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FIG. 1 is a view showing a carriage arm assembly 10 of the related art, where the axis X1–X2 represents the longitudinal direction, the axis Y1–Y2 represents the width direction, and the axis Z1–Z2 represents the height direction. The carriage arm assembly 10 has a structure in which a signal relay member 30 is mounted on a sub-assembly 11.
First, an explanation is given to the sub-assembly 11. Generally, the sub-assembly 11 includes a carriage arm body 12, a head slider 13, a driving coil 14, a bearing member 15, and a head IC 16.
The carriage arm body 12 is made of metals, includes a cylindrical housing 12a, an arm portion 12b extending from the cylindrical housing 12a in the X1 direction, and a fork portion 12c extending from the cylindrical housing 12a in the X2 direction.
The head slider 13 includes a magnetic head 19 that is embedded in one end thereof by photolithography, and is installed in gimbals 17a of a suspension 17 on the X1 side. The other end of the suspension 17 on the X2 side is fixed at a spacer 18, and the spacer 18 is fixed at an end of the arm portion 12b. The suspension 17 has a handle 17a at the end of the suspension 17 on the X2 side; the handle 17a is on the Y2 side of the suspension 17, and is projecting in the Z1 direction. In the suspension 17, a wiring pattern 20 is formed between the gimbals 17a and the handle 17b. Terminals on the magnetic head 19 are electrically connected with terminals on one end of the wiring pattern 20. The other end of the wiring pattern 20 reaches the handle 17b, and functions as terminals 21. On the handle 17b, four terminals are arranged in a line. The terminals 21 are at positions at the same height as a long and narrow side surface 12b1 of the arm portion 12b.
The driving coil 14 is roughly a square, being fixed on the fork portion 12c. The bearing member 15 is installed in the housing 12a.
The head IC 16 is built on a flexible board 26, on which a wiring pattern and terminals 25 are formed. The flexible board 26 is bonded on a base metal plate 27.
The base metal plate 27 is screwed to a side surface of the housing 12a on the Y2 side. A U-shaped bending portion of the base metal plate 27 functions as a connector 28.
After the carriage arm assembly 10 is installed in the hard disk drive, the connector 28 is connected to a flexible cable connector extending from a printing board of the hard disk drive, and thereby, the head IC 16 is electrically connected to a hard disk controller on the printing board. Terminals 25 are at positions closer to the X1 side than the head IC 16, and arranged in a line at positions at the same height as the long and narrow side surface 12b1 of the arm portion 12b. So far, the structure of the sub-assembly 11 is described.
FIG. 2, FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 show the signal relay member 30.
The signal relay member 30 has a long and narrow shape in correspondence to the shape of the side surface 12b1 of the arm portion 12b, and a copper wiring pattern 32 and terminals 33 and 34 at ends of the wiring pattern 32 are formed on a polyimide flexible base 31 of the signal relay member 30. A polyimide flexible cover 35 is bonded on the flexible base 31 by using a polyamide adhesive agent 36 to cover the wiring pattern 32. A two-sided adhesive tape 37 with a protection sheet thereon is pasted on the flexible cover 35.
After the protection sheet is removed, as illustrated in FIG. 5, the signal relay member 30 is fixed up with the side surface 12b1 of the arm portion 12b of the sub-assembly 11, which is supported by an assembling fixture 40 with the bearing member 15 being supported by the assembling fixture 40, and as illustrated in FIG. 6, the signal relay member 30 is bonded to the side surface 12b1 by the two-sided adhesive tape 37, then is heated with solder, as illustrated in FIG. 7, so that the terminals 33 are bonded with the terminals 21, and the terminals 34 are bonded with the terminals 25. In this way, the carriage arm assembly 10 is manufactured.
The magnetic head 19 is electrically connected to the head IC 16 through the wiring pattern 20 and the signal relay member 30. The assembling fixture 40 is grounded to prevent static electricity.
The signal relay member 30 may become charged with static electricity if it is subjected to friction while being mounted. However, because the whole surface of the signal relay member 30 is made of polyimide, which is insulating, when being mounted, even when the signal relay member 30 is in contact with the metal arm portion 12b, the static electricity can hardly flow to the carriage arm body 12, and the signal relay member 30 sill possesses static electricity. When the terminals 33 are bonded to the terminals 21, the static electricity flows to the magnetic head 19 through the terminals 33, terminals 21, and the wiring pattern 32, and depending on the situation, the magnetic head 19 may be destroyed by the static electricity.
In addition, the mounting position of the signal relay member 30 on the side surface 12b1 of the arm portion 12b is not uniquely defined, thus bonding of the terminals 33 with the terminals 21 and bonding of the terminals 34 with the terminals 25 are troublesome, that is, operability is low.
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Inventory management, point-of-sale, and sale conversion are key challenges for individuals and retailers. Of particular interest are eliminating lines for payment and checkout processes and increasing the resolution of data associated with an individual consumer's shopping experience. Solving these problems will improve sales and consumer shopping experiences and create a novel means to control the flow of information in a retail environment.
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Electrical steel sheets alloyed with silicon or/and the like have been conventionally used for magnetic cores of electric motors, power generators, transformers, and the like. Among electrical steel sheets, non-oriented electrical steel sheets having relatively random crystal orientations can be manufactured at a low cost, to thus be used for motors, transformers, and the like of home electric appliances, and the like in a multipurpose manner. The crystal orientations of this non-oriented electrical steel sheet are random, thus making it impossible to obtain a high magnetic flux density. In contrast to this, grain-oriented electrical steel sheets having aligned crystal orientations can obtain a high magnetic flux density, to thus be applied to high-end use for driving motors and the like of HV vehicles and the like. However, in a manufacturing method of a grain-oriented electrical steel sheet that is industrialized currently, a long-time heat treatment is required, to thus increase the cost.
As above, in the non-oriented electrical steel sheet, a sufficiently high magnetic flux density cannot be obtained, and in the grain-oriented electrical steel sheet, the direction in which a high magnetic flux density can be obtained is limited to one to two direction/directions. On the other hand, in HV vehicles, and the like, achievement of high torque and downsizing are required, and there is a demand for manufacturing a metal sheet capable of obtaining a high magnetic flux density in an in-plane circumferential direction thoroughly as a metal sheet to be used for core materials of driving motors, and the like. Thus, as methods other than the industrialized manufacturing method of the grain-oriented electrical steel sheet, there have been proposed a technique of increasing an accumulation degree of a specific crystal orientation and various techniques of decreasing a core loss. However, in the technique described in Patent Literature 7, for example, it is possible to increase an accumulation degree of {200} planes, but directionality to a specific orientation occurs, to thus have a high magnetic flux density in a specific direction, but a high magnetic flux density cannot be obtained in an in-plane circumferential direction thoroughly, and the like, resulting in that in a conventional technique, satisfactory properties are not necessarily obtained.
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to rack mounted chassis systems employed in central offices. More particularly, this invention relates to mechanisms for preventing the propagation of fire through such rack mounted chassis systems.
2. Description of the Background Art
Often fire safety requirements prohibit the easy propagation of fire in central offices and other facilities where rack mounted chassis systems are often deployed. Specifically, the rack mounted chassis systems typically include a plurality of chassis that are mounted in aligned racks. Each chassis typically includes aligned vents to provide for the natural convection cooling upwardly through each of the chassis. Unfortunately, this path for natural convection cooling also creates a path or chimney for the propagation of fire.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an improvement which overcomes the aforementioned inadequacies of the prior art devices and provides an improvement which is a significant contribution to the advancement of the rack mounted chassis art.
Another object of this invention is to provide a shutter mechanism for blocking the propagation of fire through rack mounted chassis systems.
Another object of this invention is to provide a shutter mechanism comprising at least a pair of apertured shutters which are placed in an overlapping contiguous manner and moveable between (1) an aligned position (i.e., open) wherein the holes in the apertured shutters are aligned and (2) a blocking position (i.e., closed) wherein the holes in the apertured shutters are not aligned such that the shutter mechanism may be employed within rack-mounted chassis systems to allow the free-flow of air therethrough and upon sensing a fire condition, to block the propagation of fire therethrough.
Another object of this invention is to provide a shutter mechanism including alignable shutters of material having alignable holes therethrough, wherein such shutters are spring-loaded to be urged toward a non-aligned position, but held in such an aligned position by means of a fusible link which fuses upon exceeding a predetermined temperature whereupon the shutters are then urged to the non-aligned or closed position so as to stop the propagation of fire therethrough.
The foregoing has outlined some of the pertinent objects of the invention. These objects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the intended invention. Many other beneficial results can be attained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention within the scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, other objects and a fuller understanding of the invention may be had by referring to the summary of the invention and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment in addition to the scope of the invention defined by the claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
For the purpose of summarizing this invention, this invention comprises a shutter mechanism for minimizing the opportunity for fire to spread by shutting off the vents often used in a natural convection cooled chassis. It accomplishes this by reacting automatically to the intense heat build-up of a present flame.
More particularly, the automatic fire shutter mechanism of the invention is intended to be employed within rack-mounted chassis systems. The shutter mechanism comprises a pair of apertured shutters, each of which include a plurality of holes therethrough. The holes within the respective shutters are patterned so as to be capable of being aligned with each other to allow the free flow of air therethrough and such that when the holes are non-aligned, the air flow is blocked and there is no path for the free passage of fire therethrough.
In the preferred embodiment, the shutters are spring-loaded to constantly urge the shutters into a non-aligned or closed position, but are normally retained in an aligned or open position by means of a fusible link. The fusible link preferably comprises a heat-sensitive material which fuses (i.e., breaks or melts) when the temperature exceeds a predetermined amount, whereupon the spring mechanism then urges the shutters to a non-aligned position to block the passage of fire therethrough. Accordingly, the chimney effect that would normally occur in prior art chassis systems is blocked upon closing of the shutters to their non-aligned position.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the more pertinent and important features of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the invention that follows may be better understood so that the present contribution to the art can be more fully appreciated. Additional features of the invention will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the invention. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and the specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the appended claims.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of heat transfer and mass transfer. As used herein, heat transfer is the movement of energy that heats or cools a fluid (liquid or gas) or evaporates a liquid or condenses a vapor that must exchange through a gas/liquid, gas/solid, or liquid/solid interface or combinations thereof. Mass transfer is the movement of an evaporating liquid from the liquid phase into the gas phase or movement of the condensing vapor from the gas phase into the liquid phase.
2. Description of the Related Art
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,832,115, entitled Method and Apparatus for Simultaneous Heat and Mass Transfer, issued on May 23, 1989, and invented by the inventors of the instant invention; the use of segmented wetting of sectors of at least one chamber by a fluid in a chamber through which a gas is flowing and migratory movement of the fluid through the sectors of the chamber by the fluid in a configuration involving at least two chambers with a thermally conducting wall therebetween has been described. The referenced U.S. Patent provides a multiplicity of applications in which simultaneous heat and mass transfer can be used advantageously, e.g., temperature and humidity modification, purification, etc.
While the use of two thermally connected chambers has provided a suitable environment for the implementation of the transfer, this structure has provided increased complexity in fabrication, particularly when the dimensions of the chamber become critical. A need has therefore been felt for apparatus to implement simultaneous heat and mass transfer which involves a single chamber.
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The water pollution situation in China is severe. Many areas have suffered from long-term water pollution problem, which has seriously impaired the health of the residents and the sustainable development of industry. With the implementation of the new environmental law on Jan. 1, 2015, the requirement for deep treatment of wastewater is becoming more and more urgent in China, especially the treatment problem of the non-degradable industrial wastewater.
At present, the biological method formed by combination of aerobic and anaerobic technologies is the cheapest and most effective way to remove organic pollutants, however it is unable to treat the pollutants with high biological toxicity and subsequent physical and chemical processing units are needed. Advanced oxidation method is the most promising deep treatment method, comprising the generation of hydroxyl radicals with strong oxidizing ability through the addition of energy field, light radiation, and reagents, etc., to deeply mineralize the pollutants, the products of which are harmless water and carbon dioxide. Advanced oxidation method includes Fenton oxidation, photocatalysis, ozonation, wet catalytic oxidation, supercritical water oxidation, ultrasonic oxidation, etc. However, there are certain advantages and disadvantages for these various methods. For example, the Fenton oxidation is simple in processing flow and has strong oxidizing ability, but it requires an acidic environment and produces a large amount of iron mud. The photocatalysis is slow in reaction rate and cannot overcome the problem of high cost of industrial application in a short-term. The wet catalytic oxidation requires high temperature and high pressure, which is only suitable for the wastewater treatment process with very high concentration and small water volume. The ozonation is mild in operating condition and has strong oxidizing ability, thus it has found certain applications in the municipal sewage disinfection and industrial wastewater treatment, however, its efficiency and cost are required to be further improved.
There are two ways to improve the efficiency of the ozonation: the development of high performance catalyst and the design of new reaction processes. A large number of papers and patents disclose the development process of high performance ozonation catalyst, for example CN102029165A and CN102049253A published a method for preparing different ozonation catalysts suitable for water treatment, respectively. The new reaction process mainly refers to the coupling of ozone with other reaction separation processes, such as the combination of ozone with ceramic membrane filtration, photocatalysis, and hydrogen peroxide, etc., which can increase the oxidizing ability of the ozonation process to some extent.
CN101497014 discloses a novel ozone-photocatalysis fluidized bed reaction device and a water treatment method which uses at least two devices to regenerate the fluidized catalyst in water with the off-gas ozone through switching the reaction device, which solves the problems of catalyst contamination as well as pollution and waste of the off-gas ozone, etc., however, the utilization efficiency of ozone is low relative to the effect of water treatment.
CN201762164U discloses a method for suspending the activated carbon in the reactor with the gas stripping method, however, it is required to intercept the activated carbon particles when discharging water, and the activated carbon has strong absorption for the ultraviolet light, thus the photocatalytic efficiency is low.
The existing technology employs ozone photocatalysis to treat the industrial wastewater, which will produce a large amount of hydroxyl radicals, and the treatment efficiency will be impacted due to the ineffective annihilation with each other; although the ozone has strong oxidizing effect on the unsaturated bond-containing pollutants, the removal effect on the carboxylic acid intermediate products formed after the cleavage of double bonds is limited. On the other hand, the lifetime of the ultraviolet light tubes for photocatalysis is shorter, therefore the extensive use of ultraviolet light source will increase the treatment cost.
Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop an ozone-photocatalysis reactor in the art, which has higher reaction efficiency, strong processing effect on the sewage and low manufacturing cost.
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The invention relates to a method for loading and unloading large area transportation means, such as ships or the like, by means of a vertically spirally curved conveyor connected to goods loading and unloading means, in which the goods to be conveyed are discharged or taken up by a pivotable and optionally telescopical horizontal conveyor arranged on the lower end section thereof, as well as a goods transfer means for performing the method.
For performing methods of the aforementioned type, it is known to use vertical curved conveyors comprising spiral conveyor segments extending over a conveyor area of 360.degree., which can be motor-driven in reversible manner with respect to the conveying direction and are interconnected in module-like manner and fixed to a central supporting column and a supporting frame. The supporting column and frame are connected to an upper top part, which simultaneously serves as the goods transfer mechanism for goods loading and unloading means located outside the large area transportation means. On the lower end portion of the vertical curved conveyor is provided a horizontal conveyor, which is for example constructed as a telescopical conveyor belt with a reversible conveying direction, the end conveyor located on the free end portion being vertically pivotable for taking up or discharging goods. The lower spiral conveyor segment is associated with the horizontal conveyor having an invariable goods transfer section. This means that when the horizontal conveyor performs a pivotal movement, the lower spiral conveyor segment also rotates coaxially to the longitudinal axis of the vertical conveyor and the upper conveyor section of the lower spiral conveyor segment is displaced relative to the lower conveyor portion of the non-rotary spiral conveyor segment of the vertical conveyor located above the lower spiral conveyor segment. This leads to the disadvantage that the facing conveyor portions of the said spiral conveyor segments must undergo a height displacement relative to one another, so that a vertical conveyor constructed for loading the transportation space with goods cannot be immediately used for the unloading of said space, because the goods are placed on the lower conveyor portion of the non-rotary spiral conveyor segment. This problem similarly occurs if a vertical conveyor originally intended for unloading goods is used for loading goods. In such cases, it is necessary to avoid an accumulation of goods by transferring the same in a manual manner or by additionally installed auxiliary devices, which is prejudicial to speedy loading and/or unloading operations.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the detection of analytes present in a solvent stream and particularly to the performance of light absorption and fluorescence measurements to determine the chemical properties of small amounts of fluid analyte. More specifically, this invention is directed to analytical cells which are configured as flow-through detectors and especially to microchemical analysis instruments which employ a rigid aqueous liquid core waveguide as a flow cell through which a fluid analyte is directed while being illuminated whereby light absorption by the analyte or fluorescence induced in the analyte may be measured. Accordingly, the general objects of the present invention are to provide novel and improved methods and apparatus of such character.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ultraviolet (UV) and visible (Vis) light spectrometers, photometers and fluorometers are widely used as detectors in the fields of liquid chromatography (LC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high performance capillary electrophoresis (HPCE) and capillary electrophoresis (EC). Liquid chromatography applications, for example, are used to separate molecular species owing to their differing flow mobility. The spectrometers associated with chromatography and electrophoresis apparatii detect analytes which result from the separation of the molecular species.
UV/Vis spectrometers have long employed flow cells to detect analytes in liquid chromatography. In the prior art flow cell technology, axial illumination, i.e., illumination along the flow path of the analyte, has been commonly employed. Analytical instrument manufacturers have, for many years, unsuccessfully attempted to overcome two major deficiencies inherent in previously available flow-through spectrometers. A first deficiency relates to increasing utility by reducing analysis cell volume whereby only a small amount of sample fluid is required. The second, and somewhat contradictory problem, has been to increase instrument sensitivity by increasing the light path length to thereby maximize light interaction with the sample fluid. Employing the prior art materials and techniques, it has proven to be exceedingly difficult to increase the light path length without also significantly increasing the volume of the analysis cell. It has also proven very difficult to collimate light into a beam which is sufficiently fine so that the light can travel a long distance through the sample analyte. A long light path-length has, in fact, required resort to the use of a single wavelength collimated source such as a laser. The situation where only a single wavelength light will suffice for all of the measurements required on a given sample is highly unusual. Further, it is difficult and expensive to fabricate a flat window through which light can be externally introduced into a small flow-through analysis cell. In practice, the available light introduction windows have had the result of dispersing, i.e., defocusing, the incident light beam.
To briefly summarize the above, a common application for flow-through cells is the analysis of fluids emerging from chromatographic apparatus wherein analytes have been spatially separated owing to differences in the mobility of molecular species in fluid media. As another application, small volumes of a test analyte are injected into a carrier fluid, usually water, and the carrier fluid is then passed through a flow-through detector cell for analysis by light absorption or induced fluorescent measurements. The sensitivity of prior art optical flow-through detector cells is limited by the ability to ensure that the light path through the analyte is sufficiently long to allow the incident light to interact as fully as possible with the fluid sample. In the prior art this has necessarily implied that the sample volume required should be large and, in many cases, large volume samples are not obtainable. Further, even when a large volume sample is available, and thus a cell having an acceptably long light path length could be constructed, there were significant losses associated with introduction of the analysis light into the cell and the use of non-coherent light was thus generally considered impossible.
A number of techniques for solving the above-discussed long-standing problems have been proposed and in some cases implemented. For example, as shown in published European Patent Application No. 891067001, a flow cell with a light path length of 20 mm could theoretically be achieved through the use of a Z-shaped capillary. This approach, however, was unsuccessful in actual practice because too much of the analysis light, focused directly on one end of the capillary, was lost. High light loss, i.e., low light throughput, limits a flow cell to measurements using a single wavelength light only. Thus, even when the light path length was significantly reduced, Z-shaped capillary flow cells have not proven successful for scanning the full spectrum in the UV and Vis light range.
It should be noted that the use of capillary tubing for a cuvette and glass optical fibers for both illumination and light collection was reported by Vurek and Bowman in 1969, see Analytical Biochemistry, Vol. 29, pgs. 238-247. Such use of glass optical fibers allows the elimination of the window through which light is coupled to the sample and received from the sample. However, mere elimination of the window did not solve the light loss problem since the light travelling through the capillary was not collimated and, accordingly, the maximum path length was limited to about 10 mm.
Efforts to improve on the technique reported by Vurek and Bowman have concentrated on increasing the effective path length of capillary cuvette cells through the use of non-aqueous liquid core waveguide technology. In order for a liquid to function as a light waveguide, the walls of the containment for such liquid, i.e., the walls of the capillary tube, must have a refractive index lower than that of the liquid. Water, the principal solvent for biochemical analytes, has a refractive index of 1.33. Until very recently, there were no materials available which could be used to fabricate a capillary with a refractive index of less than 1.33. In the above-referenced co-pending application, applicant discloses an aqueous liquid filled capillary waveguide.
To continue to discuss the prior art, faced with the inability to employ water as the liquid core of a light waveguide, a number of alternative technologies were proposed. Thus, as reported by K. Fuwa et al in Analytial Chemistry, Vol. 56, pg. 1640, 1984, organic solvents with refractive indices higher than that of the glass wall of a capillary tube were employed to achieve a "long capillary cell" (LCC). Such utilization of organic solvents was reported to achieve an increase in absorbance of about 3.times.10.sup.4 times. This increase in absorbance, however, required a cell 50 meters in length. Futher, the Fuwa et al technique had very limited applicability because only a few liquid organic solvents, such as carbon disulfide and benzine, could be used. A particular disadvantage of using such solvents resides in the fact that their transmittance of UV light is very poor.
Attempts to improve the performance of instruments employing an LCC included coating the internal walls of the capillary with reflective material. Such approaches are discussed by P. Dasgupta in Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 45, page 1401, 1984 and by K. Fujiwara et al in Applied Spectroscopy, Vol. 44, pgs. 1084-1088, 1990. These "mirror" approaches did not prove to be successful since a maximum of about 92% reflection could be obtained. Accordingly, after only 100 wall bounce reflections, only 0.02% of the incident light intensity remained. Dasgupta et al reported nearly a million fold loss of light intensity in a glass capillary cell 10 mm long. Additional problems resulted from the fact that the internally coated silver, which was the favored mirror material, was not flat and would also react chemically with the organic solvents. As an alternative approach, it was suggested that the outer glass surface of an LCC be coated with aluminum to reflect light at the glass-air interface. Such a proposal is discussed by L. Wei et al in Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 55, pg. 951, 1983. As yet another possibility, reported by K. Tsunoda in Analytical Science, Vol. 4, pg. 321, 1988, the capillary glass-air interface was used as the total reflecting surface without any coating. In either case where reflection was from the outer surface of the glass capillary, it has been found that some light would pass many times through the sample, some light would travel further in glass than in the sample and some light would travel only in the glass. Accordingly, the resulting fluid light absorption was not a linear function of analyte concentration and was difficult to predict.
In recent years, it has been proposed to use a fluorocarbon material to define a capillary cell. The use of a fluorocarbon material with a refractive index in the range of 1.38 to 1.5, i.e., a refractive index greater than that of water, is discussed by K. Tusunoda et al in Applied Spectroscopy, Vol. 41, pgs. 163-165, 1990 and J. Taylor et al in the Journal of Chromatography, Vol. 550, pgs. 831-837, 1991. These prior uses of capillary cells comprised of fluorocarbon material required the addition of ethanol and ethylene glycol fluids to increase the refractive index of the sample fluid so as to cause it to be greater than that of the cell defining material.
Thus, after many years of attention by researchers, a basic problem remained, i.e., the necessity of employing organic solvents with refractive indices higher than that of the walls of the capillary cell. It must be noted that, in addition to preventing the use of water as a solvent, the employment of organic solvents results in the measuring instrument being refractive index sensitive. That it, when organic solvents are employed in a LCC utilized for light aborption measurements, the refractive index effect appears on the resulting chromatograms as baseline shifts and false peaks at points where mobile phase composition is changing rapidly. Such rapid changes in mobile phase composition may result during gradient elution and sample injection. Refractive index sensitivity is a serious problem in HPLC detection systems because many organic solvents of many different refractive indices are frequently used. An absorbance detector should not measure refractive index, but should instead measure only absorbance. In conventional prior art flow cells, the lower the refractive index of the carrier fluid, the more light that will be lost. A sudden change in the refractive index of the media in the cell will introduce a sudden change in the light intensity in the detector, giving a false absorbance signal. Many complicated methods have been used with varying degrees of success to reduce this refractive index effect.
It must also be noted that fluorescence detection faces the same problems as absorbance measurement as discussed above. In the case of florescence detection, to enhance sensitivity, the excitation path length should be long. It has been proposed to increase excitation path length through the use of Pyrex glass capillary tubing, having a refractive index of 1.474, and a high refractive index mobile phase (refractive index in the range of 1.5 to 1.6) to form a waveguide. Such a system is described in K. Fujiwara et al, Applied Spectroscopy, Vol. 6, pgs. 1032-1039, 1992. The system described in the referenced article has not proven to be a practical approach because many of the frequently used mobile phases in liquid chromotography have refractive indices lower than 1.474 and, accordingly, will not function as a light waveguide.
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Generally, with the increasing amounts of information being stored, it may be beneficial to efficiently store and manage that information. While there may be numerous techniques for storing and managing information, each technique may have tradeoffs between reliability and efficiency.
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“Ten prints” is a generic term used in the art to mean a set of fingerprints which may be taken either directly from a person's fingers or palms, or may be scanned from a print card. Prints taken directly are obtained by placing the fingers (and/or palms) on a scanner or by inking the fingers, etc. onto a paper card. Each print contains minutia features which have respective X-Y coordinate positions and angles of orientation as conventionally known in the art.
For many civil and criminal applications, such as identification verification, immigration control, etc., it is necessary to match the ten prints obtained from a person to ten print records stored in a database. In conventional automatic fingerprint identification systems (AFIS), the fingerprint features are captured from a person's ten prints to form what is termed a “search record”. In a similar manner, the fingerprint features extracted from ten print cards of known identities have been stored in a database as “file records.” To determine a match, a search record and the file records are compared in a fingerprint matcher microprocessor and matcher scores are determined as a measurement of how similar the compared minutiae are.
In the prior art, a minutiae matched score is determined for each of the ten fingers (or palm print) relating to the number of individual minutiae of that finger of the search record that compares to the minutiae of the same finger that is in the file record. The higher the score, the more similar the search and file prints are determined to be. The scores are then added for the compared fingers (that may be less than 10) of the search to the file records, and then dividing the score totals by the number of fingers compared, to thus obtain an average matched score. A sorted list may be compiled from candidate file records, and a subset of candidates are selected based on an average score threshold. This subset is then sent to an examiner for review to determine the correctness of the matched prints. Since each potential matched record must be visually verified, the selection of an accurate candidate list is quite important in the process. The amount of time and energy to review a large list of candidate records is a drain on resources that are becoming more stretched as the demand for fast and accurate identification services are required. If the list is too small, the mated candidate may not be in the list since the method of averaging matched scores does not take into account even if a pair of fingerprints is matched. Even if two of the compared finger pairs exhibit high match scores, lower match scores for the rest of the fingers may override the observed results. Thus lower match scores that may result because of operator differences in pressure or technique in obtaining the prints, smudging of the prints or background noise may cancel out the higher match scores for some of the fingers of the sets that are legitimate and valuable in determining the identification of an individual. Solutions to these problems, to date, have included increasing the number of manual examiners required to provide the identification results in a timely fashion or to forego accuracy in lieu of speed.
Thus, an enhanced system and method of identification using, for example, a ten print to ten print search that provides reliable decision logic and accuracy in the initial computer search of prints remains a goal in this area. It would be desirable to have an adaptive multi-level matching and decision logic system and a method that provides decision for the individual pairs of matched prints and records, that better utilizes the resulting scores in a progressive rather than an averaged score to more accurately obtain the desired identification and fast response time.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that elements in the Figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the Figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention.
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This invention relates to the treatment and correction of hemorrhoids, and more particularly to a minimally invasive procedure using a catheter-based system to intravenously deploy one or more electrodes for providing radio frequency (RF) energy, microwave energy, or thermal energy to shrink a dilated vein in order to change the fluid flow dynamics and to restore the competency of the venous valve and the proper function of the vein.
Incompetent valves in the venous system can occur with vein dilation. Separation of the cusps of the venous valve at the commissure may occur as a result thereby leading to incompetence. Another cause of valvular incompetence occurs when the leaflets are loose and elongated. Loose leaflets of the venous valve results in redundancy, which allows the leaflets to fold on themselves and leave the valve open. These loose leaflets may prolapse, resulting in reflux of blood in the vein. When the venous valve fails, there is an increased strain and pressure on the lower venous sections and overlying tissues sometimes leading to additional valvular failure.
Hemorrhoids are a common ailment involving dilated veins which can result in bleeding, itching, and pain. Hemorrhoids are dilated veins in and around the anus and lower rectum. Dilation may result from an increased pressure in the hemorrhoidal vein. Constipation, including the frequent straining to pass hard stools increases pressure in hemorrhoidal veins, is a common cause of hemorrhoids. Other contributing factors include pregnancy, a low fiber diet, and obesity. As the hemorrhoidal vein becomes more dilated from the increased pressure, the venous valves of the hemorrhoidal vein may begin to fail and become incompetent. This can exacerbate the dilation of the hemorrhoidal vein as reflux of blood is allowed in the vein by the open incompetent valve. The vein may eventually form a sac-like protrusion if the condition is allowed to persist. Hemorrhoids are generally classified as being either internal or external, depending on their location relative to the dentate line. The dentate line is easily identified as the demarcation between the pink mucosa that form the anoderm. The dentate line separates the internal and external hemorrhoid systems. Internal hemorrhoids are located inside the anus above the dentate line. External hemorrhoids are located below the dentate line. Either can extend out of the anus.
Straining or irritation caused by passing stool can injure the delicate surface of an internal hemorrhoid and cause bleeding. If the pressure and dilation of the hemorrhoidal vein continues, the internal hemorrhoids may prolapse and be forced through the anal opening. If a hemorrhoid remains prolapsed, considerable discomfort, including itching and bleeding, may result. The blood supply to these prolapsed hemorrhoids may become cut off by the anal sphincter, which gives rise to a strangulated hemorrhoid. Thrombosis may result where the blood within the prolapsed vein becomes clotted. This extremely painful condition can cause edema and inflammation.
Increased pressure in the portal venous system can also cause an increase in pressure of the superior hemorrhoidal vein (SHV) leading to an increased diameter of the hemorrhoid. The portal venous system allows venous drainage from the intestinal tissues to the liver, and can become hypertensive when the lever is cirrhotic.
The treatment methods for hemorrhoids include invasive surgery to remove the hemorrhoid, elastic ring ligation, sclerotherapy, and the application of topical ointments or suppositories. The surgical removal of extensive or severe hemorrhoids is known as a hemorrhoidectomy. This surgical procedure can be used on both internal and external hemorrhoids. However, such surgery typically involves a long recovery period, along with the associated risks and expense of invasive surgery.
Internal hemorrhoids may be treated by rubber band ligation, where a legator is inserted through a scope in the anal canal. The hemorrhoid is grasped with forceps in the legator and held in position. The legator includes a cylinder which is slid upwards and releases one or more rubber bands around the base of the hemorrhoid. A typical diameter for the rubber band is one millimeter. The band cuts off the circulation of blood to the hemorrhoid, and the hemorrhoid begins to wither away. Provided the rubber band remains in place, the hemorrhoid typically drops off within seven to ten days.
Sclerotherapy, another treatment for hemorrhoids, involves injecting a solution, such as sodium morrhuate or phenol oil, submucously into the areolar tissue around the hemorrhoidal vein to cause inflammation and scarring to eliminate the hemorrhoid. Other external treatments cause burning or coagulation to destroy the hemorrhoid. In infrared coagulation, infrared light may be applied to create a small tissue-destroying burn around the base of the hemorrhoid to cut off the blood supply to the hemorrhoid. Electrocoagulation, sometimes referred to as bipolar diathermy, may be utilized in a similar manner. In laser therapy, also known as vaporization, a laser beam causes a superficial burn to seal off the blood vessels and retain the hemorrhoid in a non-prolapsed position.
The prior treatments for hemorrhoids involving external ligation or excision of the hemorrhoid may not affect the underlying causes which gave rise to the hemorrhoidal condition initially. Thus the condition may recur.
A need exists in the art to treat dilated hemorrhoidal veins to reduce venous pressure on the hemorrhoidal region. Such treatment should maintain the functional patency of the vein and restore valvular competency at the origins of the hemorrhoids as well as within the hemorrhoid itself.
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The photocatalytic properties of the semiconductor material titanium dioxide result from the promotion of electrons from the valence band to the conduction band under the influence of ultraviolet (UV) and near-UV radiation. The reactive electron-hole pairs that are created migrate to the surface of the titanium dioxide particles where the holes oxidize adsorbed water to produce reactive hydroxyl radicals and the electrons reduce adsorbed oxygen to produce superoxide radicals, both of which can degrade NOx and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air. In view of these properties, photocatalytic titanium dioxide has been employed in coatings and the like to remove pollutants from the air. Such coatings may also have the advantage of being self-cleaning since soil (grease, mildew, mold, algae, etc.) is also oxidized on the surface.
In many applications, it is desirable for the titanium dioxide coating to be transparent in order to maintain the original appearance of the substrate (e.g., ceramic tile, paving block, siding, etc.) or its original transparency (e.g., window glass, car windshield, etc.). Titanium dioxide colloidal sols have proven to be a useful precursor material for forming such transparent coatings.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,420,437 to Mori et al, which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a neutral titanium dioxide colloid sol said to have high stability in a neutral range and which is capable of forming a colorless transparent coating even when dried at room temperature. The sol is produced by mixing an acid titanium dioxide sol comprising 50 to 100 parts by weight of titanium dioxide colloidal particles and 5 to 50 parts by weight of a chelating agent for titanium ions with 1 to 50 parts by weight of an alkaline substance comprising at least one of alkali metal compounds and amine compounds, and optionally by adjusting the pH value of the liquid mixture to 5 to 10, or adjusting the pH value of the liquid mixture to 6 to 10, and then applying a deionization treatment to the mixture to thereby charge the titanium dioxide colloidal particles with negative electricity.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,627,336 to Ohmori et al., the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, describes an aqueous dispersion of titanium oxide particles, which are preferably predominantly comprised of brookite titanium oxide particles, comprising chloride ion, and a Bronsted base other than chloride ion, preferably nitrate ion and/or phosphate ion. The aqueous titanium oxide dispersion is prepared by hydrolyzed titanium tetrachloride in the presence of at least one kind of a Bronsted acid. Thin films formed from the aqueous titanium oxide dispersion are said to exhibit good photo-catalytic activity, transparency and adhesion to a base material.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,824,826 to Amadelli et al., the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, relates to the use of photocatalytic preparations of colloidal titanium dioxide optionally doped with a metal chosen from groups I-VA, and the lanthanide and actinide series of the periodic table, for preserving the original appearance of cementitious, stone, and marble products. Preparation of colloidal titanium dioxide by the controlled hydrolysis of titanium isopropoxide with nitric acid is provided in Example 1 of that patent.
U.S. Patent Pub. 2004/0241502 to Chung, Hoon et al., the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, relates to a method of manufacturing a neutral and transparent titanium dioxide colloid solution wherein titanium dioxide nano particles are dispersed, and a titanium dioxide colloid solution prepared by the method. In one method for preparing the sols, a titanium compound and a stabilizer are added to alcohol, neutralized by adding a basic solution, and then heated at a temperature of above 75° C. for more than 7 hours. The titanium compound can be, among others, tetraisopropanol titanium (titanium isopropoxide) and among the numerous stabilizers, glycolic acid is said to be suitable. The neutral titanium dioxide colloid solution prepared by the method are said to be stable and transparent.
Despite these advances in the art, there is considerable room for improvement as each of the known sols is not without its disadvantages. It is therefore an object of the invention to provide sols comprising photocatalytic titanium dioxide which are transparent. It is also and object of the invention to provide such transparent titanium dioxide sols which are stable over an extended period of time. It is a further object of the invention to provide novel methods for preparing such stable, transparent sols which are readily implemented on a commercial scale.
The foregoing discussion is presented solely to provide a better understanding of nature of the problems confronting the art and should not be construed in any way as an admission as to prior art nor should the citation of any reference herein be construed as an admission that such reference constitutes “prior art” to the instant application.
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In many computing systems, low-level instruction code, or firmware, is used as an intermediary between the hardware components of the computing system and high-level software executing on the computing system, such as an operating system. The firmware provides a set of software routines that allow high-level software to interact with the hardware components of the computing system using standard calls. Configuring the firmware requires the use of complex operations, tools and utilities that are platform and operating system specific.
In some environments, such as in server farms, firmware may need to be updated for computers that lack consoles or that are remotely located. A baseboard management controller (BMC) attached to the motherboard of a computer can allow the firmware of the computer to be configured using keyboard, video, and mouse redirection. However, BMCs are not practical for small computer systems such as small servers, desktops and laptops, or any other scenario without a BMC or with a BMC with limited functionality. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.
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Cephalosporin antibiotics have recently achieved considerable success in the treatment of infectious diseases of man. This particular class of antibiotics has been prepared by two known general procedures. In the first of these methods, cephalosporin C is produced by culturing the organism Cephalosporium acremonium, Newton and Abraham, Biochem. J., 62, 651 (1956). Cleavage of the cephalosporin C 2-aminoadipoyl side chain according to the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,188,311 affords 7-aminocephalosporanic acid (7-ACA). Acylation of 7-ACA with an appropriate acid halide or mixed anhydride yields the expected 7-acylaminocephaloporanic acid. The cephalosporin antibiotics obtained from cephalosporin C according to this method are derivatives of cephalosporanic acid which are substituted at the 3-position of the cephalosporin nucleus with an acetoxymethyl group. According to the cephem nomenclature system for cephalosporins, the cephalosporin antibiotics obtained from cephalosporin C are named 7-acylamido-3-acetoxymethyl-3-cephem-4-carboxylic acids.
The second method by which the cephalosporin antibiotics are prepared involves the ring expansion of the thiazolidine ring of a penicillin. In this procedure, described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,275,626, the fused B-lactam ring of the penicillin molecule remains intact. This chemical conversion is carried out by heating a penicillin sulfoxide compound in the presence of an acidic reagent, such as acetic anhydride, to obtain predominantly a 7-acylamino-3-methyl-3-cephem-4-carboxylic acid ester (a desacetoxycephalosporin) and a 7-acylamino-3-methyl-3-acyloxycepham-4-carboxylic acid ester. Also produced in this chemical conversion is a 2-acyloxymethylpenicillin, otherwise designated as a 6-acylamino-2-methyl-2-acyloxymethylpenam-3-carboxylic acid ester.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,275,626 additionally discusses the possibility of converting a penicillin sulfoxide by heating it in the presence of any one of various acidic reagents. The ultimate relative proportions of the products resulting from such reactions depend to some extent upon the particular acid which is employed, with the substituents present in the acid, as well as the particular structure and relative strength of the acid having some effect on the product mix formed.
PRODUCED: CARRYING OUT THE REACTION OF A PENICILLIN SULFOXIDE ESTER WITH THIONYL CHLORIDE, IT HAS BEEN FOUND THAT THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS ARE AMONG THOSE PRODUCED; ##SPC1##
And ##SPC2##
And ##SPC3##
It further has been found that a 2.alpha.-methyl-2.beta.-halomethyl penam (I) is unstable and gradually rearranges to the corresponding 3.beta.-halo-3.alpha.-methylcepham of the formula ##SPC4## [See, e.g., Netherlands Pat. No. 7,208,671.] This rearrangement occurs spontaneously at room temperature over a period of time ranging from several days to several months depending on the particular compound and the conditions to which it is subjected. The rearrangement can be greatly accelerated by subjecting the penam to an elevated temperature, for example, from about 50.degree.C. to about 100.degree.C., under which conditions, the rearrangement can be accomplished in as little as one hour. Conversion to the corresponding 3.alpha.-methyl-3.beta.-halocepham can also be effected by maintaining the unstable penam in a suitable inert solvent on a chromatographic column for a period of from about 24 to about 72 hours and then eluting the cepham product from the column.
Generally, the 2.beta.-bromomethyl penam compounds undergo such a rearrangement more rapidly than the corresponding 2.beta.-chloromethylpenam compounds.
It has been shown that a 6-imido-2-methyl-2-chloromethylpenam-3-carboxylic acid ester can be prepared from the corresponding 3-hydroxy-3-metylcepham such as designated by Formula III, by reacting said 3-hydroxy compound with thionyl chloride in the presence of triethylamine at elevated temperatures [S. Kukolja and S. R. Lammert, J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 94, 7169 (1972) ]. Attempts at preparing 6-acylamino-2-methyl-2-halomethylpenam-3-carboxylic acid esters from the related 3-hydroxy substituted cepham compounds under similar reaction conditions resulted in recovery of starting materials. Thus, the 6-acylamino-2-methyl-2-halomethylpenam-3-carboxylic acid esters have been inaccessible through previously described procedures which have been successfully applied to the preparation of the corresponding 6-imido-2-methyl-2-halomethylpenam compounds.
Briefly, in accordance with this invention, it has now been discovered that it is possible to convert a 7-acylamino-3-hydroxy-3-methylcepham-4-carboxylic acid ester having the structure depicted by Formula III (R=RCONH--) to a 6-acylamino-2.alpha.-methyl-2.beta.-halomethylpenam-3-carboxylic acid ester (I), an intermediate useful in the preparation of active desacetoxycephalosporin antibiotics.
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The need to separate vapors from gases is common to many industries, and is often among the most difficult separation processes. A common technique is absorption, wherein the vapor is absorbed by a liquid, resulting in the vapor being dissolved, condensed, or desublimated into the liquid. While this does result in gas/vapor separation, it adds an extra separation step, as the vapor now has to be removed from the liquid.
Another technique is to condense or desublimate the vapor onto a solid substrate in a fluidized bed or lift pipe. Fluidized beds and lift pipes are complicated and prone to operational issues.
Shot towers operate by the principle of dropping metal pellets down a tower while spraying the pellets with a molten liquid, the molten liquid building up the pellet to a larger size. While these are useful, they are not designed for vapor removal from a gas.
A process and device for desublimating a vapor out of a gas without these deficiencies is needed.
Brigham Young University Scholars Archive publication, “Cryogenic Carbon Capture using a Desublimating Spray Tower,” a thesis by Nielson, published under supervision of the Applicant, teaches cryogenic carbon capture utilizing a shot tower. The present disclosure differs from this prior art disclosure in that the prior art disclosure utilizes metal shot, cooled to cryogenic temperatures, to capture carbon dioxide by desublimation, not sub-cooled pellets of the same material as the vapor. Further, the prior art disclosure has no crushing or screening of the pellets, as the pellets are not of the same material as the vapor, and so recycle in this manner would not be effective. This prior art disclosure is pertinent and may benefit from the devices and methods disclosed herein and is hereby incorporated for reference in its entirety for all that it teaches.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,287,029, to Dowdell, teaches a method for making shot. The present disclosure differs from this prior art disclosure in that the prior art disclosure involves producing shot or powder from a liquid spray, not by desublimation of a vapor. This prior art disclosure is pertinent and may benefit from the devices and methods disclosed herein and is hereby incorporated for reference in its entirety for all that it teaches.
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Hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1) originally cloned from hematopoietic progenitor cells is a member of MAP kinase kinase kinase kinases (MAP4Ks) family, which includes MAP4K1/HPK1, MAP4K2/GCK, MAP4K3/GLK, MAP4K4/HGK, MAP4K5/KHS, and MAP4K6/MINK (Hu, M. C., et al., Genes Dev, 1996. 10(18): p. 2251-64). HPK1 is of particular interest because it is predominantly expressed in hematopoietic cells such as T cells, B cells, macrophages, dendritic cells, neutrophils, and mast cells (Hu, M. C., et al., Genes Dev, 1996. 10(18): p. 2251-64; Kiefer, F., et al., EMBO J, 1996. 15(24): p. 7013-25). HPK1 kinase activity has been shown to be induced upon activation of T cell receptors (TCR) (Liou, J., et al., Immunity, 2000. 12(4): p. 399-408), B cell receptors (BCR) (Liou, J., et al., Immunity, 2000. 12(4): p. 399-408), transforming growth factor receptor (TGF-βR) (Wang, W., et al., J Biol Chem, 1997. 272(36): p. 22771-5; Zhou, G., et al., J Biol Chem, 1999. 274(19): p. 13133-8), or Gs-coupled PGE2 receptors (EP2 and EP4) (Ikegami, R., et al., J Immunol, 2001. 166(7): p. 4689-96). As such, HPK1 regulates diverse functions of various immune cells.
HPK1 is important in regulating the functions of various immune cells and it has been implicated in autoimmune diseases and anti-tumor immunity (Shui, J. W., et al., Nat Immunol, 2007. 8(1): p. 84-91; Wang, X., et al., J Biol Chem, 2012. 287(14): p. 11037-48). HPK1 knockout mice were more susceptible to the induction of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) (Shui, J. W., et al., Nat Immunol, 2007. 8(1): p. 84-91). In human, HPK1 was downregulated in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of psoriatic arthritis patients or T cells of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients (Batliwalla, F. M., et al., Mol Med, 2005. 11(1-12): p. 21-9). Those observations suggested that attenuation of HPK1 activity may contribute to autoimmunity in patients. Furthermore, HPK1 may also control anti-tumor immunity via T cell-dependent mechanisms. In the PGE2-producing Lewis lung carcinoma tumor model, the tumors developed more slowly in HPK1 knockout mice as compared to wild-type mice (see US 2007/0087988). In addition, it was shown that adoptive transfer of HPK1 deficient T cells was more effective in controlling tumor growth and metastasis than wild-type T cells (Alzabin, S., et al., Cancer Immunol Immunother, 2010. 59(3): p. 419-29). Similarly, BMDCs from HPK1 knockout mice were more efficient to mount a T cell response to eradicate Lewis lung carcinoma as compared to wild-type BMDCs (Alzabin, S., et al., J Immunol, 2009. 182(10): p. 6187-94). These data, in conjunction with the restricted expression of HPK1 in hematopoietic cells and lack of effect on the normal development of immune cells, suggest that HPK1 may be an excellent drug target for enhancing antitumor immunity. Accordingly, there is a need for new compounds that modulate HPK1 activity.
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Some integrated circuits such as a micro-controller have a built-in CR oscillating circuit (or ring oscillator) on a chip, and a clock signal for the micro-controller is supplied from the built-in oscillating circuit. This is because in the case of an oscillating circuit using a crystal resonator or ceramic resonator, the start-up time which means the time from power is turned on until the output frequency of the oscillating circuit stabilizes is long, and it is sometimes desirable to use a CR oscillating circuit, a ring oscillator, or the like having a shorter start-up time as a clock source, even with a decrease in the accuracy of oscillation frequency. More specifically, for applications that frequently repeat starting and stopping of an oscillating circuit, a waiting time occurs at the start-up of the oscillating circuit, and it is sometimes desirable from the viewpoint of overall system performance improvement to reduce the power consumption during this waiting time. Also, an on-chip oscillating circuit is sometimes used for the purpose of cost reduction as well.
FIG. 1 is a circuit diagram of a CR oscillating circuit. In the CR oscillating circuit, IV1, IV2, and IV3 each denote an inverter, C1 and C2 each denote a capacitor, R1 denotes a resistor, ND1 to ND4 each denote a node within the oscillating circuit, and GND denotes a ground potential (0 V). The waveform of each of the nodes ND1, ND2, and ND3 is the output waveform (rectangular wave) of a CMOS circuit. The waveform of the node ND4 is such that owing to capacitive coupling between the nodes ND2 and ND4, at the time of a potential change of the node ND2, the potential of the node ND4 changes in the same direction as the node ND2, and is thereafter gradually charged/discharged by the potential of the node ND3 and the resistor R1.
FIG. 2 is a circuit diagram of another oscillating circuit. In FIG. 2, IV1 and IV4 each denote an inverter, C1 and C2 each denote a capacitor, NMn (n is an integer) denotes an N-channel MOS transistor, and PMn (n is an integer) denotes a P-channel MOS transistor. In FIG. 2, Vdd denotes a positive power supply voltage (for example, 3 V), GND denotes a ground potential (0 V), NDn (n is an integer) denotes a node within the oscillating circuit, VBGR denotes a constant voltage (for example, 2 V) generated from a band gap circuit, PB denotes the bias potential of a P-channel MOS transistor PM1, and NB denotes the bias potential of an N-channel MOS transistor NM2.
In the circuit illustrated in FIG. 2, nodes and elements corresponding to those of the circuit illustrated in FIG. 1 are assigned the same symbols to make their correspondence clear. In the circuit illustrated in FIG. 2, a node ND5 at one end of the capacitor C1 is driven by an inverter (transistors PM3 and NM3) with the constant voltage VBGR as the power supply, thereby controlling the signal amplitude of the node ND5 to be constant irrespective of temperature. In order to achieve a design in which frequency is independent of temperature, the circuit is so configured as to make the current flowing through transistors PM2 and NM1 constant independent of temperature. The bias potentials PB and NB are such potentials that make the current flowing through the transistors PM2 and NM1 constant.
The bias generation circuitry for generating the bias potentials PB and NB is all integrated on a semiconductor chip, and the circuit configuration as described below is adopted to generate a temperature-independent current. To generate a constant current, the potential generated by flowing a current through a resistor, and a reference voltage are made to coincide with each other by feedback control. By taking the temperature dependence of an on-chip resistor into account, temperature dependence is imparted to the reference voltage. The circuit is designed so that by imparting a positive temperature dependence to the reference voltage such that as the resistance becomes larger with a rise in temperature, the reference voltage also becomes larger with temperature, the temperature dependence of the resistor is cancelled out by the temperature dependence of the reference voltage, thereby ensuring that current is independent of temperature. The above-mentioned circuit realizes an oscillating circuit whose oscillation frequency is constant with respect to temperature and power supply voltage.
Although the circuit illustrated in FIG. 1 succeeds in achieving an oscillation frequency that is independent of power supply voltage by use of the capacitors C1 and C2 and the resistor R1, the circuit has a drawback in that if the resistor R1 is dependent on temperature, it is difficult to suppress fluctuation of oscillation frequency. In the case where the resistor R1 is integrated into a semiconductor chip, for example, it is practically difficult to reduce the temperature dependence of the resistor R1 below a certain level. Also, when the values of the resistor R1 and capacitors C1 and C2 fluctuate owing to manufacturing variations, so does oscillation frequency. That is, the circuit illustrated in FIG. 1 has the following problems: when the values of the resistor R1 and capacitors C1 and C2 fluctuate owing to manufacturing variations, oscillation frequency also fluctuates; and when the value of the resistor R1 varies owing to temperature fluctuation, oscillation frequency fluctuates.
The circuit illustrated in FIG. 2 aims to cancel out the temperature dependence of a resistor by the temperature dependence of a pre-designed built-in reference voltage, and generate the bias potentials PB and NB for charging/discharging the capacitors C1 and C2 at constant current, thereby mitigating temperature variation of oscillation frequency. However, an error is present in the actual output potential VBGR of a reference voltage generation circuit. This error also causes the temperature dependence of the potential VBGR to become slightly positive or negative depending on each individual circuit manufactured. Even more ideally, even when the circuit is configured so as to make the current flowing through the transistors PM2 and NM1 constant independent of temperature, because an error is also present in this portion, the temperature dependence of the charging/discharging current for the capacitors C1 and C2 does not become exactly the same as a designed value, either. Furthermore, the delay time of the inverters IV1 and IV4 is also dependent on temperature and each individual circuit manufactured, and thus becomes the cause of an error in the temperature characteristics of oscillation frequency.
In the circuit illustrated in FIG. 2, even if it is attempted to control the current that charges the capacitors C1 and C2 to be constant by means of the bias potentials PB and NB, when the node ND4 changes from low level to high level, the transistor NM1 turns OFF, so the drain potential of the transistor NM2 becomes the ground potential GND. Since a parasitic capacitance is present at the drain of the transistor NM2, when the node ND4 changes from high level to low level, the discharging current for the node ND4 does not become exactly the same as the current set by the bias potential NB. An extra electrical charge equivalent to the parasitic capacitance at the drain of the transistor NM2 being charged from the ground potential GND to a given potential is discharged from the node ND4. Likewise, the parasitic capacitance at the drain of the transistor PM1 also becomes the cause of an error in the setting of current.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 63-304702 discloses an oscillating circuit configured so that, in a ring oscillator in which a plurality of stages of gates are serially connected and the gate output of the last stage is fed back to the gate input of the first stage to thereby excite oscillation, a transfer gate is inserted in between adjacent gates, and the transfer gate is connected to a control potential that may be made variable in an analog manner.
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The present invention relates to an impeller comprising an alloy including effective amounts of platinum, cobalt, and boron for use in a blood pump such as a rotary Ventricular Assist Device (“VAD”).
Clinical applications of Ventricular Assist Devices (“VADs”) to support patients with end-stage heart disease, as a bridge to cardiac transplantation, or as an end stage therapeutic modality have become an accepted clinical practice in cardiovascular medicine. It is estimated that greater than 35,000 persons suffering from end stage cardiac failure are candidates for cardiac support therapy.
VADs may utilize a blood pump for imparting momentum to a patient's blood thereby driving the blood to a higher pressure. In particular, a rotary VAD is a blood pump containing an electromagnetically coupled impeller that spins to assist the patient's circulatory system.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/072,471, filed Feb. 26, 2008, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference into this application, provides an example of an intravascular rotary VAD that may be implanted in the patient to provide assistance in pumping blood for hearts that are afflicted with congestive heart failure or the like. This intravascular rotary VAD is a miniaturized VAD that has many uses due to it's small size. This miniaturization has made possible new techniques for less invasive implantation which in expected to shorten recovery times for patients following surgery.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2007/0078293 A1, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference provides an example of a blood pump impeller including a platinum-cobalt alloy that is magnetizable to a high degree and may be manufactured as a single piece.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,983,230, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference describes a magnetic platinum-cobalt-boron alloy having high coercivity for various uses.
By this invention, an improved blood pump impeller is provided for use in, for example, a rotary VAD. It has been found that an impeller comprising an alloy including predetermined amounts of platinum, cobalt, and boron results in an impeller that is highly effective and has superior magnetic, mechanical, and biocompatible properties. These superior properties make possible further miniaturization and streamlining of a VAD pump than has previously been impossible in the VAD industry.
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In the process for forming images utilizing the electronic photography, a photosensitive member is uniformly charged with static electricity, an electrostatic latent image is formed by exposing the uniformly charged member to light so that the electrostatic charge in the exposed portions is dissipated, the latent image is made visible by development by attaching a toner to the electrostatic image, the visualized image is transcribed to a material such as paper, and the transcribed image is fixed by a means for fixing such as heating. The process for the development includes the single component process using a single type of a magnetic or non-magnetic toner and the double component process using two types of powder materials that are a toner and a carrier. The apparatus can be made smaller and simpler in the development in accordance with the single component process. In particular, the development in accordance with the non-magnetic single component process has a characteristic in that color toners providing bright images can be used.
In an apparatus for forming images by development in accordance with the non-magnetic single component process, hydrophobic silica is frequently added to the mother toner particles so that the amount of the electrostatic charge of the toner on the development roller is kept uniform during printing for a long period of time. When silica alone is added externally, background becomes high and the electrostatic charge tends to be unstable under fluctuations in the environment. To overcome these problems, titanium oxide, barium titanate, strontium titanate or magnetite is added externally.
For example, as the negatively charged toner which exhibits excellent stability of the electrostatic charge during repeated uses and under fluctuations in the environment, exhibits excellent property for transcription to paper and reproducibility of black color and can overcome the problem of filming to the photosensitive member and blurred dots during fusing, a negatively charged toner which contains a polyester-based resin as the binder resin and a boron-based chelate compound as the charge control agent and to which hydrophobic silica and a metal titanate are added from the outside in amounts such that the ratio of the amounts by weight of hydrophobic silica to the metal titanate is 5:1 to 1:1.2, is proposed. It is described that the decrease in the amount of electrostatic charge under an environment of a high temperature and a high humidity can be prevented and the stability of electrostatic charge under fluctuations in the environment can be improved by using hydrophobic silica and a metal titanate (Patent Reference 1). However, when hydrophobic silica and a metal titanate are added externally to the mother particles of a toner, aggregates of hydrophobic silica and the metal titanate tend to be formed. The formed aggregates tend to be separated from the toner particles to contaminate members of the printer such as the charge roller and the development roller, and print defects such as background and starvation of filled images tend to arise.
As the non-magnetic single component toner which can provide excellent density of formed images and suppress staining of the background simultaneously, a non-magnetic single component toner which contains 0.2 to 5 parts by weight of barium titanate formed in accordance with the liquid phase process and having a BET specific surface area of 0.5 to 5.0 m2/g per 100 parts by weight of the toner, is proposed (Patent Reference 2). However, since barium titanate having a BET specific surface area of 0.5 to 5.0 m2/g has a great particle diameter, barium titanate tends to be separated from the toner particles during repeated printing for a long period of time. Therefore, reproducibility of dots and narrow lines decreases, and the consumption of the toner increases.
Many of the recent apparatuses for forming full color images have a member for intermediate transfer, and transferability of the toner is important. Toner particles having a spherical shape is more advantageous from the standpoint of improving the transfer rate than toner particles having a sharp shape such as toner particles obtained by mixing and pulverization since the toner particles having a spherical shape have smaller areas of contact with the photosensitive member and the member for the intermediate transfer and exhibit smaller force of adhesion.
The toner particles having a spherical shape has another advantage in that the particles can be more uniformly charged. In the development using a non-magnetic single component toner, a thin layer is more easily formed on the development roller and the electrostatic charge is more easily stabilized when the toner particles having a spherical shape are used.
As the toner particles having a spherical shape, toner particles prepared in accordance with the suspension polymerization process or the emulsion polymerization process with aggregation and toner particles prepared by rounding toner particles obtained in accordance with a conventional process of mixing and pulverization by a heat treatment, are known. The toners prepared in accordance with the polymerization process have problems in that agents used in the polymerization such as surfactants are left remaining on the surface of the toner and adversely affect the property for electrostatic charge of the toner and that a very great amount of the initial investment in the apparatus is required. The toner prepared in accordance with the suspension polymerization process has a further problem in that, when the toner left remaining on the photosensitive member after the transcription is cleaned with an elastic blade, incomplete cleaning tends to take place since the shape of the particles is almost perfectly spherical,
Examples of the toner formed by rounding by the heat treatment include a toner described in Patent Reference 3 [Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Heisei 11 (1999)-295929]. However, the agents added from the outside tend to be separated since the surface of the toner particles is smooth and wax is present on the surface in a significant amount. It occasionally takes place that the wax component works as the binder, and the agents added from the outside contaminate the development roller and the charge roller. [Patent Reference 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Heisei 11 (1999)-133669 [Patent Reference 2] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-107999 [Patent Reference 3] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Heisei 11 (1999)-295929
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In cloud computing design, numerous tools exist to create and deploy applications in cloud environments. For example, application provisioning tools facilitate cloud computing designers to create and standardize application deployment topologies on infrastructure clouds. Some application provisioning tools include graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that enable designers to generate application deployment topologies called application blueprints, which define structures and configurations of applications. Some applications include multiple nodes corresponding to different aspects of the application. Application provisioning tools enable deploying an application onto any selected one of a number of cloud environments. However, when a cloud environment is selected in an application provisioning tool, all nodes of the application are deployed on the same cloud environment. As such, prior application provisioning tools allow designers to deploy an application in a particular cloud environment based on the application blueprint such that all nodes of that application are deployed in the same cloud environment.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a matching circuit chip, a filter with a matching circuit and a duplexer mainly used for high-frequency apparatuses such as cellular phones.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a duplexer comprises a high-impedance transmission line 2004 connected between a receiving filter 2006 and an antenna terminal 2002, and a high-impedance transmission line 2005 connected between the antenna terminal 2002 and a transmitting filter 2007 as shown in FIG. 21. Each of the transmission lines 2004 and 2005 is used to reverse the phase of the pass band frequency of its mating filter, thereby to obtain a high impedance condition at high frequencies. The transmission line 2004 is set so that the impedance of the receiving filter 2006 becomes open at the pass band frequencies of the transmitting filter 2007, and the transmission line 2005 is set so that the impedance of the transmitting filter 2007 becomes open at the pass band frequencies of the receiving filter 2006. As a result, a signal to be transmitted from the transmitting terminal 2003 to the antenna terminal 2002 is not affected by the receiving filter 2006, and a signal to be transmitted from the antenna terminal 2002 to the receiving terminal 2001 is not affected by the transmitting filter 2007. The circuit is thus used as a duplexer operating at a desired band.
In this kind of conventional duplexer, lines are required to be formed within a substrate having a low dielectric constant so that the transmission lines thereof have a sufficiently high impedance, thereby causing a problem of making the lengths of the lines longer and making the size of the duplexer larger. In addition, in the case when chip components are used instead of the transmission lines to form a matching circuit, problems are also caused; the number of components increases, and a frequency band wherein impedance matching can be attained becomes narrow.
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Protein kinases are enzymes that catalyze the phosphorylation of hydroxyl groups of tyrosine, serine, and threonine residues of proteins. Many aspects of cell life (for example, cell growth, differentiation, proliferation, cell cycle and survival) depend on protein kinase activities. Furthermore, abnormal protein kinase activity has been related to a host of disorders such as cancer and inflammation. Therefore, considerable effort has been directed to identifying ways to modulate protein kinase activities. In particular, many attempts have been made to identify small molecules that act as protein kinase inhibitors.
The c-Met proto-oncogene encodes the Met receptor tyrosine kinase. The Met receptor is a 190 kDa glycosylated dimeric complex composed of a 50 kDa alpha chain disulfide-linked to a 145 kDa beta chain. The alpha chain is found extracellularly while the beta chain contains transmembrane and cytosolic domains. Met is synthesized as a precursor and is proteolytically cleaved to yield mature alpha and beta subunits. It displays structural similarities to semaphorins and plexins, a ligand-receptor family that is involved in cell-cell interaction. The ligand for Met is hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), a member of the scatter factor family and has some homology to plasminogen (Longati, P. et al., Curr. Drug Targets 2001, 2, 41-55); Trusolino, L. and Comoglio, P. Nature Rev. Cancer 2002, 2, 289-300].
Met functions in tumorigenesis and tumor metastasis. Expression of Met along with its ligand HGF is transforming, tumorigenic, and metastatic (Jeffers, M. et al., Oncogene 1996, 13, 853-856; Michieli, P. et al., Oncogene 1999, 18, 5221-5231). MET is overexpressed in a significant percentage of human cancers and is amplified during the transition between primary tumors and metastasis. Numerous studies have correlated the expression of c-MET and/or HGF/SF with the state of disease progression of different types of cancer (including lung, colon, breast, prostate, liver, pancreas, brain, kidney, ovaries, stomach, skin, and bone cancers). Furthermore, the overexpression of c-MET or HGF have been shown to correlate with poor prognosis and disease outcome in a number of major human cancers including lung, liver, gastric, and breast. c-MET has also been directly implicated in cancers without a successful treatment regimen such as pancreatic cancer, glioma, and hepatocellular carcinoma.
Met mutants exhibiting enhanced kinase activity have been identified in both hereditary and sporadic forms of papillary renal carcinoma (Schmidt, L. et al., Nat. Genet. 1997, 16, 68-73; Jeffers, M. et al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 1997, 94, 11445-11500). HGF/Met has been shown to inhibit anoikis, suspension-induced programmed cell death (apoptosis), in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells. Anoikis resistance or anchorage-independent survival is a hallmark of oncogenic transformation of epithelial cells (Zeng, Q. et al., J. Biol. Chem. 2002, 277, 25203-25208).
Increased expression of Met/HGF is seen in many metastatic tumors including colon (Fazekas, K. et al., Clin. Exp. Metastasis 2000, 18, 639-649), breast (Elliott, B. E. et al., 2002, Can. J. Physiol. Pharmacol. 80, 91-102), prostate (Knudsen, B. S. et al., Urology 2002, 60, 1113-1117), lung (Siegfried, J. M. et al., Ann. Thorac. Surg. 1998, 66, 1915-1918), and gastric (Amemiya, H. et al., Oncology 2002, 63, 286-296). HGF-Met signaling has also been associated with increased risk of atherosclerosis (Yamamoto, Y. et al., J. Hypertens. 2001, 19, 1975-1979; Morishita, R. et al., Endocr. J. 2002, 49, 273-284) and increased fibrosis of the lung (Crestani, B. et al., Lab. Invest. 2002, 82, 1015-1022).
Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) belongs to the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) superfamily of protein kinases. ALK expression in normal adult human tissues is restricted to endothelial cells, pericytes, and rare neural cells. Oncogenic, constitutively active ALK fusion proteins are expressed in anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) and inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors (IMT) due to t2; chromosomal translocations. ALK has also recently been implicated as an oncogene in a small fraction of non-small-cell lung cancers and neuroblastomas (Choi et al, Cancer Res 2008; 68: (13); Webb et al, Expert Rev. Anticancer Ther. 9(3), 331-356, 2009).
Anaplastic large-cell lymphomas (ALCLs) are a subtype of the high-grade non-Hodgkin's family of lymphomas with distinct morphology, immunophenotype, and prognosis. ALCLs are postulated to arise from T cells and, in rare cases, can also exhibit a B cell phenotype. In addition, there are 40% of cases for which the cell of origin remains unknown and that are classified as “null”. First described as a histological entity by Stein et al. based on the expression of CD30 (Ki-1), ALCL presents as a systemic disease afflicting skin, bone, soft tissues, and other organs, with or without the involvement of lymph nodes. ALCL can be subdivided into at least two subtypes, characterized by the presence or absence of chromosomal rearrangements between the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene locus and various fusion partners such as nucleophosmin (NPM). Approximately 50-60% of cases of ALCL are associated with the t(2;5;)(p23;q35) chromosomal translocation, which generates a hybrid gene consisting of the intracellular domain of the ALK tyrosine kinase receptor juxtaposed with NPM. The resulting fusion protein, NPM-ALK has constitutive tyrosine kinase activity and has been shown to transform various hematopoietic cell types in vitro and support tumor formation in vivo. Other less frequent ALK fusion partners, e.g., tropomyosin-3 and clathrin heavy chain, have also been identified in ALCL as well as in CD30-negative diffuse large-cell lymphoma. Despite subtle differences in signaling and some biological functions, all fusions appear to be transforming to fibroblasts and hematopoietic cells. ALK fusion proteins have also been detected in a rare form of malignancy called inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. Extensive analysis of the leukemogenic potential of NPM-ALK in animal models has further corroborated the importance of NPM-ALK and other ALK rearrangements in the development of ALK-positive ALCL and other diseases.
2-amino-pyridines, such as PF-2341066, have been reported as potent inhibitors of the HGF receptor tyrosine kinase (c-Met) and ALK (J. G. Christensen, et al. Abstract LB-271, AACR 2006 meeting; H. Y. Zou et al. Cancer Res 2007; 67: 4408; patent disclosures: WO 2004076412, WO 2006021881, WO 2006021886).
As there is still unmet need in treatment options for kinase mediated disease, it is desirable to create new and alternative approaches to addressing treatment and prevention of disease, disorders, or symptoms thereof.
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The present invention is directed towards improvements in ski boots and, more particularly, is concerned with a device that is incorporated in the ski boot and which makes it possible to vary the axial orientation in order to correctly align the boot in relation to the ski.
It is well known that a ski boot and, especially, the ski boot sole, must have high rigidity and mechanical resistance for the purpose of attaching the ski as firmly as possible to the skier's foot in order to successfully withstand the stresses transmitted through the bindings during, e.g., the carrying-out of a descent.
When a ski boot, of currently known design, is attached to the appropriate ski, the longitudinal axis of the body of the boot coincides with the longitudinal axis of the attached sole and with the longitudinal axis of the ski. In such a boot it is well known that the foot and the anklebone of the skier are locked in the boot rigidly. Consequently, during actual sport skiing using this equipment, the orientation of the foot of the skier is constrained to coincide with the axis of the ski, regardless of the congenital morphological characteristics of the skier's ankle and knee joints.
When the aforementioned constraint is applied to feet which, in their natural condition of rest, are of the so-called type "with retracted points" or "with convergent points" stresses will appear at these joints, particularly the knee joint, as the sports activities continue or become more technically difficult. These stresses are translated into sensations of pain, combined with inflammation of the tendons or of the ligaments and, in any case, with a gradually increasing feeling of fatigue.
In order to overcome this technical disadvantage, various ideas for the modification of the position of the boot in relation to the ski have been proposed which are intended to satisfy the morphological requirements of the skier. More particularly, it has been suggested that the angular position of the entire boot in relation to the ski be varied, by changing the position of the front part of the binding in a manner that may be, more or less, aligned. It has been recognized, however, that these attempts not only do not always overcome the aforementioned disadvantage, they also entail other technical disadvantages, such as the undesirable and not easily counteracted raising of the centrifugal force components along slightly curved paths. Consequently, the problem addressed by the present invention is to provide a device that can be incorporated into a ski boot and which makes it possible for the boot to be correctly aligned in relation to the ski resulting, at all times, in the most appropriate morphological position given the characteristics of the skier's feet and knees.
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Although some conventional liquid valves permit control of liquid temperature and volume flow rate by adjustment of a single control handle, they do so at the expense of requiring many components that are hard to manufacture and maintain, and often call for specialized maintenance personnel to perform many required repair and maintenance tasks. Furthermore, in bathroom installations wherein a shower head as well as a bathtub is being supplied with water, an additional water faucet capable of controlling temperature and flow rate of water supplied to the shower head must typically be installed, requiring a rather complicated arrangement which leads to waste of time, money and space.
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In recent years, an optical switch module, using a light deflecting element having an electro-optical effect, has been proposed (for example, refer to the U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,966).
Such an optical switch module has the following structure. As shown in, for example, FIGS. 1A and 1B, in the optical switch module, light deflecting elements 101 and 102, formed of electro-optical materials (for example, electro-optical crystals, such as PZT or PLZT), are mounted onto a slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100.
That is, as shown in, for example, FIGS. 1A and 1B, the slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100 has integrally formed, input channel optical waveguides (input channel optical waveguide array) 103 to which a light signal is input, collimator lenses (input-side lens array) 104 that convert the input light signal into parallel light (collimated light), a slab optical waveguide 105 that allows the light signal converted into the parallel light to propagate therethrough, light-converging lenses (output-side lens array) 106 that converge the light signal (propagating parallel light), and output channel optical waveguides (output channel optical waveguide array) 107 to which the light signal is output. A first light-deflecting element mounting opening 112, to which the light deflecting elements 101 are mounted, and a second light-deflecting element mounting opening 113, to which the light deflecting elements 102 are mounted, are formed in the slab optical waveguide array substrate unit 100. In FIG. 1B, reference numeral 111 denotes a core layer, reference numeral 114 denotes a lower clad layer, and reference numeral 115 denotes an upper clad layer.
The input-side light deflecting elements (first light-deflecting element array) 101 and the output-side light deflecting elements (second light-deflecting element array) 102 are formed by forming thin-film slab optical waveguides 109, formed of electro-optical materials (for example, electro-optical crystals, such as PZT or PLZT), onto respective conductive substrate units 108; by forming prism electrodes 110 on a surface of each slab optical waveguide 109; and by polishing end surfaces.
In the optical switch module, the input-side light deflecting elements 101 are mounted to the first light-deflecting element mounting opening 112 disposed between the collimator lenses 104 and the slab optical waveguide 105 at the slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100. The output-side light deflecting elements 102 are mounted to the second light-deflecting element mounting opening 113 disposed between the slab optical waveguide 105 and the light-converging lenses 106.
In the optical switch module having such a structure, application of a predetermined voltage to the prism electrodes 110 (formed at the input-side light deflecting elements 101 and the output-side light deflecting elements 102) results in the following. For example, as shown in FIG. 1A, light signals, input from the input channel optical waveguides 103 and converted into parallel lights by the collimator lenses 104, are deflected by the input-side light deflecting elements 101, propagate through the slab optical waveguide 105, are deflected again by the output-side light deflecting elements 102, are converged by the light-converging lenses 106, and are focused at the predetermined output channel optical waveguides 107. This causes a path of the light signal that is input from the input channel optical waveguide 103 to be switched, so that the light signal is output from the predetermined output channel optical waveguide 107.
An example of a method of manufacturing the optical switch module having the above-described structure is given below. First, as shown in, for example, FIG. 2A, a slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100 is formed so that input channel optical waveguides 103, an input-side lens array 104, a first light-deflecting element mounting opening 112, a slab optical waveguide 105, a second light-deflecting element mounting opening 113, an output-side lens array 106, and an output channel optical waveguide 107 are integrally formed. Next, as shown in, for example, FIGS. 2B and 2C, a first light-deflecting element array 101 and a second light-deflecting element array 102 are mounted to the light-deflecting element mounting opening 112 and to the light-deflecting element mounting opening 113 in a slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100, respectively. (For example, refer to the U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,966).
In this manufacturing method, since the number of joints that are joined with an adhesive is small, it is possible to restrict the influence resulting from positional displacement with time at the joints. For mounting the light deflecting element arrays 101 and 102 onto the slab optical waveguide substrate unit 100, active alignment is performed while monitoring the intensity of output light. During the active alignment, when light (monitor light, propagating light) that propagates through the slab optical waveguide is displaced from a predetermined traveling angle, the propagating light does not combine at the output channel optical waveguides 107, and positional adjustment of the output-side lens array (light-converging lens array) 106 cannot be carried out either. Therefore, it is difficult to perform the alignment (active alignment) of the first light-deflecting element array 101 and the second light-deflecting element array 102.
The causes of the angular displacement of the propagating light are, for example, polishing precision of the light deflecting elements and crystal characteristics (ununiformity in film thicknesses and refractive indices) of the light deflecting elements.
Another example of manufacturing the optical switch module is given below. For example, as shown in FIGS. 3A to 3D, each component making up the optical switch module is individually formed. The components are located where an input channel optical waveguide array 103 and an input-side lens array 104 are formed, the component where a first light-deflecting element array 101 is mounted, the component where a slab optical waveguide 105 is formed, the component where a second light-deflecting element array 102 is mounted, and the component where an output-side lens array 106 and an output channel optical waveguide array 107 are formed. These components are joined to each other with a butt-joint, so that the optical switch module is manufactured. (For example, refer to the U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,966).
In this manufacturing method, it is possible to join each component as a result of active alignment while monitoring the intensity of output light. However, the characteristics of the optical switch module may become deteriorated due to positional displacement with time at each joint. In particular, if the number of such joints is large, the characteristics of the optical switch module tend to be deteriorated due to positional displacement with time at each joint.
Accordingly, the related art has the problem that alignment by active alignment cannot be reliably performed due to an angular displacement of propagating light.
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The present invention generally relates to detecting devices and more particularly, to a pyroelecric type detecting device for detecting infrared rays or the like through their convergence by a converging mirror.
Generally, infrared sensors for detecting infrared rays are divided into a quantum type utilizing photoelectric effect of semiconductors and a thermal type utilizing thermoelectric effect or pyroelectric effect. The quantum type infrared sensors are quite highly sensitive. However, since response wavelength range of the quantum type infrared sensors is narrow and the quantum type infrared sensors are required to be cooled for detecting infrared rays, the quantum type infrared sensors are not widely used. On the other hand, detection sensitivity of the thermal type infrared sensors is low. However, the thermal type infrared sensors have such a feature as functioning at room temperature without dependence upon wavelength. Therefore, recently, the thermal type infrared sensors, especially the pyroelectric type infrared sensors are widely used in various fields.
The pyroelectric type infrared sensors are a kind of temperature sensors for detecting temperatures through utiliziation of pyroelectric effect that when temperature change is caused in pyroelectric crystals, electric charge is produced on the surfaces of the pyroelectric crystals upon spontaneous polarization. The pyroelectric type infrared sensors are used for detecting human bodies, flames and temperatures. As will be seen from the above described operational principle that temperature change is detected by electric charge produced on the surfaces of the pyroelectric crystals, the pyroelectric type infrared sensors have such drawbacks as high impendance and susceptibilty to external noises. Thus, in a pyroelecric type detecting device employing the pyroelectric type infrared sensor, it has been so arranged that a conveying mirror is provided in the vicinity of a mounting portion of the pyroelectric type infrared sensor so as to converge upon the pyroelectric type infrared sensor, infrared rays emitted by a source generating the infrared rays such that a signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio is increased.
In the known pyroelectric type detecting device referred to above, the pyroelectric type infrared sensor is secured to a frame or the like having the converging mirror attached thereto and the frame is angularly adjustably mounted such that a direction of incidence of infrared rays can be set arbitrarily. However, if the frame is angularly adjustably mounted such that infrared rays are set at a direction of incidence as described above, such problems arise due to relatively large size of the frame having the converging mirror attached thereto that a range of directions of incidence of infrared rays is restricted and a site for mounting the pyroelectric type detecting device is limited.
In order to eliminate such problems of the known pyroelectric type detecting device, it will be considered that the pyroelectric type infrared sensor smaller in size than the frame for the converging mirror is arranged to be moved relative to the frame so as to adjust the direction of incidence of infrared rays. However, in this case, a lead wire (usually, a shielding wire) extending from the pyroelectric type infrared sensor to an amplifier for amplifying an output of the pyroelectric type infrared sensor is displaced through positional adjustment of the pyroelectric type infrared sensor, thereby resulting in change of stray capacitance of the lead wire. The pyroelectric type infrared sensor has a high impedance as described above. Thus, when the stray capacitance of the lead wire changes, noise components inputted to the pyroelectric type infrared sensor vary and thus, such an inconvenience is incurred that an S/N ratio of an input signal to the amplifier changes according to adjusted positions of the pyroelectric type infrared sensor.
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An inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system can be used in a variety of microfabrication processes including substrate cleaning processes, surface conditioning processes, thin film deposition processes, etching processes, and cleaning processes, among other applications. In an ICP system, a generator supplies a radio frequency (RF) supply signal to an induction coil. The supply signal generates time-varying magnetic fields around the induction coil that then create electric currents through a process gas by way of electromagnetic induction. The electric currents supply the energy to generate the plasma from the process gas. An impedance matching network can be used to facilitate the transfer of power from the supply signal generator to the induction coil of the ICP system and thereby facilitate the formation of the plasma while minimizing the wasted reflected power and potentially reducing the risk of damage to a device being fabricated in the ICP system as well as damage to the ICP system components themselves.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a thermal power generator for generating electric power by utilizing a high heat source and a low heat source, and particularly improves an electric power generating effect by providing an evaporator, vapor-liquid separator, absorber and regenerator, increases thermal efficiency of the evaporator and condenser, and reduces the costs of constructing the apparatus.
2. Related Art Statement
An oceanic thermal power generator of this kind for obtaining electric power by utilizing a temperature difference between warm sea water at high temperature in an oceanic surface layer and cold sea water at low temperature in an oceanic deep layer has hitherto been constructed, by using an evaporator, a turbine connected to a generator, and a condenser as a main apparatus. Warm sea water is circulated through an evaporator, and cold sea water is circulated through a condenser. A working fluid is evaporated using a temperature difference between the warm and cold sea water, and condensed. A turbine is driven in this period to generate power. However, the warm sea water circulated through the evaporator is extracted from a surface layer of the ocean having a temperature as high as 15.degree.-33.degree. C., and plankton, spawn and dirt floated therein adhere to a heat transfer surface of the main apparatus, so that the thermal conductivity efficiency is disadvantageously lowered. As a general method of preventing stains for removing such disadvantage, there is a method of preventing planktonic stains by injecting chlorine into circulating sea water, or providing an electrode in circulated sea water and generating chloride by electrolysis. There is also a method of preventing any other stains by circulating sponge balls, brush and the like with circulated sea water through the main apparatus. However, since the thermal exchange temperature difference is small in oceanic thermal power generation, the amount of needed circulated sea water is enormous. As a result, such general methods of preventing stains produces problems such as high cost, environmental pollution and the like. That is, the method of using sponge balls, brush and the like requires many sponge balls and brushes, and results in a lowering of net output by increasing power consumption based on an increase of circulated resistance, and further results in an increase of the cost of the equipment and an increase of a power generation unit cost.
Therefore, the prior oceanic thermal power generator is not applicable to a general method of preventing stains and is disadvantageously high in cost.
The present inventors have invented an oceanic thermal power generator (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1,989/92) and a control device in oceanic thermal power generation (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 1,990/92).
In the oceanic thermal power generator of this kind, a Rankine cycle or regenerating cycle is formed by utilizing the so-called single component medium having high purity, such as ammonia, flon, water and the like as a working fluid.
In the known Rankine cycle, thermal efficiency is small, so that the areas of an evaporator and a condenser become enormous, and generating cost becomes expensive. In order to eliminate this disadvantage, a cycle utilizing a mixture of ammonia and water as a working fluid has been proposed. This is called "calina cycle". In this calina cycle, thermal efficiency becomes high as compared with the conventional Rankine cycle, but thermal efficiencies of the evaporator and condenser are lowered, so that there is a disadvantage of cancelling the increased thermal efficiency with the saving cost. Moreover, the whole amount of mixed vapor is passed through a condenser, an area of the condenser becomes larger than the ranking cycle, a flow rate of the low heat source increases, the cost for constructing a generator becomes high, and power for sending a low heat source and a high heat source becomes large, so that this cycle is not economically advisable.
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a spray head having a rotary nozzle.
2. Background of the Related Art
Spray heads are commercially available in numerous designs and configurations for use in showers, faucets, whirlpools, sprinklers, and industrial processes. While many spray heads are designed and sold for their decorative styling, there is a great number of different showerhead mechanisms which are intended to improve or change one or more characteristic of the water spray pattern. Any particular spray pattern may be described by the characteristics of spray width, spray distribution or trajectory, spray velocity, and the like. Furthermore, the spray pattern may be adapted or designed for various purposes, including a direct jet stream for massaging of muscles, a pulsed jet, or a more uniform soothing spray or jet, to name a few.
The vast majority of spray heads may be categorized as being either stationary or oscillating and having either fixed or adjustable openings or jets. Stationary spray heads with fixed jets are the simplest of all spray heads, consisting essentially of a water chamber and one or more jets directed to produce a constant pattern. Stationary spray heads with adjustable jets are typically of a similar construction, except that it is possible to make some adjustment of the jet opening size and/or the number of jets utilized. However, these types of jets provide a straight often piercing directed flow of water.
These stationary spray heads cause water to flow through its apertures and contact essentially the same points on a user's body in a repetitive fashion. Therefore, the user feels a stream of water continuously on the same area and, particularly at high pressures or flow rates, the user may sense that the water is drilling into the body, thus diminishing the positive effect derived from such a spray head. In order to reduce this undesirable feeling, various attempts have been made to provide oscillating sprayheads.
Examples of oscillating sprayheads include the showerheads disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,791,584 (Drew et al.), U.S. Pat. No. 3,880,357 (Baisch), 4,018,385 (Bruno), U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,457 (Brewer), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,664 (Heitzman). U.S. Pat. No. 4,944,457 (Brewer) discloses an oscillating showerhead that uses an impeller wheel mounted to a gear box assembly which produces an oscillating movement of the nozzle. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,664 (Heitzman) discloses a showerhead having a rotary valve member driven by a turbine wheel and gear reducer for cycling the flow rate through the housing between high and low flow rates. Both of these showerheads require extremely complex mechanical structures in order to accomplish the desired motion. Consequently, these mechanisms are prone to failure due to wear on various parts and mineral deposits throughout the structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,691,584 (Drew et al.) also discloses an oscillating showerhead, but utilizes a nozzle mounted on a stem that rotates and pivots under forces places on it by water entering through radially disposed slots into a chamber around a stem. Although this showerhead is simpler than those of Brewer and Heitzman, it still includes a large number of piece requiring precise dimensions and numerous connections between pieces. Furthermore, the Drew showerhead relies upon small openings for water passageways and is subject to mineral buildup and plugging with particles.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,927 (Lee) discloses a showerhead with an apparatus having a plurality of blades designed to produce vibration and pulsation. One blade is provided with an eccentric weight which causes vibration and an opposite blade is provided with a front flange which causes pulsation by momentarily blocking the water jets. Again, the construction of this showerhead is rather complex and its narrow passageways are subject to mineral buildup and plugging with particulates.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,547 (Golan et al.) discloses a shower head including a housing, a turbine and a fluid exit body, such that fluid flowing through the turbine causes rotation of the turbine. The rotating (spinning) turbine can be used to cause rotation of the fluid exit body and/or a side-to-side rocking motion in a pendulum like manner.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,438 (Meyer) discloses a sprinkler head having a housing with an inlet, a water distributing structure having a nozzle on one end and a cup shaped element at the opposite end which is operative in response to the tangential flow of water into the housing for effecting the orbital movement of the nozzle. There is also disclosed a disk that rotates in rolling contact with a surface within the housing for effecting the fractional rotation of the nozzle. The cup shaped element rotates about the longitudinal axis in response to the flow of water from the inlet.
A particularly useful action for a showerhead is referred to as "wobbling." The term "wobbling" may be defined as the motion of a circular member rolling on its edge along a surface following a circular path. A common example of wobbling is what occurs when a coin is spun on its edge over a smooth surface. The coin begins spinning or rotating in a vertically upright position, but as the coin slows, the coin begins to wobble along a circular path having an ever increasing diameter until the coin comes to rest on its face. While a wobbling motion will often be accompanied by some degree of rotation, a wobbling member will have points on its surface which experience a sequence of up and down motions as well.
Whirlpool baths are equipped with nozzles that cause the water in the bath to be turbulent and waving, preferably to impart a massaging of the skin and muscles or a gentle rocking of the body. This is typically accomplished with high pressure water jets that draw water from the bath and circulate it back into the bath at a high pressure and flow rate. However, due to the size of a typical whirlpool bath and the flow rates required to operate the whirlpool bath, there are typically about six or eight nozzles in a whirlpool bath. This finite number of nozzles causes general agitation of the bath water, but the water flowing from individual nozzles is fixed and may channel through the bath water in a fairly constant path.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved apparatus that delivers water in a continually changing manner, such as wobbling, rotating, and the like. It would be desirable if the apparatus were able to deliver water in the desired manner, even at low pressures or flow rates, perhaps those dictated or desirable for water or energy conservation. It would be further desirable if the apparatus provided a simple design and construction with minimal restriction to water flow and open conduits for reducing the possibility or extent of plugging.
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to a receptacle connector and, particularly, to a dustproof receptacle connector.
2. The Related Art
In the field of electronic connectors, a type of connector is designed with dustproof function in order to avoid the deterioration of electrical connection even short circuit, which are caused by contamination.
Japan patent NO. 2004-31186 issued on Jan. 29, 2004, disclosed a dustproof receptacle connector, which includes a female shield, a housing enclosed by the female shield, and a plurality of female contacts disposed in the housing. The housing has a receiving cavity with a front opening defined in a front surface thereof. A dustproof cover is slidably received in the receiving cavity for sealing the front opening, with two projecting pillars extending rearwards from the rear surface thereof. Correspondingly, two mounting holes are defined in a rear wall of the housing, and two springs are respectively positioned by one end of each spring retained on the corresponding projecting pillar of the dustproof cover and the other end of each spring infixed in the corresponding mounting hole of the housing. Each female contact has a conductive portion received in the receiving cavity for making electrical connection with a mating plug connector. Thus, when in use, the mating plug connector is inserted into the receptacle connector to push the dustproof cover sliding towards the rear wall of the housing with the springs against the dustproof cover being gradually compressed, so that the conductive portions of the receptacle connector are exposed out entirely of the dustproof cover for making electrical connection with the mating plug connector. When the mating plug connector is pulled out, the elasticity of the compressed springs pushes the dustproof cover to slide outwards to seal the front opening of the receptacle connector for protecting the conductive portions of the female contacts from contaminants such as dust, dirt or moisture.
However, in these prior connectors, each spring is positioned between the projecting pillar of the dustproof cover and the mounting hole of the housing only by two ends of the spring, so the main body of the spring easily oscillates laterally and cause the unsteady sliding of the dustproof cover as the mating plug connector being inserted into the receptacle connector, and furthermore the unsteady sliding of the dustproof cover results in bad dustproof function during the dustproof cover sliding back by the resilience of the springs to seal the front opening of the receptacle connector again. In addition, the springs will depart from the projecting pillars or the mounting holes in a condition of greater lateral deformation of the compressed springs. Therefore, the prior dustproof receptacle connector cannot provide a reliable dustproof function.
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The battery charging function of a mobile phone is closely related to safety in use of the mobile phone. Particularly, variations in voltage of the power grid and abnormal operations of the user may cause the battery charger to output a surge voltage. If the surge voltage surges into the mobile phone during the battery charging process, then a potential safety hazard will result.
Common battery chargers for mobile phones have only a limited self-regulating capability, and generally can only regulate voltage variations within a range of 30 kHz (Kilo Hertz) to 60 kHz. However, in practice applications, variations in voltage of the power grid may take place in some areas, or some users may connect the battery charger to a mobile phone firstly before the battery charger is plugged into a socket.
Both the two cases may incur voltage variations greater than 60 kHz, in which case the battery charger will be deprived of the self-regulating capability and output a surge voltage. For instance, at a moment when the battery charger is plugged into the socket, a surge voltage having a duration of 20 ns (nano seconds) and a peak-peak voltage value (Vpp) of 30 V will be outputted. This surge voltage will surge into the mobile phone to impact the mobile phone, which is very likely to cause damage to or have other adverse effects on the mobile phone.
Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown a charging circuit of a conventional mobile phone. The charging circuit comprises a charging port 101, a capacitor C0, a metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) transistor M0, a diode D0, a resistor R0 and a power management unit (PMU) 102. The charging port 101 has an output terminal connected to a first input terminal of the PMU 102, and the capacitor C0 has one end connected to the first input terminal of the PMU 102 and the other end grounded. The MOS transistor M0 has a source connected to the first input terminal of the PMU 102, a gate connected to an output terminal of the PMU 102 and a drain connected to the resistor R0 via the diode D0; and the resistor R0 is connected to a battery. Moreover, a cathode of the diode D0 is connected to a second input terminal of the PMU, and an anode of the battery B0 is connected to the second input terminal of the PMU 102.
In the aforesaid charging circuit of the mobile phone, no protection circuit against the surge voltage is provided. Consequently, once a surge occurs, the power input, individual control ports and the battery itself of the mobile phone will all be impacted. Although there are over voltage protection (OVP) devices available in the market, the OVP devices have a reaction time of about 5 μs and, thus, cannot provide effective protection against the surge. Moreover, the OVP devices have a high cost.
Accordingly, there is still room for improvement and advancement of the surge protection technologies of the prior art mobile terminal.
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1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to training spoken dialog systems and more specifically to generating user models with automatically transcribed dialog data.
2. Introduction
Under ideal conditions, designers of dialog managers in spoken dialog systems would try different dialog management strategies on the actual user population that will be using the spoken dialog system and select the one that works best. However, users are typically unwilling to endure this kind of extensive experimentation because users typically view protracted experimentation as too time consuming, boring, or pointless. One alternative to this tedious experimentation is to build a model of user behavior. Then designers can experiment as much as needed to refine the dialog manager in the spoken dialog system using the model without troubling actual users. Of course, only a high-quality user model which accurately reflects user actions can provide relevant and useful results for such experiments. One known method of building a user model is to estimate a model based on transcribed corpora of human-computer dialogs. However, hundreds or even thousands of transcriptions are required and manual dialog transcription is expensive. Worse, user simulations are created for whole user populations instead of for individuals because of limited quantities of transcribed data for individual users. Consequently, these corpora are frequently too small, too sparse, and/or not specific enough for practical use. Further, spoken dialog system designers must often periodically evaluate the spoken dialog system with real users, which is also expensive and time-consuming.
In the prior art, a human transcriptionist listens to each of hundreds or thousands of user utterances and manually enters the words that were spoken. These transcriptions allow prior art systems to estimate user behavior model and the ASR model to create user simulations. The user behavior model takes the dialog history as input and predicts a distribution over user actions (such as answering a question, remaining silent, hanging up, etc.), and the ASR model takes the user action as input and predicts a distribution over ASR results (such as whether an error is made, a confidence score, etc.).
In practice, ASR errors are isolated and independent, so it is feasible to build the ASR model with relatively few parameters (fewer than a thousand transcriptions is often sufficient). However, user behavior depends heavily on the dialog history, and capturing this in the user behavior model requires much more training data.
One problem with the prior art approach is that transcribing dialog data is slow and expensive, so the number of transcriptions available for training the user behavior model is limited. As a result, user behavior models are impoverished, and cannot effectively account for dialog history. Moreover, these user behavior models cover a whole population of users, and do not model individual differences. Since dialog systems are trained on user simulations, these limitations set an upper-bound on the effectiveness of the optimization process. To realize the potential gains of machine-learning approaches to building dialog systems, user behavior models need to be estimated from many more dialogs than can feasibly be transcribed.
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1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to infusion pumping systems for medical use in intravenous therapy, and more particularly to a disposable pump set adapted to cooperate with a rotor assembly block to provide a peristaltic pump action.
In modern medical practice, patients in hospitals and in other facilities are in many cases treated for various maladies with medicaments and nutritional substances dissolved in a liquid carrier. These therapeutic solutions are infused directly into a vein or artery of the patient by a process generally designated as intravenous (IV) therapy.
The simplest embodiment of an IV infusion system takes the form of a solution container supported at an elevated position relative to the patient to be treated to provide gravity flow through a flexible pipe leading to a catheter inserted in the patient. The rate of fluid flow is set by an adjustable clamp in the fluid line, flow rate being indicated by a drip chamber just below the container. By counting the number of drops which fall during a given interval, the attendant obtains an approximate reading of flow rate.
A gravity feed IV system leaves much to be desired; for while the physician treating the patient will specify a particular solution for IV therapy and indicate the volume of solution to be administered, as well as the flow rate of infusion, it is difficult for the nurse to comply with this prescription unless she carefully monitors the gravity-feed system to be sure it is operating in the desired manner. Since a nurse has other pressing duties, she may not be able to give the system the repeated attention it demands.
To obviate the drawbacks incident to gravity-feed IV systems, it is known to employ electronically-controlled, motor-operated peristaltic pumps to feed a prescribed volume of IV solution into a patient at a carefully regulated flow rate. The clinical use of such infusion pumps is now commonplace in intensive care and special care hospital facilities for patients who require IV infusion with a degree of accuracy and reliability that cannot be realized with a gravity feed system.
When using an IV pumping system, one must exercise care to minimize the risk of air embolism. Thus, should the pump still be in operation after the container is emptied of its solution, the pump will then proceed to infuse air into the patient, and this may have serious consequences. Moreover, air, rather than solution, may be pumped into the patient should the peristaltic pump chamber included in the pump set be ruptured or separated from its fittings.
One commercially available IV infusion pump system is the "Extracorporeal" Model 2100 infusion pump manufactured by Extracorporeal Medical Specialties, Inc., of King of Prussia, Pa. The main component of this system is a solid state motordriven device for controlling the rate of flow during the administration of IV fluids. The device makes use of a rotarytype pumping action employing a single size pump chamber for all flow rates.
In the Extracorporeal system, the pumping action is effected by means of a detachable plastic rotor assembly and an independent IV pump set having integral therewith a silicon-rubber tube function as the pump chamber. This pump chamber is joined to the rotor assembly which is provided with a set of rollers, pressure between the rollers and the stator wall of the assembly acting to occlude the flexible pump chamber and thereby trap the fluid therein.
As the rotor is turned by the internal motor, the points of occlusion then advance to progressively push the fluid through the pump chamber, flow rate being controlled by adjusting the speed of the motor. Because the IV pump set is independent of the rotor assembly, it affords a sealed, sterile fluid pathway. The set is disposable after a single 24-hour use in compliance with existing medical requirements.
Another commercially-available IV system is the "Simplicity" volumetric infusion pump system manufactured by Critikon, Inc., of Tampa, Fla. The "Simplicity" system, which is generally similar in structure and function to the system marketed by Extracorporeal, also includes an independent pump set having a flexible pump chamber which cooperates with a rotor assembly to define a peristaltic pump for forcing a therapeutic fluid into the patient at a controlled rate. It further includes an alarm that is activated if the fluid container is empty, or if the tubing in the set is kinked or is dislodged from the rotor assembly.
In the "Simplicity" system, an empty bottle condition is sensed by a flow detector placed in the upper portion of the drip chamber so that it will detect the absence of fluid from the bottle while there is still fluid in the line. But no protective means are provided in this or any other commercially-available system for sensing the presence of air in the line at the outlet side of the pump chamber leading to the patient.
Thus, in practice, air may be drawn into the relatively delicate pump chamber if it is torn or punctured, or separated from its fittings. A flow detector which senses air resulting from the absence of fluid flow from the container will not give an alarm should air be entrained into the pump chamber from which it will be pumped into the patient and give rise to air embolism.
Another source of danger in an IV infusion pumping system lies in the possibility that the independent pump set which cooperates with the rotor assembly may inadvertently be installed therein in reverse; that is to say, with its outlet connector placed on the inlet side and its inlet connector placed on the outlet side of the rotor assembly. In this event, instead of infusing a therapeutic solution into the patient, blood will be drawn out of the patient. No provision is made in systems of the type heretofore known to positively preclude this possibility, which is sometimes referred to as a "Vampire" action.
Another problem heretofore experienced with systems which make use of an independent pump set is the difficulty of joining the set to the rotor assembly. While experienced personnel may be able to correctly install the set, this is not true of the more typical hospital attendant.
2. Prior Art
Systems which include motor-controlled pumps in an IV system to feed a solution intravenously in a patient are disclosed in the following patents:
______________________________________ Moulinier 2,483,924 1949 Ferrara et al. 2,102,523 1937 Lee 2,804,023 1957 Daniels 2,909,125 1959 Cantor 3,138,104 1964 Hahn 3,137,242 1964 ______________________________________
Among the patents which disclose electronic control equipment to govern the operation of the pump motor in an IV system are the following:
______________________________________ Jess et al. 4,217,993 1980 Willock 3,848,592 1974 Weishaar 3,799,702 1974 Shim 4,278,085 1981 Brown 4,256,437 1981 ______________________________________
The following patents relate tot he structure of peristaltic pumps;
______________________________________ Lepp et al. 4,142,845 1979 Casson et al. 4,184,815 1980 Spinosa et al. 3,927,955 1975 Hankinson 3,963,023 1976 ______________________________________
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(i) Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to hair cosmetics and more particularly, to hair cosmetics of the type which comprise flavanol derivatives by which they can impart to the hair a suitable degree of style retentivity and good touch or texture with easy combing performance.
(ii) Description of the Prior Art:
Hair style is one of the most important factors in beauty art and a variety of beauty treatments are effected thereon. For instance, techniques for imparting a suitable degree of wave to the hair by the use of hair cosmetics include so-called permanent treatments by permanent wave set and transient treatments such as by set lotion, hair spray and the like. These treatments are used to dress the hair. However, treatments by perm have a possibility of considerably impairing the hair to a state of showing little progress toward recovery. Treatments such as with set lotion, hair spray and the like merely set the hair transiently, with a drawback in that set hair readily loses its shape when exposed to moisture. Both types of treatments are not satisfactory. Additionally, these treatments have the tendency of rendering the hair hard and are not satisfactory with respect to the touch of the hair.
For the purpose of removing stain deposited on the hair, shampoos are used, but commercially available shampoos wash away, in addition to the stain, oils necessary for the hair, leading to unfavorable phenomena such as split ends, broken hairs and the like upon brushing of the hair. In order to overcome this disadvantage, hair rinses, preshampoos and the like are employed, some of which are compounded with oils and fats, rendering the hair sticky.
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1. Field of the Invention
The resent invention relates to a camera with a date recording device for recording date and time on a film, and, more particularly, to a date recordable camera which is capable of operating in at least two modes.
2. Description of Related Art
Typically, various types of photographic cameras which have functions for recording date and/or time on a film are known. Such a date recordable camera typically incorporates therein a date recording device having a clock circuit, a liquid crystal display (LCD) device for displaying figures representative of date and/or time, a liquid crystal display (LCD) device serving as a pattern exposure mask for exposing a figure pattern of date and time to a film, and an illumination lamp. A transparent pattern display panel of the pattern exposure liquid crystal (LCD) device is disposed in contact with a surface of the film and illuminated from the back by the illumination lamp. While the LCD device displays thereon a series of figures representative of a date and/or a time counted by the clock circuit, the pattern exposure LCD device forms a transparent pattern of the series of figures through which light from the illumination lamp passes to expose the film, recording an image of the figure pattern on the film.
Date and time counted by the clock circuit and displayed on the LCD device is adjustable through a plurality of externally operated date switches including a display mode selection switch, a digit position selection switch, an adjusting switch and the like. In many instances, the display mode selection switch gives a selection among a date mode in which "year," "month" and "day" are displayed on the LCD device, a time mode in which "hour" "minute" and "second" are displayed on the LCD device, and the like. The term "digit position" used herein shall refer to one of positions of figures representative of "year," "month," "day," "hour," "minute" and "second".
Ordinarily, the camera has various other switches such as a flash exposure selection switch, an automatic focusing selection switch, a self-exposure selection switch and the like. As described above, the prior art cameras equipped with date recording devices have a number of switches which leads to an increased number of breakdowns and might be an obstacle to making such a camera lighter and smaller.
According to another aspect of the prior camera equipped with a date recording device, since the clock circuit includes a time memory which is in many instances comprised of a volatile random access memory (RAM), when power supply to the clock circuit is interrupted during battery replacement of batteries, the time memory loses its contents. In such a case, the date must be reset after the replacement of batteries. However, since the camera is automatically placed into an inoperative mode upon removal of batteries from the camera and removes the display of date on the LCD device, it is difficult to perceive whether or not date has been reset after the replacement of batteries.
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This invention is related to the testing of audio equipment and, in particular, analog to digital converters (ADC), digital to analog converters (DAC), digital audio processors or recorders, audio amplifiers, and the like.
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Recently, single-stranded multimode and single-mode optical fibers have seen increased application in communications and many other related systems. Consequently, the fabrication of optical fiber circuit elements, such as access couplers for interconnecting separated terminals, has gained in importance. Several successful methods for producing low-loss access couplers using multimode single-stranded optical fibers have been developed. Two rather simple procedures relied upon in the fabrication of low-loss access couplers (excess loss of the order of 1 dB) for multimode fibers were recorded by Barnoski and Friedrich in the Applied Optics 15, 2629 (1976) and by Ozeki and Kawasaki in Applied Physics Letters 28, 528 (1976).
The first method employs a CW CO.sub.2 laser to fuse two sections of multimode fibers side-by-side. The power coupling transmission coefficient was 6.6%. The second method uses two biconically tapered multimode fibers to form a coupler by cementing these fibers side-by-side with an optical adhesive. The two biconical sections are produced by pulling a multimode fiber while it is being heated by a circular tungsten wire (such a technique is disclosed in the article appearing in Applied Physics Letter 26,386 (1975) by T. Ozeki, T. Ito and T. Tamura). While the second method reported values of 62 and 79% for throughput and 4.6 and 9.6% for power coupling transmission coefficients, improved very low-loss access couplers (less than 1 dB) and coupling ratios up to 24% were reported by Kawasaki and Hill in Applied Optics 16, 1794 (1977) using a combination of the two methods referred to above. This produced a tapered coulper fabricated by fusing the two twisted fibers under stress with the aid of an oxy-butane microtorch. A partial explanation as to the reason why the twisted, tapered biconical couplers provide efficient performance is given in the Ozeki-Kawasaki Applied Physics Letter article identified above.
Further improvements of the multiport directional couplers have evolved using Kawasaki and Hill's latest technique. E. G. Rawson and A. B. Nafarrate further demonstrated this technique and their article appearing in the Electronics Letters 14, 274 (1978) discloses that efficient multiport star couplers were obtained by twisting several fibers under tension and fusing them with the aid of a microtorch.
Unfortunately the couplers, while being satisfactory to one degree or another when made in the laboratory under controlled personally supervised individual operations, did not lend themselves to a relatively predictable fabrication sequence which could be duplicated for mass production of a multitude of such couplers. Thus, there is a continuing need in the state-of-the-art for a method for producing fiber optic couplers which is cost efficient and which provides controllable, predictable, acceptable coupling ratios between at least two fibers while assuring their structural integrity.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electrophotographic system image forming apparatuses such as a copying machine and a printer in which an electrostatic latent image formed on an image bearing member is developed by toner to obtain an image.
2. Related Background Art
An image forming process by an image forming apparatus will be described with reference to FIG. 4.
First, by setting an original G with a surface to be copied facing downward onto an original stand 10, and pressing a copy button, copying is started. When a unit 9 integrally formed of an original irradiation lamp, short focus lens array and CCD sensor irradiates and scans the original, and the lighting scan light reflected by the original surface is formed into an image by the short focus lens array, and is incident upon the CCD sensor.
The CCD sensor is constituted of a light receiving section, transfer section and output section. A light signal is converted to an electric signal in the CCD light receiving section, and successively transferred to the output section in the transfer section in synchronization with a clock pulse, and the charge signal is converted to a voltage signal, and subjected to amplification and low impedance treatment in the output section to emit an output. The analog signal obtained in this manner is subjected to a known image processing, converted to a digital signal and transmitted to an image forming section.
In the image forming section, the above-described image signal is received, and an electrostatic latent image is formed as follows. A photosensitive drum 1 is rotatively driven centering on a central spindle at a predetermined peripheral speed, and uniformly charged to provide a positive or negative polarity by a charger 3 in the process of the rotation. The light of a solid laser element 102 (FIG. 5) turned on/off in response to the image signal and emitted to the uniformly charged surface is scanned by a rotary polygonal mirror 104 (FIG. 5) rotating at a high rate, and the electrostatic latent image is successively formed on the surface of the photosensitive drum 1.
FIG. 5 schematically shows the constitution of a laser scan section 100 for scanning the laser beam in the above-described device. When the laser beam is scanned by the laser scan section 100, the solid laser element 102 is flickered at a predetermined timing by a light emitting signal generating device 101 based on the inputted image signal. Subsequently, the laser beam radiated from the solid laser element 102 is converted to a substantially parallel light flux by a collimator lens system 103, further scanned in the direction of arrow C by the rotary polygonal mirror 104 rotating in the direction of arrow B, and formed into a spot-like image on a scanned surface 106 of a photosensitive drum or the like by the group of f.theta. lenses 105a, 105b, 105c. By the scanning of the laser beam, an exposure distribution is formed on the scanned surface 106 for one image scanning. Furthermore, when the scanned surface 106 is scrolled by a predetermined amount vertically to the scanning direction for every scanning, the exposure distribution is obtained on the scanned surface 106 in response to the image signal.
A developing process will next be described. Generally, developing methods are roughly classified into four types: a method comprising coating a sleeve with nonmagnetic toner with a blade or the like, or coating the sleeve with magnetic toner using a magnetic force, carrying the toner, and developing the image on the photosensitive drum in a non-contact state (mono-component non-contact development); a method of developing the image of the toner coated as described above in a contact state (mono-component contact development); a method comprising using a mixture of toner particles and a magnetic carrier as a developer, carrying the developer by the magnetic force, and developing the image on the photosensitive drum in the contact state (two-component contact development); and a method of developing the image of the above-described two-component developer in the non-contact state (two-component non-contact development). In respect of the high image quality and high stability of the image, the two-component contact development method is frequently used.
As shown in FIG. 3, a developing device 4 is provided with a developer container 16, the inside of the developer container 16 is divided into a development chamber (first chamber) R1 and an agitation chamber (second chamber) R2 by a partition wall 17, and replenishing toner (nonmagnetic toner) 18 is contained in a toner storage chamber R3. Additionally, the partition wall 17 is provided with a replenishing port (not shown), and the amount of the replenishing toner 18 corresponding to the amount of the consumed toner drops for replenishment in the agitation chamber R2 via the replenishing port.
On the other hand, a developer 19 is contained in the development chamber R1 and the agitation chamber R2. The developer 19 is a two-component developer containing the nonmagnetic toner and magnetic particles (carrier), and the mixture ratio is set so that about 4 to 10% by weight of the nonmagnetic toner is mixed. Here, the nonmagnetic toner has a volume average particle diameter of about 5 to 15 .mu.m. Moreover, the magnetic particles contain ferrite particles coated with a resin, or resin particles with magnetic materials dispersed therein, the weight average particle diameter is in a range of 25 to 60 .mu.m, and a volume resistance is in a range of 10.sup.6 to 10.sup.12 .OMEGA..multidot.cm. Furthermore, the permeability of the magnetic particles is in a range of 2.5 to 5.0.
The developer container 16 has an opening in the vicinity of the photosensitive drum 1, and a development sleeve 11 protrudes to the outside via the opening. The development sleeve 11 is rotatably incorporated in the developer container 16. The development sleeve 11 has an outer diameter of 32 mm, and a peripheral speed of 280 mm/sec, and rotates in a direction shown by an arrow in FIG. 3. The development sleeve 11 is disposed so that an interval from the photosensitive drum 1 is about 500 .mu.m. The development sleeve 11 is formed of a nonmagnetic material, and a magnet 12 is fixed inside as magnetic field generating means.
The magnet 12 has a development pole S1, a magnetic pole N3 positioned on the downstream, and magnetic poles N2, S2, N1 for carrying the developer 19. The magnet 12 is disposed in the development sleeve 11 so that the development pole S1 is substantially opposite to the photosensitive drum 1. The development pole S1 forms a magnetic field in the vicinity of the development section between the development sleeve 11 and the photosensitive drum 1, and a magnetic brush is formed by the magnetic field.
A blade 15 is disposed above the development sleeve 11 and at a predetermined interval from the development sleeve 11. An interval between the development sleeve 11 and the blade 15 is about 800 .mu.m. The blade 15 is fixed to the developer container 16. The blade 15 is formed of nonmagnetic materials such as aluminum and SUS316, and regulates the layer thickness of the developer 19 on the development sleeve 11. A carrying screw 13 is contained in the development chamber R1. The carrying screw 13 is rotated in a direction shown by an arrow of FIG. 3, and the developer 19 in the development chamber R1 is carried in the longitudinal direction of the development sleeve 11 by rotatively driving the carrying screw 13.
A carrying screw 14 is contained in the agitation chamber R2. The carrying screw 14 carries the toner along the longitudinal direction of the development sleeve 11 by its rotation. The toner freely drops into the agitation chamber R2 from a replenishing port 20 of the storage chamber R3.
The development sleeve 11 bears the developer in the vicinity of the magnetic pole N2, and the developer 19 is carried toward the development section with the rotation of the development sleeve 11. When the developer 19 reaches the vicinity of the development section, the magnetic particles of the developer 19 are connected by the magnetic force of the magnetic pole S1, and raised from the development sleeve 11 to form the magnetic brush of the developer 19.
For a developing system, a reversal developing system is used, and a direct-current voltage and alternating voltage are applied to the development sleeve 11 from a power source (not shown). In this conventional example, the direct-current voltage of -500V, an alternating voltage Vpp=2000V, and a rectangular wave Vf=2000 Hz are applied. Generally, when the alternating is applied, the development efficiency increases, and the image obtains a high grade, but fog is easily generated. Therefore, usually by producing a potential difference between the direct-current voltage applied to the developing device 4 and the surface potential of the photosensitive drum 1, the fog is prevented.
In this example, the fog removing potential is 150V which is a difference between the first uniformly charged potential of -650V and the direct current voltage of -500V applied to the development sleeve 11. On the other hand, a difference of 300V between the exposed and attenuated potential of -200V and the direct-current voltage of -500V applied to the development sleeve 11 corresponds to a contrast potential for attaching the toner to the photosensitive drum from the development sleeve.
The toner image formed in this manner on the photosensitive drum 1 is electrostatically transferred to a transfer material by a transfer charger 7 (see FIG. 1). Thereafter, the transfer material is electrostatically separated by a separating charger 8 (see FIG. 1), conveyed to a fixing device 6, and thermally fixed so that the image is outputted.
On the other hand, after the toner image is transferred, the surface of the photosensitive drum 1 is subjected to removal of adhering contaminants such as a transfer residual toner by a cleaner 5 (see FIG. 5), and repeatedly used for image formation. The above-described constitution is only an example. For example, instead of a corona charger, a fur brush, a magnetic brush, or a charging roller is used as a charger 2, a transfer roller is used as a transfer charger, and various systems are used. However, the image is basically formed in the above-described process.
In recent years, the miniaturization of the image forming apparatus has advanced. However, when only the above-described charging, exposure, developing, transfer, fixing and cleaning processes are miniaturized, the miniaturization of the entire apparatus is limited. Moreover, the above-described transfer residual toner is recovered and discarded by the cleaner 5, but it is preferable also from the respect of environment protection that such waste toner should not be generated. Therefore, the cleaner is removed, and a cleaner-less apparatus is proposed to perform the cleaning simultaneous with developing by the developing device.
The cleaning simultaneous with developing is a method of recovering a slight residual toner on the photosensitive drum after the transfer by a fog removing bias during developing on and after the next process. According to this method, since the transfer residual toner is recovered and used in the subsequent processes, the waste toner is eliminated, and maintenance troubles can be reduced. Moreover, a great space advantage is provided, and the apparatus can remarkably be reduced in size. Additionally, to enhance the cleaning efficiency in the simultaneous developing/cleaning system, for example, the use of a substantially spherical toner manufactured by a polymerization process and very superior in mold release properties is very effective.
However, the present inventors have found that the following problems are caused in the process of image formation on several tens of thousand of sheets in the simultaneous developing/cleaning system in which the apparatus can be reduced in size as described above, as compared with the system having the cleaner.
(1) The image density is gradually lowered particularly in a low humidity environment.
(2) The amount of flying toner increases particularly in a high humidity environment.
As a result of studies by the present inventors, it has been found that these phenomena are attributed to the inadequacies of the particle diameter of the toner developed on the photosensitive member, particle diameter of the residual toner on the photosensitive member, triboelectrification amount of these two toners with the magnetic carrier, and the like.
Specifically, for example, for the developing process, when the solid toner image is formed on the photosensitive member under the alternation electric field, and when the weight average diameter of the toner particles forming the toner image is larger than the weight average diameter of the toner particles in the developer container, during repetition of the image formation, the toner particles in the developer container shift toward the small diameter side. As a result, when the image is repeatedly formed, the developing property and image density are deteriorated as compared with the initial stage.
In the apparatus provided with the cleaner, developing bias conditions, and the like may be set so that the toner particle diameter on the photosensitive member becomes equal to the toner particle diameter in the developer container. However, since the simultaneous developing/cleaning system is constituted to recover the residual toner on the photosensitive member into the developer container (generally, since the toner passes through the transfer process, the toner particle diameter becomes smaller than that in the developer container, or an external addition ratio is lowered in many cases), the toner particles in the developer container more easily shift to the small diameter side as compared with those in the system provided with the cleaner.
In this case, when the triboelectrification amount of the residual toner on the photosensitive member with the magnetic carrier in the developer container is higher than that of the toner in the developer container or the replenishing toner container with the magnetic carrier, the electrification amount increases as the image formation advances. Additionally, the ratio of the small particle diameter toner increases as described above. Therefore, the image density is remarkably lowered particularly under the low humid environment. On the other hand, when the triboelectrification amount of the residual toner on the photosensitive member with the magnetic carrier in the developer container is lower than that of the toner in the developer container or the replenishing toner container with the magnetic carrier, the ratio of the toner particles with the small diameter and low triboelectrification amount increases in the developer container, and the toner flying amount increases particularly under the high humid environment.
Specifically, as described above, the studies of the present inventors have revealed that in the simultaneous developing/cleaning system, since the relation between the particle diameter of the toner for developing the electrostatic latent image on the photosensitive member and the particle diameter of the toner remaining on the photosensitive member and recovered into the developer container, and the relation in triboelectrification amount between these toners are not adequately set to maintain the initial state of the toner particle diameter distribution in the developer container, the above-described problems occur.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wireless communications. More specifically, the present invention relates to signal reception.
2. Background Information
A system for mobile wireless communications may support communications between a base station and a mobile unit even when the mobile unit is in motion. For example, a system for cellular telephony may support communications even when the mobile unit is moving at a high rate of speed, such as in an automobile or on a train.
Relative movement between a mobile unit and a base station in communication may affect the characteristics of the transmission channel between them, however. Specifically, this relative movement may give rise to a Doppler frequency shift that results in a spreading of the transmitted signal at the receiver. The Doppler effect may be illustrated graphically by comparing spectral plots of a transmitted signal at the transmitter and at the receiver. For example, a pilot signal of a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) system (before pseudonoise (PN) spreading and transmission by a base station) may have a delta-function magnitude spectrum as shown in FIG. 1A. As a result of the Doppler effect, the spectrum of the signal as received (and after PN despreading) by a mobile unit in motion may be spread as shown in the magnitude spectrum of FIG. 1B. The bandwidth of the spreading is a function of the carrier frequency and of the relative velocity, as described by the following expression:
f d = f c v c ( 1 ) where fd is the Doppler frequency, fc is the carrier frequency, c is the speed of light, and v is the relative velocity. Expression (1) demonstrates that the bandwidth of the Doppler spreading is dependent on (and increases with) the relative velocity. In a system for mobile wireless communications, the perceived relative velocity may be expected to change constantly. Additional discussion of the Doppler effect in wireless communications may be found in Microwave Mobile Communications, W. C. Takes, ed., 1974 (reprinted 1994 by IEEE Press, Piscataway, N.J.) and Wireless Communications, T. S. Rappaport, Prentice-Hall, 1996.
Bandwidth spreading as caused by the Doppler effect may create inaccuracies in a signal as received. Information relating to Doppler spreading of a signal may be applied within a receiver to improve reception of the spread signal (and possibly of other signals received over the same path). Unfortunately, existing methods for bandwidth estimation are too inefficient for practical application. What is needed is a method and apparatus to efficiently obtain a bandwidth estimate.
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The present invention relates to a torque sensor for detecting in a non-contact manner an amount of a torque transmitted to a shaft.
According to a conventional method for detecting in a non-contact manner an amount of a torque transmitted to a shaft, a strain produced on the surface of the shaft by the torque is converted into a relative permeability variation of a soft magnetic alloy having magnetostriction which is fixed to the surface of the shaft, and this variation is detected as an inductance variation through a coil disposed at the periphery of the shaft. However, the torque sensor of this type has disadvantages that the output of the sensor is changed by the difference between amounts of thermal expansion of the shaft and the soft magnetic alloy. The magnitude of this change depends on the difference of the coefficient of linear thermal expansion between the shaft, and soft magnetic alloy.
Accordingly, it is necessary to modify the factors of temperature compensation etc., in accordance with the change of the coefficient of linear thermal expansion which is caused when the kind of the material forming the shaft is changed. Moreover, sensitivity is considerably lowered when a thermal strain equal to or more than 400.times.10.sup.-6 due to the difference in amounts of the thermal expansion between the shaft and the soft magnetic alloy is applied to a soft magnetic layer.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to bicyclic heteroaromatic compounds and their methods of use and, more particularly, to bicyclic heteroaromatic compounds that are antitumor agents that inhibit the function of microtubules (antimitotic agents or mitotic inhibitors) and that have antitumor activity. These bicyclic heteroaromatic compounds inhibit P-glycoprotein (Pgp) infected tumor cells, and inhibit paclitaxel sensitive and resistant tumor cells. The compounds may be made into acid salts that are water soluble for providing orally active antitumor agents.
2. Description of the Background Art
Mitosis is the process of nuclear division in eukaryotic cells that produces two daughter cells from one parent cell. The daughter cells and the original parent cell have identical chromosomes and DNA. Generally, cancer is a disease of mitosis. It is believed that cancer begins when a single cell is converted from a normal cell to a cancer cell. This is often due to a change in function of one or more genes that normally function to control cell growth. The cancer cells proliferate by repeated, and uncontrolled mitosis, in contrast to normal cells which undergo only about 20 to 50 generations of replication and then cease. A tumor may be thought of a mass of unhealthy cells that are dividing and growing in an uncontrolled way.
Microtubules are long, protein polymers that are hollow, tube-like filaments found in certain cell components such as the mitotic spindle. Each microtubule is composed of repeating subunits of the protein tubulin. Microtubules aggregate to form spindle fibers. During mitosis, cells use their spindle fibers to line up chromosomes, make copies of them, and divide into new cells with each new daughter cells having a single set of chromosomes. The polymerization dynamics of microtubules play a pivotal role in this process as part of cell replication. The crucial involvement of microtubules in mitosis makes them a target for antitumor agents. Antitumor agents that inhibit the function of microtubules are known as antimitotic agents.
Many classes of antimitotic agents are known. One such class is the vinca alkaloids exemplified by vincristine, vinblastine, vindesine, and vinorelbine. The vinca alkaloids are used in the treatment of leukemias, lymphomas, and small cell lung cancer. Another class of antimitotic agents are the taxanes, exemplified by paclitaxel (commercially available from Bristol-Myers Squibb Company under the tradename TAXOL®) and docetaxel. The taxanes are useful in the treatment of breast, lung, ovarian, head and neck, and bladder carcinomas. Colchicine typifies another class of antimitotic agents. Colchicine, while not used as an antitumor agent, is a microtubule polymerization inhibitor. Lastly, the combrestatins are another class of antitumor agents. Antimitotic agents such as the vinca alakaloids, colchicine, colcemid, and nocadazol block mitosis by keeping the mitotic spindle from being formed. These agents bind to the tubulin and inhibit polymerization, preventing cells from making the spindles they need to move chromosomes around as they divide. In contrast, paclitaxel binds to the tubulin protein of microtubules, locking the microtubules in place and inhibiting their depolymerization. With the mitotic spindle still in place, a cell may not divide into daughter cells.
Multidrug or multiple drug resistance (MDR) is a major drawback of cancer chemotherapy. Ultimate failure of chemotherapy often times occurs with the use of antimitotic agents due to MDR. MDR may be inherently expressed by some tumor types while others acquire MDR after exposure to chemotherapy. P-glycoprotein (Pgp) is a 170 kilodalton (kDa) protein that belongs to the ATP-binding cassette superfamily of transporters. Pgp has been implicated as a primary cause of MDR in tumors. Pgps are efflux transporters found in the gut, gonads, kidneys, biliary system, brain, and other organs. A series of homologous proteins termed multidrug-resistance proteins (MRPs) are also known. MRPs are associated with MDR in tumors. The first MRP termed MRP1 was identified in a drug resistant lung cancer cell line that expressed Pgp. All of these transporters bind drugs within cells and release them to the extracellular space using ATP. Tumor cells pre-exposed to cytotoxic compounds often allow the cells to manifest resistance in the presence of the cytotoxic drug. Overexpression of Pgp has been reported in a number of tumor types, particularly after the patient has received chemotherapy, indicating the clinical importance of Pgp in MDR. The clinical significance of Pgp along with its limited expression in normal tissues makes Pgp a viable target for inhibition to reverse MDR.
While antimitotic agents have shown to be some of the most successful agents against malignancies, resistance, both intrinsic and acquired, often results in treatment failures. Thus, there exists a need to develop new compounds that possess antimitotic activity, anti-multidrug resistance activity, and antitumor activity, that may be used alone as a single agent in the treatment of cancer, or in combination with chemotherapeutic agents, including antimitotic agents, that shall inhibit mitosis in a wide variety of cells, including cells that are subject to MDR. There is a need, therefore, for single compounds which provide the desired antimitotic, anti-multidrug resistance and antitumor activities with a high degree of selectivity and low toxicity, and that are effective inhibitors of paclitaxel sensitive and resistant tumor cells.
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Sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics have routinely been administered to animals in order to promote weight gain in apparently healthy animals. While supplementing animal feed with antibiotics can have a number of benefits, concerns exist over the use of conventional antibiotics in animal feed and water. The use of antibiotics in sub-therapeutic levels in animals has been implicated in the rise in antibiotic resistance of bacteria. Additionally, residual antibiotics may remain in meat products that are meant for human consumption.
To address these concerns the US Food and Drug agency (FDA) require that that antibiotic must be withdrawn from the feed of the animal at least two weeks prior to slaughter to prevent antibiotics remaining in the animal that is to enter the human food chain. The European Union and other countries require that antibiotics are not used as growth promoters in animal feed. Furthermore feed composition costs make a large proportion of the costs in animal production.
Date pits are readily available in a number of countries. Date pits have typically been seen as waste product from the preparation of dates and are usually discarded.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nonaqueous electrolyte battery, a battery pack using the nonaqueous electrolyte battery, and a vehicle having the battery pack mounted thereto.
2. Description of the Related Art
Vigorous research is being conducted on a nonaqueous electrolyte battery in which the battery is charged and discharged by the migration of lithium ions between the negative electrode and the positive electrode in an attempt to develop a high energy density battery.
The nonaqueous electrolyte battery is required to satisfy various characteristics depending on the use of the battery. For example, it is desirable for the nonaqueous electrolyte battery used as a power source of a digital camera to achieve the discharge not lower than about 3 C, and for the nonaqueous electrolyte battery mounted to a vehicle such as a hybrid automobile to achieve the discharge not lower than about 10 C. Such being the situation, the nonaqueous electrolyte battery used in the fields exemplified above is required to exhibit an excellent charge-discharge cycle life when the charge-discharge is repeated under a large current.
The nonaqueous electrolyte battery available on the market nowadays comprises a positive electrode in which a lithium-transition metal composite oxide is used as the positive electrode active material and a negative electrode in which a carbonaceous material is used as the negative electrode active material. In general, Co, Mn, Ni, etc. are used as the transition metals contained in the lithium-transition metal composite oxide used as the positive electrode active material.
In recent years, a nonaqueous electrolyte battery in which lithium-titanium oxide having a high Li ion insertion potential, compared with the carbonaceous material, is used as a negative electrode active material has been put to the practical use. The lithium-titanium oxide is small in change of volume accompanying the charge-discharge operation of the secondary battery, and, thus, permits the nonaqueous electrolyte battery using the lithium-titanium oxide as the negative electrode active material to be excellent in the charge-discharge cycle characteristics, compared with the nonaqueous electrolyte battery using the carbonaceous material as the negative electrode active material. Particularly, it is desirable to use lithium titanate having a spinel structure as the negative electrode active material.
For example, Japanese Patent Disclosure (Kokai) No. 09-199179 discloses a nonaqueous electrolyte battery comprising lithium titanate, which is small in change of volume during the charge-discharge operation of the secondary battery, as the negative electrode active material. It is taught that the nonaqueous electrolyte battery is small in change of volume, and that the short circuiting and the decrease of the battery capacity accompanying the swelling of the electrode are unlikely to take place.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Disclosure (Kokai) No. 2005-72008 discloses a negative electrode active material formed of vanadium oxide represented by LixMyVzO2+d. It is disclosed that negative electrode active material has pores having a pore diameter of 0.1 to 10 μm and that the pore volume per unit weight of the negative electrode active material is 10−3 cc/g to 0.8 cc/g.
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This invention relates to a video noise reduction system for use in a recording apparatus adapted to record red, blue and green primary color component video signals on a plurality of separate tracks of a magnetic recording medium.
In high definition videotape recorders, component video signals are frequency modulated before they are recorded on a recording medium. Such frequency modulation may cause greater noise to be introduced to a higher frequency signal component to worsen the picture quality, particularly the resolution power. Although various approaches have been made to reduce video noise caused by frequency modulation, they are not sufficient at certain points.
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(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display panel (hereinafter, PDP), and more particularly, to a surface discharge type PDP with an electrode structure in which a pair of display electrodes are formed on one substrate and have a corresponding pair of bus electrodes within each discharge cell between two substrates to cause a display discharge.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Generally, a plasma display panel is a display device in which ultraviolet rays generated by gas discharge excite phosphors to realize predetermined images. Such a plasma display panel is popular for wide screen display devices since it enables the manufacture of large screen sizes with high resolution.
Referring to FIG. 8, a generally known PDP is formed with address electrodes 112 along one direction (in the X-axis direction of the drawing) on a rear substrate 110, and a dielectric layer 113 is formed on an entire surface of the rear substrate 110 covering the address electrodes 112. On the dielectric layer 113, barrier ribs 115 of a stripe pattern are formed and placed between each of the address electrodes 112, and red (R), green (G), blue (B) phosphor layers 117 are formed on each of the barrier ribs 115.
In addition, display electrodes 102, 103 having a pair of transparent electrodes 102a, 103a and bus electrodes 102b, 103b are formed along the direction crossing the address electrodes 112 (in the Y-axis direction of the drawing) on a surface of a front substrate 100 opposing the rear substrate 110. A transparent dielectric layer 106 and a MgO protection film 108 are formed covering the display electrodes on a surface of the front substrate 100.
The region where the address electrodes 112 on the rear substrate 110 are intersected with the display electrodes 102, 103 on the front substrate 100 is to be a portion where discharge cells are formed.
An address voltage Va is applied between the address electrodes 112 and the display electrodes 102, 103 to cause address discharge, and a sustain voltage Vs is applied to a pair of the display electrodes 102, 103 to cause sustain discharge. Then, the generated vacuum ultraviolet rays excite phosphors so that they emit visible light through the front substrate 100 and thereby display PDP images.
However, the PDP having the discharge electrodes 102, 103 and the barrier ribs 115 in a stripe formation as shown in FIG. 8, may cause crosstalk between the discharge cells adjacent with the barrier ribs 115. In addition, it may cause the misdischarge between the adjacent discharge cells since the discharge areas are connected to one another along the direction where the barrier ribs 115 are formed. In order to prevent these problems, the distance between the display electrodes 102, 103 corresponding to the adjacent pixels needs to be over a certain level, which reduces improvements in efficiency.
To solve the above problems, PDPs having improved electrodes and barrier ribs as shown in FIG. 9 have been suggested. The PDP has a configuration such that transparent electrodes 123a of display electrodes 123 are extended from bus electrodes 123b to face each other in a pair within each of the discharge cells. For the purpose of reducing the crosstalk between the adjacent discharge cells and enhancing the emission efficiency by increasing the phosphor coated area, a PDP is suggested which has barrier ribs 125 of the matrix type formed with vertical barrier ribs 125a and horizontal barrier ribs 125b perpendicular to each other. Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 1998-149771 describes such a plasma display panel.
A PDP is a display using gas discharge, and its emission efficiency can be varied according to the amount of the excited atoms generated. The emission efficiency is known to increase with increasing total or partial pressure of sealed discharge gases.
If total or partial pressure is increased to improve the efficiency, the breakdown voltage necessarily increases and the discharge instability increases. Sometimes the discharge itself does not take place, and the use of high pressure resistant devices causes an increase in the unit cost of a circuit.
In an effort to lower the breakdown voltage in such a PDP, a gap between discharge electrodes can be decreased when designing discharge electrodes. However, simply decreasing the gap between discharge electrodes may cause several problems.
One problem arising when this gap is decreased is that the discharge path is decreased, thereby deteriorating the emission efficiency of panel. Furthermore, if the gap between discharge electrodes is decreased below a certain value, the breakdown voltage is increased. As shown in the Paschen curve of FIG. 10, if the discharge gas temperature multiplied by the distance between the electrodes (p·d value) becomes lower than a certain value (the minimum value), the Vf voltage value along the Y axis can increase. Accordingly, a decrease in breakdown voltage is needed by properly designing electrodes.
Another problem which can occur when the gap between the discharge electrodes is decreased is related to insulation resistance of dielectric substances. If the gap between the discharge electrodes is decreased, a strong magnetic field is generated between two electrodes and then the possibility of destruction of insulation between the electrodes is increased. It therefore becomes necessary to improve the insulating resistance. Accordingly, these factors must be considered when designing the discharge electrodes.
FIGS. 11a and 11b show a plan view of conventional discharge cells and a light profile graph for sustain discharge in a conventional PDP.
FIG. 11b shows the light emission from the portion within the dotted line in FIG. 11a along the vertical direction (the direction parallel to barrier ribs). Although the bus electrodes supply a voltage, they also have an adverse effect of shielding the visible light generated from a discharge space as shown in FIG. 11b, since the bus electrodes are positioned at the discharge space. Accordingly, this causes the deterioration of the brightness and the emission efficiency.
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The human metapneumovirus (hMPV) had been present in the human population for at least 50 years before it was first identified. Nature Medicine 7:P719-724 (2001). hMPV belongs to the Paramyxoviridae family of viruses, which includes several well known human pathogens such as measles virus, mumps virus, parainfluenza viruses and the human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV). Based on hMPV's genetic sequence and structure, hMPV falls in the Pneumovirinae sub-family, together with its closest known human-infecting relative, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). However, hMPV's genetic sequence and structure differs sufficiently from that of RSV and is consequently placed in a separate genus—the Metapneumoviruses.
hMPV infects people of all ages and causes mild to severe respiratory infections. By the age of 5, most children have been infected with hMPV at least once. Severe disease requiring hospitalization occurs primarily in young children, the elderly and the immunocompromised. hMPV's clinical impact and epidemiology is very similar to that of RSV and infection by these two viruses cannot be distinguished on the bases of clinical signs alone.
Human metapneumovirus is common worldwide and seems to be most active in late winter and early spring—a period when many other respiratory viruses are also circulating. Several epidemiological surveys on hMPV infection have documented cases of metapneumovirus in Europe, Africa, Asia/Australia, Southern America, and Northern America. Worldwide, hMPV accounts for a significant portion of respiratory tract illnesses in hospitalized children, with high incidences occurring during the winter months in moderate climate zones and late spring-early summer in the subtropics. hMPV accounts for roughly 5 to 15% of the respiratory tract illnesses in hospitalized young children, with children <2 years of age being most at risk for serious hMPV infections. hMPV infections, like RSV and influenza virus infections, also account for respiratory tract infections in the elderly population and in patients with underlying disease.
What is needed is a simple, fast, and economical method to detect and identify types and subtypes of human metapneumovirus without the implementation of cell culture protocols, and without cross-reactivity to avian metapneumoviruses.
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A wide variety of semiconductor devices, and methods of making semiconductor devices, are known. Some of these devices are designed to emit light, such as visible or near-visible (e.g. ultraviolet or near infrared) light. Examples include electroluminescent devices such as light emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes, wherein an electrical drive current or similar electrical signal is applied to the device so that it emits light. Another example of a semiconductor device designed to emit light is a re-emitting semiconductor construction (RSC).
Unlike an LED, an RSC does not require an electrical drive current from an external electronic circuit in order to emit light. Instead, the RSC generates electron-hole pairs by absorption of light at a first wavelength λ1 in an active region of the RSC. These electrons and holes then recombine in potential wells in the active region to emit light at a second wavelength λ2 different from the first wavelength λ1, and optionally at still other wavelengths λ3, λ4, and so forth depending on the number of potential wells and their design features. The initiating radiation or “pump light” at the first wavelength λ1 is typically provided by a blue, violet, or ultraviolet emitting LED coupled to the RSC. Exemplary RSC devices, methods of their construction, and related devices and methods can be found in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 7,402,831 (Miller et al.), U.S. Patent Application Publications US 2007/0284565 (Leatherdale et al.) and US 2007/0290190 (Haase et al.), PCT Publication WO 2009/048704 (Kelley et al.), and pending U.S. Application Ser. No. 61/075,918, “Semiconductor Light Converting Construction”, filed Jun. 26, 2008, all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
When reference is made herein to a light at a particular wavelength, the reader will understand that reference is being made to light having a spectrum whose peak wavelength is at the particular wavelength.
FIG. 1 shows an illustrative device 100 that combines an RSC 108 and an LED 102. The LED has a stack of LED semiconductor layers 104, sometimes referred to as epilayers, on an LED substrate 106. The layers 104 may include p- and n-type junction layers, light emitting layers (typically containing quantum wells), buffer layers, and superstrate layers. The layers 104 may be attached to the LED substrate 106 via an optional bonding layer 116. The LED has an upper surface 112 and a lower surface, and the upper surface is textured to increase extraction of light from the LED compared to the case where the upper surface is flat. Electrodes 118, 120 may be provided on these upper and lower surfaces, as shown. When connected to a suitable power source through these electrodes, the LED emits light at a first wavelength λ1, which may correspond to blue or ultraviolet (UV) light. Some of this LED light enters the RSC 108 and is absorbed there.
The RSC 108 is attached to the upper surface 112 of the LED via a bonding layer 110. The RSC has upper and lower surfaces 122, 124, with pump light from the LED entering through the lower surface 124. The RSC also includes a quantum well structure 114 engineered so that the band gap in portions of the structure is selected so that at least some of the pump light emitted by the LED 102 is absorbed. The charge carriers generated by absorption of the pump light move into other portions of the structure having a smaller band gap, the quantum well layers, where the carriers recombine and generate light at the longer wavelength. This is depicted in FIG. 1 by the re-emitted light at the second wavelength λ2 originating from within the RSC 108 and exiting the RSC to provide output light.
FIG. 2 shows an illustrative semiconductor layer stack 210 comprising an RSC. The stack was grown using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on an indium phosphide (InP) wafer. A GaInAs buffer layer was first grown by MBE on the InP substrate to prepare the surface for II-VI growth. The wafer was then moved through an ultra-high vacuum transfer system to another MBE chamber for growth of II-VI epitaxial layers used in the RSC. Details of the as-grown RSC are shown in FIG. 2 and summarized in Table 1. The table lists the thickness, material composition, band gap, and layer description for the different layers associated with the RSC. The RSC included eight CdZnSe quantum wells 230, each having a transition energy of 2.15 eV. Each quantum well 230 was sandwiched between CdMgZnSe absorber layers 232 having a band gap energy of 2.48 eV that could absorb blue light emitted by an LED. The RSC also included various window, buffer, and grading layers.
TABLE 1Refer-Thick-Band Gap/encenessTransitionNo.Material(nm)(eV)Comment230Cd0.48Zn0.52Se3.12.15quantumwell232Cd0.38Mg0.21Zn0.41Se82.48absorber234Cd0.38Mg0.21Zn0.41Se:Cl922.48absorber236Cd0.22Mg0.45Zn0.33Se1002.93window238Cd0.22Mg0.45Zn0.33Se →2502.93-2.48gradingCd0.38Mg0.21Zn0.41Se240Cd0.38Mg0.21Zn0.41Se:Cl462.48absorber242Cd0.38Mg0.21Zn0.41Se →2502.48-2.93gradingCd0.22Mg0.45Zn0.33Se244Cd0.39Zn0.61Se4.42.24II-VI buffer246Ga0.47In0.53As1900.77III-V buffer224InP350,0001.35III-VsubstrateFurther details of this and other RSC devices can be found in PCT Publication WO 2009/048704 (Kelley et al.).
Of particular interest to the present application are light sources that are capable of emitting white light. In some cases, known white light sources are constructed by combining an electroluminescent device such as a blue-emitting LED with first and second RSC-based luminescent elements. The first luminescent element may, for example, include a green-emitting potential well that converts some of the blue light to green light, and transmits the remainder of the blue light. The second luminescent element may include a potential well that converts some of the green and/or blue light it receives from the first luminescent element into red light, and transmits the remainder of the blue and green light. The resulting red, green, and blue light components combine to allow such a device, which is described (among other embodiments) in WO 2008/109296 (Haase), to provide substantially white light output.
Some devices provide white light using a pixelated arrangement or array. That is, multiple individual light-emitting elements, none of which emit white light by themselves, are arranged in close proximity to each other so as to collectively form a pixel. The pixel typically has a characteristic dimension or size below the resolution limit of the observation system, so that light from the different light-emitting elements is effectively combined in the observation system. A common arrangement for such a device is for three individual light-emitting elements—one emitting red (R) light, one emitting green (G) light, one emitting blue (B) light—to form an “RGB” pixel. Reference is again made to WO 2008/109296 (Haase), for disclosure of some such devices.
Also of interest to the present application are light sources that are not only capable of emitting white light, but also of changing or adjusting the apparent color of the output. For example, in some cases a “cool” white color may be desired, while in others a “warm” white color may be desired. A given “shade” of white may be plotted as an (x,y) color coordinate on a conventional CIE chromaticity diagram, and can be characterized by a color temperature as is known by those skilled in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,387,405 (Ducharme et al.), for example, discusses lighting systems that provide adjustable color temperature. One such lighting system uses multiple light sources constructed by combining a blue-emitting LED with a layer of yellow phosphor. Some of the blue light is absorbed by the phosphor and re-emitted as yellow light, and some of the blue light passes through the phosphor layer. The transmitted blue light combines with the re-emitted yellow light to produce an output beam having an overall output spectrum that is perceived as nominally white light. Device-to-device variations in phosphor layer characteristics and/or other design details give rise to device-to-device differences in the output spectrum and corresponding differences in perceived color, with some LED/phosphor devices providing a “cool” white color and others providing a “warm” white color. The '405 patent reports that some commercial LED/phosphor devices exhibit color temperatures of 20,000 degrees Kelvin (20,000K) while others exhibit color temperatures of 5750K. The '405 patent also reports that a single one of these LED/phosphor devices allows for no control of color temperature, and that a system with a desired range of color temperature cannot be generated with one device alone. The '405 patent goes on to describe an embodiment in which two such LED/phosphor devices are combined with an optical long-pass filter (a transparent piece of glass or plastic tinted so as to enable only longer wavelength light to pass through) that shifts the color temperature of the devices, and then a specific third LED (an Agilent HLMP-EL 18 amber LED) is added to these filtered LED/phosphor devices to provide a 3-LED embodiment with adjustable color temperature.
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Lighting apparatus, for example used for back-lighting of LCD-displays, usually emit polychromatic light, such as light with a color location in the white region of the CIE-diagram. For the generation of polychromatic light, lighting apparatus usually comprise primary light sources emitting light with different colors, which is mixed additively to produce the desired polychromatic light. In order to control brightness and color location of the polychromatic light, the primary light sources of the lighting apparatus have to be controlled.
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U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,636 describes a sensor in which a planar sensing element is secured in gas-tight fashion in a ceramic shaped element by way of a sensing element seal. The sensing element seal is a glass seal which is provided, in the form of a fusible glass seal, in a depression which surrounds the sensing element and is introduced on the exhaust gas-side ceramic shaped element, and thereby separates a reference gas space from a measured gas space.
Another sensor is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,596,132. As described therein a sensing element is mounted directly in a reference gas space-side housing part of a metal housing by way of a sensing element seal. The sensing element seal is formed by a fusible glass seal which encloses the reference gas space-side end of the sensing element together with the contacted connector cables. The sensing element operates without a reference atmosphere.
A sensor according to the present invention achieves a secure, gas-tight, and gasoline-resistant sealing of the sensing element. The sensor is of simple construction in terms of assembly engineering, and to that extent is economical to manufacture. The installation space available on the reference gas side is used in order to arrange the sensing element seal as far away as possible from the hot exhaust gas. As a result, the various coefficients of thermal expansion of the sensing element seal and solid electrolyte material of the sensing element, and the reaction behavior of the material of the sensing element seal with the solid electrolyte material of the sensing element, have less of an effect, thus creating a sensing element seal that is crack-free and reliable, at high temperatures and in the presence of temperature cycling, over its entire utilization life.
A particularly gas-tight and gasoline-resistant sensing element seal is achieved by way of a glass seal, the glass seal being introduced into the receptacle in the form of fusible glass. A further limitation in the heat flux toward the glass seal is achieved by a thermal insulation element that is arranged between the ceramic shaped element and fusible glass seal and is made of a material with poor thermal conductivity. It has proven advantageous in this context to use a presintered steatite ring which is deformed by the application of pressure into a powder packing. One advantageous embodiment, which allows the use of a preassembled subassembly made up of ceramic formed element, sensing element, inner metal sleeve, and glass seal, moreover consists in the fact that a further presintered steatite ring, which secures the ceramic shaped element in the housing by sealing, is inserted between the ceramic shaped element and the housing.
A further advantageous embodiment with a preassembled subassembly is made possible by pre-securing the sensing element in the housing. In this context, the sensing element is secured, prior to manufacture of the sensing element seal, by way of a powder packing configured between two ceramic shaped elements. The powder seal acts simultaneously as an insulator with respect to the thermal conduction occurring during manufacture of the fusible glass seal, and as an additional primary seal. The seal arrangement made up of the sensing element seal and powder packing thus forms a dual-action seal which has an additionally favorable effect on continuous operation of the sensor. The advantage of this embodiment moreover lies in the fact that no assembly forces act on the sensing element seal which is subsequently manufactured.
A further reduction in the influence of the coefficients of thermal expansion of the solid electrolyte material of the sensing element and the fusible glass is possible by the fact that a ceramic shaped element, which surrounds the sensing element and has a coefficient of thermal expansion very closely matched to the solid electrolyte material of the sensing element, is inserted into the fusible glass.
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The present disclosure relates generally to medical devices and, more particularly, to sensors used for sensing physiological parameters of a patient.
In the field of medicine, doctors often desire to monitor certain physiological characteristics of their patients. Accordingly, a wide variety of devices have been developed for monitoring many such physiological characteristics. Such devices provide doctors and other healthcare personnel with the information they need to provide the best possible healthcare for their patients. As a result, such monitoring devices have become an indispensable part of modern medicine.
One technique for monitoring certain physiological characteristics of a patient is commonly referred to as pulse oximetry, and the devices built based upon pulse oximetry techniques are commonly referred to as pulse oximeters. Pulse oximetry may be used to measure various blood flow characteristics, such as the blood-oxygen saturation of hemoglobin in arterial blood, the volume of individual blood pulsations supplying the tissue, and/or the rate of blood pulsations corresponding to each heartbeat of a patient. In fact, the “pulse” in pulse oximetry refers to the time varying amount of arterial blood in the tissue during each cardiac cycle.
Pulse oximeters typically utilize a non-invasive sensor that transmits light through a patient's tissue and that photoelectrically detects the absorption and/or scattering of the transmitted light in such tissue. One or more of the above physiological characteristics may then be calculated based upon the amount of light absorbed or scattered. More specifically, the light passed through the tissue is typically selected to be of one or more wavelengths that may be absorbed or scattered by the blood in an amount correlative to the amount of the blood constituent present in the blood. The amount of light absorbed and/or scattered may then be used to estimate the amount of blood constituent in the tissue using various algorithms.
Pulse oximetry measurement often involves placement of a sensor on a patient's tissue, typically via a lightly adhesive sensor, a clip-style sensor, or a sensor that may be fitted through pressure contact with the tissue. Because these sensors are worn for up to four hours before the sensor is repositioned, pulse oximetry sensors may slightly deform the underlying tissue if the pressure contact is too great. Deformed tissue may be associated with motion artifacts in cases where pressure from the sensor alters the blood flow into the tissue, leading to changes in the pulse oximetry readings.
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The present invention relates to a binding for a snowboard.
Now, FIG. 30 is an explanatory view of a conventional binding for a snowboard. In FIG. 30, reference numeral 1 designates a base plate to be fixed to a snowboard main body (not shown); 2: a boot; 3: a back support fixed to the rear end of the base plate 1 in such a manner that it can be contacted with the rear surface of the boot 2; 4: a cushion mounted on the inner surface of the back support 3; 5: an ankle strap disposed on the base plate 1 for fastening the instep of the boot 2; 6: ankle strap pad mounted on the inner surface of the ankle strap 5; 7: a toe strap disposed on the base plate 1 for fastening the tiptoe portion of the boot 2; and 8: a toe strap pad mounted on the inner surface of the toe strap 7, respectively.
Now, FIG. 31 is an explanatory detailed view of the toe strap 7. In FIG. 31, reference numeral 9a designates one band having one end thereof fixed to the one-side rising portion 10 of the base plate 1; 9b: the other band having one end thereof fixed to the other-side rising portion 10 of the base plate 1; 11: a buckle connected to the free end of the other band 9b; 12: a ratchet belt connected to the buckle 11; and 13: a lock part including a ratchet pawl for connecting the ratchet belt 12 to one band 9a.
By the way, the ankle strap 5 has the same structure as the toe strap 7.
In the thus structured binding for a snowboard, when mounting the boot. 2 onto the base plate 1, the engagements between the ratchet belts 12 and lock parts 13 of the ankle strap 5 and toe strap 7 are removed, and one band 9a and the other band 9b are separated from each other by both hands. After then, the boot 2 is placed onto the base plate 1 from above thereof, the ratchet belt 12 is inserted into the lock part 13 including a ratchet pawl in such a manner as shown in FIGS. 31 and 32, and the buckle 11 is then fastened to thereby fix the instep portion and tiptoe portion of the boot 2 to the base plate 1.
In the binding of this type, in the rising portion 10 of the base plate 1, there are formed a plurality of holes which are used to fix one of the bands 9a, 9b such that the position thereof can be adjusted. That is, when adjusting the boot fixed state again, without removing the base plate from the snowboard, one of the bands is removed from its previously engaged one of the plurality of holes and is inserted into a new one of the plurality of holes to fix the boot to the base plate.
However, since the bands 9a, 9b and the rising portions 10 of the base plate 1 are fixed by bolts and nuts, a tool must be used to mount and remove them, which is troublesome.
Also, because the toe strap 7 is simply fastened from the upper portion of the tiptoe portion thereof, there is play in the tiptoe direction, so that the boot cannot be fastened sufficiently.
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{
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1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a flush system, and more particularly to a method and arrangement for controlling flush water volume during a flushing operation.
2. Description of Related Arts
Urinal and toilet flush systems have been well-known as one of the most significant inventions in the last century. A conventional toilet or urinal flush system comprises a valve body having a water inlet and a water outlet, a diaphragm having a water channel communicating between the water inlet and the water outlet, a relief valve disposed at the diaphragm for blocking the water flowing from the water inlet to the water outlet through the water channel, and a flush actuator arranged to move the relief valve at a position where the water is allowed flow to the water outlet for completing the flushing operation.
Conventionally, the relief valve has a pivotal pin member longitudinally and downwardly extended therefrom in the water channel, whereas the flush actuator comprises an elongated actuating member transversely and pivotally extended from the valve body, and a pusher pin transversely and movably extended in the valve body to align with the pivotal pin, in such a manner that when the elongated actuating member is pivotally moved in a predetermined direction (such as a downward direction with respect to the valve body), the pusher pin is transversely pushed to drive the pivotal pin to pivotally move within the valve body so as to open the relief valve for allowing water flowing through water channel. As a result, a user is able to flush the toilet by actuating the flush actuator.
A major drawback for this conventional toilet flush system is that the user is unable to control the volume of water flow so that unnecessary waste of water is prevalent. In other words, the conventional flush system will allow a standard time and volume of flushing regardless of purpose thereof. For example, when the user wishes to flush away a certain piece of toilet paper in the toilet bowl, he or she is unable to adjust the volume of flushing water so that the flushing cycle in this particular instance is exactly the same as any usual flushing cycle for this particular flush system. This is obviously undesirable from environmental as well as economical point of view.
There exist several types of flush systems which include certain types of water adjustment mechanisms which are claimed to be capable of controlling the volume of water during a typical flush cycle. However, the major problem for these kinds of water adjustment mechanisms is that their efficacy of effectively controlling the volume of flushing water among a plurality of operation modes is in doubt. For example, a conventional flush system equipped with a conventional water adjustment mechanism may have two modes of operations, namely a regular flush cycle and a water-saving flush cycle, in which the latter is supposed to require less water than the former. However, the reality is that very often, there is no noticeable or significant difference in water consumption between these two modes of operations so that there is no practical distinction between these two modes of operations. From engineering point of view, when the water adjustment mechanism produces no significant difference in water consumption, there is actually no reason or incentive to produce a flush system having such a water adjustment mechanism because it will certainly increase the manufacturing cost of that flush system.
It is submitted that the main reason for this ineffectiveness in controlling the volume of flush water is that one is hard to accurately control the period for which the relief valve is opened by one single actuating member. Thus, it is possible that the time of opening the relief valve in the two modes of operations is very much the same so that there is no noticeable difference in water volume between these two modes of operation.
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A ski slope snow tiller normally comprises a frame connected to a tractor movable in a travelling direction; a shaft fitted with snow-working tools; a casing surrounding the shaft; and a mat towed over the snow surface, behind the casing.
Though highly effective in tilling snow on ski slopes, tillers of this sort have a tendency to accumulate, or at least fail to prevent accumulating, snow, which, be it produced by snowfall or thrown up by the tiller or the tractor to which the tiller is connected, deposits in particular on the part of the tiller between the casing the mat.
The amount of snow accumulated on the tiller depends on the width of the tiller, and, according to the Applicant's findings, may be as much as 600 kg. This added weight on the tiller has numerous drawbacks increased power consumption of the tractor; impaired maneuverability of the tractor and tiller as a whole; potential damage to the component parts of the tiller; increased wear of the tiller; and the necessity to clean the snow off the tiller before garaging the tractor and tiller, to prevent flooding the garage when the snow melts.
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Battered and breaded food portions, which may be fish, seafood, poultry, red meat or vegetables, are commonly-known food products served in the home, in restaurants and in institutions. Traditionally, these items are provided to the customer in a form which is raw, partially- or fully-cooked, battered and/or breaded, and frozen. Such products normally are produced by the application of batters and/or breadings to raw or to raw-frozen or to cooked-frozen substrates, subjecting the battered and/or breaded substrates to a blanch frying treatment, refreezing the portions, and packaging the refrozen products in suitable containers. Such products have been traditionally cooked or heated for consumption in the home, restaurant or institution by either deep-frying or oven heating. These food products, when reconstituted for consumption by the latter methods, have offered attractively-coloured portions with moist meat and crisp coating textures.
In recent years, the use of microwave ovens in homes, restaurants and institutions has shown considerable growth, but the variety of foods which can be satisfactorily cooked in microwave ovens is limited. The limitation is most critical for foods which are to present combined textural features, such as both moistness and crispness, within a portion. Such limitations have prevented the availability of a battered and breaded food portion which possesses the desirable crispness within the breading and the desirable moistness within the substrate fish, meat or vegetable. Although food products are available in the marketplace which are indicated to be microwaveable, none possess the desirable combination of crispness and moistness in the cooked product.
This limitation on microwave oven reconstitution or cooking of food arises mainly from very rapid thawing of the ice in the frozen portion to water, the nearly-immediate generation of steam from water within the food portion, and the passage of this steam to and/or through the batter/breading coating, during the microwave application. The rapid release of water and water vapour and their passage to the batter/breading coating before the coating is cooked and made crisp by the microwave heating, results in the formation of a soggy, gummy, tough eating quality which is undesirable.
These problems and effects do not arise with deep frying and oven heating reconstitution, which is effected by external heating and results in cooking of the batter/breading coating before substantial moisture evaporation occurs within the food portion.
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{
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The background description provided herein is solely for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the illustrative embodiments of the disclosure. Aspects of the background description are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the claimed subject matter.
Sanitary sewer systems may include multiple pump stations which pump wastewater from residences and businesses to a wastewater treatment facility through a network of conduits. Sewer gases such as hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, carbon dioxide and methane emanate from the wastewater as it flows through the pump stations. These sewer gases are corrosive to the structural and functional components of the pump stations. However, venting of the corrosive sewer gases from conventional pump stations may be inefficient such that the pump stations require frequent and extensive maintenance or replacement.
Therefore, an enhanced efficiency wastewater pump station venting system and method which enhance longevity and reduce the maintenance needs of a wastewater pump station in a wastewater treatment system are desirable.
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{
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This invention relates to an improved construction of a liquid crystal display cell and more particularly to a liquid crystal display cell in which the liquid crystal is filled into the cell through an inlet port or opening provided for a peripheral sealing member which supports and secures spaced glass plates of the cell and the inlet port is hermetically sealed by an inlet port sealing member.
A liquid crystal display cell generally comprises a pair of spaced insulating plates such as glass plates which are hermetically secured to a peripheral sealing member provided with an inlet port for filling the liquid crystal. The profile of the peripheral sealing member is defined on a glass plate by a silk-screen printing machine in a general manner. However, in a small liquid crystal display cell for use in small timepieces for example, the spacing between the glass plates is only 6 to 10 microns so that the width of the inlet port provided through the side surface of the peripheral sealing member inserted in such small spacing is less than 1 mm. Accordingly, care should be taken not to close or decrease the area of the inlet port during assembly of the cell, and it is generally difficult to secure the glass plates to the peripheral sealing member with the peripheries of the glass plates and the periphery of the peripheral sealing member being flush with each other. Sometimes the peripheral portions of the glass plates project about 4 to 20 microns beyond the periphery of the peripheral sealing member.
FIG. 1a shows a plan view and FIG. 1b a side view of a liquid crystal display cell in which the glass plates project beyond the periphery of the peripheral sealing member and the inlet port for filling the liquid crystal is not yet sealed.
As shown, the cell comprises a pair of glass plates 1 and 2 secured to the opposite surfaces of a peripheral sealing member 3 made of low melting point glass, for example. Liquid crystal and display electrodes (not shown) are housed in the cell. An inlet port 4 for filling the liquid crystal into the cell is provided through a portion of the peripheral sealing member between the glass plates.
FIG. 2 shows some examples of the prior art inlet port sealing member for sealing the inlet port of a cell in which the peripheries of the glass plates project beyond the periphery of the peripheral sealing member. According to one example shown in FIGS. 2a and 2b, a metal layer 5 is formed on the portion of the glass plates about the inlet port by, for example, vapour deposition or ion plating and a solder 6 is applied onto the metal layer 5 for sealing the inlet port 4. Of course, the joints between the glass plates and the peripheral sealing member other than the inlet port are hermetically sealed by the adhesion of the peripheral sealing member made of low melting glass.
In this construction, since the metal layer 5 is formed prior to the assembly of the glass plates and the peripheral sealing member, the portions of the peripheral sealing member 3 about the inlet port 4 is not formed with a metal layer and after application of the inlet port sealing member or solder, a fine passage 9 having a depth of 4 to 20 microns is formed along the outer surface of the peripheral sealing member 3 and between the plates. Accordingly, it has been necessary to seal the opposite ends of the passage 9. If low melting point glass is used for this purpose it is necessary to heat the cell and such heating deteriorates the liquid crystal. For this reason, room temperature setting type organic resins have been used as the sealing agent.
However, room temperature setting type sealing agents have a higher tendency to chemically react with the liquid crystal than other inorganic sealing agents such as low melting glass and solder. Moreover, since the organic sealing agents do not have properties for preventing humidity in the ambient atmosphere from passing therethrough, the liquid crystal quickly deteriorates due to hydrolysis. Further, their resistance to weather, ultraviolet ray, for example, is low. To solve these difficulties it has been proposed to apply a metal layer 5a to surround the inlet port 4, on both glass plates 1 and 2 and the peripheral sealing member 3, as shown in FIGS. 2c and 2d. However, due to offset relationship between the glass plates and the peripheral member it has been difficult to form a continuous metal layer to completely cover the side surfaces of the glass plates and the peripheral sealing member so as to eliminate passage 9.
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{
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward the field of transferring, browsing and viewing images, and more specifically to an image object that permits fast, efficient transfer, manipulation and viewing of large images.
2. Art Background
The Internet provides opportunities to transmit information quickly, reliably, and efficiently. For example, the Internet is a good medium to transmit email messages consisting of a size less than a few kilobytes of data. Email is also commonly used to transmit data files, typically attached to the email messages. For example, it is common to attach files, such as word processing documents, that consist of a several kilobytes of data. With increased advancements in video and imaging technology, there is an increased demand to transmit large files. For example, it is common for Internet users to transmit digitized images generated from pictures. In the scientific and medical community, it is desirable to transmit large image files. These image files may comprise detailed maps, image data collected from sensors, medical images, etc.
In the medical imaging application, it has become more common for images to be stored, distributed, and viewed in digital form using computer technology. Currently, Picture Archival and Communication Systems or PACS have been in widespread use. In a typical PACS application, image data obtained by imaging equipment such as CT scanners or MRI scanners are stored in the form of computer data files. The size of a data file for an image varies depending on the size and resolution of the image. For example, a typical image file for a diagnostic-quality chest X-ray is on the order of 10 megabytes (MB). The image data files are usually formatted in a “standard” or widely accepted format. In the medical field, one widely used image format is known as DICOM. The DICOM image data files are distributed over computer networks to specialized viewing stations capable of converting the image data to high-resolution images on a CRT display.
Although the Internet is a good medium for transmitting small files, when transferring large images, such as large image files, which may comprise files of over 10 megabytes of data, the Internet becomes slow. For example, currently, many computer users, particularly home users, only have 56 kilobit per second (“56K”) modems to transmit data across the Internet. Even higher bandwidth connections to the Internet, which permits faster transmission of data, do not accommodate the ability to transmit extremely large data files. Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a system that permits users to communicate images over networks, including the Internet, without having to email large data files. It is also desirable to develop a system that permits users to manipulate those images as dynamic images.
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{
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In the art of shingle manufacture, it has been known that laminated shingles may be prepared using separate layers. Each layer is constructed, generally of a bituminous coated web, with granules applied to an upper surface thereof.
The two shingle layers are then laminated together, by application of an adhesive, generally a bituminous material, to the back of the secondary layer, which is then applied over the base layer, whereby the adhesive secures the layers together, sandwiching granules from the top of the base layer therebetween. Examples of laminated shingles include those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,181,361 and 5,287,669, for example.
One prior art process for producing a laminated shingle is disclosed in FIG. 1 hereof, which will hereinafter be discussed in greater detail.
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{
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1. Technical Field
Example embodiments relate to a semiconductor device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The recent increase in the distribution of information media has led to advancement in the functionalities of semiconductor devices. To ensure higher competitiveness, new semiconductor products may have to meet demands for lower cost and higher quality by way of higher integration. Semiconductor scale-down continues to achieve higher integration.
Research is under way to increase operating speed of a semiconductor device and enhance integration density. The semiconductor device is equipped with discrete devices such as metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistors. The integration of the semiconductor device resulted in gradually decreasing distances between gates of the MOS transistors, and also gradually narrowed contact forming regions between the gates.
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{
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A networked computer environment typically includes a server computer system that provides client computer systems with access to information and services. The server and client computer systems are usually connected via a local area or a wide area private Intranet system, or via the public Internet. Shared files are typically stored in an HTML file format, which has become an internationally accepted format for sharing data in a networked computer environment. A unique uniform resource locator (URL) may be associated with each HTML file, enabling client computer systems to request a specific HTML file from a server computer system.
Generally, an HTML file includes a hierarchical set of markup elements. Most markup elements include a start tag, followed by content, followed by an end tag. The content is typically a combination of text and nested markup elements. Tags, which are enclosed in angle brackets (‘<’ and ‘>’), indicate the file structure and the format of the file data. There are tags for markup elements such as titles and headers, for text attributes such as bold and italic, for lists, for paragraph boundaries, for links to other documents or other parts of the same document, for graphic images, for non-displayed comments, and for many other features. Further details regarding HTML may be found in reference books such as, “HTML For Dummies,” by Ed Tittel and Steve James (1996).
An application program module used for viewing HTML files is commonly referred to as a browser. The primary function of a browser is to find, retrieve, and display HTML files and other files. A browser is generally not intended for word processing or data creation and manipulation. However, a browser may be used to display documents or data that are generated by other application program modules, once such documents or data are converted into an HTML or HTML-compatible format.
While application programs exist for directly creating and manipulating HTML data, users often prefer to create and manipulate data using more familiar applications programs, such as word processors, electronic spreadsheets and the like. An electronic spreadsheet, word processor, or other similar application program typically operates on “native data” stored in native data files having a format that is native to the particular application program. Many such application programs provide the user with the option to convert native data into HTML data and to publish the HTML data into an HTML file. However, data persistence is generally problematic when a user works with multiple files. In order to maintain consistency, the user must modify the HTML data in the HTML file upon every subsequent modification of the corresponding native data within the native data file.
The EXCEL 2000™ electronic spreadsheet application program, which is distributed by Microsoft Corporation or Redmond, Wash., includes functionality for publishing native data from a spreadsheet file into an HTML file, without requiring a separate HTML editor to define any HTML tags. During the publication process, EXCEL 2000 inserts a unique identifier into the destination HTML file in order to identify the published data and mark its location in the HTML file. EXCEL 2000 further stores the unique identifier in a data structure that is associated with the native spreadsheet file. Thus, by generating a series of user interface commands, the user is able to instruct EXCEL 2000 to locate the previously published data in the HTML file, by way of the unique identifier, and to update or “republish” the data in order to reflect changes made to the native data in the spreadsheet file.
As mentioned with respect to EXCEL 2000, the existing prior art application programs that address issue of publishing data into an HTML document require the user to generate a series of user interface commands in order to republish the data. If the user does not generate the proper user interface commands, or if the user does not remember to invoke the republication process after the native data is modified, the originally published data will be inconsistent with the modified native data. As is well known in the art, serious consequences may result from the sharing of inconsistent or outdated data in a networked computer environment. Therefore, there is a need for automatic republication of data into an HTML file or another published file, without the need for user interaction, in response to modification of corresponding native data.
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{
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a floor safe having a rotating bolt plate that reduces warp and wear caused by other locking devices and provides several deterrents to forcible entry.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 1,854,839 to J. Hermann on Apr. 19, 1932 shows a safe having a removable door that is cammed under a protective flange and then locked in place by a key operated rectangular locking bolt.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,404,916 to B. M. Ingram on Sept. 20, 1983 describes a safe having a hinged door with springs to deter free fall of the door and a pair of locking stays on the door to deter an effort to pry off the door.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,888 to W. G. Cartwright, et al., on Nov. 13, 1984 shows a cylindrical safe having a closure with a sliding bolt that pushes a ring into a captive position in a groove located in the body of the safe thus locking the closure to the body.
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{
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The present invention relates to a binding device which causes legs of a bind member to pass through punched holes formed in sheets to be bound, and forms the legs into a ring-like shape, thereby binding the sheets.
For example, plural copied sheets are bound and then distributed during a meeting or presentation. Generally, staples are used as a means for binding sheets. However, this means has a disadvantage in that a spread portion of the bound sheets is difficult to see. Means for bonding together end faces of sheets using a hot melt adhesive is also known. However, the means which uses a hot melt adhesive in binding has a problem in that the adhesive must be cooled after beating and hence the binding process requires a prolonged time period.
A binding device which allows sheets to be completely spread and in which the binding process can be rapidly performed is known. In the device, as shown in FIG. 12(a), a bind member 22 is used in which plural U-like pieces 21 perpendicularly project from a straight portion 20 at regular intervals. The U-like pieces 21 are passed through punched holes 24 which are previously formed along edges of sheets 23, respectively. The portions projecting from the punched holes 24 are bent by a bending device as shown in FIG. 12(b) to form the pieces into a ring-like shape, whereby the sheets 23 are bound. When sheets are bound by such a binding device, facing pages can be spread 180 degrees, and the whole face of each page can be seen.
However, the binding device has problems as follows. The bind member 22 itself has the plural U-like pieces 21 which are previously shaped, and the length of the member is chosen to correspond to a length of a side of a particular size sheet 23 (for example a B5 size, A4 size, or the like). Therefore, each bind member is bulky. When multiple bind members are prepared, a large space is required, and the bind members may become entangled with one another and hence difficult to handle. Furthermore, the production cost of one bind member is high. Therefore, the work of binding a number of sheets while grouping the sheets into many sets is cumbersome and costly.
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The present invention relates to a seat-load measuring apparatus mounted under a seat rail for guiding a seat of a vehicle, such as a car, so as to measure the load imposed on the vehicle seat.
As this type of seat-load measuring apparatus, seat-load measuring apparatuses 104 have been proposed which are mounted under seat rails 103 for guiding a vehicle seat 102, on which a person 101 sits, in order to measure the load imposed on the vehicle seat 102, as shown in FIGS. 10(A) to 10(C) (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-258234, hereinafter “Patent Document 1”).
In each seat-load measuring apparatus 104, a lower surface of a base 105 that has an upward-pointing angular-U shape in cross section is fixed to a seat mounting section 107 of a vehicle body with seat brackets 106 at the front and rear ends therebetween, and the seat rail 103 and the base 105 are connected by a pin bracket (hereinafter, also referred to as a rail bracket) 108 serving as a connecting bracket that has a downward-pointing angular-U shape in cross section. In this case, the seat rail 103 is firmly connected to the flat upper surface of the pin bracket 108, and a bracket pin (hereinafter, also referred to as a stopper bolt) 109 is passed through pin holes 108a and 108b provided in the left and right side plates of the pin bracket 108 and pin holes 105a and 105b provided in the left and right side plates of the base 105, thereby connecting the seat rail 103 to the base 105.
On the other hand, a seat-load measuring apparatus has been proposed which ensures measuring accuracy without any influence of manufacturing errors of a vehicle floor by placing a seat rail between the seat-load measuring apparatus and the vehicle floor and absorbing the manufacturing errors of the vehicle floor by a clearance formed by a sliding contact in the seat rail (for example, see Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-116081, hereinafter “Patent Document 2”).
The seat-load measuring apparatus 104 disclosed in Patent Document 1 described above is interposed between the seat bracket 106 fixed to the seat mounting section 107 of the vehicle body and the seat rail 103, assembly stress may be produced in the seat-load measuring apparatus 104 by the influence of the upper surface of the seat mounting section 107 of the vehicle body. When the assembly stress is produced in the seat-load measuring apparatus 104, the seat-load measuring apparatus 104 cannot ensure a sufficient measuring accuracy.
In a case in which a heavy load is imposed on the pin bracket 108 that connects the seat rail 103 and the base 105 of the seat-load measuring apparatus 104, for example, in a vehicle collision, the pin bracket 108 must have a sufficient strength to support the heavy load.
However, in the connecting structure for the seat rail 103 and the base 105 of the seat-load measuring apparatus 104 disclosed in Patent Document 1 described above, only the bracket pin 109 extends through the pin holes 105a and 105b simply provided in the left and right side plates of the base 105 having an upwardly-pointing angular-U shape in cross section and the pin holes 108a and 108b simply provided in the left and right side plates of the pin bracket 108 having a downwardly-pointing angular-U shape in cross section. Therefore, the pin bracket 108 has a limitation of having a sufficient strength. That is, the pin bracket 108 can be increased to some extent by increasing the dimensions of portions 108c and 108d of the pin bracket 108 where the pin holes 108a and 108b are formed (for example, the thicknesses, and the distances from the pin holes 108a and 108b to the outer peripheral edge of the pin bracket 108). However, in such a case in which the dimensions of the portions of the pin bracket 108 having the pin holes 108a and 108b are simply increased, layout restrictions are increased, and mounting flexibility is reduced.
Although a heavy load, for example, in a vehicle collision can be, of course, supported by the connecting structure using the pin bracket 108 disclosed in the above publication, it is desirable to more reliably support such a heavy load without increasing layout restrictions.
In the seat-load measuring apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 2 described above, the seat rail is interposed between the seat-load measuring apparatus and the vehicle floor, and manufacturing errors of the vehicle floor are absorbed by the clearance produced by the sliding contact in the seat rail. This overcomes the problem of an insufficient measuring accuracy in Patent Document 1 described above.
In the seat-load measuring apparatus disclosed in Patent Document 2, however, an operation hole or the like must be formed in the base member, in a manner similar to that in Patent Document 1 described above, and this decreases the strength of the base member.
Although the base member disclosed in Patent Document 2 described above can support a heavy load produced, for example, in a vehicle collision, it is desirable to more reliably support such a heavy load without increasing layout restrictions.
The present invention has been made in view of such circumstances.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a management system, a management device, an image forming device, a management system control method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been proposed a management system that manages consumables by monitoring the remaining amount of toner loaded in an image forming device. When the remaining amount of toner becomes low since a new toner bottle has been loaded in the image forming device, the management system provides a notification indicating the necessity of the replacement of the toner bottle. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-22277 discloses a management system that receives toner remaining amount information from an image forming device, determines that the toner bottle delivery time is reached when the received remaining amount of toner is less than a predetermined value, and provides a toner bottle delivery request based on the determination. In addition, the management system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-22277 determines the optimum timing for providing a toner bottle replacement notification using the remaining amount of a toner bottle loaded in an image forming device, the number of copies printed, and a coverage.
The management system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2012-22277 does not consider the case where a new toner bottle may be prematurely replaced before completion of the use of the toner bottle since the loading thereof in an image forming device. However, in practice, a user may replace a toner bottle even when the remaining amount of toner is still present in the toner bottle. The reason for this is because, in order to make an image forming device operate continuously during the night in a company or the like, a user who uses the image forming device may replace the previously loaded bottle with a new toner bottle before the user gets home from the company. If a toner bottle loaded in the image forming device is replaced before the toner stored in the toner bottle is completely used, a conventional toner management system cannot perform appropriate management.
Also, a maintenance service contract for an image forming device is present between the sales company of the image forming device and its customer. For example, in the contract, there is a clause that a sales company receives a maintenance service fee corresponding to the number of copies printed instead all the payment of toner used by the image forming device of interest shall be borne by the sales company. If a toner bottle in which the remaining amount of toner is present is discarded by a customer under the contract without complete use of the toner, the replacement of toner bottles may significantly exceed the assumption made by the sales company. In such a case, the sales company has no choice but to increase a service price for a maintenance contract itself in order to compensate an increase in toner payment due to the replacement of toner bottles exceeding the assumption. Such a cost increase may be disadvantageous for both the customer and the sales company. Thus, it is preferable that consumable such as a toner bottle is replaced after being completely used.
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The present invention relates to a control gear for fluorescent lamps, which comprises two or more lamp circuits for igniting and burning fluorescent lamps, the lamp circuits comprising supply and igniting components specific for each lamp, and a supply line arranged to supply voltage to the lamp circuits.
Fluorescent lamps are generally used owing to their good lighting power. In addition, the long operating life of fluorescent lamps and the various tones of colour available enable their use in various applications.
A control gear is required for burning fluorescent lamps, the control gear supplying the ignition voltage necessary for the fluorescent lamp and the supply voltage necessary during its use. When using several fluorescent lamps connected to a prior art control gear, a problem arises from the fact that when one fluorescent lamp becomes defective, the fluorescent lamps connected to the same control gear cannot continue to function normally. Present control gears do not allow the switching off of a defective lamp without switching off the other lamps connected to the same control gear. This causes problems when lamps are replaced, because replacing one switched-off lamp does not necessarily allow the system to work.
It is an object of this invention to provide a control gear for fluorescent lamps, which avoids the above drawbacks and allows one and the same control gear to supply voltage to the fluorescent lamps in such a manner that the operation of one lamp is completely independent from that of the others. This object is achieved by a control gear of the invention characterized in that the control gear also comprises a switching element connected to a supply line and common to all lamp circuits, which element is arranged to cut the supply to all lamp circuits, switching elements specific for each lamp circuit, which elements are arranged to control the voltage of the lamps in the lamp circuits, a control unit arranged to control the common switching element and the switching elements specific for each lamp circuit, and lamp circuit-specific circuits for identifying a defective fluorescent lamp, which are arranged to transmit information on defective fluorescent lamps to the control unit.
The invention is based on the idea that an electronic control gear comprises, for each lamp, circuit switching elements with which the lamps can be controlled separately independent of the control of the other lamps. In normal operation, the switching elements of the lamp circuits are controlled in parallel using the same control. The control gear of the invention also comprises circuits for identifying defective lamps, and on the basis of the error information received from the circuits, the control of the defective lamp can be stopped, and the other fluorescent lamps connected to the same control gear can continue operation undisturbed. The control gear of the invention provides significant advantages with respect to condition control and maintenance of the lamps, since a defective lamp is easy to locate and replace when necessary.
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In a conventional information storage device, for example a hard disk device (hereafter, referred to as an HDD), a sufficient amount of time for specifying a source (cause) of an access error (in the case of data reading or data writing, approximately 10 seconds) is used as a timeout value during access. Hence, when an error occurs during HDD access, the error source is specified before a timeout, and then recovery processing corresponding to the error source is executed.
Note that the aforementioned timeout value may differ according to a command executed by the HDD, but during initial access, in which the HDD executes a command (a Reset command, a Read command, a Write command, and so on) such that the CPU accesses the HDD for the first time, and an access retry, which is executed following recovery from an error occurring during the initial access, the HDD is accessed in accordance with an identical command and therefore an identical value is typically used as the timeout value. Note that the type of access to the HDD is determined in accordance with the content of the command executed on the HDD side, and the timeout value differs according to the type of access.
Patent Document 1 discloses a control device for a disk array in which different timeout values are used according to the condition of the disk array. In this control device, a first timeout value is used to access the disk array when the disk array is operating normally, but in a state of degeneration occurring when one disk of the disk array is defective, a second timeout value smaller than the first timeout value is used, that is, access is timed out in a shorter amount of time than when the disk array is normal. Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. 3,284,963
In this conventional information storage device, identical timeout periods are used during initial access and an access retry, and therefore recovery from an access error accompanied by a timeout requires a large amount of time. As a result, there is a problem such that an overall response speed of an information processing system employing the information storage device may be reduced.
This problem will now be described more specifically.
FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a flow of conventional HDD access processing in a case where data reading or data writing is performed in relation to an HDD. Here, the timeout value of the access is assumed to be 10 seconds, which is a sufficient amount of time to specify the error source. Further, a time required to achieve successful access without error generation is assumed to be 0.1 seconds, and a time required for recovery processing is assumed to be 0.5 seconds.
First, when the HDD executes a command such that the CPU accesses the HDD (step ST100), counting of the timeout value is started, and after waiting for a response from the HDD, an access result is determined (step ST101). When an access error occurs at this time, a disk control unit of the HDD executes processing to specify the source of the error before being timed out (corresponding to the time required to specify the error source). The disk control unit notifies the CPU side of the error source thus specified in the form of an error source report.
The CPU determines whether or not to retry HDD access, taking into consideration the source of the HDD access error specified in the error source report, a number of retries up to that point, and so on (step ST102). When a retry is to be performed, the CPU executes recovery processing corresponding to the error source (step ST103) and then returns to the step ST100 to execute post-recovery access.
On the other hand, when a response is received from the HDD in the step ST101 such that the HDD is accessed successfully without an error (step ST104), the time required for this operation is 0.1 seconds. Further, when an error occurs, the error source is specified, recovery processing is executed in relation to the error, and the processing returns to the step ST101, in which the HDD is accessed successfully without an error, the time required for this operation is 10.6 seconds.
When a retry is deemed unnecessary in the step ST102, the CPU terminates the processing as an access error (step ST105). Note that the time required to obtain this result is the 10 seconds required to specify the error source. Further, when a single access retry is executed, an error occurs in the step ST101 following the recovery processing, and a further retry is deemed unnecessary again in the step ST102 following the error source specification processing, the time required for this operation is 20.5 seconds.
Hence, a minimum of 10 seconds is required to recover from an access error accompanied by a timeout, and when a timeout is implemented again during an access retry, a response cannot be obtained for at least 20 seconds. Furthermore, by shortening the timeout period, the speed of the recovery processing and the response can be increased, but the error source can no longer be specified.
Further, in Patent Document 1, the timeout period is fixed at the first timeout value or the second timeout value depending on the condition (normal condition or degenerated condition) of the disk array, and therefore a similar inconvenience to the aforementioned occur.
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This invention relates generally to doors and windows and more specifically to the jambs of door and window openings that frame the openings and into which doors and windows are mounted.
When constructing the doors and windows of a building, a rough opening is usually formed with framing timbers, which in residential housing are generally 2xc3x974 studs. A prefabricated frame is then installed in the rough opening. In the case of a door, this frame generally comprises a threshold and sill assembly defining the bottom of the frame, a pair of spaced vertical jambs defining the sides of the frame, and a head jamb at the top of the frame. The jambs are formed to receive the door panel, which is mounted to one of the vertical jambs by hinges, and to provide a peripheral stop against which the door rests when it is closed. In many cases, weather stripping is provided along the stop to form a seal between the door panel and the stop in order to prevent unwanted drafts through the closed door.
For many years, door jambs, and window jambs for that matter, have been formed of elongated planks or boards of wood that are milled to form the contour of the jamb and to define the raised peripheral stop of the jamb. Since the surfaces of these jambs are generally visible, it has historically been necessary to fabricate door jambs from high grade clear lumber that has no knots, is stable when subjected to moisture, and can be stained and painted with superior results. Although such lumber was plentiful from old growth forests for decades, it has become increasingly rare and correspondingly expensive over the past several years. As a result, old style door frames made of milled clear lumber are quickly becoming cost prohibitive, and can only continue to follow this trend as old growth forests are progressively harvested.
Some attempts have been made to reduce the reliance on expensive lumber in the fabrication of door and window jambs. For example, vinyl clad jambs fabricated of less expensive lower grade lumber covered by a skin of extruded vinyl have become popular. However, these types of jambs still require the time consuming process of milling the wooden jamb members to the desired contour, extruding a vinyl cladding contoured to fit over the wooden jambs, and installing the cladding on the jambs during the manufacturing process. As a result, some vinyl clad jambs can be even more expensive than all wood jambs formed of high grade lumber.
Another attempt to solve the problem has been to fabricate a combination jamb with interior portions made of high grade lumber but with exterior portions made of vinyl or plastic extrusions. These composite jambs have met with some success but still require the use of some high grade lumber for interior portions of the jambs. Further, most of these types of jambs require specialized installation techniques, which carpenters resist. Finally, as with all jambs that include wood, the wooden portions of the jamb are subject to rot and decay over time, particularly in the region of the door sill,.and require replacing over time.
While a door jamb having no wooden components would seem to be a solution to the problem, this has proven an illusive goal for door and window manufacturers. Hollow extruded plastic jambs, while not including any wood, are flimsy, do not take nails and screws like wood, and are generally unacceptable in all but the most inexpensive construction. Solid extruded plastic jambs have not proven practical because the plastic is not as strong as wood and is subject to much greater thermal expansion and contraction than wood, which can cause the jamb to buckle or deform under extreme temperature conditions.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a novel door and window jamb assembly that uses no wood, that is resistant to rot and decay for much longer periods of time than wood, that is installed using traditional carpentry techniques, and that is not subject to degradation due to thermal expansion and contraction. It is to the provision of such a jamb assembly that the present invention is primarily directed.
Briefly described, the present invention, in one embodiment thereof, comprises an improved door jamb assembly fabricated entirely of coextruded thermoplastic material. The jamb is coextruded with a porous blown thermoplastic core and a solid non blown thermoplastic skin that is adapted to be primed and painted. The jamb is extruded to have the desired profile, and, in the preferred embodiment, has a jamb portion and a raised portion that forms a stop against which a closed door can rest. A groove is extruded along the bottom of the stop for holding a flexible whether strip for sealing against the door.
A pair of rolled or extruded aluminum reinforcing members are coextruded with the jamb and are embedded within the blown core thereof. The reinforcing members are shaped to be surrounded and be gripped by the thermoplastic material of the jamb. The reinforcing members function to minimize the thermal expansion and contraction of the jamb member and to eliminate any tendency of the member to bow or deform when exposed to changes in temperature. In the preferred embodiment, one of the reinforcing members has a leg that is positioned adjacent the inside edge of the jamb for receiving screws or other fasteners that mount a decorative case molding to the jamb. Similarly, the other reinforcing member has a leg that is positioned adjacent the outside edge of the jamb for receiving screws or other fasteners used to attach a brick mold to the jamb. This provides additional reinforcement to the jamb since the reinforcing members are firmly attached to the case molding inside a building and the brick mold on the outside of the building.
Accordingly, an blown all thermoplastic door jamb is now provided that uses no wood, is efficient to manufacture with a minimum of manufacturing steps, that is not subject to rot and decay, and that is strong and thermally stable even under extreme temperature conditions. These and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention will become more apparent upon review of the detailed description set forth below when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, which are briefly described as follows.
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The present invention relates generally to an optical information processor for optically recording and/or reproducing information, and more particularly concerns an information tracking apparatus for tracing information by light beams or spots with high accuracy.
For reading out information from a disc surface in which information is previously recorded in a spiral track pattern as is in the case of an optical video disc, an optical audio disc and the like systems, a tracking function or control is required for causing a writing/reading light spot to trace the information track with accuracy. The tracking control in turn requires an operation for detecting positional deviation of the light spot from the information track and a control operation for displacing the light spot in dependence on a magnitude of the detected deviation and the direction thereof to correctively cancel the deviation.
In the optical video disc systems which are currently commercially available, a tracking control system is practically adopted in which deviation of the light spot from the information track or groove (hereinafter also referred to as the tracking error) is detected by making use of two auxiliary light spots in addition to the main light spot which serves as writing/reading spot. For example, reference is to be made to Japanese Laid-Open patent application No. 44-50954. The principle of this known tracking control system will briefly be reviewed below. Referring to FIG. 1a of the accompanying drawings, an information reading light spot 1 is positioned at a mid point between two auxiliary light spots 2 and 3 with an equal distance l thereto. It will further be noted that the centers 5 and 7 of the auxiliary light spots 2 and 3 are deviated to the right and to the left (as viewed in the drawing), respectively, by a same distance .delta. from a virtual center line 8 which passes through the center 6 of the readout light spot 1 and extends in parallel with the direction in which the information track is moved forwardly as indicated by a blank arrow. Thus, the light spots 2 and 3 may be considered to sandwich the light spot 1 in directions which are both parallel and perpendicular to the information track or groove. Photodetectors for receiving light rays reflected from the disc illuminated by the light spots are disposed on an image plane of an objective lens or lenses for focusing the reflected light rays. More specifically, referring to FIG. 1b, images of the light spots 2, 1 and 3 are focused onto the photodetectors 12, 11 and 13, respectively, through associated objective lenses (not shown). The output signals of the photodetectors 12, 11 and 13 are amplified by associated amplifiers 14, 15 and 16 to constitute output signals A, B and C, respectively. In the case of an optical video disc, the information track denoted by a numeral 4 is constituted by a series of pits (i.e. elongated or circular holes each having a depth corresponding to a quater wavelength of a light source) pressed into the disc surface in a phased array and representing information. Since the information signal recorded on the video disc is derived through frequency modulation of the video signal (whose band covers a range from DC to 4 MHz), it is possible to detect variations or changes in the DC component to be utilized for the tracking control without being subjected to influence of the information signal by selecting the band of the amplifiers 14 and 16 to be sufficiently narrow as compared with that of the information signal.
Assuming now that behavior or variation of the DC component of the output signal B occurring upon traversal of the reading light spot 1 across a track is represented as a function of deviation from the center of the track (i.e. tracking error), the behavior will be such as indicated by a double-dotted broken line curve B in FIG. 2. The output signals A and C correspond to the output signal B shifted to the right (i.e. in the positive direction) and to the left (i.e. in the negative direction), respectively, by the distance .delta. along the abscissa symmetrically to the ordinate, since the auxiliary light spots 2 and 3 corresponding to the output signals A and C are deviated symmetrically from the reading light spot 1, as described above. This means that the rightward deviation or displacement of the track 4 as viewed in FIG. 1a causes the quantity of reflected light of the auxiliary spot 2 to be decreased while the quantity of reflected light of the spot 3 is increased, and vice versa.
For detecting the tracking error, the output signals A and C may be supplied to the inputs of a differential amplifier whose output signal will then be such as indicated by a broken line curve in FIG. 3. The tracking control is made with the aid of light spot control means such as a light beam deflector or the like in such a manner that the output signal of the differential amplifier becomes zero, i.e. the quantities of reflected light of the auxiliary spots 2 and 3 are equal to each other. As will now be appreciated, the tracking control system mentioned above can certainly assure the tracing of the information track by the reading light spot in a stabilized manner, so far as information is previously recorded as in the case of the optical video disc or the optical audio disc. However, in the case of an information processor commonly referred to as the digital optical disc system which is destined to record and reproduce digital information, video information and others on a real-time base, the hitherto known tracking control apparatus suffers a shortcoming that the accurate tracking (i.e. track tracing operation) can not be attained in the recording mode operation. This problem will be scrutinized below.
In a typical one of the known digital optical disc systems, recording of information on a disc composed of a photosensitive information recording medium (e.g. a metallic film) formed on a disc substrate through vapor deposition is accomplished in such a manner that light from a high-power laser is focused in the form of a light spot having a diameter of the order of 1 .mu.m on the surface of the spinning disc with the intensity of the laser beam being modulated in accordance with information to be recorded, as the result of which information is recorded on the recording medium in the form of holes referred to as pits thermally produced in the disc surface in a spiral or concentric circular pattern. In the playback operation, the information carrying medium of the disc is irradiated with a focused light beam of a low-power laser to pick up the recorded information in terms of variations in the quantity of light reflected from the pits. For particulars, reference may be made to an article titled "Ten Billion Bits Fit Onto Two Sides of 12-inch Disc", Electronics, No. 23 ( 1978), p. 75. This information processor system is typically inplemented in such a structure as shown in FIG. 4. Referring to this figure, a disc 103 having a diameter on the order of 30 cm is rotated in the direction indicated by an arrow around a rotating shaft 104 driven by an electric motor 105. An optical head 102 which is constituted by a laser light source, an optical system for guiding laser light from the light source to the disc 103 and photodetectors for detecting light reflected from the disc is mounted on a swing arm actuator 101 to be movable in a radial direction of the disc 103. Recording and playback operations of the optical information processor of the above mentioned structure will be described below by referring to FIG. 5 which shows in a fragmental enlarged view a structure of a disc used to this end.
A groove 113 of a concaved form in section referred to as the guide groove having predetermined width and depth is formed in a spiral or concentric circular pattern in a ultraviolet-hardenable resin layer deposited on a disc substrate 111 of a glass or plastic material. A metallic film 110 is formed over the groove forming resin layer through vapor evaporation. Laser light emitted from the optical head 102 is focused in the form of a spot and moved along the guide groove 113 to thereby record information in the form of pits 112 in the manner described above. In the playback mode, the information carrying disc surface is illuminated with the light spot along the guide groove 113 to detect the quantity of reflected light. Additionally, signals for controlling the main light spot are also derived on the basis of the quantity of reflected light.
The light spot control signals include primarily an off-focus detection signal representative of the out-of-focus state of the light beam due to vertical vibrations of the disc and a tracking error detection signal representative of deviation or error between the center of the light spot and that of the guide groove. These two signals are derived from light rays reflected from the metal film at locations other than the information pits.
Returning to FIG. 1a, the auxiliary spots 2 and 3 as well as the information writing/reading or main spot 1 are formed by splitting a light beam emitted from a single laser light source into the corresponding number of beams by means of a diffraction grating. The ratio of light intensity distribution of the auxiliary spot to that of the main or information writing/reading spot is set at about 1/10 with a view to increasing the light utilization for the main or information writing/reading spot. In the recording mode, the laser power is increased for forming the pits. At this time, the tracking operation for causing the main or writing spot 1 to follow the guide groove 113 has to be carried out simultaneously with the recording operation. However, in the case of the recording mode, the tracking error can not be detected with accuracy by the hitherto known method, giving rise to a problem.
More specifically, it is assumed that the direction indicated by the arrow in FIG. 1a is tangential to the rotating direction of the disc. As the pits are formed by the main or writing light spot 1 having intensity modulated in accordance with information to be recorded in the recording operation, the reproduced signal originating in the auxiliary spot 2 is subjected to the influence of the formed information pit and is decreased in magnitude. As the consequence, the output signal of the photodetector 12 amplified by the amplifier 14 varies in such a manner as represented by a solid line curve A' in FIG. 2. Under the circumstances, the output signal of the differential amplifier which represents the difference between the outputs of the amplifiers 14 and 16 (this difference corresponds to the tracking error signal) is modified as indicated by a solid line curve in FIG. 3 which is remarkably deviated from the broken line curve representative of the desirable tracking error signal. Under the circumstances, the intrinsic center position 0 of the track is shifted to a position indicated by 0' as shown in FIG. 3, involving a corresponding offset in the tracking error signal. Accordingly, when the tracking servo control is performed on the basis of this detected signal (solid line curve), the center of the main or writing light spot is positioned at the offset point 0', as the result of which the information pits are recorded at incorrect positions, to a serious drawback.
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Having decorative motor vehicle wheels has become more popular with consumers for the vehicles. The below disclosure is directed to a novel vehicle wheel generally comprising a decorative member attached to a base wheel for enhancing the decorative appearance of the motor vehicle at the wheel area.
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Handwriting recognition systems are being developed to allow users to input handwritten data into a computer. An electronic tablet allows a user to hand write data that the commuter can recognize. The user writes data on the electronic tablet with a special pen. As the user moves the pen across the tablet, the tablet displays "ink." The tablet senses the position of the pen as the user writes and sends the position data to the computer. The computer receives this position data and converts it to recognized symbols, such as letters or numbers, in a convenient format, such as ASCII format. The computer then processes the formatted characters.
Some handwriting recognition systems recognize not only characters, letters and punctuation, but also gestures. Gestures are handwritten symbols that are typically used to represent editing commands or to produce non-printing text. For example, a handwritten backslash over a letter may mean delete the letter, a caret in between two letters may mean insert text, or a vertical line with an arrow to the left may mean insert a carriage return. Gestures are used extensively when printed documents are edited. During recognition, these gestures are converted to a convenient format for use by the computer.
These handwriting recognition systems use algorithms to map handwritten data to symbols. Typically, these systems internally store a prototype for each symbol that can be recognized. A prototype is a "picture" of a handwritten symbol that is used to map handwriting to a symbol. A system that recognizes just capital letters may have only 26 prototypes: one for each capital letter. Recognition systems use recognition algorithms to map handwritten data- to a prototype. As long as the user writes like the prototypes, the handwritten data is successfully recognized. Conversely, the more dissimilar the handwritten data and the prototype are, the more likely it is that the handwritten data will be misrecognized. Misrecognition is typically due to the differences in user handwriting styles and legibility of the handwriting. For example, the handwritten word "dear" may be misrecognized as the word "clear" depending the way the user writes a "d" and the prototypes for the letters "d," "c," and "1."
Although some computer programs are written to accept handwritten data, most computer programs are designed to receive data typed by a user at a computer keyboard. Such programs are call non-pen programs, that is, the programs are not designed to support handwritten data entry. It is often desirable to allow users the option to input data through a keyboard or by handwriting. Many people are not proficient at typing. They shun using computers because it is burdensome to enter data. These people, however, would use a computer if the computer program would accept handwritten data entry. Also, there are many situations where the use of a keyboard is impractical and where the use of handwritten data entry would be practical.
Many of the non-pen application programs are written for a windowing environment. One such windowing environment is Windows by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Several operating systems also have integrated windowing environments. In a windowing environment, each application program is assigned a window. The windows for several programs can be shown on the computer display simultaneously. Typically, the windowing environment supports multitasking, that is, multiple programming may be operating concurrently. The windowing system controls the positioning and size of the windows on the screen. Typically, the user has considerable flexibility in arranging the windows. In most windowing systems, the windows can overlap. The window that logically overlaps obscures the overlapped window.
It would require extensive redesigning and reprogramming to adapt non-pen programs to accept handwritten data. In some situations, it may not be economically feasible to adapt a non-pen program. The costs of the adaptations may not be offset by increased revenue resulting from the program accepting handwritten data. It would be desirable if these non-pen application programs could receive handwritten data without the need to adapt the non-pen application program. It would be desirable if the non-pen program could also receive handwritten gestures.
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An electrophotographic process is a process of obtaining a duplicate or copy by electrostatically charging an electrophotographic photoreceptor, image-exposing the photoreceptor to form electrostatic latent image, developing the latent image with a developer (toner), transferring the toner image formed on the photoreceptor onto a transfer paper, and fixing the transferred toner image.
The electrophotographic photoreceptor being used in the electrophotographic process is composed of an electrically conductive substrate having formed thereon a photo-sensitive layer as the fundamental structure, as the materials constituting the photosensitive layer, amorphous silicon (hydrogenated amorphous silicon) is known, and recently various improvements have been attempted.
The electrophotographic photoreceptor using the amorphous silicon (hereinafter, is referred to as amorphous silicon photoreceptor) is produced by forming an amorphous layer of silicon on an electrically conductive substrate by a glow discharging decomposition method of a silane (SiH.sub.4) gas and hydrogen atoms are contained in the amorphous silicon layer to show a good photoconductivity. The amorphous silicon photoreceptor has features that the surface hardness of the photosensitive layer thereof is high, the photoreceptor is excellent in abrasion resistance, has a high heat resistance, is excellent in electrical stability, has a wide spectral sensitivity, and has a high light sensitivity, and is an electrophotographic photoreceptor having an ideal property as an electrophotographic photoreceptor.
The amorphous silicon photoreceptor has the excellent characteristics as photoreceptor as described above but the dark resistance thereof is relatively low and hence has the disadvantage that the dark decay of the photoconductive layer is large and when the photoreceptor is charged, a sufficient charged potential is not obtained. In other words, the amorphous silicon photoreceptor has the disadvantage that in the case of charging the photoreceptor, image-exposing the photoreceptor to form an electrostatic latent image, and then developing the latent image, the surface potential on the photoreceptor is decayed before the image-exposure or the charges at the unexposed portions are decayed before the development step, whereby the charged potential necessary for development is hard to obtain.
The decay of the charged potential is liable to be changed by the influence of the surrounding conditions, and in particular, under a high-temperature high-humidity circumstance, the charged potential is greatly lowered. Furthermore, when the photoreceptor is repeatedly used, the charged potential is gradually lowered.
When a copy is made by using the electrophotographic photoreceptor showing such a large dark decay of the charged potential, the copy obtained has a low image density and a poor reproducibility of half tone.
For improving the aforesaid point, it has been proposed to form amorphous silicon as a photoconductive layer and applying amorphous silicon carbide, amorphous silicon nitride, or amorphous silicon oxide onto the photoconductive layer by a plasma CVD method to form a charge blocking layer which further functions, at the same time, as a surface protective layer.
However, in the amorphous silicon photoreceptor having the surface protective layer formed as described above, there is a problem that by repeating the copying operation, an image blurring occurs. This phenomenon is particularly severe at a high-humidity circumstance and hence such an amorphous silicon photoreceptor cannot be used for an ordinary electrophotographic process.
Also, a process of increasing the dark resistance and, at the same time, reducing the dielectric constant by doping carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc., into the amorphous silicon layer has been proposed as described in JP-A-56-62254 and JP-A-56-62255. (The term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). However, in the foregoing process, an optical gap is broadened, whereby the sensitivity in a long wavelength region is lost and thus the process cannot be used for a printer using a semiconductor laser.
Furthermore, a process of preventing the occurrence of interference fringes by most suitably selecting the reflective index and the thickness of the surface layer composed of amorphous silicon carbide, amorphous silicon nitride, etc., has been proposed as described in JP-A-61-29851. However, in the foregoing process, the surface layer is abraded by repeating the copying operation for a long period of time, whereby the surface layer loses the function of preventing the reflection of light. Also, the process cannot cope with the gap of the oscillation wavelength of a semiconductor laser by the change of the surrounding conditions.
Still further, amorphous silicon formed by a plasma CVD method has a high surface hardness but has a fault that the amorphous silicon is liable to be cracked and is weak to shock as compared to a selenium-series photosensitive layer and an organic photoreceptor. Accordingly, the amorphous silicon photoreceptor is scratched by a paper-releasing claw, etc., in a copying apparatus or a printer, which results in causing a problem that white points and black points are liable to form on the image of the copy.
Also, an amorphous silicon photoreceptor has many semispherical defects having a diameter of from 1 .mu.m to 30 .mu.m at the surface of the photosensitive layer and by repeating a copying operation, electrical or mechanical destructions occur at the defect portions of the layer to form white points and black points on the images formed, which reduces the quality of images.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a procedure for feeding products in sheet form to a conveyor, in particular associated with an apparatus for packaging, and with a pick-up assembly in a sheet feeder that uses this procedure.
2. Discussion of the Background
In the field of the selection and transport products in sheet form, in particular in machines associated with packaging apparatus, there may be problems in correct and aligned feed of the products in sheet form, such as inserts, additional sheets, publishing products in general. In fact, these products usually require to be fed to a conveyor for collection and feed towards stations or machines for subsequent packaging and must be perfectly aligned over the underlying product.
In order not to create packaging problems and give the finished package, comprising the additional elements, a pleasing appearance, feed of single products in sheet form must be performed according to a direction well aligned and parallel to the one of the final position that must be obtained.
Moreover, it must be taken into account that to obtain a good grasp on the additional product it must e possible to grasp the product itself in an area with a certain amount of rigidity. This is also important in order for the product to be extracted without being broken and to avoid xe2x80x9ctearingxe2x80x9d of part of the product, which means it cannot be picked up by the suction cups.
Moreover, the current system for picking up and feeding the material in sheet form requires the transverse or longitudinal crease of the material in sheet form to be correctly aligned with the other publishing material to which it is to be added. Moreover, the insert or additional sheet must be correctly aligned with the pick-up area to enable it to be grasped correctly by the feeder or sheet feeder. For this purpose the feeder or sheet feeder is positioned laterally or astride the conveyor so that the insert can be grasped along the crease or the rigid area of this to be grasped correctly, as mentioned above.
The machine operator must then proceed, once the series of products and/or inserts to add on top of one another for subsequent packaging is known, to arrange the various sheet feeders according to the positions required depending on the crease of the particular insert and depending on the final position to be obtained in the package. This operation causes a loss of time to move the sheet feeder to the correct position.
The object of the present invention is to find a solution to these problems, by feeding products in sheet form towards a conveyor, in particular for example associated with a packaging apparatus, which generally consents feed of a generic insert, whatever the position (longitudinal or transverse) of its rigid or creased part.
This object according to the present invention is achieved by performing a procedure to feed products in sheet form to a conveyor, in particular associated with a packaging apparatus, and a pick-up assembly in a sheet feeder that uses this procedure, according to what is set down in the independent claims.
Other characteristics emerge from the subsequent appended claims.
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The present invention relates to a conveying apparatus suitable for driving a number of carriers in such a manner that the front end of each carrier thrusts the rear end of the preceding carrier.
In prior art thrust-drive conveying apparatuses, the front end of a carrier thrusts the rear end of the preceding carrier along a traveling path, which includes linear and U-turn path sections. Travel in the linear path sections occurs without thrust problems. In the U-turn path sections, adjacent carriers are not aligned linearly, but angled to each other. The direction of the thrust acting on each of the mutually angled carriers differs from the direction in which the preceding carrier moves. The difference between the directions causes a great loss of thrust. Accordingly, in order to thrust the carriers smoothly and securely in the U-turn path sections, it is necessary to maximize the radius of curvature of these sections and drive the carriers with great thrust. One type of prior art conveying apparatus includes carriers formed with driven frictional surfaces for compressive contact with driving rotors, which frictionally drive the carriers. It is difficult to thrust these carriers in the U-turn path sections of a traveling path. Accordingly, in the U-turn path sections, these carriers are driven by an end-to-end traction system.
Thus, in the prior art conventional conveying apparatus, the carriers are driven by the combination of the thrust drive system and the end-to-end traction system. In the linear path sections, the rear ends of the carriers are thrusted. In each U-turn path section, the carriers are connected end-to-end, and a driving means applies thrust to one of them, which pulls the following carriers. Each carrier of the prior art apparatus needs to include connecting means for connection to and disconnection from others carriers. The traveling path of this apparatus needs to include means for automatically disengaging the connecting means. Thus the entire apparatus is complex in structure, expensive, and complex to control.
The object of the present invention is to provide a conveying apparatus that can solve the foregoing problems. A conveying apparatus according to the present invention comprises a guide rail and carriers. The rail includes a U-turn path section. Each carrier includes a load bar assembly including at least three load bars connected end-to-end by vertical pivot shafts in such a manner that the bars can pivot horizontally relative to each other. Each carrier also includes a load support supported by the associated middle load bar. Each carrier further includes a pair of front and rear trolleys supporting at least the front and rear end load bars, respectively. The trolleys are supported movably on and guided by the guide rail. The front and rear trolleys are fixed to and in parallel with the front and rear end load bars, respectively. The free ends of the front and rear end load bars protrude from the front end of the front trolley and the rear end of the rear trolley, respectively, so that the free end of the front end load bar of each carrier and the free end of the rear end load bar of the preceding carrier can contact together in the U-turn path section.
While each carrier is traveling in the U-turn path section, the free ends of the end load bars of its load bar assembly deviate only slightly from the center line of the path section (the locus of the center of width of each trolley). This makes it possible to position the free ends on the center line.
Accordingly, in the U-turn path section, the free end of the front end load bar of each carrier and the free end of the rear end load bar of the preceding carrier can contact together at a point (the thrust point between adjacent carriers) near and even very near to the center line of the path section. Depending on the shape of the free ends, they can contact together on the center line. As a result, the thrust of each carrier acts on the preceding carrier efficiently through the free ends of their end load bars in the U-turn path section. This makes it possible to thrust the carriers smoothly and securely in the U-turn path section.
The present invention removes the need to particularly enlarge the radius of curvature of the U-turn path section and/or provide an exclusive driving means for this section. It is consequently possible to promote the practical use of a conveying apparatus in which the front end of each carrier thrusts the rear end of the preceding carrier.
In another embodiment, each of the carriers may include a load bar assembly including at least five load bars connected end-to-end by vertical pivot shafts in such a manner that the bars can pivot horizontally relative to each other. Each of the carriers may also include a load support supported by the associated middle load bar. Each of the carriers may further include a pair of front and rear load trolleys supporting the front and rear ends respectively of the associated middle load bar in such a manner that these trolleys can rotate relative to the bar each on a vertical pivot shaft. Each of the carriers may further include a pair of front and rear guide trolleys supporting the front and rear end load bars respectively.
Thus, the present invention makes it possible to drive long carriers smoothly in the U-turn path section even if this section has a relatively small radius of curvature. Further, the present invention prevents excessive torsional stress from acting on the middle load bars of the carriers due to loads.
The free ends of the end load bars may be convexly arcuate in plan view. In the U-turn path section, the convexly arcuate ends of the end load bars of adjacent carriers can contact together on or closely near the center line of this section. This makes it possible to thrust the carriers effectively in the U-turn path section.
The junction between each end load bar and the trolley supporting the end load bar may be near the joint between the end load bar and the adjacent load bar.
The present invention minimizes the overall length of each end load bar. Additionally, the present invention reduces the deviation of the joint between each end load bar and the adjacent intermediate load bar from the U-turn path section. This makes it possible to thrust the carriers more smoothly and securely in the U-turn path section.
The load bars of each load bar assembly may be connected together in such a manner that the mutually connected ends of adjacent load bars are positioned on or over each other. At least one side of each load bar may form a driven frictional surface continuing flush and linearly to the driven frictional surfaces of the other load bars in a linear path section of the guide rail.
Additionally, the present invention enables continuous friction drive of the carriers by means of their load bar assemblies in the linear path section.
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of data processing systems. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for processing graph objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
Multi-Tiered Enterprise Computing Systems
Traditional client-server systems employed a two-tiered architecture such as that illustrated in FIG. 1a. Applications 102 executed on the client side 100 of the two-tiered architecture are comprised of a monolithic set of program code including a graphical user interface component, presentation logic, business logic and a network interface that enables the client 100 to communicate over a network 103 with one or more servers 101. A database 104 maintained on the server 101 provides non-volatile or “persistent” storage for the data accessed and/or processed by the application 102.
The “business logic” component of the application represents the core program code of the application, i.e., the rules governing the underlying business process (or other functionality) provided by the application. The “presentation logic” describes the specific manner in which the results of the business logic are formatted for display on the user interface. The “database” 104 includes data access logic used by the business logic to store and retrieve data.
The limitations of the two-tiered architecture illustrated in FIG. 1a become apparent when employed within a large enterprise. For example, installing and maintaining up-to-date client-side applications on a large number of different clients is a difficult task, even with the aid of automated administration tools. Moreover, a tight coupling of business logic, presentation logic and the user interface logic makes the client-side code very brittle. Changing the client-side user interface of such applications is extremely hard without breaking the business logic, and vice versa. This problem is aggravated by the fact that, in a dynamic enterprise environment, the business logic may be changed frequently in response to changing business rules. Accordingly, the two-tiered architecture is an inefficient solution for enterprise systems.
In response to limitations associated with the two-tiered client-server architecture, a multi-tiered architecture has been developed, as illustrated in FIG. 1b. In the multi-tiered system, the presentation logic 121, business logic 122 and database 123 are logically separated from the user interface 120 of the application. These layers are moved off of the client 125 to one or more dedicated servers on the network 103. For example, the presentation logic 121, the business logic 122, and the database 123 may each be maintained on separate servers, 126, 127 and 128, respectively.
This separation of logical components and the user interface provides a more flexible and scalable architecture compared to that provided by the two-tier model. For example, the separation ensures that all clients 125 share a single implementation of business logic 122. If business rules change, changing the current implementation of business logic 122 to a new version may not require updating any client-side program code. In addition, presentation logic 121 may be provided which generates code for a variety of different user interfaces 120, which may be standard browsers such as Internet Explorer® or Netscape Navigator®.
The multi-tiered architecture illustrated in FIG. 1b may be implemented using a variety of different application technologies at each of the layers of the multi-tier architecture, including those based on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition™ (“J2EE”) standard, the Microsoft .NET standard and/or the Advanced Business Application Programming (“ABAP”) standard developed by SAP AG. For example, as described below, in a J2EE environment, the business layer 122, which handles the core business logic of the application, is comprised of Enterprise Java Bean (“EJB”) components with support for EJB containers. Within a J2EE environment, the presentation layer 121 is responsible for generating servlets and Java Server Pages (“JSP”) interpretable by different types of browsers at the user interface layer 120.
J2EE Application Server Architecture
FIG. 2 illustrates a typical J2EE application server 200 in which the presentation layer is implemented by a “Web container” 211 and the business layer is implemented by an Enterprise Java Bean (“EJB”) container 201. Containers are runtime environments which provide standard common services 219, 209 to runtime components. For example, the Java Naming and Directory Interface (“JNDI”) is a service that provides application components with methods for performing standard naming and directory services. Containers also provide unified access to enterprise information systems 217 such as relational databases through the Java Database Connectivity (“JDBC”) service, and legacy computer systems through the J2EE Connector Architecture (“JCA”) service. In addition, containers provide a declarative mechanism for configuring application components at deployment time through the use of deployment descriptors.
As illustrated in FIG. 2, each layer of the J2EE architecture includes multiple containers. The Web container 211, for example, is itself comprised of a servlet container 215 for processing servlets and a Java Server Pages (“JSP”) container 216 for processing Java server pages. The EJB container 201 includes three different containers for supporting three different types of enterprise Java beans: a session bean container 205 for session beans, an entity bean container 206 for entity beans, and a message driven bean container 207 for message driven beans. A more detailed description of J2EE containers and J2EE services can be found in RAGAE GHALY AND KRISHNA KOTHAPALLI, SAMS TEACH YOURSELF EJB IN 21 DAYS (2003) (see, e.g., pages 353-376).
Object-Oriented Computer Systems
The computer systems described above consist of many smaller pieces of program code referred to as “objects” which interact each other. For example in a computer program for booking cars at least three objects are required for storing the relevant information: one for the person who makes the booking (name, credit card number etc), one for the booked car (model, engine, class, etc) and another for the booking itself (booking date, return date, etc).
In most cases, objects reference other objects to form very complex object networks. Sometimes information about the structure of an object network is needed without knowledge about the real data and semantics of the objects in the network. By way of analogy, within a genealogic tree, to determine structural data such as how many people are linked, how clustered the tree is, etc, it is not necessary to know the details about each person—just the properties of the network itself. For that purpose, a consistent, flexible way to represent the object network structure would be desirable.
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Ferrochrome, ferronickel and other nickeliferous alloys are widely used in steel industry for the production of refined steel. Owing to the high price and low availability of nickel, attempts have been made at least partly to replace nickel with manganese in steelmaking.
Manganese is usually added to the steelmaking process for the final control of the manganese content of steel. The addition can be made, for instance, into an argon oxygen decarburization (AOD) converter in the form of metallic manganese bodies, which have been produced by electrolysis. The operating costs of an electrolytic manganese manufacturing process are very high.
Remarkable amounts of finely divided manganese ore particles are generated in connection with mining, crushing, transportation and handling of manganese ore. Manganese ore fines having a grain size under 6-9 mm cannot be directly used in manganese ore smelting. Ore fines tend to form covers and crusts on top of the charge in an electric furnace. Crust formation can cause gas eruptions, problems in the settling of the charge and extensive disturbances in the smelting operation.
Manganese-containing refined steel can be used as a corrosion resistant metal under less harsh conditions than nickel-containing refined steel. Manganese-containing refined steel can be used, for instance, in the manufacture of kitchen equipment, such as washing stands, food serving apparatus, cutlery, among other things. In this way the costs of the products can be made lower than the costs of corresponding nickel-containing products.
There is a need in the art for a method and a ferroalloy product by means of which the use of manganese as a raw material in steelmaking can be made easier and more cost-effective.
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1. Technical Field
The present inventive concept described herein relates to methods for fabricating semiconductor devices and, more particularly, to a method for fabricating a rewritable three-dimensional semiconductor memory device.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to meet ever-increasing needs of users for superior performance and low costs, there is a requirement for high integration density of semiconductor memory devices. In the case of conventional two-dimensional or planar semiconductor memory devices, their integration density is mainly determined by area occupied by a unit memory cell. Therefore, the conventional two-dimensional semiconductor memory devices are greatly affected by fine-pattern forming technologies. However, because extremely expensive equipment is needed to achieve fine patterns, the integration density of two-dimensional semiconductor memory devices is still limited while demand is continuing to increase.
Various technologies for three-dimensionally forming memory cells have been suggested to overcome the foregoing limitation. According to the technologies, three-dimensionally arranged memory cells allow area of a semiconductor substrate to be used effectively. For this reason, integration density of the three-dimensional memory device becomes higher than that of a two-dimensional semiconductor device.
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Technical field
The present disclosure relates to Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) integrated Circuits (IC). Particularly, the present disclosure relates to multi-cycle write leveling in DRAM devices. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to synchronizing the clock signal and data strobe signal in a DRAM device using multi cycle write leveling procedure.
Description of the Related Art
Memory devices/systems used in computing systems typically incorporate one or more Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) integrated circuits arranged on a memory module, for example, a DIMM (Dual In-Line Memory Module). A DIMM typically includes multiple DRAM devices serially mounted on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and is typically adapted to be used in personal computers, laptop computers, servers and the like. Typically, the operations of DRAM devices (on the DIMM) are controlled by a memory controller. Recent evolutions in the field of memory devices include DDR3 DRAM, third generation of the DDR DRAM family, which offers enhanced data bandwidth and signal quality.
To achieve enhanced signal integrity at higher data rates, DDR3 memory modules typically adopt fly-by signal routing for clock (CK), address, command (for example, RAS_n, CAS_n and the like) and control signals (for example, CS_n, ODT, and the like) while matching the trace length for data (DQ) and data strobe (DQS). The consequence of incorporating fly-by topology is though at the DRAM controller, wherein CK and DQS could be designed to meet the DRAM timing specification (tDQSS) as shown in FIG. 1 but at the DRAM ball the CLK and DQS are no longer in phase given the difference in the trace lengths of CK and DQS as shown in FIG. 1a. In order to overcome the aforementioned drawback, the memory controller uses a feature termed as ‘write leveling’ wherein the feedback from the DDR3 DRAM is utilized to adjust/calibrate DQS (data strobe signal) with the clock signal. A conventional method specified by Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) to align clock signal (CK) and data strobe (DQS) is to perform write leveling using a simple feedback mechanism from a DRAM. However, this method is efficient only when the trace difference is less than a single DRAM clock cycle. When the trace difference is greater than one DRAM clock cycle, the specified method does not accomplish cycle matching at the DRAM ball as shown in FIG. 1b.
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Data center cooling has become a problem of increasing interest as the number of servers and the power each server consumes has been rapidly increasing to meet the increasing demands of computation, transaction processing, telecommunications, and interne usage. With rising energy costs and new incentives for “green” energy use, efficiency has become an important issue.
Data centers are cooled using air conditioning units or ACUs. Typically, data centers are over-provisioned with ACUs where the capacity of the ACUs far exceeds the cooling needs of the data center. By operating too many ACUs in the data center, the efficiency of each ACU decreases.
Therefore, techniques for improving data center cooling efficiency would be desirable.
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Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are manufactured by forming active regions on a substrate and by depositing various conductive and semiconductive layers on the substrate. The radiative recombination of electron-hole pairs can be used for the generation of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., light) by the electric current in a p-n junction. In a forward-biased p-n junction fabricated from a direct band gap material, such as GaAs or GaN, the recombination of the electron-hole pairs injected into the depletion region causes the emission of electromagnetic radiation. The electromagnetic radiation may be in the visible range or may be in a non-visible range. Different colors of LEDs may be created by using materials with different band gaps. Further, an LED with electromagnetic radiation emitting in a non-visible range may direct the non-visible light towards a phosphor lens or a like material type. When the non-visible light is absorbed by the phosphor, the phosphor emits a visible light.
LEDs are typically manufactured on a sapphire substrate (Al2O3) for group III-N compound LED structures because the crystal orientation of the sapphire substrate allows the group III-N compounds to be epitaxially grown on the sapphire substrate. Sapphire substrates, however, are expensive as compared to silicon substrates. Also, sapphire substrates are typically characterized by thermal accumulation due to the low thermal conductivity of sapphire.
Furthermore, LEDs are typically formed on a planar substrate, thereby resulting in a planar LED structure. A planar LED structure limits the amount of light-emitting material that may be placed on a given size of substrate. As a result, the light emitting efficiency of an LED of a given size is restricted.
Accordingly, there is a need for a structure and a method to form LED devices more cost effectively while increasing the light emitting efficiency of an LED of a given size.
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Angiogenesis is a mechanism in which new blood vessels are generated from existing blood vessels by growth, division, migration, and the like, of an endothelial cell, plays an important roll in normal growth processes including wound healing or female menstrual cycle (Risau, Nature, 386:671, 1997), and moreover, abnormally excessive angiogenesis is known to play a crucial role in diseases such as tumor growth and metastasis, age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), diabetic retinopathy, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic inflammation (Carmeliet and Jain, Nature, 407:249, 2000).
Hypothesis that tumor growth and metastasis are angiogenesis dependent, and therefore, a therapy focusing on anti-angiogenesis could be a new therapeutic agent for solid tumors was raised by Dr. J. Folkman in 1971. After that, research into a technology relating to inhibition of excessive angiogenesis mechanisms has attracted attention of many researchers (Ferrara and Kerbel, Nature, 438:967, 2005). A progressing aspect of the angiogenesis is determined by comprehensive balance of angiogenesis inducers and angiogenesis inhibitors, and is progressed by complex and multi-step sequential processes. In detail, various angiogenesis inducers including vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) secreted by tumor or injured tissues are bound to corresponding receptors of existing peripheral vascular endothelial cells to activate vascular endothelial cells, which increase permeability of vascular endothelial cells, and to secret protease such as matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), which decomposes basement membrane and extracellular matrix surrounding vascular endothelial cells, such that the vascular endothelial cells escape from existing capillaries and migrate/proliferate toward the tissue secreting angiogenesis inducer. The migrated and proliferated vascular endothelial cells form an intravascular tube structure, and finally, pericyte which is a structural support of the vascular endothelial cell is introduced to achieve stable and mature blood vessel formation.
As described above, it was found that signaling of VEGF and a VEGF receptor (VEGFR) bound to the VEGF is suppressed to ultimately inhibit angiogenesis, thereby obtaining therapeutic effects on various diseases age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic inflammation, including growth and metastasis of tumor, and thus, development of various drugs capable of inhibiting VEGF activity has been ongoing.
Specifically, VEGF forms protein separation and purification and cDNA cloning by Dr. N. Ferrara group from Genentech in 1989 (Leung et al., Science, 246:1306, 1989). It is known so far that VEGF which is also referred to as VEGF-A has four isotypes (VEGF121, VEGF165, VEGF189, and VEGF206), and it is reported that among the four isotypes, VEGF165 is the most abundant in all human tissues except for placenta (Tisher et al., J. Biol. Chem., 266:11947, 1991). It is known that VEGF is bound to receptors VEGFR-1 and VEGFR-2/KDR with significantly high affinity; however, signal of VEGF is mainly transferred through VEGFR-2 to induce mechanisms related to angiogenesis such as proliferation, migration, and the like, of vascular endothelial cells. Due to the above-described reasons, VEGF and VEGFR-2 become main targets for inhibiting angiogenesis mechanism induced by VEGF, and a number of theses deal with VEGF and VEGFR-2 (Ellis and Hicklin, Nature Rev. Cancer, 8:579, 2008; Youssoufian et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 13:5544s, 2007).
For example, Avastin (bevacizumab, Genentech) is a humanized antibody targeting VEGF-A (Ferrara et al., Biochem. Biophy. Res. Comm., 333:328, 2005), which has received US FDA approval on treatment for metastatic colorectal cancer in 2004, non-small cell lung cancer in 2006, and Her-2 negative metastatic breast cancer in 2008, respectively, and is approved to treat Glioblastoma mutiforme (GBM), and renal cancer. Currently, clinical trials on a variety of solid tumors are ongoing in order to expand indications. In addition, Lucentis which was developed in the same company, is an antibody prepared by cutting Fab fragments only from Avastin for good permeability of Lucentis when Lucentis is injected into retina in order to inhibit excessive angiogenesis around macula which is a main aspect of senile macular degeneration (Eter et al, Biodrgus, 20:167, 2006), and as a therapeutic agent for wet age-related macular degeneration (wet-ARMD), which has received US FDA approval in 2006.
As another antibody for treatment targeting VEGF, there is VEGF-trap manufactured by Regeneron (Holash et al., PNAS, 99:11393, 2002). VEGF-trap is a soluble decoy receptor in a form in which second immunoglobulin domain of VEGFR-1 and third immunoglobulin domain of VEGFR-2 are fused to human Fc, which has not received U.S. FDA approval yet, but has been ongoing in phase III stage for metastatic breast cancer, metastatic lung cancer, metastatic colorectal cancer, hormone refractory prostate cancer, and the like.
Meanwhile, examples of anti-angiogenesis antibodies targeting VEGFR-2 which is a receptor of VEGF include IMC-1121B (EP 1916001A2) manufactured by Imclone company, CDP-791 (PCT/GB02/04619) manufactured by UCB company, Tanibirumab (TTAC-0001) (WO2008/153237) developed by the present inventors and has been in a clinical trial, and the like.
IMC-1121B is a monoclonal antibody selected from a fully human Fab library, which has been ongoing in Phase III stage for metastatic breast cancer, and was entered in Phase III stage for stomach cancer in 2010. CDP-791 manufactured by UCB is a humanized antibody, which has been ongoing in phase II stage for non-small cell lung cancer in PEGylated Di-Fab form. Since this antibody does not have Fc, antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity or complement-dependent cytotoxicity may not be expected.
Lastly, Tanibirumab (TTAC-0001) developed by the present inventors is a monoclonal antibody selected from a fully human ScFv library, and is the only antibody having reactivity with flk-1 of mouse and rat origin (VEGFR-2 homologue) while simultaneously targeting VEGFR-2, which is one of important distinguishable features from IMC-1121B manufactured by Imclone (WO2008/153237). In particular, cross-species cross reactivity exhibited by Tanibirumab is possible to make a research into animal disease model to carry on future development of anti-cancer agent for specific cancer by stages, which makes related researches easier.
As described above, researches targeting VEGF and VEGFR-2 have been dramatically developed for last five years, and a number of therapeutic agents are developed by market and clinical studies.
Meanwhile, cells differentiated into Tip cell by VEGF/VEGFR-2 signaling strongly express DLL4 and are bound to Notch1 receptor present in surrounding cells, and cells in which Notch1 signaling pathway is activated are differentiated into stalk cellIs to form normal blood vessel tube structure, which proves that DLL4/Notch1 signaling pathway is one of the most important mechanisms for VEGF/VEGFR-2 path and angiogenesis (Dufraine et al., Oncogene, 27:5132-5137, 2008).
It is known so far that DLL4 is one of ligands to a Notch receptor, and there are four kinds of Notch receptors (Notch 1 to 4) and five kinds of Notch ligands (Jagged-1, Jagged-2, DLL1, DLL3, and DLL4) in mammals. Notch signaling pathway is initiated by binding a Notch ligand of one cell to a Notch receptor of other cell, and is necessarily activated only by direct interaction between different cells (Bray SJ, Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol., 7(9):678, 2006).
When the Notch ligand is bound to the Notch receptor, an ADAM metalloprotease is firstly activated to cleave a cellular membrane outer proximal site of the Notch receptor, and then a gamma-secretase complex is activated to cleave a cellular membrane inner proximal site of the Notch receptor, such that Notch Intracellular Domain (NICD) is isolated and migrates into the nucleus. NICD is bound to an RBPJ/CSL transcription factor to induce expression of Notch target genes such as basic helix-loop-helix proteins including Hes and Hey. The Notch signaling pathway determines proliferation/differentiation/apoptosis in accordance with the situation of corresponding cells, and plays an important role in maintenance of normal stem cells and cancer stem cells.
Basically, all Notch receptors are capable of being bound to all Notch ligands; however, combinations of various bindings are selectively controlled in microenvironments of the corresponding cells. For example, DLL4 is strongly expressed on angiogenesis endothelial cells during a fetal development process, and is bound to Notch1 and Notch4 which are expressed in peripheral endothelial cells; however, DLL4-Notch1 binding is the most important in an exclusive way (Yan M, Vasc Cell, 2011), and angiogenesis progresses through the DLL4-Notch1 binding. The above-description is well found by gene deficiency test, and the like (Duarte et al., Genes Dev, 2004; Gale et al., PNAS, 2004; Krebs et al., Genes Dev, 2004).
Therefore, when the DLL4-Notch1 binding is suppressed, angiogenesis may be inhibited, and therefore, various diseases such as tumor, and the like, are capable of being treated. It has been already proven that when VEGF is inhibited by using Avastin (bevacizumab), and the like, in cancer treatment, angiogenesis is inhibited to decrease perfusion of the tumor, and a tumor size is decreased. Meanwhile, when binding with Notch1 expressed in peripheral cells while targeting DLL4 is inhibited, blood vessels are abnormally and largely generated (hypersprouting), but do not achieve complete function, which decreases perfusion of non-functional tumor, and as a result, the tumor size is reduced (Thurston et al, Nat Rev Cancer, 7(5):327, 2007).
Interestingly, when an antibody inhibiting VEGF and DLL4 is administered in xenograft animal experiments using several cancer cell lines performed in Genentech's research team, growth of the cancer is much strongly suppressed, as compared to a case in which an antibody inhibiting VEGF and an antibody inhibiting DLL4 are separately administered, respectively (Ridgway et al., Nature, 444(7122):1083, 2006). It suggests that signaling by DLL4/Notch1 path is not simply activated by VEGF/VEGFR-2 path, and various angiogenesis-related diseases such as tumor, and the like, are capable of being effectively treated by simultaneously inhibiting signalings by two paths.
In addition, it was found that DLL4 inhibition has an effect on both of a tumor being sensitive to VEGF/VEGFR-2 path inhibitor and a tumor being resistant to VEGF/VEGFR-2 path inhibitor (Ridgway et al., Nature., 444(7122):1083, 2006; Noguera-Troise et al., Nature., 444(7122):1032. 2006), which provides a significantly important clue to overcome resistance which currently and frequently occurs when drugs such as Avastin blocking VEGF are administered (including two cases of an intrinsic resistance in which Avastin is not effective from the beginning and acquired resistance in which an efficacy of Avastin is gradually falling over time).
Further, it was found from Oncomed's research team that DLL4 inhibition directly reduces frequency of cancer stem cells in tumor and inhibits tumor growth (Hoey et al., Cell Stem Cell., 2009), which suggests that DLL4 inhibition is possible to essentially block recurrence of cancer. Finally, resistance to anti-cancer chemotherapy and antibody therapeutic agents such as Herceptin, and the like, that are currently used for cancer treatment has a lot of relevance to the Notch signaling pathway and inhibition of DLL4/Notch1 path is also possible to overcome resistance of the anti-cancer chemotherapy and the antibody therapeutic agents such as Herceptin, and the like (Wang et al., Biochim Biophys Acta., 1806(2):258, 2010).
As described above, various angiogenesis-related diseases such as tumor, and the like, are capable of being effectively treated by simultaneously inhibiting signalings by two paths of VEGF/VEGFR-2 and DLL4/Notch 1. However, the development of drugs that are effective for this has not been made yet, and therefore, relevant development is urgently required.
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It has heretofore been proposed to induce polymorphic transition of graphite to diamond by subjecting a starting material to high pressure shock compression. The Garrett U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,499,732, 3,653,792 and 3,659,972, for example, propose the use of shaped electrically detonated explosive charges to obtain spherically symmetrical implosion shock waves for forming diamonds from graphite or for sintering powdered metals. One significant problem associated with this technique is one of physical size: the mass of explosive material involved would be on the order of thirty kilograms. An explosion of this size requires extraordinary containment precautions, and also raises problems in connection with recovery and contamination of the sample. Smaller explosive masses cannot be uniformly ignited using the electrical detonation techniques proposed in the art.
Another significant problem with the above proposed techniques is the lack of control of the implosive pressure afforded by shock compression techniques. Yet another problem with the electrically ignited explosive system is that of achieving a high degree of spherical symmetry in the detonating explosive.
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Streptococcus pneumoniae is an important cause of otitis media, meningitis, bacteremia and pneumonia. Despite the use of antibiotics and vaccines, the prevalence of pneumococcal infections has declined little over the last twenty-five years.
It is generally accepted that immunity to Streptococcus pneumoniae can be mediated by specific antibodies against the polysaccharide capsule of the pneumococcus. However, neonates and young children fail to make an immune response against polysaccharide antigens and can have repeated infections involving the same capsular serotype.
One approach to immunizing infants against a number of encapsulated bacteria is to conjugate the capsular polysaccharide antigens to proteins to make then immunogenic. This approach has been successful, for example, with Haemophilus influenzae b (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,538 to Gordon and U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,574 to Anderson). However, there are over eighty known capsular serotypes of S. pneumoniae of which twenty-three account for most of the disease. For a pneumococcal polysaccharide-protein conjugate to be successful, the capsular types responsible for most pneumococcal infections would have to be made adequately immunogenic. This approach may be difficult, because the twenty-three polysaccharides included in the presently-available vaccine are not all adequately immunogenic, even in adults. Furthermore, such a vaccine would probably be much more expensive to produce than any of the other childhood vaccines in routine use.
An alternative approach for protecting children, and also the elderly, from pneumococcal infection would be to identify protein antigens that could elicit protective immune responses. Such proteins may serve as a vaccine by themselves, may be used in conjunction with successful polysaccharide-protein conjugates, or as carriers for polysaccharides.
In McDaniel et al (I), J. Exp. Med. 160:386-397, 1984, there is described the production of hybridoma antibodies that recognize cell surface proteins on S. pneumoniae and protection of mice from infection with certain strains of encapsulated pneumococci by such antibodies. This surface protein antigen has been termed "pneumococcal surface protein A" or PspA for short.
In McDaniel et al (II), Microbial Pathogeniesis 1:519-531, 1986, there are described studies on the characterization of the PspA. From the results of McDaniel (II), McDaniel (III), J. Exp. Med. 165:381-394, 1987, Waltman et al., Microb. Pathog. 8:61-69, 1990 and Crain et al., Infect. Immun. 58:3293-3299, 1990, it was also apparent that the PspAs of different strains frequently exhibit considerable diversity in terms of their epitopes, and apparent molecular weight.
In McDaniel et al (III), there is disclosed that immunization of X-linked immunodeficient (XID) mice with non-encapsulated pneumococci expressing PspA, but not isogenic pneumococci lacking PspA, protects mice from subsequent fatal infection with pneumococci.
In McDaniel et al (IV), Infect. Immun., 59:222-228, 1991, there is described immunization of mice with a recombinant full length fragment of PspA that is able to elicit protection against pneumococcal strains of capsular types 6A and 3.
In Crain et al, (supra) there is described a rabbit antiserum that detects PspA in 100% (n=95) of clinical and laboratory isolates of strains of S. pneumoniae. When reacted with seven monoclonal antibodies to PspA, fifty-seven S. pneumoniae isolates exhibited thirty-one different patterns of reactivity. Accordingly, although a large number of serologically-different PspAs exist, there are extensive cross-reactions between PspAs.
The PspA protein type is independent of capsular type. It would seem that genetic mutation or exchange in the environment has allowed for the development of a large pool of strains which are highly diverse with respect to capsule, PspA, and possibly other molecules with variable structures. Variability of PspA's from different strains also is evident in their molecular weights, which range from 67 to 99 kD. The observed differences are stably inherited and are not the result of protein degradation.
Immunization with a partially purified PspA from a recombinant .lambda. gt11 clone, elicited protection against challenge with several S. pneumoniae strains representing different capsular and PspA types, as described in McDaniel et al (IV), Infect. Immun. 59:222-228, 1991. Although clones expressing PspA were constructed according to that paper, the product was unstable and isolation from cell fragments following lysis was not effected.
While the protein is variable in structure between different pneumococcal strains, numerous cross-reactions exist between all PspA's, suggesting that sufficient common epitopes may be present to allow a single PspA or at least a small number of PspA's to elicit protection against a large number of S. pneumoniae strains.
In addition to the published literature specifically referred to above, the inventors, in conjunction with co-workers, have published further details concerning PspA's, as follows:
1. Abstracts of 89th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, p. 125, item D-257, May 2989;
2. Abstracts of 90th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, p. 98, item D-106, May 1990;
3. Abstracts of 3rd International ASM Conference on Streptococcal Genetics, p. 11, item 12, June 1990;
4. Talkington et al, Infect. Immun. 59:1285-1289, 1991;
5. Yother et al (I), J. Bacteriol. 174:601-609, 1992;
6. Yother et al (II), J. Bacteriol. 174:610-618, 1992; and
7. McDaniel et al (V), Microbiol Pathogenesis, 13:261-268.
In the aforementioned copending U.S. patent applications Ser. Nos. 656,773 and 835,698 (corresponding to published International patent application, WO 52/1448), as well as in Yother et al (I) and (II), there are described the preparation of mutants of S. pneumomiae that secrete an immunogenic truncated form of the PspA protein, and the isolation and purification of the secreted protein. The truncated form of PspA was found to be immunoprotective and to contain the protective epitopes of PspA. The PspA protein described therein is soluble in physiologic solution and lacks at least the functional cell membrane anchor region.
In the specification which follows and the drawings accompanying the same, there are utilized certain accepted abbreviations with respect to the amino acids represented thereby. The following Table I identifies those abbreviations:
TABLE I ______________________________________ AMINO ACID ABBREVIATIONS ______________________________________ A = Ala = Alanine M = Met = Methionine C = Cys = Cysteine N = Asn = Asparagine D = Asp = Aspartic Acid P = Pro = Proline E = Glu = Glutamic Acid Q = Gln = Glutamine F = Phe = Phenylalanine R = Arg = Arginine G = Gly = Glycine S = Ser = Serine H = His = Histidine T = Thr = Threonine I = Ile = Isoleucine V = Val = Valine K = Lys = Lysine W = Try = Tryptophan L = Leu = Leucine Y = Tyr = Tyrosine ______________________________________
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Electric shavers for use in personal hygiene applications generally comprise a rotary or reciprocating drive shaft that drives a movable cutting member against a stationary screen. A spring or other biasing mechanism biases the cutting member against the inner surface of the screen, forcing the cutting member into engagement with the screen. The relative motion of the cutting member against the stationary screen acts as a shear plane, cutting the hair as it is received through several slots or openings formed on the screen. After repeated use, the cutting edges and surfaces of the electric shaver become dull. When this occurs, the efficacy of the electric shaver to obtain a close shave consequently decreases.
Numerous sharpening processes have been proposed as an alternative to replacement of the cutting member and screen. Such processes generally include providing a honing surface such as a disc or plate that can be rotatably engaged against the cutting edges of the movable cutting member. In one such process described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,689 to Voll, an apparatus for sharpening a rotary shaver includes a sharpening disc having an abrasive surface that can be brought into contact with the cutting edges of the movable cutting member. Insertion of the sharpening disc requires the operator to manually disassemble the shaver housing prior to sharpening the cutting edges with the disc. Since the sharpening disc sharpens only the cutting edges of the movable cutting member and not the cutting surface formed by the stationary screen, replacement of the screen may still be required to return the electric shaver to its original working condition.
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The deposition of thin metallic films on substrates by the decomposition of metallo-organic solutions is a technology which has been known for many years. Although the technique has been known for a long time, its primary application has been in the decorative trade, with the main emphasis on producing films of precious metals on ceramic and glass articles. The earliest known application was bright gold for decorating porcelain and this process had been used since 1830.
Almost all of the work prior to 1980 used metallo-organic compounds derived from resins or other natural products and were commonly called metal resinates. These resinates were and still remain suitable for most applications in the decorative trade, but the variability of chemistry, which is an inescapable result of the preparation from natural products, was a major impediment to the extensive development of technical applications of the metallo-organic decomposition (MOD) process. It has only been in recent years that MOD films have been produced from pure, well characterized compounds.
Recent applications of MOD processing are in processing technical ceramics where most of the emphasis is on fine particle processing. Sol-gel methods use metal alkoxides as the starting materials and have general formula M(OR).sub.n where M and R are metals and alkyl groups, respectively. Metal alkoxides are hydrolyzed easily and yield oxides, hydroxides, and hydrated oxides in crystalline and amorphorous forms. The fine powders derived from the metal alkoxides have high surface reactivity, making it possible to use low sintering temperatures and obtain uniform grain size bodies with the desired electrical properties. Others have prepared films from the metal alkoxide solutions by dipping substrates into the solution. The barium titanate films prepared by this method have had very good electrical properties. The metal alkoxide method, however, is a sol-gel method and involves several lengthy steps in processing.
The metallo-organic decomposition technology investigated by R. W. Vest, G. M. Vest and others produce the metal oxide films or powders directly and more quickly than those produced form the sol-gel methods. For example, silver films were fabricated by thermally decomposing the MOD silver inks on silicon for use as collector grids for photovoltaic cells. These collector grids required good adhesion, low contact resistance, low sheet resistance, and long term stability. Also, their deposition methods should not degrade the n-p junction. The fired films were 100% solder leach resistant, had good line definition and excellent long term adhesion. The resistivity was very close to that of bulk silver, indicating the films were very dense. This method of metallizing solar cells was also very inexpensive as compared to sputtering or vapor depositing on Si.
There are many advantages of MOD processing compared to alternate techniques for producing metal and ceramic films. The MOD process yields the equilibrium phases of the desired systems at relatively low temperatures, which circumvents the problem of selective volatility of different species. In general, the low temperature processing yields extremely find grain size polycrystalline films; in many cases the initial inorganic films are amorphous to X-rays. This allows for precise control of grain size by annealing after preparation of the films. The low temperature processing and the achievement of equilibrium phases is primarily due to the fact that the formulation that is deposited on the substrate is a true solution, and hence, the mixing of the various ingredients is on the molecular level. This ultimate mixing and high reactivity also can be used to an advantage in preparing very dense films. In most cases, the films with near theoretical density can be achieved. Starting from solution also leads to films with extremely uniform composition over large areas, and allows for uniform doping in the ppm range. High purity can be maintained during MOD processing by appropriate care in the various processing steps.
There are some intrinsic limitations to MOD processing, however. The volume change in going from the deposited wet film to the fired inorganic films is always large. In addition to requiring care during thermal processing, this large volume change means that the fired films will always be thin. This limitation of film thickness can be overcome by the multilayer approach. A second intrinsic limitation is one of the advantages cited in the previous paragraph, namely, that thermodynamic equilibrium is achieved very rapidly because of the extremely high reactivity upon thermal decomposition. Many of the electronic films in use today have their desirable properties because of the non-equilibrium microstructure. These non-equilibrium microstructures cannot be duplicated by MOD technology but alternate approaches to achieve equivalent electrical properties with an equilibrium microstructure can often be utilized. Another limitation due to the thermodynamic equilibrium achieved is that only oxides or only metals of certain elements can be produced.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming method and apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for driving printing elements of a printer head by analyzing the power necessary to print a page before printing, and driving the printing elements according to the analysis results.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, image forming equipment convert a document written by a user via an application program, or an image photographed with, for instance, a digital camera, into encoded data. The image forming equipment outputs the encoded data onto media, thereby making the document or image visible to the user.
Recently, image forming equipment having an array-head structure has been developed. In such image forming equipment, a printer head having the same length as the width of a medium onto which an image is to be printed is used to achieve high speed and high quality printing. To fascilitate high speed and high quality printing, the print head utilizes many printing elements to convey the image.
In the case of an inkjet printer, a printer head includes a plurality of nozzles. The nozzles convey ink onto a medium to print the image. For each nozzle to convey ink onto the medium, the nozzles must be supplied with power of a predetermined value.
Therefore, in the case of image forming equipment having an array-head structure, such as inkjet printers, power consumed to print an image greatly increases as the number of printing heads increase. An increase in print heads, in turn, requires a high-power power supply to accommodate the increased power consumption. Consequently, the size of the image forming equipment cannot be reduced due to the physical size of high-power power supplies.
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A safety rotating closure is disclosed for a multi-compartment bottle, for example, a two-chamber bottle, with a separate pour neck.
In the household and in a commercial-industrial application, substances are often used which consist of separate components. For example, the substances are detergents or gardening agents or also agricultural agents which consist of at least two flowable or liquid individual components which must be stored separately from one another and come into contact with one another only when poured out. In this connection it is necessary to house the individual components in a standard container which has several chambers. For this purpose multi-compartment bottles, especially of plastic, which are produced in one or more parts, are known from the prior art.
To prevent the individual components from coming into contact with one another too early, in addition to multi-compartment bottles with a common pour opening for the chambers there are also multi-compartment bottles, conventionally two-chamber bottles which have a separate pour neck with its own pour opening for each chamber. Providing the separate pour openings with separate closures, for example rotating closures, is known.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,934,515 discloses a two-chamber bottle which has two separate pour openings. Each pour opening is provided with a separate closure. The closures are mounted on a platform which can be slipped onto the pour necks. Finally there is an overcap which can be placed over the pour neck provided with the closure platform.
US 2003/0173364 A1 describes a canister-like, two-chamber container which has a pour neck with two pour openings. The outside wall of the common pour neck is provided with an external thread. After attaching separate closure stoppers for the pour openings, a screw cap can be screwed onto the common pour neck.
Due to the often basic or acid contents of the multi-compartment bottles or in the case of other problematical contents, there is often the desire to seal these bottles child-proof. Therefore fundamentally any individual rotating closure can be provided with a child safety. In any case this approach is not extremely user-friendly in application. Therefore, the prior art discloses a sealing cap for a multi-compartment bottle, especially for a two-chamber bottle which can be screwed onto the common bottle neck of the multi-compartment bottle. The rotating closure has a sealing membrane which is located within the closure which is pressed against the edges of the mouth of the pour openings when the closure is screwed on. Sealing of the pour openings via the sealing membrane is unfortunately often simply unsatisfactory. When the rotating closure is screwed on and off, the opening edges rub against the sealing surface of the sealing membrane. In this way the sealing membrane can wear and then no longer closes correctly. The child safety feature of this known rotating closure consists in positive locking of interlocking elements located on the closure with the correspondingly made counterparts on the bottle neck. This dictates that bottles which are to be provided with a childproof closure must be produced separately.
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wheel inspection technology for a vehicle, and particularly, to a method and apparatus for tuning a parameter of a Kalman filter in a wheel inspection to remove noises in wheel inspection data more effectively.
2. Description of Related Art
For railway vehicles, especially for high speed railway vehicles, wheels are very important and costive assets. Generally, each wheel costs about $10,000, and a rolling stock has about 100 wheels. Given this, the cost of the wheels in one vehicle is very high. In addition, the wheels directly impact the vehicle's speed, safety and comfort.
To minimize wheel failure and to avoid catastrophic events, railway operators are usually equipped with a wheel inspection system to monitor relevant parameters of the wheels and to detect abnormal conditions of the wheels. In the existing wheel inspection systems, usually sensors are installed on the rail and are used to measure the relevant parameters of the wheels. This wheel data is then provided to a status inspection system to analyze whether the shape of the wheel is circular, whether the wheel is worn down, what the wheel diameter difference is, etc., to help the operators know the status of the wheels. In general, the detected relevant parameters of the wheel include a wheel profile and wheel diameter value.
It is well known that there exists noise in the wheel data measured by the sensors, which would cause an error in the analysis result of the wheel data, and may make the analysis result meaningless or generate false alarms. Therefore, it is necessary to remove the noise in the wheel inspection data to ensure that the analysis result can indicate the current status of the wheels accurately. Thus, Kalman filtering technology is often effectively used in the existing wheel inspection system to remove the noise in the signals.
The basic idea of the Kalman filter is to calculate an estimation value of the current status based on the estimation value of the previous status and the measurement value of the current status—It is a kind of recursive estimation. The operation of the Kalman filter includes two phases: prediction and update. In the prediction phase, the current status is predicted based on the estimation value of the previous status. In the update phase, the prediction value obtained in the prediction phase is optimized based on the measurement value of the current status to obtain the more accurate new estimation value.
In the prediction phase, the current status is predicted under formula (1):{circumflex over (x)}k−=Axk−1 (1)
where {circumflex over (x)}k− represents the status prediction value for time k, A represents a status transition matrix, and xk−1 represents the status estimation value for time k−1. Thus the prediction value of the prediction estimation covariance for time k is:Pk−=APk−1AT+Q (2)
where Pk− represents the prediction value of the prediction estimation covariance for time k and Pk−1 represents the estimation value of the prediction estimation covariance for time k−1.
In the update phase, Kalman gain is calculated from formula (3):Kk=Pk−(Pk−+R)−1 (3)
where Kk represents the gain for time k, and R represents the measurement error covariance and is a constant. Then, the status prediction value for time k is updated under formula (4) to obtain the new status estimation value:{circumflex over (x)}k={circumflex over (x)}k−+Kk(zk−{circumflex over (x)}k−) (4)
where {circumflex over (x)}k represents the status estimation value for time k, and zk represents the status measurement value for time k. In addition, the prediction value of the prediction estimation covariance is updated under formula (5) to obtain the new estimation value of the prediction estimation covariance:Pk=(I−Kk)Pk− (5)
where Pk represents the estimation value of the prediction estimation covariance for time k.
In the Kalman filter, the Kalman gain Kk is in fact a balance factor for the prediction estimation covariance Pk and the measurement error covariance R. If the measurement error covariance R is close to 0, the Kalman gain Kk is close to 1, and the updated status estimation value {circumflex over (x)}k is close to the status measurement value zk. If the prediction estimation covariance Pk is close to 0, the Kalman gain Kk is also close to 0, and the updated status estimation value {circumflex over (x)}k is close to the status prediction value {circumflex over (x)}k−.
In the use of the Kalman filter, the measurement error covariance R is usually unchanged. However, in practice, the measurement error covariance R cannot remain unchanged. For example, in the case that the weather condition is changed or the working time is long, the sensors installed on the rail will be affected, leading to the measurement error covariance R being changed. Once the parameter of the Kalman filter is inappropriate, the signal noise remove effect will be decreased, easily resulting in the wrong analysis result. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the changes of the measurement error covariance R of the Kalman filter in the wheel inspection to make the estimation result of the Kalman filter more accurate.
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1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to electrosurgical apparatuses, systems and methods. More particularly, the present disclosure is directed to electrosurgical systems configured to monitor contact quality of return electrode pads to the patient during electrosurgical procedures.
2. Background of Related Art
Energy-based tissue treatment is well known in the art. Various types of energy (e.g., electrical, ultrasonic, microwave, cryogenic, heat, laser, etc.) are applied to tissue to achieve a desired result. Electrosurgery involves application of high radio frequency electrical current to a surgical site to cut, ablate, coagulate or seal tissue. In monopolar electrosurgery, the active electrode is typically part of the surgical instrument held by the surgeon and applied to the tissue to be treated. A patient return electrode is placed remotely from the active electrode to carry the current back to the generator and safely disperse current applied by the active electrode.
The return electrodes usually have a large patient contact surface area to minimize heating at that site. Heating is caused by high current densities which directly depend on the surface area. A larger surface contact area results in lower localized heat intensity. Return electrodes are typically sized based on assumptions of the maximum current utilized during a particular surgical procedure and the duty cycle (i.e., the percentage of time the generator is on).
The first types of return electrodes were in the form of large metal plates covered with conductive jelly. Later, adhesive electrodes were developed with a single metal foil covered with conductive jelly or conductive adhesive. However, one problem with these adhesive electrodes was that if a portion peeled from the patient, the contact area of the electrode with the patient decreased, thereby increasing the current density at the adhered portion and, in turn, increasing the heating at the tissue. This risked burning the patient in the area under the adhered portion of the return electrode if the tissue was heated beyond the point where circulation of blood could cool the skin.
To address this problem various return electrodes and hardware circuits, generically called Return Electrode Contact Quality Monitors (RECQMs), were developed. Such systems relied on measuring impedance at the return electrode to calculate a variety of tissue and/or electrode properties. These systems detected peeling by identifying changes in amplitude of the impedance of the return electrodes.
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1. Technical Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to ESD protection circuits.
2. Background Information
An electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit commonly referred to as an active RC triggered clamp can be used to protect functional circuitry from damaging high voltages caused by electrostatic discharge events. If a voltage between two terminals of an integrated circuit increases at an adequate rate due to an ESD event, then an RC circuit triggers and turns on a large N-channel field effect transistor (sometimes referred to as a “bigFET”). The bigFET shunts an ESD current between the two terminals and clamps the voltage across the terminals to a voltage that is safe for the functional circuitry. Although multiple such active RC triggered clamp circuits can be stacked, such active RC triggered clamps are generally used in applications where the supply voltage is relatively low (for example, three volts). If such stacked active RC triggered clamps were to be used in an application having a higher supply voltage of twenty volts for example, then the bigFETs would likely have to be made to be undesirably large because bigFETs in active RC triggered clamps operate in the normal conductive mode.
If an active circuit that operates from a relatively high operating supply voltage is to be protected from ESD events, then a silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) circuit could be used as is known in the art. Unfortunately, SCR ESD protection circuits when activated have holding voltages that can be lower than the relatively high operating supply voltage. This is undesirable. If during normal circuit operation a large voltage transient (that is not due to an ESD event) were to appear across the supply voltage terminals of a circuit protected by an SCR ESD protection circuit, then the SCR ESD protection circuit might engage and pull the supply voltage below the operating voltage of the active circuit. Some means must therefore generally be provided to prevent such large voltage transients from being imposed across the supply voltage terminals. Having to provide this extra circuitry is undesirable.
FIG. 1 (Prior Art) is a circuit diagram of a conventional ESD protection circuit 1 used to protect functional circuitry that operates from the relatively large operating supply voltages described above. ESD clamp circuit 1 is sometimes referred to as a “gate grounded NMOS” (GGMOS or GGNMOS) protection circuit because the gate of each of the N-channel field effect transistors 2-4 is coupled to the source of the transistor. FIG. 2 is a simplified cross-sectional diagram of the circuit of FIG. 1. Under an ESD event, the three transistors 2-4 conduct in the snap-back or parasitic bipolar mode such that an ESD current is conducted from the VCC supply voltage terminal 5, through transistor 2, through transistor 3, though transistor 4, and to ground terminal 6.
FIG. 3 (Prior Art) is a cross-sectional diagram of one of the stages of the GGMOS protection circuit of FIG. 3. Under a high voltage condition, the electric field across the reverse-biased drain 7 to body 8 depletion region increases to the point that an avalanche breakdown mechanism generates change charge carriers. These carriers result in a current flow that flows into the base of a parasitic bipolar NPN transistor 9. The N-type collector of parasitic transistor 9 is the N+ type drain 7. The N-type emitter of parasitic transistor 9 is the N+ type source 10. The P-type base is the P-type material of the body 8 of the N-channel field effect transistor. Parasitic transistor 9 is depicted with the bipolar transistor symbol in FIG. 3. The base current turns on the bipolar transistor, which in turn causes a large collector current to flow across the drain-to-body junction. This current serves to contribute to the necessary base current to sustain forward biasing of the base-to-emitter junction of the parasitic transistor. Accordingly, whereas a higher drain-to-source voltage (called the trigger voltage) is required to initiate bipolar transistor conduction, once initiated the bipolar transistor conduction is sustained unless the drain-to-source voltage drops below a lower voltage (called the holding voltage). This characteristic of transistor turn on and conduction is commonly referred to as “snap-back”.
Stacking three such GGMOS circuits such as in the circuit of FIG. 1 multiplies each of trigger voltage and the holding voltage by the number of circuits stacked. The circuit of FIG. 1 therefore has a trigger voltage that is three times the trigger voltage of the single stage circuit of FIG. 3. The circuit of FIG. 1 therefore has a holding voltage that is three times the holding voltage of the single stage circuit of FIG. 3. Unfortunately, the multiplied trigger voltage of the stacked circuit of FIG. 1 may be so high that damage may occur to the functional circuitry to be protected before the ESD protection circuit of FIG. 1 triggers and performs its current shunting function.
FIG. 4 (Prior Art) is a diagram of an ESD protection circuit that has a lower trigger voltage. The ESD protection circuit is sometimes referred to as a gate-driven NMOS (GDNMOS) circuit or a gate-coupled NMOS (GCNMOS) circuit. A resistor 11 is disposed between the gate 12 and the source 13 as illustrated in FIG. 4. The structure has a capacitance 14, such as the inherent drain-to-gate overlap capacitance of the transistor. During an ESD event, a rapid rise in the voltage on drain 24 is coupled to gate 12 by the capacitance 14, and current flow across resistor 11 causes a gate-to-source voltage. This gate-to-source voltage induces a channel to form under the gate 12 and allows an amount of surface current 15 to flow from drain 24. Current 15 serves to reduce the trigger voltage of the circuit. For additional information on this effect, see: 1) “Design Methodology and Optimization of Gate-Driven NMOS ESD Protection Circuits In Submicron CMOS Processes”, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 45, no. 12, pages 2448-2456 (December 1998) by Julian Zhiliang Chen et al.; and 2) U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,217; 3) U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,146; and 4) U.S. Pat. No. 5,631,793. Where larger holding and trigger voltages are required than are provided by a single stage, the circuit of FIG. 4 can be stacked. FIG. 5 (Prior Art) illustrates a conventional stacked GCMOS ESD protection circuit having three stages 16-18.
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Platelets, and the components which they secrete upon activation, play a major role in hemostasis, thrombosis and the development of atherosclerosis (see Petersdorf, R. G., et al., eds., Principles of Internal Medicine, 10th edition, 1983, McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 292-294 and 1468). Megakaryocytes in the bone marrow form platelets by pinching off pieces of their cytoplasm.
Upon injury to a tissue, blood platelets adhere to the exposed subendothelial tissue through adhesive platelet components. These components also promote platelet-platelet interactions and smooth muscle cell proliferation in response to platelet-derived growth factors. Platelets adhere to other membranes through their membrane protein GPIb to von Willebrand factor (a component of clotting factor VIII) in the subendothelial matrix. This is followed by platelet clot formation by interactions between GPIIb/IIIa, as well as von Willebrand factor, platelet factor 4 and fibrinogen which are secreted from the platelet alpha granules into the interstitial spaces of the clot. Thus, the efficacy of platelet participation in normal processes, as well as in atherosclerosis, is largely dependent upon adequate numbers of platelets and adequate concentrations of the participating components in the platelet membranes and granules.
Platelet production is controlled by sequential regulation of the component steps of megakaryocytopoiesis: 1) commitment of pluripotent stem cells to the megakaryocyte lineage, 2) proliferation of the committed stem cells, 3) polyploidization, 4) cytoplasmic maturation, and 5) platelet release. Greenberg-Sepersky, S. M., et al., Thrombo. Res. 24:299-306 (1981). However, the process of platelet production which occurs at the level of differentiation and maturation of the parent megakaryocytes in the bone marrow is poorly understood.
To date, several humoral factors have been postulated to regulate the steps of megakaryocytopoiesis in vivo and in vitro. In colony-forming assays, which measure the proliferation of committed stem cells, megakaryocyte colony-stimulating factor (Meg-CSF), megakaryocyte potentiator (MK-POT), interleukin-3 (IL-3), interleukin-1 (IL-1), erythropoietin (EPO), and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), all increase the number and size of megakaryocyte colonies in vitro. Thrombocytopenic serum, a source of the uncharacterized factor "thrombopoietin," or the conditioned medium from bone marrow cultures and cultured human embryonic kidney cells increases the number, ploidy, and size of megakaryocytes in vitro, and the incorporation of radiolabelled precursors into the membrane and alpha granules of newly-released platelets in vivo.
A major limitation of most of these studies is the lack of a purified megakaryocytic cell system. All of the studies which examine megakaryocyte differentiation utilize bone marrow cell preparations. However, except for studies which utilize primary cultures of a single bone marrow cell type, interpretation of the results is complicated by the presence of non-megakaryocytic cells which may act as accessory cells.
The mechanisms controlling thrombopoiesis are not well understood due to the inability to isolate megakaryoblasts away from other bone marrow cells in the absence of accessory cells, and due to the unavailability of a cultured cell line which can serve as a model of the differentiating megakaryocyte. Megakaryocyte differentiation and maturation is characterized by increased polyploidization and enhanced expression of platelet membrane proteins such as GPIb, GPIIb/IIIa and platelet-specific alpha granule formation.
Cell lines which display the characteristics of megakaryocytic cell have been reported. However, these cell lines are limited in their ability to be used as models of megakaryocyte differentiation. For example, MEG-01 cells have been reported to be a megakaryoblastic cell line. However, MEG-01 cells contain the important platelet marker antigen, GPIb, only in the cytoplasm of a subpopulation of larger MEG-01 cells rather than uniformly expressing it on the surface of all the cells. Ogura, M., et al., Blood 66:1384-1392 (1985).
LAMA-84 cells are a megakaryocytic cell line which expresses the platelet marker proteins GPIIb/IIIa. However, LAMA-84 cells do not express the platelet marker protein GPIb. In addition, the LAMA cell line is not committed to the megakaryocytic lineage, but rather represents an earlier stage in differentiation as shown by the fact that they are a tripotent, megakaryocytic, erythroid, and granulocytic cell line. Seigneurin, D., et al., Exp. Hematol. 15:822-832 (1987).
The mutant human megakaryocytic cell line, the HEL cell, does not express the beta subunit for GPIb platelet marker protein and contains an abnormally glycosylated alpha subunit for GPIb. Kieffer, et al., J. Biol. Chem. 261:15854-15862 (1986); Martin et al., Science 233-1235 (1982); Tabilio, A., et al. EMBO J. 3:453-459 (1984).
A promyelocytic leukemic cell line, HL60, responds to inducers of platelet synthesis such as 12-0-tetradecanoyl phorbol 2-acetate (TPA). However, HL60 cells respond to TPA by differentiating to either monocytes or granulocytes instead of inducing platelet production. Michalevicz, R., et al., Leuk. Res. 9:441-448 (1985).
Morgan, D. A., et al., J. Cell. Biol. 100:565-573 (1985) reported a series of human cell lines with properties of megakaryocytes which were isolated and cultured from peripheral blood. However, none of these cell lines are capable of differentiating to a cell with the characteristics of platelet late differentiation morphology, such as alpha granule formation.
The megakaryocytic cell line EST-IU expresses the platelet marker proteins GP IIb/IIIa on its membrane. Sledge, G. W.,et al., Cancer Res. 46:2155-2159 (1986). However, this cell line routinely dies after six months of continuous cell culture (30-35 cell divisions).
Thus, there remains a need for a purified megakaryocytic cell population, in which the culture conditions can be carefully manipulated and the results easily monitored, to study the process of megakaryocytopoiesis, to evaluate the effects of megakaryocytopoietic, hemopoietic and nonhemopoietic factors on the megakaryocyte system, to study platelet formation and release from the parent megakaryocyte (thrombopoiesis), to provide a source for the purification of megakaryocyte and platelet components, to identify new megakaryopoiesis factors from crude preparations and to serve as an assay system for the subsequent isolation and characterization of those new factors.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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Computing devices using operating systems are increasingly popular and more and more electronic devices are being provided with operating systems. Computing devices using operating systems are not accessible to a user for normal operation until the operating system of the device is loaded and operating normally. To protect the operating system from failure, computing devices have various conditions which will trigger the pausing, stopping, and closing of the operating system.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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Ignition coil controlled ignition systems for automotive vehicles in which a transistor is serially connected with the ignition coil are well known; such systems usually include a control circuit which controls the transistor to conductive state, whereupon current will flow from a source, typically the on-board network of a vehicle, including a battery, through the coil to the transistor to ground or chassis. When a sufficient amount of electromagnetic energy has been stored in the coil, the transistor is suddenly controlled to blocked state, causing an inductive high-voltage surge in the secondary of the ignition coil which provides the energy for flash-over of the spark of a spark gap, for example a spark plug. A distributor can be interposed in the secondary between the coil and the spark plug for multi-cylinder internal combustion engines. Under certain operating conditions of the vehicle, it is possible that the voltage supply exceeds a given nominal value; current through the transistor in series with the coil then will become excessive, leading to damage, and possible destruction thereof.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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Tuned filters have been employed for a number of years to decode scrambled or protected television signals. U.S. Pat. No. 5,168,251 discloses a notch filter, for example, that includes two separate electrically interconnected filter sections mounted on a common circuit board. Connections to the filter sections provided on the circuit board are made via a collet assembly and a terminal that are soldered to the circuit board. The two filter sections are magnetically isolated through an isolation area defined by an isolation shield. The common circuit board is placed within a filter housing having one open end and an integral connector located at the other end. Art end cap is then attached to the open end of the filter housing with a press fit. The filter housing with attached end cap is then located within an outer sleeve by sliding the filter housing into an open end of the outer sleeve. A press-fit is commonly used as the securing mechanism to retain the filter housing within the outer sleeve.
It is important to seal the filter structure to prevent moisture and other contaminants from entering the filter. One particularly difficult area to properly seal is the interface between the collet and the filter housing. Conventional manufacturing techniques attempt to utilize relatively large amounts of sealant to cover over the entire back portion of the collet. This method, however, is somewhat difficult to work with and can result in inconsistencies in the quality of the manufactured filters. It would therefore be desirable to provide a collet assembly that could be quickly and easily sealed during the manufacturing process.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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The present invention relates to transactions for payments of goods/services and, more particularly, to a phone-based electronic wallet providing authentication of transactions across multiple channels of commerce.
Both credit cards and debit cards are commonly used in the retail environment for the purchase of goods and/or services. Such cards are popular with consumers, and merchants accept these cards as a necessary part of doing business, i.e., they provide an effective substitute to cash and checks.
These card-based transactions are typically performed across multiple channels of commerce. For example, card-based transactions may be performed in person at a retail outlet, via a computer connected to the internet, via a mobile phone and/or via a company-based call center (e.g., a 1-800 number for a catalog company). These various transactions are conducted in different ways and, accordingly, have different levels of fraud risk associated therewith. In addition, the mentioned transactions generally require that the consumer have his or her card in hand to either present to the cashier in a retail environment, or to enter the requested information via the internet and/or over the telephone. Those knowledgeable in the field with recognize that the risk of financial fraud is greater during remote transactions because there is less ability for the merchant to verify the identity and authenticity of the cardholder.
It will also be appreciated that in today's environment it is common for a consumer to carry his or her cell/mobile phone on their person at all times. In fact, on many occasions it is more likely that the consumer will be carrying his/her phone, than carrying his/her wallet. Companies have attempted to tap into this trend by offering/facilitating various phone-based applications directed to a whole range of services. The recent growth of so-called “smart phones” has greatly increased the interest of companies in this area. As a result, more and more transactions are likely to be performed from a remote location, e.g., ordering a product over the internet while standing in line. However, as the number of remote transactions increase, so does the risk of financial fraud.
There is therefore a need in the art for a method and system for authenticating electronic transactions across multiple channels of commerce. There is a further need in the art for a method and system which operates in conjunction with a phone (e.g., a smart phone) for authenticating financial transactions whether initiated in person, over the internet via a stand alone terminal, via the placement of a call to the call center of a company, and/or via a transaction initiated with the very same phone. Finally, there is a need in the art for a method and system which allows a bank or other financial institution to reduce fees to merchants conducting remote electronic transactions when utilizing enhanced authentication techniques, and to limit/reverse the shifting of fraud liability to the merchant for such remote transactions.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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Various designs for hatch covers for railway cars have been available for some time. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,250,233 elongated hatch covers are disclosed in which a strap is mounted on one side of the opening and the strap is affixed to the cover by means of welding and/or bolts and latch means is provided at the opposite side of the opening for holding the strap down and the hatch cover closed during transit. A torsion bar is utilized to aid in raising the hatch cover to the open position.
While most hatch covers have been made of metal, recently the use of non-metallic material, particularly fiber reinforced plastic, or fiberglass for hatch covers has been suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 3,605,639. Longitudinal reinforcements are provided in accordance with this design.
It has also been suggested to provide a smaller hatch cover within a larger elongated hatch cover in U.S. Pat. No. 3,523,506. The large elongated opening may be used for loading ladings wherein dusting is not a problem. If dusting is a problem the smaller hatch opening may be used. Furthermore, in order to utilize the small cover it is necessary to unlatch both the large cover latch and the small cover latch. This operation is somewhat time consuming and can be unpleasant in inclement weather.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tool for use while inflating a tire of the type having an inner tube, and where the inner tube is inflated while inside the tire by means of a valve stem which protrudes outwardly through a dimensioned hole in the tire rim. Such tires are commonly used in bicycles, motorcycles and tractors.
Inflating the inner tube of a tire can be a challenging task particularly from an initial, deflated condition due to the required manipulation and alignment of the valve stem of the inner tube. The valve stem must sometimes be pulled through the hole in the tire rim, and must be held in position during the inflation process. There is a need for an effective way to keep the valve stem aligned and positioned in the stem hole to prevent it from being pushed back into the interior of the tire assembly during inflation of the tube, or to become misaligned sideways.
2. Prior Art
One prior patent showing a tool that is designed to hold or pull a valve stem during inflation is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,528,735, issued Jul. 16, 1985 to Eastridge et al. This has two parts, one of which is an elongated handle part with a bifurcated end providing two side portions forming a clevis, the two side portions extending from a base between inner ends of the side portions, the base being provided with a recess. The side portions have slots which pivotally and slidably receive a transverse pin holding a stem puller or stem connector part. This latter part is a generally cylindrical body with an axial bore, having an outer end portion terminating in an internally threaded cylindrical section adapted for attachment to a valve stem, and having an inner end portion configured as a nipple to receive air pressure supply means. The valve stem connector is movable relative to the handle between a first position in which it is aligned with the handle and in which its inner end portion is received in the recess in the base of the clevis, and a second position in which the stem connector lies at a large angle to the handle axis. To go from the first to the second position the stem connector needs to be firstly moved axially so that its inner end portion is pulled out of the recess in the handle while the transverse pin slides in the slots of the clevis side portions. A magnet releasably holds the inner end of the stem connector part in the recess.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
The present invention relates to a console box.
A console box that accommodates small objects may be arranged between a driver seat and a passenger seat in a vehicle. One embodiment of a known console box includes a box body having an opening portion, a lid supported by a hinge shaft on the box body, an opening/closing mechanism that tilts the lid between an opened position where the lid opens the opening portion and a closed position where the lid closes the opening portion. U.S. Pat. No. 7,407,200 discloses an example of a console box including two lids and an opening/closing mechanism that has a plurality of gears. The two lids are arranged next to each other in the widthwise direction of a vehicle. In the console box, the opening/closing mechanism tilts the two lids about the corresponding hinge shafts in opposite directions to open and close the opening portion.
In the conventional console box, when the two lids are tilted to the closed position about the hinge shafts, the lids close the opening portion. When the two lids are tilted to the opened position about the two hinge shafts, the lids greatly open the opening portion.
When the lids have been tilted to the closed position, the vehicle occupant may apply force to a lid that further tilts the lid in the closing direction from the closed position. When the lids have been tilted to the opened position, the vehicle occupant may apply force to a lid in the opening direction that further tilts the lid in the opening direction from the opened position. No measures have been taken against such an erroneous operation of the lids in the conventional console box. Thus, erroneous operation of a lid will apply excessive load to the opening/closing mechanism. This causes adjacent gears to mesh with one another at improper positions. As a result, the opening/closing mechanism may not function properly and close and open the two lids at different timings.
Such a problem is not limited to the type of console box described above that uses two lids to entirely open and close the opening portion but may also occur in a console box that uses a single lid to entirely open and close the opening portion.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical disk having audio data and still picture data recorded thereon, a reproduction apparatus and a reproduction method for reproducing information recorded on the optical disk, and a recording medium having a program stored thereon for causing the reproduction apparatus to carrying out a method for reproducing information recorded on the optical disk.
2. Description of the Related Art
One application for a DVD-Audio is a “slide show” application for reproducing a plurality of still pictures in a prescribed order synchronously with (or asynchronously with) reproduction of audio information. A typical “slide show” application is a music application for sequentially displaying still pictures related to the lyrics of a song synchronously with reproduction of the song.
In a conventional music application, a plurality of still pictures to be displayed for a specific song and the order of displaying the plurality of still pictures are predetermined.
Title producers have demanded a system in which a plurality of still picture groups are prepared for a specific song and one of the still picture groups is selectively displayed. Herein, the term “still picture group” refers to a group of a plurality of still pictures.
In order to select one of the plurality of still picture groups in accordance with an input from a user, a menu needs to be displayed. Preferably, such a menu can be retrieved at an arbitrary time by operating a button on a device such as a remote control or the like.
However, the contents of the menu are different from one song to another. Providing a menu retrieval button for each song requires many menu retrieval buttons, which makes operation by a remote control or other devices difficult.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a guidance screen control method of a biometrics authentication device, to a biometrics authentication device, and to a program for same, which utilizes the biometrics characteristics of a portion of the body of a human to perform individual authentication, and in particular relates to a guidance screen control method of a biometrics authentication device, to a biometrics authentication device, and to a program for same, which, at the time of detection of biometrics information, provides guidance for the living body for detection in the range of detection, to perform verification against registered biometrics information.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exist numerous regions of the human body which can be used to differentiate individuals, among them fingerprints and toe-prints, the retina of the eyes, facial features, and blood vessel patterns. Advances in biometrics technology in recent years have been accompanied by proposals of various devices which identify biometrics characteristics which are such regions of the human body to authenticate individuals.
For example, because blood vessels in the palms and fingers and palm-prints provide a comparatively large quantity of individual characteristic data, they are suited to individual authentication where high reliability is required. In particular, the patterns of blood vessels (veins) remain unchanged from the fetus throughout life, and are thought to be completely unique, and so are suited to individual authentication. FIG. 25 through FIG. 28 explain conventional technology for authentication using the palm. As shown in FIG. 25, at the time of registration or authentication, the user brings the palm of a hand 110 close to an image capture device 100. The image capture device 100 emits near-infrared rays, which are incident on the palm of the hand 110. The image capture device 100 receives the near-infrared rays reflected from the palm of the hand 110 using a sensor.
As shown in FIG. 26, hemoglobin within the red corpuscles flowing in the veins 112 has lost oxygen. This hemoglobin (reduced hemoglobin) absorbs near-infrared rays at wavelengths near 760 nanometers. Consequently when near-infrared rays are made incident on the palm of a hand, reflection is reduced only in the areas in which there are veins, and the intensity of the reflected near-infrared rays can be used to identify the positions of veins.
As shown in FIG. 25, a user first registers in a server and card the vein image data for the palm of his own hand, using the image capture device 100. Next, in order to perform individual authentication, the user uses the image capture device 100 of FIG. 25 to cause the vein image data of his own palm to be read.
The individual is authenticated by comparing the patterns of veins in the registered vein image retrieved using the user's ID and in the vein verification image read by the image capture device 100. For example, on comparing the vein patterns in the registered image and a verification image as in FIG. 27, the individual is authenticated as the individual in question. On the other hand, upon comparison of the vein patterns in a registered image and in a verification image as in FIG. 28, the individual is not authenticated (see for example Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2004-062826).
In such non-contact detection of biometrics information, the living body can move freely relative to the image capture device 100, and in particular the hand can move freely. On the other hand, the portion 100 for detection of the body must be positioned within the image capture range of the image capture device 100 to enable accurate detection. Methods to achieve this have been proposed in which, each time an image is captured, the position and orientation of the hand is detected, and when accurate image capture is not possible, a display or voice output is employed to convey the inappropriateness of the position or orientation of the hand (see for example WO 04/021884). By means of this method, because detection is contact-free, accurate detection of biometrics information is possible even when there is no sense of resistance to the hand or body during detection.
In this detection of biometrics information, the body, and in particular the hand moves freely. In order to perform rapid biometrics authentication, however, it is necessary to perform image capture frequently, detect appropriate images, and output these to the authentication process. Hence even if, as a consequence of the image capture state at each image capture, a display is presented indicating that the body part position or orientation is inappropriate, there is the possibility that the display may change in a short period of time, causing the user to be confused.
Similarly, because the display switches instantaneously, the screen may appear to the user to be flickering, so that again the display is not used effectively to guide the user.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
This invention relates generally to a diverter valve for directing water from a mixing valve to a number of separate outlets and specifically to a diverter valve capable of directing fluid to a specific combination of hydraulic devices.
Typically, a diverter valve is commonly assembled between a flow control device or valve such as a mixing faucet and several hydraulic devices. One common example is the use of a mixing valve for a shower and tub combination. The mixing valve provides proportional quantities of hot and cold fluids. The diverter valve is actuated to provide fluid to desired hydraulic device such as the spout for the bathtub or the showerhead. In some versions of the diverter valve is capable of diverting fluid to one of several hydraulic devices. Diverter valves commonly have a valve cartridge rotatable about an axis to provide selective fluid communication between an inlet and one of a several outlets.
It is becoming increasingly common to increase the number of showerheads or other hydraulic devices available for use within a shower. Typically, if more than one hydraulic device is installed, separate on/off valves are required to control the flow of fluid to each hydraulic device. It is known to install multiple showerheads within a shower to provide many streams of continuous and directed water flow. In such assemblies many valves are required in order to selectively engage or disengage water flow through specific showerheads. Installation of such valves increases cost, complexity and installation time. The added expense is a barrier to installing multiple showerheads in many applications where cost is of concern.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a multi-port diverter valve capable of directing fluid from an inlet to a multiple hydraulic outlet devices in various combinations.
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{
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
}
|
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