monitoring torsional oscillations on shafts in which the instantaneous power of the generator is measured. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Filling elements and filling machines for filling bottles or similar containers, in particular also for pressure-filling, are known in different embodiments.
For the purpose of the invention, the term “pressure-filling” is to be understood generally to mean a filling method wherein before the actual filling phase, i.e. before the opening of the liquid valve, the respective container that is to be filled and that lies with its container mouth in sealed position against the filling element is pre-stressed with a pressurised pressure gas (inert gas or CO2 gas) which the filling material flowing to the container then increasingly displaces as return gas from the container interior during filling.
For the purpose of the invention, “container in sealed position with the filling element” means that the respective container that is to be filled lies in the manner known to the skilled person with its container mouth pressed seal-tight against the filling element or against a seal at that location which encircles the at least one discharge port.
In the case of known filling elements, the pressure gas is delivered to the respective container and the return gas is taken away from the respective container over one and the same controlled gas path configured in the filling element, i.e. over a gas path in which a control valve is disposed. This is then for example part of a pneumatic control valve array and is controlled by at least one electrically controllable switching valve of a machine controller of the filling machine.
In order among other things to increase the output of a filling machine (number of filled containers per unit of time) while maintaining the gentle filling of the containers, it would make sense if the effective flow cross-section of the gas path for the pressure gas were greater than the effective flow cross-section of the gas path for the return gas, since on the one hand the time (cycle time) for pre-stressing can be reduced and on the other hand a filling speed that is optimum for gentle filling can be achieved in this way. For the purpose of the invention, “effective flow cross-section” means that flow cross-section which the respective gas path exhibits overall and which is essentially determined by the section (gas path section) of the gas path having the smallest cross-section.
This requirement for a larger effective flow cross-section for the pressure gas and at the same time for a reduced effective flow cross-section for the return gas cannot be satisfied by a single control valve in the common gas path for the pressure gas and the return gas.
Instead this would require at least two control valves with associated electrical switching valve, and this would mean a considerable complexity in terms of both design and in particular of circuit engineering and control engineering. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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