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Head-mounted display devices (also called herein head-mounted displays) are gaining popularity as means for providing visual information to user. In head-mounted displays, optical elements are located close to an eye of a user, which provides additional challenges. | {
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The present invention relates to video signal coding methods and, more particularly relates to such methods which are suitable for use in transmitting a moving picture video signal.
Conventionally, in a moving picture video signal communication system, such as a conference system for a video telephone system, a moving picture video signal is transmitted to a remote point via a transmission line. It has been proposed to efficiently utilize the limited capacity of the transmission line by transmitting less than all of the successive frames of the signal according to a so-called frame skipping process. The receiver reproduces the frames that have been skipped by the transmitter by interpolation based on picture information for the frames preceding and following the skipped frames with the use of motion vectors transmitted in place of the skipped frames (refer to Japanese Patent Publication No. 60-28392).
Since the motion vectors include less information than complete frames, it is theoretically possible to achieve efficient transmission of significant moving picture information in this manner. In practice, however, it is not always possible for the transmission apparatus to generate accurate motion vector information in the frame skipping process, and in the event that inaccurate motion vectors are transmitted in this fashion, the pictures reproduced by interpolation at the receiver can be objectionably poor in quality.
One type of transmission apparatus codes moving picture information in the form of unitary transmission blocks each including, for example, eight pixels per line by eight lines of the video signal to be transmitted. With the use of such apparatus, the contents of the pictures generated by interpolation at the receiver can become discontinuous in the event that the motion vectors for the transmitted unitary blocks are inaccurate and pictures reproduced with such motion vectors are likewise objectionably poor. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video projection apparatus for projecting a video to a wall surface, a screen surface, or the like, and more particularly to a video projection apparatus which employs a structure in which a projection direction of the video can be easily changed to an arbitrary direction, a size of the entire apparatus is small, and portability is superior.
2. Related Background Art
Up to now, in a video projection apparatus such as a liquid crystal projector, a video based on a video signal inputted from the outside or a video stored in an internal memory (video storing means) is enlargedly projected onto a screen surface. A video projection apparatus which employs a structure in which a video displayed on a small video display means such as a liquid crystal panel is illuminated with a light flux from a light source means for emitting intense light to enlargedly project the video to a large imaging area such as a screen has been known as such a video projection apparatus (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-260473 or Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H06-082765).
A scanning projection display apparatus for projecting a light beam onto a predetermined surface using a scanning optical system to display a video has been also known (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-029182).
According to the video projection apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-260473, a video is displayed on the liquid crystal display panel based on a video signal inputted from the outside. A light flux from the liquid crystal display panel illuminated with a light flux from the light source means is projected to a screen provided in a predetermined direction by a projection lens through a mirror provided in a pivotable cover member.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H06-082765, disclosed is a liquid crystal projector whose projection main body can be set at various angles by using a leg part relative to an adapter to project a video in an arbitrary direction.
According to the scanning projection display apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-029182, a resonance type mirror and a galvanomirror are used for a scanning means. A scanning member in a horizontal direction is driven with a sine wave for two-dimensional scanning to project a video.
In general, the video projection apparatus is large in size and heavy, so that the projection direction of the video is substantially determined. According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H06-082765, for example, a base for changing the projection direction is fit onto a main body, thereby changing the video projection direction. Although the projection direction can be changed in such a manner, the amount of change is small. Therefore, for example, it is hard to change the projection direction from the ceiling of a room to the wall surface thereof. A size of the apparatus itself is likely to increase because the base is fit.
According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. H10-260473, a mirror is located in an exit port of the video as a means for changing the projection direction of the video without the movement of the video projection apparatus itself, thereby changing the projection direction. When the projection direction is intended to significantly change using a method of locating the mirror, a size of the mirror becomes very large, with the result that a size of the apparatus increases. When the method of locating the mirror is used, a changeable projection direction is limited to only a single direction. | {
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This invention relates to laryngeal mask airway devices (LMA-devices) which are artificial airway devices permitting spontaneous or artificial ventilation of the lungs of a patient.
LMA-devices are described in UK Patents Nos. 2,111,394 and 2,205,499. Such devices have become accepted items of equipment for rapidly and reliably establishing an unobstructed airway in a patient in emergency situations and in the administration of anaesthetic gases, and have found use in most countries of the world.
The insertion of such a LMA-device into the throat of the patient is, in the great majority of cases an entirely straightforward procedure which can be carried out successfully following readily understandable training. FIG. 1 illustrates a preferable situation for the insertion of an LMA-device into a patient's throat. The inflatable cuff surrounding the bowl of the mask is fully deflated and correctly oriented and aligned for passage through the back of the mouth and into the throat. The semi-rigid bowl of the mask is supported by the anesthetist's hand grasping the flexible airway tube adjacent its junction with the mask in order to gently urge the mask into the patient's throat.
Circumstances do, however, occasionally arise during insertion leading to undesirable positioning of the device and/or undesirable forces being applied to the device and/or to the patient. One of the most common of such circumstances is that the leading end of the device, i.e., the distal end of the fully deflated inflatable cuff formation, becomes folded over on itself presenting the more rigid distal end of the mask to catch the inside the throat and subject the patient to undesirable forces. Alternatively, or additionally, the folded over distal end of the cuff will obstruct correct and full inflation of the cuff thereby obstructing the creation of a full seal around the patient's laryngeal inlet and hence obstructing formation of a full enclosed airway to the patient's lungs. This, in turn, may result in anesthetic gases passing unnecessarily into the patient's oesophagus and in any matter regurgitated through the oesophagus entering the larynx and soiling the patient's trachea and lungs. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solid-state image sensor which includes a plurality of pixel cells that generate signal charges in accordance with incident light.
2. Description of the Related Art
A gettering technique has been a known technique to form a gettering layer on the reverse side of a semiconductor wafer so as to collect and capture metallic contaminants present thereon. The background of such a gettering technique is described in LSI Handbook, Japanese Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, first printing of first edition, pp 358-364, published by Ohm-sha.
Also, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No.2002-43557 describes an example in which the gettering technique is applied to a solid-state image sensor. Herein, gettering layers are stacked outside a well (mainly under the well) that surrounds a pixel region.
If a solid-state image sensor is contaminated with metal or the like, in general, a dark output occurs from the contaminated area, thereby reducing the S/N of an image signal.
In particular, the metal contamination is conspicuous in a pixel region formed in an epitaxial layer. Contaminants of such metallic impurities include metals in a material gas for epitaxial growth or those used for processing equipment (such as gas conduits). The dark output derived from the metallic impurities directly acts upon the pixel region in the epitaxial layer, whereby the S/N of an image signal is significantly reduced.
In this context, the inventors of the present application made experiments on contamination with iron in the processing step, which is a main factor of the dark output and often used in processing equipment. In the experiments, solid iron was dissolved on a silicon substrate which had been heated to 900° C. The result was that the substrate was contaminated with the iron from its surface up to a depth of 5 μm, which may cause degradation in device characteristics such as the dark output.
According to the experiment results, it can be assumed that the metal contamination occurring in the processing steps of the solid-state image sensor is to have direct effects on the pixel region in the vicinity of the surface.
However, the gettering layer is formed on the reverse side of the substrate or under the well by the aforementioned conventional gettering technique. This causes a problem that gettering capability is not sufficient in the pixel region which is intensively contaminated with metal because the gettering layer is substantially spaced away from the pixel region (the substrate surface).
With the progress of device miniaturization of the solid-state image sensor, in particular, the overall gettering capability reduces as temperature in the processes lowers, so that the contamination cannot be sufficiently eliminated from the pixel region. | {
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A power conversion device which includes two serially-connected SW elements of an upper arm and a lower arm and supplies power to a load by converting a voltage and a current from a DC power supply is disclosed, for example, in JP2005-287267A (Patent Literature 1).
A power conversion device employed in a vehicle is required to have high power density (compact size and large current) and a small power loss. To this end, a current, a voltage, and a switching speed (hereinafter, referred to as a SW speed) of the SW elements are kept increased. When a current, a voltage, and a SW speed of the SW elements which supplies power are increased, however, a surge voltage occurring at the time of switching is increased. In order to reduce a switching loss (hereinafter, referred to as a SW loss), it is absolutely necessary to restrict the surge voltage. The surge voltage also depends on a value of floating inductance in an interior of a filter capacitor or a power module forming the power conversion device or in a bus bar electrically connecting the foregoing components, and the surge voltage becomes high when the floating inductance is large.
The power conversion device disclosed in Patent Literature 1 includes power modules in each of which the SW element is molded with resin in the shape of a flat rectangular parallelepiped. A positive electrode and a negative electrode are provided on one flat surface of the power module and the other surface forming a heat-sinking plane is connected to a cooling substrate. A positive (upper arm) power module group and a negative (lower arm) power module group are disposed in such a manner that the respective surfaces provided with the electrodes oppose each other at a predetermined interval and form a two-way path in which currents flowing in and out from the respective modules oppose each other. Owing to the location and the configuration of the power modules as above, the power conversion device of Patent Literature 1 restricts a surge voltage to be low by reducing the floating inductance occurring between the power modules.
On the other hand, when a larger current flows, the SW elements generate a larger amount of heat while in use. It thus also becomes necessary to enhance radiation performance of the SW elements. A SW element with excellent radiation performance is disclosed, for example, in JP2003-110064A (Patent Literature 2).
The SW element disclosed in Patent Literature 2 is a double-sided heat-sinking element module. The element module has a structure in which a pair of heat sinks is bonded to both surfaces of a semiconductor chip, for example, via solder layers, and the element module is entirely molded with resin in such a manner that respective outer surfaces of a pair of the heat sinks are exposed. Accordingly, heat can be released from the both surfaces of the semiconductor chip and high radiation performance can be exerted. The element module of Patent Literature 2 is also shaped like a flat rectangular parallelepiped. However, different from the power module in Patent Literature 1, the heat sink exposed to one flat surface forms a positive electrode and the heat sink exposed to the other surface forms a negative electrode. | {
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The invention disclosed herein relates generally to apparatus for communicating digital data, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for asynchronous one way communication from one computing device to another requiring minimum hardware and minimum computing device overhead.
The use of microprocessors and microcomputers for performing a wide variety of data processing tasks, particularly in conjunction with equipment control applications, is rapidly expanding. An increasing number of such applications utilize microprocessors or microcomputers at various separated locations in a total system. It is often necessary for one such microcomputer to communicate data to another.
Communication between computing devices requires both program capacity and memory capacity. Since the capacity of a microcomputer is limited, it is desirable that the transmitting and/or receiving operations require a minimum amount of computing power and storage.
To at least some extent, the data communication burden on a microcomputer can be relieved through the use of external devices, interfaces and circuitry. However, it is also desirable that the complexity and cost of the external portions of the communication link be minimized.
The applicant has provided a unique, simple and low cost method and apparatus for achieving digital data communication from one microcomputer to another. Both the burden placed on the microcomputer and the amount and complexity of external circuitry are minimized. | {
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The present invention relates to disposable absorbent articles. More specifically, the invention relates to a disposable absorbent article, such as a disposable diaper, that includes a pair of back ears and that is designed to be produced at a high speed and yet in a reliable and economical fashion.
Absorbent articles such as disposable diapers are typically made on high speed (i.e., hundreds of products per minute) production lines. When manufacturing articles in this way, it is desirable to produce a product that includes features that provide an attractive product to the caregiver and/or the user and that is effective at containing and absorbing bodily exudates. An example of such features include separately attached ears. In certain aspects, the articles can include a pair of ears extending from the article in the back waist region. In addition, these articles can optionally include a pair of ears extending from the article in the front waist region. The ears can be useful for providing better hip coverage to the wearer. Further, the ears can optionally be stretchable or even elastomeric for improved fit and comfort. Moreover, the ears can include fastening members to keep the article about the hips and waist of the wearer.
While absorbent articles that include features such as separately attached ears or other components can be desirable in certain circumstances, adding components to a mass produced absorbent article can be costly and increase the complexity of the production process thereby potentially creating a speed limitation to the process. Moreover, there is an increasing desire to produce effective absorbent articles very inexpensively keeping in mind the more cost-conscious consumer.
Thus, there is a need for an absorbent article that is configured to be made on a high-speed production line that includes back ears and optionally front ears. Further, there is a need for such an article that is configured to be produced in a very efficient and cost-effective manner. Still further, there is a need for such an article that can be inexpensively made and yet is still pleasing to the wearer and/or caregiver. | {
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When membranes suitable for filtering out bacteria and smaller entities were developed by Zsigmondy and others between World Wars I and II, all such membranes were known as ultrafiltration membranes. At the present state of the art the definition of "ultrafiltration membranes" has been narrowed and additional loosely defined names introduced:
In this specification and the appended claims "nanofiltration membranes" are defined as membranes which reject less than about 50% of sodium chloride when challenged at about room temperature and at about 225 pounds per square inch trans-membrane pressure difference with a solution in water containing about 2000 milligrams of sodium chloride per liter and which in a separate test reject more than about 50% of magnesium sulfate when challenged at about room temperature and at about 225 pounds per square inch trans-membrane pressure difference with a solution in water containing about 2000 milligrams of magnesium sulfate per liter. Such membranes typically reject 90% or more of albumin but may or may not reject a substantial fraction of disaccharides. | {
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Thermoplastic olefins (TPOs), impact copolymers (ICPs) and thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPVs), collectively referred to herein as heterophase polymer compositions, thermoplastic elastomers and/or soft thermoplastic blends (STPBs), comprise an isotactic polypropylene thermoplastic phase and a high molecular weight or crosslinked elastomeric phase. The STPBs also commonly includes non-polymeric components such as fillers and other compounding ingredients.
STPBs are multiphase polymer blends where a thermoplastic such as isotactic polypropylene forms a continuous matrix phase and an elastomer, such as an ethylene containing interpolymer, is the dispersed phase. The polypropylene matrix imparts tensile strength and chemical resistance to the STPBs, while the elastomer imparts flexibility and impact resistance. A distinction between these members of STPBs, (e.g. TPVs, TPOs and ICPs) is some have a dispersed phase which is not crosslinked, or is only modestly crosslinked, others have crosslinked dispersed phases. TPOs are made by mechanical and post polymerization blending of the components while ICPs are made during the polymerization by differential polymerization of the polymer components. TPVs are also blends of thermoplastic and elastomer like TPOs, except that the dispersed elastomer component is crosslinked or vulcanized. As a result of the increased coherence of the dispersed, crosslinked elastomer, its share of the total composition in a TPV may be increased to levels higher than for a TPO.
Traditionally, highly amorphous, very low density ethylene-propylene copolymers (EPs) and ethylene-propylene-diene terpolymers (EPDMs) have been used as the elastomer component in STPBs. These EPs or EPDMs generally have a high viscosity expressed in Mooney units. STPBs desirably have the processing characteristics of the thermoplastic phase, while the ultimate properties include a substantial amount of elasticity from the rubber phase.
A major market for STPBs is in the manufacture of automotive parts, especially bumper fascia, door skin, air bag cover, side pillars and the like. These parts are generally made using an injection molding process. To increase efficiency and reduce costs it is necessary to decrease molding times and reduce wall thickness in the molds. To accomplish these goals, manufacturers have turned to high melt flow rate polypropylenes, (e.g. greater than 35 g/10 min). These high melt flow rate resins are low in molecular weight and consequently difficult to toughen, resulting in products that have low impact strength as previously mentioned. It would be desirable to formulate an STPB having greater elongation to break and more toughness, improved processability, and/or a combination thereof.
US 2007/0240605 describes low molecular weight propylene copolymers. Polyolefin thermoplastic elastomers comprising blends of propylene polymers with non-crystalline ethylene-α-olefin random copolymers or with hydrogenated products of styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymers are disclosed in Japanese laid-open patent application Nos. Sho 50-14742/1975, Sho 52-65551/1977, Sho 58-20664/1983, and Sho 58-215446/1983. | {
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This invention relates to fishing lures. More particularly, this invention relates to a combination jig and spinner lure designed so that the spinner rotates both when the lure is retrieved and when it is allowed to sink in the water.
A wide variety of artificial lures are available to the sports fisherman. One common form of artificial fishing lure is known as a "jig". In its simplest form, a jig is the combination of a hook and a weighted jig head, the weighted jig head being constructed of a heavy material such as lead. Generally, a portion of the hook's thank passes through the jig head so that the eye of the hook protrudes from one portion of the jig head and the remainder of the hook's shank extends from another portion of the jig head. In order to attract more fish, the jig head is usually painted and the hook shank is generally adorned with a dressing such as hair, rubber or plastic skirt.
Weighted jig heads and hooks come in a variety of shapes to suit the intended function of the jig. One common jig configuration includes a ball shaped weighted jig head and a hook with a ninety degree bend in the hook shank just below the hook eye. Typically, the shank is bent such that the hook eye resides on the same side of the shank as the hook point and such that the hook resides substantially in a single plane. The jig head attaches to the hook so that the shank of the hook exits a posterior section of the round jig head and the book eye protrudes from an upper portion of the round jig head. This type of jig is typically used when fishing in deep water near the bottom with the jig being moved up and down in a vertical fashion to attract fish.
Another type of jig includes a weighted jig head that is elongated in shape and used in conjunction with a hook having a straight shank. The jig head connects to the hook shank in a manner so that the hook eye extends from an anterior portion of the jig head while the hook shank extends from a posterior portion along a common axis. Fisherman use this type of jig in a casting and retrieving mode wherein, during the retrieving mode, the fisherman intermittently retrieves the jig and allows the jig to sink in the water so that the jig travels in a sawtooth fashion on or near the bottom.
Another common form of fishing lure is known as a "spinner". A spinner includes a generally oval, metal blade with a convex surface, commonly called a spinner blade, attached to a wire shaft via a clevis. A fishing line attaches to a shaft eye located at a first end of the wire shaft while a hook assembly attaches to a second end of the wire shaft opposite the first end. When the spinner is retrieved through the water, the blade rotates about the wire shaft in a conical pattern. The rotation of the spinner blade attracts fish with the fish engaging the hook instead of the spinner blade. Individual spinner blades can also be attached to other lures to attract fish. Typically, a spinner blade attaches to the lure via a barrel or crane swivel and will function satisfactorily if the spinner blade have enough free space within which to rotate.
Heretofore, jigs and spinners have not been combined satisfactorily. To achieve maximum benefit from adding a spinner blade to a jig, the spinner blade must be closely coupled with the hook. Close coupling exists when the blade spins directly in front of or such that it passes between the hook point and-the hook shank during a portion of its rotation. Such close coupling increase the chances of hooking a fish that strikes and engulfs the spinner blade. Due to the nature of the methods used in fishing with a jig, further benefit would be derived if the spinner blade rotated both while the jig was allowed to descend in the water and when the jig was retrieved upwardly or horizontally.
An inherent problem with closely coupling a spinner blade to a jig adjacent the hook point relates to the water flow around the jig head itself. Because of the shape of a typical jig head, water flow velocity is greatest near the surface of the jig head. Therefore, a decreased water pressure is created at the surface of the jig head, this negative pressure attracting the spinner blade to the jig head. This water velocity/pressure phenomenon is called the "Venturi" principle. When a normal linkage is used to connect a spinner blade to the top-front of a jig head, the reduced water pressure at the surface of the jig head attracts the spinner blade and prevents the spinner from rotating.
Certain prior devices attempted to combine the benefits of spinners and jigs. One particular lure connected a spinner blade to the jig's weighted jig head opposite the hook point so that when the lure was retrieved, the spinner resided underneath the jig head with the jig head and hook above. In this configuration, gravity kept the spinner away from the jig head, and the spinner blade would spin on a straight retrieve, but not when the lure was allowed to sink in the water. Further, in this configuration, the spinner blade was in a position to collect weeds and other bottom trash as it passed near the bottom.
Another prior lure attempted to closely couple a spinner blade with a jig. This lure included a jig with a straight hook shaft, an elongated jig head connected to the hook shaft, and a hook eye located along the hook's shaft axis. A bracket was employed to provide an offset mounting location for the spinner blade so that it was closely coupled to the hook point. With this lure however, because of the jig head's shape and because the line was attached to the lure at a point along the hook's shaft axis, the blade's weight and the Venturi effect at the jig head surface caused the blade to contact the jig head upon retrieval and thereby prevented the spinner blade from properly spinning during retrieval. The spinner blade therefore spun only while the lure was sinking. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a key-updating method in a key-insulated cryptosystem, encryption processing method, a key-insulated cryptosystem, and a terminal device used in the key-insulated cryptosystem.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with progress of so-called information technology (IT), a cryptosystem for carrying out encryption processing of information to be transmitted and received has been widely used in these days.
In such a cryptosystem, there is a problem that security of information to be encrypted cannot be secured when a cryptographic algorithm used for the encryption processing is once analyzed.
However, in reality, rather than the case where the cryptographic algorithm is analyzed, there is a problem that a key used for encryption processing is exposed outside due to carelessness of a user who uses the cryptosystem.
Therefore, to cope with such key exposure, so-called “key-insulated cryptosystem” has been known (see, for example, Y. Dodis, J. Katz, S. Xu and M. Yung, “Key-Insulated Public-Key Cryptosystems”, Proc. of Eurocrypt 2002, Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 2332, 2002, Springer-Verlag, P. 65-82 (hereinafter referred to as “Reference Document 1”), and M. Bellare and A. Palacio, “Protecting against Key Exposure: Strongly Key-Insulated Encryption with Optimal Threshold”, Cryptology ePrint Archive 064, the Internet URL:http://eprint.iacr.org/2002 (hereinafter referred to as “Reference Document 2”). In the key-insulated cryptosystem, it is possible to decrypt information which is encrypted by other users in the key-insulated cryptosystem for a predetermined time period, by using a user decryption key stored in a terminal device connected to a communications network.
In addition, in the key-insulated cryptosystem, “key-updating information” is generated by using “secret information” stored in an external device (for example, an IC card) connected to a terminal device. A user of the terminal device can update the user decryption key used in the terminal device by using the key-updating information.
That is, one of great features in the key-insulated cryptosystem is as follows. Even in a case where some of the user decryption keys, which are applied for a certain time period, are exposed outside, as long as the total number of the exposed decryption keys does not exceed a certain number, the decryption keys, which are applied for a time period other than the time period during which the exposed key is applied, are still unknown to persons and systems other than the user. That is, security in the time period other than the time period, during which the exposed decryption key is applied, is not affected at all.
Here, a specific configurational example of a key-insulated cryptosystem will be briefly described. For example, an update interval of a user decryption key is assumed to be one day, and the key is assumed to be updated for (N−1) times, that is, for N days.
A user (a terminal device) in the key-insulated cryptosystem uses general public-key encryption (for example, RSA encryption and ElGamal encryption) to generate N pairs of a public key and a decryption key ((Pki, Ski)1≦i≦N) and to publish pk=(pki)0≦i≦N as a public key.
In addition, the user (the terminal device) stores dk0=sk0 as an initial decryption key. Furthermore, the decryption key sk=(ski)0≦i≦N is set as a master key hk* (secret information), and the master key hk* is enclosed in an external device (for example, a tamper-proof region in an IC card or the like).
For example, at the j-th time key update, the external device generates key-updating information dj=skj based on the master key hk* and the fact that it is the j-th time key update. The generated key-updating information dj is transmitted to the terminal device connected with a secured communications path.
The user (the terminal device) generates a new decryption key dkj=dj by using the key-updating information dj and erases the previous decryption keys dkj−1 and dj. | {
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Attempts at controlling dynamic, continuous processes, including polyolefin production processes have been a long standing goal of the process industry.
Gas phase processes for the homopolymerization and copolymerization of monomers, especially olefin monomers, are well known in the art. Such processes can be conducted, for example, by introducing the gaseous monomer or monomers into a stirred and/or fluidized bed of resin particles and catalyst.
In the fluidized-bed polymerization of olefins, the polymerization is conducted in a fluidized-bed reactor, wherein a bed of polymer particles is maintained in a fluidized state by means of an ascending gas stream including gaseous reaction monomer. The polymerization of olefins in a stirred-bed reactor differs from polymerization in a gas fluidized-bed reactor by the action of a mechanical stirrer within the reaction zone, which contributes to fluidization of the bed. As used herein, the term “fluidized-bed” also includes stirred-bed processes and reactors.
The start-up of a fluidized bed reactor generally uses a bed of preformed polymer particles. During the course of polymerization, fresh polymer is generated by the catalytic polymerization of the monomer, and polymer product is withdrawn to maintain the bed at constant volume. An industrially favored process employs a fluidization grid to distribute the fluidizing gas to the bed, and also to act as a support for the bed when the supply of gas is cut off. The polymer produced is generally withdrawn from the reactor via one or more discharge conduits disposed in the lower portion of the reactor, near the fluidization grid. The fluidized bed includes a bed of growing polymer particles, polymer product particles and catalyst particles. This reaction mixture is maintained in a fluidized condition by the continuous upward flow from the base of the reactor of a fluidizing gas which includes recycle gas drawn from the top of the reactor, together with added make-up monomer. The fluidizing gas enters the bottom of the reactor and is passed through a fluidization grid, upwardly through the fluidized bed.
A variety of gas phase polymerization processes are known. For example, the recycle stream can be cooled to a temperature below the dew point, resulting in condensing a portion of the recycle stream, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,543,399 and 4,588,790. This intentional introduction of a liquid into a recycle stream or reactor during the process is referred to generally as a “condensed mode” operation.
Further details of fluidized bed reactors and their operation are disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,243,619, 4,543,399, 5,352,749, 5,436,304, 5,405,922, 5,462,999, and 6,218,484, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,525,678 suggests a catalyst including a zirconium metallocene that produces a relatively low molecular weight, high comonomer-content polymer, and a titanium non-metallocene that produces a relatively high molecular weight, low comonomer-content polymer. Typically, ethylene is the primary monomer, and small amounts of hexene or other alpha-olefins are added to lower the density of the polyethylene. The zirconium catalyst incorporates most of the comonomer and hydrogen, so that, in a typical example, about 85% of the hexene and 92% of the hydrogen are in the low molecular weight polymer. Water is added to control the overall molecular weight by controlling the activity of the zirconium catalyst.
When polymerizing with two or more catalysts, it is desirable to monitor and control the relative contribution of each catalyst to the polymer product, so that the polymerization conditions can be adjusted to obtain the desired polymer properties. The properties of the polymer produced in the reactor are affected by a variety of operating parameters, such as reaction temperature, monomer feed rates, catalyst feed rates, co-catalyst feed rates, hydrogen gas concentration, or water feed rate. In order to produce polymer having a desired set of properties, polymer exiting the reactor is sampled and laboratory measurements carried out to characterize the polymer. If it is discovered that one or more polymer properties are outside a desired range, polymerization conditions can be adjusted, and the polymer resampled. This periodic sampling, testing and adjusting, however, is undesirably slow, since sampling and laboratory testing of polymer properties is time-consuming. As a result, conventional processes can produce large quantities of “off-specification” polymer before manual testing and reactor control can effectively adjust the polymerization conditions.
In WO 03/044061 a rolling average of a ratio of two gas phase component concentrations, each concentration in turn expressed as a component's gas phase mole fraction divided by its feed rate into the reactor, as seen in equation (7) on page 13 of that publication, is referred to as a LI. The LI gives an indication of the polymer properties being produced, without waiting for manual product analysis. This technique results in improved control compared to the prior art. However, using the technique of WO 03/044061 yields somewhat inaccurate control when feed ratios change and also the equation did not consider methods to choose the leading indicator target. Further, improvements made in industrial use applied a leading indicator based on a weighting factor in turn based on polymer residence time in the reactor. While using this latter method, the leading indicator based on polymer residence time, gave a better indication of reactor behavior than the rolling average of WO 03/044061, a quicker, more responsive leading indicator was sought. Such a more responsive leading indicator might allow improved, more timely control of polymerization processes, and in so doing, permit reduction of off-test or off-specification polymer in response to either unintended reactor variable perturbations, or minimizing such off-test or off-specification polymer in response to an intended change in reactor variables, such as when changing such variables to achieve a different class of material by effecting a change to polymer properties such as melt index, flow index, density, molecular weight, molecular weight distribution or combinations thereof by adjusting reactor variables.
Thus, it would be desirable to have faster methods and more accurate methods for monitoring and/or predicting changes in polymer properties, or changes in relative activities of catalysts, especially in multiple catalyst processes. In addition, it would be desirable to have methods to predict what reactor conditions would be required, based on simple reactor data and product properties, to produce a particular type or kind of polymer product. It is especially important to minimize the production of polymer product that does not meet desired specifications during times when the reactor process conditions are changing (either deliberately or through process parameter drift). | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Various standards have been established for electrical connectors used to interconnect information equipment. The Universal Serial Bus (USB) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1394 standards are known as representative examples of such.
In order to add required functionality, these types of electrical connectors are configured to internally house an electronic component. For example, FIGS. 14(A)-(B) shows a type-A plug or electrical connector 500 that conforms to the USB standard (FIG. 8 of Unexamined Patent Application Publication JP2002-190412). The plug 500 internally houses an inductor (common mode choke coil) L20 in order to add a noise suppression effect to the plug 500.
As shown in FIG. 14(A), in the electrical connector 500, an inductor L10 is connected between a pair of signal contacts 521 and a pair of signal lines w1 of a cable W. As shown in FIG. 14(B), the inductor L10 is mounted on a small circuit board 550 and is inserted between the pair of signal contacts 521 and the pair of signal lines w1 via a pair of signal pins 551a, 551b provided at an end of the circuit board 550. Similarly, the inductor L20 is inserted via a pair of power supply pins 552a, 552b provided at either end of the circuit board 550 between a pair of power supply contacts 522 and a pair of power supply lines w2 of the cable W.
The inductor L10 connected between the signal contacts 521 and the signal lines w1 of the cable W and the inductor L20 connected between the power supply contacts 522 and the power supply lines w2 of the cable W are both mounted on the circuit board 550 and housed within a metal shell 530 of the electrical connector 500. Functioning as a shield, the metal shell 530 is connected to a shield layer S that covers the signal lines w1 and power supply lines w2 of the cable W. Except for a mating portion 510 at a front end of the metal shell 530, the metal shell 530 that houses the circuit board 550 is molded with an insulative resin 560.
An electrical connector that conforms to the USB standard or other standards must maintain compatibility, and therefore has a restriction in that the shape of the mating portion cannot be changed arbitrarily. Moreover, because the overall configuration, including the insulative housing, of such an electrical connector has a small size and low profile, there is the problem in that the usable space for accommodating an electronic component within the insulative housing is extremely small.
For example, in the electrical connector 500 previously described, the dimensions of the usable space for accommodating the circuit board 550 within the metal shell 530 do not exceed 10 mm in the vertical and horizontal directions, and the height is approximately 3 mm. In consideration of the fact that the circuit board 550 has a thickness of approximately 0.5 to 1 mm, electronic components capable of being mounted on the circuit board 500 and being positioned inside the metal shell 530 of the electrical connector 500 are limited to electronic components having a height of not more than 2 mm. Thus, the electronic components capable of being housed inside this small-size low-profile electrical connector were limited to surface mountable components such as chip-type components.
Depending on the usage conditions of an electrical connector that houses an electronic component, due to an inability to satisfy required specifications for chip-type electronic components or for other reasons, the electrical connector may, in some cases, be required to internally house a lead-type electronic component. However, with a small-size low-profile electrical connector such as the USB connector previously described, space is limited inside the insulative housing, and it is therefore difficult to position lead-type electronic components therein. Moreover, since lead-type electronic components come in a wider variety of sizes and shapes than chip-type components, there is also a problem in that the shape of the insulative housing must be changed for each lead-type electronic component. | {
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Conventional arrows rely primarily on the arrow tip to cut into a target, penetrate it, and exit it, with no consideration that the arrow or arrows themselves can be integral cutting devices. These conventional arrows generally include an arrow shaft having interchangeable arrow heads. Generally, arrow head designs have been limited to small broad heads designed for improved flight, and a one size cutting angle and resulting cutting diameter of the tip. If it is a mechanical device, it often will rely on its ability to open in a relatively short timeframe because the blades are located close to the initial point of contact of the target. Moreover, relative densities at the point of impact can vary greatly (e.g., initial contact with an animal can strike soft tissue or dense bone). Conventional designs typically fall short in accounting for these considerations which can, as a result, affect their reliability. The impact surface further affects the ability of the mechanical blades and related mechanisms to deploy efficiently. With this loss of efficiency, the mechanical tip of a conventional arrowhead can absorb a disproportionate amount of kinetic energy which otherwise could have been transferred to the target. Additionally, it is difficult to design a tip that opens inside the target to most effectively damage vital organs.
Being confined to a tip, conventional designs are limited by their overall weight and length due to various competing design considerations. For example, because the tip of an arrow is located at the front of an arrow, it must be located forward of the arrow rest and the bow handle and, therefore, it is desirable to keep the weight of the arrowhead relatively low, and the length of the arrowhead, relatively short. Because of these constraints, the arrowhead design must include relatively short blades so that the arrow's flight path and speed is not adversely affected. As such, conventional arrowheads are limited in length and weight thus precluding them from enclosing large blades that are needed for high-speed bow and cross bows, and further limiting their options for properly spacing a combination of a fixed-type design with a mechanical-type design. Finally, conventional tips are often limited to a single type of a device and cannot accommodate the weight necessary to accommodate a totally integrated solution.
Further, there has been little design variation, even with the development of modern high speed and compound bows, spear guns, and cross bows. Existing designs do not provide the ability for the archer to adjust the blade angle on the arrow heads to compensate for variable for bow poundage, or for specific target game. In addition, most current arrow head designs do not provide for a change of blade angles at the time of target penetration to optimize arrow performance for target having different densities.
Additionally, the safety of drawing an arrow and firing an arrow has not been addressed to protect the archer's hand and arm. Conventional arrow rests have been one dimensional only, holding the arrow at one point of time and place. The critical space between the string and bow handle, commonly called the “brace height,” is left open by conventional arrow rests so that the archer is unprotected in that space. Moreover, conventional known arrow heads generally have blades that are fixed in open positions, and lack a safety locking system in place to constrain the blades in a closed position during the draw and fire cycle.
Modern bows, spear guns and crossbows today have reached levels of speed and kinetic energy that were not available years ago. The kinetic energy of the arrow in flight has almost doubled. Many modern arrows are designed to enable “pass through” shots, where the arrow completely passes quickly through the target. Because the arrow continues moving through and beyond the target, the arrow does not deliver 100% of its kinetic energy to the target. Any kinetic energy not delivered to the target is wasted.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a hunting arrow that deploys maximum kinetic energy on the target. Such a design could include a device that delivers the ballistics of first fracturing the surface of a target and secondary devices that open internal to the target or at some distance from impact within the target.
Moreover, such a design may include an arrow that deploys the proper number of blades at the proper blade angle, or that deploys multiple blades based on the density of the target at the point of impact. Such a design may also include a safety system that locks deployable blades or multiple arrow shafts into place during the draw and fire cycle, as well as an arrow rest and/or bow bracket that protects the arm and hand of an archer during the draw and fire cycle. | {
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An electric vehicle uses an electric motor for propulsion. Energy required to power the propulsion motor is stored in a battery system located within the vehicle. Heavy-duty electric vehicles (such as, e.g., electric buses, electric trucks, etc.) may store a large amount of energy in its battery system. It some situations, it is desirable to selectively dissipate the energy stored in the battery system to the ambient to lower its stored energy. Embodiments of the current disclosure address these situations. The scope of the current disclosure, however, is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability to solve any specific problem. | {
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This application claims the priority of Japanese Patent Application No. 4-140745, filed Jun. 1, 1992.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a steering wheel pad which includes an air bag device and a horn switch.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. 4-5171 discloses a conventional vehicular steering wheel pad which includes an air bag device. As shown in FIG. 13, the pad includes an inner member 51, an outer member 52, and a horn switch 53 disposed between the inner and outer members 51 and 52. An air bag device 54 is accommodated under the inner member 51. The air bag device 54 is held under the inner member 51 by means of a pair of bag supports 55 disposed on opposing sides of the steering wheel (only one shown).
In a pad 56 having the above described configuration, each bag support 55 is secured to a bracket 59 by means of rivets 58, in order to prevent each member 51, 52, 54 and 55 from moving when an air bag 57 is inflated by activation of the air bag device 54. The brackets 59 together with the horn switch 53 and the outer member 52 are secured to the inner member 51, which has high rigidity, by means of other rivets 60.
Lead wires 61 and 62 are connected to the horn switch 53 and the air bag device 54, respectively, such that the horn switch 53 and the air bag device 54 can be electrically connected to a connection leading to a battery. The lead wires 61 and 62 are passed through a space in the pad 56 and bundled together. The bundled wires 61 and 62 are inserted into a hole 63a of a metal plate 63. These wires 61 and 62 are then connected to the battery, via a slip ring or the like.
However, in the conventional configuration, assembling the pad 56 and electrically connecting the horn switch 53 should be performed separately, particularly when the electrical connection of the horn switch 53 and the lead wire 61 requires a connection via a narrow space. Therefore, the wiring operation becomes rather difficult to perform, which causes the work efficiency for assembling the pad to decrease. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink, and an ink-jet recording method and instruments using the ink. In particular, the present invention relates to an ink which permits highly fine and high-image quality recording or printing on non-coated paper such as paper for copying, paper for reporting, bond paper and continuous business forms, i.e., so-called plain paper, which are commonly used in offices and homes, to say nothing of coated paper specially prepared for ink-jet recording, and on cloth, an ink-jet recording method using such an ink, and a recording unit, ink-jet recording apparatus and ink cartridge containing such an ink therein.
2. Related Background Art
Inks of various compositions have been hitherto reported with respect to inks for ink-jet recording. In particular, in recent years, detailed research and development have been made from various aspects such as composition and physical properties of inks with a view toward conducting good recording or printing on plain paper such as paper for copying, paper for reporting, notepaper and letter paper, which are commonly used in offices, and on cloth.
With respect to ink-jet recording methods, those of very different systems have heretofore been reported, including a system in which charged ink droplets are continuously generated to use a part of them in recording, a system in which signals are applied to a recording head having a piezoelectric element to generate droplets of a recording liquid according to the signals, thereby conducting recording, and a system in which thermal energy according to recording signals is applied to a recording liquid in a chamber of a recording head to generate droplets of the recording liquid by the thermal energy, thereby conducting recording.
In particular, a system of a type wherein an ink is ejected by the bubbling phenomenon of the ink caused by thermal energy as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 54-59936 has recently attracted attention in that the high integration and high densification of nozzles can be realized with ease. However, since the system makes good use of the bubbling, which is a phenomenon different from those of other systems, more stringent conditions are required of the inks to be used.
As preferable conditions required of inks used in such a system, may be mentioned the following conditions:
(1) having good frequency responsiveness, whereby ink droplets are ejected stably at all times from minute ejection orifices without causing clogging, and in particular, having good responsiveness of bubbling to thermal energy; PA1 (2) even when allowed to stand without capping a head during the suspension of recording, being able to be stably ejected from just after the resumption of recording, namely, being unlikely to dry in the vicinity of ejection orifices and hence causing no clogging; PA1 (3) providing high-quality images free of undefined or irregular feathering and/or bleeding, in particular, on plain paper and cloth; PA1 (4) having quick fixing ability (good drying ability) on plain paper and cloth; PA1 (5) having good storage stability and being able to keep good ink performances over a long period of time, and moreover causing neither disconnection nor deposition of foreign matter on a heating head, in particular, in the case of recording by a system making good use of thermal energy; and PA1 (6) being highly safe from toxicity, inflammability and the like.
Many proposals have heretofore been made with a view toward meeting such requirements. For example, inks generally contain a high-boiling organic solvent such as glycol for the purpose of preventing drying and clogging, and the like. When such an ink has been used to conduct recording on plain paper high in sizing degree, there have been problems in that the ink does not readily penetrate into the interior of the paper and an area on which a record has been made does not dry well, so that when such an area is touched with a finger, the finger is smeared with the ink, or the unrecorded area of the paper is stained due to rub-off of the characters recorded. Besides, when printing has been conducted on a cloth with such inks, such problems that marked bleeding occurs and color depth is also low, resulting in the formation of dull images, have occurred.
Under such circumstances, in order to enhance the penetrability of an ink into the interior of the paper, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 55-29546 has proposed a method in which a great amount of a surfactant is added to the ink. In this case, however, feathering has occurred to an extremely great extent on some kind of paper. In the case where such an ink is charged into a head for ink-jet, there have been recognized such problems such as the ink receding from an orifice surface, resulting in a failure in ejection of the ink, or the whole of the orifice surface is wetted to the contrary, also resulting in failure in ejection of the ink, though it varies with the structural conditions of the head.
It has also been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 56-57862 to make the pH of an ink strongly alkaline. This method, however, involves such drawbacks that the ink is harmful when touched with fingers, and poor results may be obtained in view of both resistance to feathering and fixing ability against paper using a certain kind of size, for example, neutralized paper.
Besides the above proposals, various improvements have been attempted to date. However, there has not yet been known under the circumstances any ink which can sufficiently solve all the problems of the feathering, drying ability and clogging. It is important to design an ink having a performance with good frequency responsiveness in addition to the above properties. Such a subject is however extremely difficult to attain. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Various data processing systems have been developed including storage systems, cellular telephone systems, and radio transmission systems. In such systems, data is transferred from a sender to a receiver via a medium. For example, in a storage system, data is sent from a sender (e.g., a write function) to a receiver (e.g., a read function) via a storage medium. As information is stored and transmitted in the form of digital data, errors are introduced that, if not corrected, can corrupt the data and render the information unusable. The effectiveness of any transfer is impacted by any losses in data caused by various factors.
Consequently, error checking systems have been developed to detect and correct errors of digital data. Error checking systems are used, for example, to process data retrieved from a magnetic hard disk drive (HDD). Each data sector of the disk drive has different noise, jitter, and distortion characteristics or signal to noise ratios (SNR), due, for example, to magnetic media defects, off-track writing, high fly height of magnetic write heads during a writing operation, large phase disturbance, and so forth. The throughput of an HDD can be affected by the number of read errors in a data sector, based in part on the SNR, and by the speed at which the read channel can recover from a read error by correcting the errors. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a tone quality control apparatus, and specifically to a digital tone control apparatus using digital signal processing. This invention also relates to a method of controlling tone quality.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, digital signal processing technics have remarkably entered the field of sound. Especially in the field of hall sound, finer sound making or generation has been performed by development of digital mixers, digital equalizers, or other digital devices.
Some speaker systems have their own channel dividers and perform primitive unit correction in addition to the channel division. Such techniques have also advanced sound control in hall sound systems.
In some conventional hall sound systems, audio or musical signals inputted via microphones are mixed and converted by a mixer into a mixed sound signal, which is fed to an equalizer. The equalizer performs filtering of the sound signal at an adjustable frequency characteristic. This filter characteristic is generally adjusted in accordance with a frequency characteristic of a hall and a frequency characteristic of a sound reproducing speaker system. An output sound signal from the equalizer is applied to a channel divider. The channel divider separates the inputted sound signal into plural bands and thus derives plural sound signals corresponding to the respective bands. The channel divider generally includes analog filters for the band division. The band-divided sound signals are fed to power amplifiers respectively. After amplification by the power amplifiers, these sound signals are inputted into respective units of the speaker system, such as a tweeter, a mid-range, and a woofer. The units of the speaker system convert the respective sound signals into corresponding sounds.
In these conventional sound systems, adjustment of the filter characteristic of the equalizer and adjustment of characteristics of the filters in the channel divider allow a frequency characteristic of sound reproduction to vary. Since the filters in the channel divider are of the analog type and also the equalizer is of the analog type, this allowable variation in the frequency characteristic is generally broad and gentle and, usually, frequency characteristics of the respective bands can not be varied independently even when the equalizer has a 1/3 octave band-width. Therefore, it is generally difficult to flat or compensate sharp peaks and dips in the original sound pressure frequency characteristics of the respective units of the speaker system. It should be noted that such peaks and dips in the frequency characteristic cause a problem in aural sensation.
Advanced hall sound systems use an accurate digital equalizer. Usually, it takes a long time to set or adjust the digital equalizer to optimize the frequency characteristic. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates to movement of data across asynchronous clock boundaries and, more particularly, to elastic storage operations. Further particularly, the invention relates to recovery and boundary verification for elastic storage operations.
The purpose of an elastic store is to allow the movement of data across asynchronous clock boundaries. At a boundary between two clock domains, a clock associated with incoming data and a clock associated with outgoing data may have different periods. Alternatively, the two clocks may alternate from high to low at the same rate.
A FIFO (First In First Out) memory may be used as part of an elastic store between the two clock domains. This FIFO memory may be a dual port RAM (Random Access Memory) with independent address inputs and data ports for read and write. A true dual-port memory allows each port to operate independently. Each side (read and write) of the elastic store uses a continuously-running independent clock and data may be read or written to the elastic store after activating a read or write enable port.
A typical FIFO has many inputs and many outputs. The inputs are arranged to receive, for a write, a write address at a write address input, data to write at a write data input, a signal on a write enable port and a write clock. The inputs are arranged to receive, for a read, a read address at a read address input, a signal on a read enable port and a read clock. The output is arranged to transmit, for a read, the data that is read at the read address. In particular, while writing is enabled by the signal on the write line, a write operation is performed on the data received at the write data input at a write address received at the write address input. The write operation occurs as triggered by the write clock. Further, when a read is enabled by the signal on the read line, a read operation is performed on the data present at the read address received at the read address input. The read operation occurs as triggered by the read clock.
A well designed elastic store includes a write counter for providing a write address, at the write address input, for each write operation. Similarly, the elastic store includes a read counter for providing a read address, at the read address input, for each read operation. Following each write or read operation, the respective counter is incremented to the next value in a counter cycle. The write counter and read counter cycle through the same sequence of addresses.
In designing an elastic store, consideration must be given to avoidance of overflow or underflow conditions. Take, for example, an elastic store having a clock ratio (the ratio between the write clock and read clock periods) of 15:14 and 64 buffer addresses. In this case, the elastic store may perform 34 more write operations than read operations before the elastic store is full (overflow). Similarly, the elastic store may perform 30 more read operations than write operations before the elastic store is empty (underflow). With a ratio of 15 to 14, the worst case is that the elastic store will perform 16 more write operations (or read operations) than read operations (or write operations). This scenario assumes a write address of 0 and read address of 31 at the beginning (boot-up time or after several recoveries). Under ideal conditions then, the distance between the read address and the write address is not less than 15.
At boot-up time, i.e., when the elastic store is turned on, write and read clocks may not reach a steady functionality immediately. Unfortunately, the address supplied by the write counter and the address supplied by the read counter are unknown at boot-up time. Thus, the possibility exists that the read address and the write address are adjacent (i.e., if one counter is incremented, the value supplied by each counter may be equal). This is a potentially dangerous scenario. For example, if a slip occurs on one clock (jitter), the elastic store might go into an overflow condition (an attempt to write to a fullxe2x80x94i.e., unreadxe2x80x94memory address) or an underflow condition (an attempt to read from an empty memory address). The result of the elastic store having gone into an overflow or underflow condition, is that the elastic store can no longer handle data without corruption.
In one recovery scheme, an interrupt can be generated, as triggered by an overflow or underflow condition, and software can reset the elastic store. However, the elastic store in this recovery scheme can take a while to react. Furthermore, when the elastic store does react, the software may reset the elastic store at an inopportune time.
Clearly, there is a requirement for measures to avoid overflow or underflow. However, if overflow or underflow occurs despite the avoidance measures there is a requirement for a recovery method for returning the elastic store to a functional state.
A circuit is provided that attempts to avoid elastic store overflow or underflow through address boundary verifications. However, if the elastic store fails due to over flow or underflow, a method is provided for recovering elastic store functionality.
Advantageously, the elastic store can work alone, i.e., external assistance is not required to correct for failures. Further, the elastic store is fully programmable for flexibility.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of operating an elastic store, the elastic store including a First In First Out memory (FIFO) having a write address input and a read address input. The method includes determining a write address as supplied to the write address input, determining a read address as supplied to the read address input, detecting a state of the elastic store wherein the write address is adjacent to the read address and, responsive to the detecting the state, performing a recovery operation.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention there is provided an elastic store including a First In First Out memory (FIFO) having a write address input and a read address input, a write counter for supplying a write address to the write address input of the FIFO, a read counter for supplying a read address to the read address input of the FIFO and a verification and recovery circuit for receiving a write address as supplied to the write address input, receiving a read address as supplied to the read address input, detecting a state of the elastic store wherein the write address is adjacent to the read address and, responsive to the detecting the state, performing a recovery operation.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Recently, various types of electronic devices, such as a mobile communication terminal, a smartphone, a tablet personal computer (PC), a notebook, a wearable device, a digital camera, and a personal computer, have been widely used with the development of digital technologies.
An electronic device may simultaneously transmit and receive data for full-duplex communications in a full-duplex communication system. For example, the electronic device may transmit a transmitted (Tx) signal to a base station through a duplexer and an antenna, and may receive a received (Rx) signal through the antenna and the duplexer.
In the electronic device, a transmitted signal path for signal transmission and a received signal path for signal reception may be simultaneously active, and the received signal path may receive interference by the transmitted signal path. For example, some Tx signals (for example, Tx noise) may infiltrate into the received signal path from the duplexer, and this Tx noise may cause deterioration in the performance of the received signal path.
The above information is presented as background information only to assist with an understanding of the present disclosure. No determination has been made, and no assertion is made, as to whether any of the above might be applicable as prior art with regard to the present disclosure. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image measurement device, and more specifically to improvement in an image measurement device that extracts an edge in a workpiece image obtained by photographing a workpiece, to measure a dimension of the workpiece.
2. Description of Related Art
An image measurement device is a device that photographs a workpiece to acquire a workpiece image and extracts an edge in the workpiece image to measure a dimension and a shape of the workpiece (e.g., JP 2012-32224 A, JP 2012-32341 A, JP 2012-32344 A, JP 2012-159409 A, and JP 2012-159410 A). Normally, the workpiece is placed on a movable stage that is movable in X-, Y-, and Z-axis directions. By moving the movable stage in the Z-axis direction, the workpiece image is brought into focus, and by moving the movable stage in the X- or Y-axis direction, a position of the workpiece is adjusted into a field of view.
Since the workpiece image is an extremely accurate analog of the workpiece irrespective of a position of the movable stage in the Z-axis direction, determination of a distance and an angle on the workpiece image allows detection of an actual dimension on the workpiece. Edge extraction is performed by analyzing a change in luminance of the workpiece image, detecting edge points, and fitting a geometric figure such as a straight line, a circle, or an arc to the detected plurality of edge points, whereby an edge showing a boundary between the workpiece and a background, and roughness on the workpiece is obtained. The dimension of the workpiece is measured as a distance or an angle between the edges obtained in such a manner, or a central position or a diameter of a circular edge. Further, a difference (error) between the measured dimension value and a design value is compared as a tolerance, to perform quality determination.
In the case of measuring an outer shape of the workpiece by use of such an image measurement device, there is often used transmittance illumination for irradiating the workpiece on the stage with illumination light from the opposite side to a camera. In contrast, in the case of measuring a non-through hole, a step, and roughness on the workpiece, there is often used epi-illumination for irradiating the workpiece on the stage with illumination light from the same side as the camera.
In the conventional image measurement device, a texture on the workpiece surface, namely, a processing mark, a pattern or fine roughness, may be erroneously extracted as an edge in dimension measurement using the epi-illumination, and the dimension measurement is thus difficult to stabilize as compared to the case of using the transmittance illumination, which has been problematic. Especially, in the case of photographing the workpiece on the stage by use of a camera with a low photographing magnification, an edge cannot be stably extracted, which has been problematic. Normally, in the dimension measurement, a vertical plane, which is parallel to a photographing axis of the camera, is extracted as an edge. However, since the camera with a low photographing magnification has a large depth of field, even when the upper end of the vertical plane is initially brought into focus, the lower end of the vertical plane is also brought into focus. Hence, correct edge extraction has been difficult since it is influenced not only by a texture on the upper end of the vertical plane but also by a texture on the lower end of the vertical plane. | {
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There is known a method for preheating steel scrap to a prescribed temperature with the use of high-temperature waste gases produced in a steel-refining metallurgical furnace, for example, an electric furnace when manufacturing steel from the steel scrap as raw material in the steel-refining metallurgical furnace. According to this method, it is possible to reduce the refining time in the electric furnace, and thus save the electric power consumption required for refining.
FIG. 1 is a schematic sectional view illustrating an embodiment of the conventional apparatus for preheating steel scrap by the above-mentioned high-temperature waste gases. In FIG. 1, 1 is a preheating vessel for receiving and preheating a steel scrap, which vessel 1 has cylindrical drum portion 1b provided with an open top 1a, and a two-part bottom lid 2,2 which is movable by means of a suitable opening/closing device (not shown). This preheating vessel 1 is adapted to receive steel scrap to be preheated from the open top 1a thereof, and to discharge the preheated steel scrap by opening the bottom lid 2,2.
Also in FIG. 1, 7 is a hood downwardly flaring for covering the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1. The top end of the hood 7 is provided with a waste-gas inlet 8 to which a blow pipe 9 of high-temperature waste gases is connected. The hood 7 is movable from the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1, and is adapted to introduce the high-temperature waste gases into the preheating vessel 1.
In FIG. 1, 4 is a pit for housing the preheating vessel 1. The pit 4 is provided in the ground, and has a depth capable of containing substantially half the height of the preheating vessel 1; 10 is a duct opening at an end thereof to the lower part of the side wall of the pit 4, the other end of the duct 10 being connected to a chimney through a fan and a dust collector, and the waste gases after preheating the steel scrap contained in the preheating vessel 1 are discharged from the pit 4 through the duct 10; 5 are a plurality of stands installed on the bottom of the pit 4 for supporting the preheating vessel 1; and, 6 is a sealing water groove provided on the ground surrounding the pit 4.
In FIG. 1, 3 is a canopy provided along the outer peripheral wall surface of the drum portion 1b of the preheating vessel 1 substantially at the middle of the height of the drum portion 1b for sealing a gap between the pit 4 and the preheating vessel 1 placed in the pit 4. The outer peripheral edge of the canopy 3 is provided with a downwardly extending flange 3a which is inserted into the sealing water groove 6 when the preheating vessel 1 is placed into the pit 4, and thus the gap between the outer peripheral edge of the canopy 3 and the pit 4 is liquid-tightly sealed.
When preheating steel scrap in the conventional apparatus described above, the preheating vessel 1, containing the steel scrap to be preheated is placed on a plurality of stands installed on the bottom of the pit 4, and at the same time the flange 3a of the canopy 3 fixed to the drum portion 1b of the preheating vessel 1 is inserted into the sealing water groove 6. Thereafter, the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1 is covered with the hood 7, and then, high-temperature waste gases are introduced from the hood 7 into the preheating vessel 1.
The high-temperature waste gases introduced from the hood 7 into the preheating vessel 1 pass through the preheating vessel 1 as shown by the arrows in FIG. 1 while preheating the steel scrap contained in the preheating vessel 1. The waste gases after thus preheating the steel scrap are discharged into the pit 4 through the juncture of the bottom lid 2,2 and a gap present in the contact portion between the bottom lid 2,2 and the drum portion 1b. Since the gap between the pit 4 and the preheating vessel 1 is sealed by the canopy 3 fixed to the drum portion 1b of the preheating vessel 1, the waste gases discharged into the pit 4 after preheating the steel scrap are totally withdrawn through the duct 10, and discharged to open air from the chimney through a dust collector.
The above-mentioned conventional apparatus is problematic in that, when covering the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1 with the movable hood 7 for preheating steel scrap, gaps are produced in the contact portion between the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1 and the hood 7, through which gaps the ambient air comes into the preheating vessel 1. Such gaps are caused by the insufficient shape accuracy and thermal deformation of the end surface of the open top 1a of the preheating vessel 1 and the inner peripheral surface of the hood 7 in contact with this end surface of the open top 1a, or caused by defectively attaching the hood 7 to the preheating vessel 1.
The ambient air coming into the preheating vessel 1 causes a temperature drop of the high-temperature waste gases blown from the hood 7 into the preheating vessel 1, thus resulting in an insufficient preheating of the steel scrap. Furthermore, if the ambient air comes into the preheating vessel 1, the amount of waste gases which must be withdrawn through the discharging duct 10 is increased by this air ingression, thus requiring installation of an unnecessarily large-capacity fan for sucking waste gases and an unnecessarily large-capacity dust collector for collecting dust from the waste gases.
Under such circumstances, there is a strong demand for the development of an apparatus for preheating steel scrap by introducing high-temperature waste gases discharged from a steel-refining metallurgical furnace into a preheating vessel containing steel scrap to be preheated, and preheating the steel scrap, in which apparatus the ambient air does not come into the preheating vessel and which apparatus permits efficient preheating of the steel scrap to a prescribed temperature. But such an apparatus is not as yet proposed. | {
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The present invention relates, in general, to electronics and, more particularly, to methods of forming semiconductor devices and structure.
In the past, audio amplifiers have been used to convert acoustic signals into electrical signals which can drive speakers. Audio amplifiers have become widely used in devices such as, for example, mobile phones, personal computers, laptops, notebooks, Tablets, etc. and typically include a microphone amplifier circuit configured to convert the audio signal into an electrical signal. One type of microphone amplifier circuit includes a digital MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) microphone module. A digital MEMS microphone module typically includes a MEMS microphone having a terminal connected to a charge pump and another terminal connected to a preamplifier having an output connected to an analog to digital converter, which generates a digital output signal from an audio signal. A figure of merit for microphone amplifier circuits is the signal to noise ratio (SNR). A source of noise in digital MEMS microphone modules is at the preamplifier stage.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have microphone amplifier circuit which enhances the SNR and expands the dynamic range of the microphone amplifier circuit. It is desirable for the circuit and method to be cost and time efficient to implement.
For simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements in the figures are not necessarily to scale, and the same reference characters in different figures denote the same elements. Additionally, descriptions and details of well-known steps and elements are omitted for simplicity of the description. As used herein current carrying electrode means an element of a device that carries current through the device such as a source or a drain of an MOS transistor or an emitter or a collector of a bipolar transistor or a cathode or an anode of a diode, and a control electrode means an element of the device that controls current flow through the device such as a gate of an MOS transistor or a base of a bipolar transistor. Although the devices are explained herein as certain n-channel or p-channel devices, or certain n-type or p-type doped regions, a person of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that complementary devices are also possible in accordance with embodiments of the present invention. It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the words during, while, and when as used herein are not exact terms that mean an action takes place instantly upon an initiating action but that there may be some small but reasonable delay, such as a propagation delay, between the reaction that is initiated by the initial action and the initial action. The use of the words approximately, about, or substantially means that a value of an element has a parameter that is expected to be very close to a stated value or position. However, as is well known in the art there are always minor variances that prevent the values or positions from being exactly as stated. It is well established in the art that variances of up to about ten percent (10%) (and up to twenty percent (20%) for semiconductor doping concentrations) are regarded as reasonable variances from the ideal goal of exactly as described.
It should be noted that a logic zero voltage level (VL) is also referred to as a logic low voltage or logic low voltage level and that the voltage level of a logic zero voltage is a function of the power supply voltage and the type of logic family. For example, in a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) logic family a logic zero voltage may be thirty percent of the power supply voltage level. In a five volt Transistor-Transistor Logic (TTL) system a logic zero voltage level may be about 0.8 volts, whereas for a five volt CMOS system, the logic zero voltage level may be about 1.5 volts. A logic one voltage level (VH) is also referred to as a logic high voltage level, a logic high voltage, or a logic one voltage and, like the logic zero voltage level, the logic high voltage level also may be a function of the power supply and the type of logic family. For example, in a CMOS system a logic one voltage may be about seventy percent of the power supply voltage level. In a five volt TTL system a logic one voltage may be about 2.4 volts, whereas for a five volt CMOS system, the logic one voltage may be about 3.5 volts. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a high-strength steel plate which is used as a structural member of a construction machine or an industrial machine, has excellent delayed fracture resistance, bending workability, and weldability, has high strength of a yield strength equal to or greater than 1300 MPa and a tensile strength equal to or greater than 1400 MPa, and has a plate thickness equal to or greater than 4.5 mm and equal to or smaller than 25 mm; and a producing method therefor.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2008-237264 filed on Sep. 17, 2008, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, with the worldwide construction demand, the production of construction machines such as cranes and concrete pumping vehicles has increased, and simultaneously, the size of these construction machines has continued to increase. In order to suppress an increase in weight due to the increase in size of the construction machine, demand for a lightweight structural member has increased, so that a change to high-strength steel having a yield strength of 900 to 1100 MPa-class is taking place. Recently, demand for a steel plate for a structural member having a yield strength of 1300 MPa or greater (and a tensile strength of 1400 MPa or greater, preferably, 1400 to 1650 MPa) has increased.
In general, when the tensile strength increases over 1200 MPa, there is a possibility that delayed fracture due to hydrogen may occur. Accordingly, in particular, a steel plate having a yield strength of 1300 MPa-class (and a tensile strength of 1400 MPa-class) requires a high delayed fracture resistance. In addition, the steel plate that has a high strength is disadvantageous in terms of usability such as bending workability and weldability. Therefore, the steel plate requires usability that is not much lower than an existing high-strength steel of 1100 MPa-class.
As a technique related to a steel plate for a structural member having a yield strength of 1300 MPa-class, a producing method for a steel plate which has a tensile strength of 1370 to 1960 N/mm2-class and has excellent hydrogen embrittlement resistance is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H7-90488. However, the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H7-90488 is related to a cold-rolled steel plate having a thickness of 1.8 mm and is premised on a high cooling rate of 70° C./s or greater, so that the technique does not consider weldability.
Hitherto, as a technique for enhancing a delayed fracture resistance of high-strength steel, there has been known a technique of refining grain size. Techniques of Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-80903 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-302974 are examples of this technique. However, in the examples, in order to enhance the delayed fracture resistance, the prior austenite grain size needs to be equal to or smaller than 5 μm (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-80903) and equal to or smaller than 7 μm (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-302974). However, it is not easy to refine the grain size of a steel plate down to such a size by a normal production process. Both the techniques disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-80903 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2007-302974 are techniques for refining a prior austenite grain size through rapid heating before quenching. However, in order to rapidly heat the steel plate, special heating equipment is needed, so that it is difficult to implement either technique. In addition, due to the grain refining, hardenability is degraded. Therefore, in order to ensure the strength, additional alloy elements are needed. Accordingly, an excessive grain refining is not preferable in terms of weldability and economic efficiency.
For the purpose of wear resistance, a steel member having a high strength corresponding to a yield strength of 1300 MPa-class has been widely used, and there are examples of a steel member taking delayed fracture resistance into consideration. For example, wear-resistant steels having excellent delayed fracture resistance are disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-229075 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H1-149921. The tensile strengths of the wear-resistant steels disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-229075 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H1-149921 are in the ranges of 1400 to 1500 MPa and 1450 to 1600 MPa, respectively. However, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H11-229075 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H1-149921, there is no mention of yield stress. With regard to wear resistance, hardness is an important factor, so that the tensile strength has an effect on the wear resistance. However, since the yield strength does not have a significant effect on the wear resistance, the wear-resistant steel does not generally take the yield strength into consideration. Therefore, the wear-resistant steel is considered to be unsuitable as a structural member of a construction machine or an industrial machine.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. H9-263876, a high-strength bolt steel member that has a yield strength of 1300 MPa-class is provided with enhanced delayed fracture resistance by elongation of prior austenite grains and rapid-heating tempering. However, the rapid-heating tempering cannot be easily performed in existing plate heat treatment equipment, so that it cannot be easily applied to a steel plate.
As described above, the existing technique is not enough to economically obtain a high-strength steel plate for a structural member, which has a yield strength of 1300 MPa or greater and a tensile strength of 1400 MPa or greater, and has delayed fracture resistance or usability such as bending workability and weldability. | {
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Some display devices have integrated cameras. For example, a camera is integrated into a laptop computer's monitor to capture video and then save the video to the laptop. In some cases, the camera is built inside the monitor's housing and is stationary with respect to the monitor. In the case of a stationary camera design, a user has to turn the monitor to adjuster the camera's position. To overcome this problem, in other cases, the camera is mounted to a monitor by a rotatable holder. In the case of a rotatable holder design, a user can manually turn the holder to adjuster the camera's position without moving the monitor. However, the manual operation is not convenient and the position of the camera can not be controlled remotely. In addition, as the rotatable holder as well as the camera is outside the monitor, it is likely to be accidentally broken. | {
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Many people experience breathing problems, which may result in difficulty sleeping, in snoring, or in other more serious conditions such as obstructive sleep apnea. One treatment for such breathing disorders involves the use of devices that are inserted into a user's mouth for extending the user's lower jaw forward. These devices open the airway (i.e., breathing passageway) more fully to allow easier breathing through the nose and mouth. Certain of these devices include upper and lower arches that are connected together using a mechanism that may be adjusted to pull the lower arch, and thus the user's lower jaw, forward to open the airway more fully. | {
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With increasing demands on computational power and data transmission bandwidth, electronic devices and microstructures incorporating such devices are becoming increasingly complex necessitating a greater degree of mechanical and electrical interconnection among components. In response, three-dimensional microstructures provide a variety of advantages in accommodating the need for increased device performance. By way of example, three-dimensional microstructures and methods for their manufacture are illustrated at least at U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,948,335, 7,405,638, 7,148,772, 7,012,489, 7,649,432, 7,656,256, 7,755,174, 7,898,356, 8,031,037 and/or U.S. Application Pub. Nos. 2010/0109819, 2011/0210807, 2010/0296252, 2011/0273241, 2011/0123783, 2011/0181376 and/or 2011/0181377, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.
A typical approach for electrically and/or mechanically interconnecting both planar and three-dimensional microstructures is soldering. However, it may be difficult to stop solder from wicking up the length of a metal component, especially in view of the complex surface morphologies which may be encountered in three-dimensional microstructures, and particularly when such structures are made of or coated with metals such as gold, silver, copper or similar metals which are capable of promoting solder flow. For instance, the presence of a multitude of discrete components, mounting surfaces, interconnected chips, and so on presents a variety of surface height changes and void spaces prone to wicking molten solder along the surfaces of such components.
While the phenomena of adhesion of a desired solder to base metal may be called “wetting” and lack of it as “non-wetting”, for the purposes of the present application the term “wicking” is defined to connote the flow (intended or unintended) of solder along the surface of parts, even though the physics of the flow is not one of traditional fluidic “wicking” in the sense as it occurs when a fabric contacts water. Wicking therefore in the context of the present application is the wetting of the solder, and to stop the wicking in the present application refers to stopping of wetting and flow of the solder past the intended boundaries. A clean thin layer of gold on platinum, intended for solder reflow, may for example, continue to wet the surface particularly in non-oxidizing conditions for a great distance until the solder thickness or composition due to interdiffusion becomes unacceptable for its intended purpose.
The unintended flow of solder throughout such microstructures may cause decreased performance, uncontrolled bond lines, shorting, solder embrittlement, and other problems. In traditional planar structures such as circuit boards control of the solder flow can be performed with a patterned solder mask. Often such materials are either selectively applied or patterned, e.g., photo-patterned, or they may be micro-sprayed. Whereas a “solder mask”, such as a patterned planar dielectric coating, may be used to stop and/or control solder flow, in an open three-dimensional structure applying such a material may be relatively difficult to achieve for multiple reasons. First, the interconnects and/or electrical junctions where devices are to be attached may be on a layer other than the surface layer, precluding the use of dry film. Second, a complex three-dimensional structure may be hard to coat and/or pattern lithographically on more than one layer. Third, it may be desirable to ensure substantially complete removal of any existing solder mask materials as they may degrade performance such as RF performance, because they may not be applied with sufficient accuracy and/or quantity for many applications (e.g., microwave devices) onto such three-dimensional structures. These problems are aggravated when the desired pad dimensions for a solder or conductive adhesive continue to shrink from squares of hundreds of microns on a side to squares of tens of microns, as currently is the case for some microwave and mm-wave devices and circuits such as MMICs.
In addition, three-dimensional microstructures may include coatings of excellent conductors and/or noble metals, such as gold, which may aggravate a problem of solder flowing along a conductor in an uncontrolled manner. Further, solder thickness and even conductive adhesive thickness, as well as volume, in a particular location often need to be controlled as the these parameters can determine mechanical properties such as strength and resistance to fatigue. Maintaining the solder's reflow over a controlled location during attach can provide compositional control of the metals in the solder system as noble metals, diffusion barriers, and base metals tend to dissolve to varying degrees and therefore impact lifetime and other properties of the electro-mechanical junctions at the points of attach. Still, solder attach may be an important technique for high strength and reliable device attachment. Previous approaches for three-dimensional microstructures have failed to disclose how to maintain adhesion of such coatings particularly when the CTE match of the wettable metals and the non-wettable layers or “wick stop” materials may be highly mismatched. Thus, there remains a need to control flow, wetting area, and/or spread of solder material for three-dimensional micro-electric structures including, for example, those incorporated herein by reference above. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to advertising a user device, more specifically to a system and method of tracking and mapping customer analytics across multiple screens to match advertisements from subscribers of directory services with customers.
2. Introduction
Companies such as Google® and Yahoo!®, have made a business of tracking customer searches and selling advertisements to customers based on that model. It is well known that television stations make money selling target advertising for various shows although they do not know who specifically is watching any particular show. Certain rating procedures are commonly used to gather data about characteristics of the individuals that watch particular shows to aid advertisers in targeting their ads as well as their cost structures. However, there is still much uncertainty in the quality of consumer data and whether television advertising matches the intended consumer group to its maximum potential.
Cell phones are being improved wherein the owner of the phone may be known and some phones may provide a mobile television capability but they may not know specific details about the customer patterns. With the implementation of more advanced cell phone and portable devices as well as an improving ability to identify about user's buying habit, what is needed in the art is an improved system and method of using known data about the customer to target advertisements to a particular customer. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of fabricating a fine structure on a surface of an article to produce new optical, mechanical, or physical properties of the article. This method of fabricating a fine structure is applicable to fabrication of, for example, a MLA (micro-lens array), a diffractive optical element, a deflecting optical element, a refractive optical element, a complex refractive optical element, a fiber-related optical element, a beam splitter, and so on. Particularly, this method of fine structure fabrication is suitable for fabrication of an optical element having a dimension less than about 10 mm. Furthermore, this method is applicable to a surface treatment for a micro-machine, mechanically swingable parts of an automobile engine, a compressor of an air conditioner, and articles in various other fields.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, quite a few techniques have been proposed for fabrication of a fine surface structure. These techniques are described below. (A) The reference “Optical and Electro-optical Engineering Contact”, Vol. 38, No. 5, pp. 42–51 (2000) (particularly, descriptions on page 45) discloses a method of fabricating a multi-level element by lithography, which involves using a number of M masks and through a number of M−1 steps of treatments to produce an element having a step-like phase distribution having N=2M levels. (B) The reference “Applied Physics”, Vol. 68, No. 6, pp. 633–638 (1999), published monthly by the Japan Society of Applied Physics, discloses a technique which combines methods of photolithography, dry etching, and direct writing using an electron beam, a laser beam, or an ion beam. (C) Japanese Laid Open Patent Application No. 2001-356470 discloses a method involving fabricating a three-dimensional structure on a photo-conducting material by using a transmittance variable mask, and transferring the structure to the material of a final article by dry etching. Here, a transmittance variable mask is a mask that has a distribution of light transmittance in the thickness direction of the mask in addition to a pattern in the plane of the mask. (D) Japanese Laid Open Patent Application No. 2002-192500 discloses a method in which a mold is fabricated in advance, and the surface shape of the mold is transferred to a resin, moreover the structure on the resin is transferred to the material of a final article by dry etching.
Among the methods above, method (A) requires a large number of masks, and non-negligible uncertainties produced by a large number of times of alignment. In addition, method (A) suffers from non-negligible etching errors in the thickness direction, and the minimum line width achievable with method (A) is 1 μm.
Method (B) requires an apparatus capable of high precision control, therefore, the apparatus is costly. In addition, the writing time using an electron beam, a laser beam, or an ion beam is long in method (B). As an numeral example, about 10 to 15 hours are needed to write a square area of 500 μm×500 μm. Because of poor mass-productivity and reproducibility of method (B), it has not been put into practical use.
In contrast, methods (C) and (D) are capable of producing three-dimensional surface structures with high precision and good reproducibility. Further, method (D) has a low fabrication cost because of usage of a mold for transfer of the surface structure.
However, there exists a difficulty in fabricating a fine surface structure on an object material by using dry etching as in method (D).
Considering the application of an article having a fine surface structure, the height of the surface structure is important. For example, in the case of an optical lens, a higher fine structure of the optical lens implies an increased numeral aperture and hence greater illuminance. But fabrication of a high surface structure is difficult because a large amount of the object material has to be etched. As a result, processing time (here, the etching time) becomes long, and fabrication precision degrades exponentially with the etching time.
In addition, when using a mold to fabricate a fine structure, because the mold is repeatedly used a large number of times, the service life of the mold is short. | {
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There are known measuring systems as, for example, systems in numerical control machine tools for detecting the position and/or the dimensions of workpieces, by checking heads, or contact detecting probes mounted in the machine, that in the course of the checking cycles displace with respect to the workpiece, touch the surface to be checked and, after contact has occurred, cause the wireless transmission of signals to receiving units.
Each receiving unit is in turn connected, by means of an interface unit, to a relevant numerical control unit that, by processing other signals indicative of the position of the probe, receives information about the position of the workpiece surfaces.
The probes can include electric batteries for the power supply of the circuits detecting contact and the transmission devices. The wireless transmission can occur, for example, by emitting electromagnetic signals of optical or radio-frequency type.
Since a probe is utilized just for short time intervals during the machining cycle of its machine tool, it is normally kept in a "stand-by" condition of low power consumption and it is powered up only when there is the need to perform a checking cycle.
The switching from the "stand-by" condition to the "powered-up" state can be carried out by controlling suitable switching devices on the probe by means of wireless activation signals sent by the receiving unit.
A system of this type is illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,693,110.
In a working environment, for example in a workshop, there can be multiple checking probes, installed in various machine tools: each machine tool can comprise, in general, one or more probes for performing checking cycles and sending associated signals to the receiving unit of that machine. Generally, for each machine tool just a probe at a time is selected to perform a checking cycle, even though there are cases in which, in specific machines, two (or, in theory, more) probes perform checkings in partially coincident moments.
When an activation signal is sent by the interface of a machine for energizing a specific probe in the machine that has to perform a checking cycle, it is advisable to avoid that other probes in that machine or in adjacent machines be concurrently activated.
The need to activate an individual probe and not others operating in the same environment is particularly evident when transmission between the probe and the receiving unit occurs (in both ways) by means of radio-frequency modulated signals, as in this case, unlike to what occurs, for example, in optical-type transmissions, it is practically impossible to assign a precise direction to the emitted radiation, and a single activation signal "awakes" all the probes in a specific working area.
A radio telemetry system in which a master station activates a plurality of transponders is disclosed by EP-A-0428322. In the system therein described, the transponders are meters and the master station, that is movable, has to collect the data reported from all of them, one by one, and does so, awaking them from a stand-by state, in a substantially random order. In fact, the order depends on different circumstances occurring at the moment the awaking action starts (e.g.: which of a number of radio channels is the quietest; which of the meters is listening on that channel; which of the awoke meters is the nearest to the movable station; . . . ).
As a consequence, the system shown in EP-A-0428322 cannot be used in a measuring system in which a selected, specific probe has to be activated. | {
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The present invention relates to methods of treating isolated pancreatic cells and microencapsulated pancreatic cells, in order to prepare the cells for transplantation. Media containing an antibiotic, an anti-oxidant, an anti-cytokine, or an anti-endotoxin, or combinations thereof, are utilized.
Glycemic control in diabetes has been shown to delay the onset of, and slow the progression of, associated pathological complications. However, achieving adequate glycemic control using insulin therapy can be difficult. One alternative to insulin therapy is the transplantation of functioning pancreatic islet cells to diabetic subjects, to provide biological insulin replacement.
Approximately one percent of the volume of the human pancreas is made up of islets of Langerhans (hereinafter xe2x80x9cisletsxe2x80x9d), which are scattered throughout the exocrine pancreas. Each islet comprises insulin producing beta cells as well as glucagon containing alpha cells, somatostatin secreting delta cells, and pancreatic polypeptide containing cells (PP-cells). The majority of islet cells are insulin-producing beta cells.
However, transplanted or grafted islet cells encounter immunological rejection, which can limit the clinical usefulness of his method. (Brunicardi and Mullen, Pancreas 9:281 (1994); Bartlett et al., Transplant. Proc. 26:737 (1994)). To combat rejection, immunosuppressive drugs may be used, but such immunosuppressive therapy impairs the body""s immunological defenses and carries significant side effects and risks in itself. Approaches to containing and protecting transplanted islet cells have been proposed, including the use of extravascular diffusion chambers, intravascular diffusion chambers, intravascular ultrafiltration chambers, macroencapsulation and microencapsulation. The goal of islet transplantation is to achieve normoglycemia in the treated subject for some extended period of time.
Microencapsulation of islet cells has been proposed to reduce or avoid immunological rejection of transplanted islet cells. Lim and Sun, Science 210:908 (1980). The cells are encapsulated in a membrane that is permeable to cell substrates and cell secretions, but essentially impermeable to bacteria, lymphocytes, and large immunological proteins. The method of microencapsulation described by Lim and Sun involves forming gelled alginate droplets around isolated islet cells, and then adding coats of poly-L-lysine and additional alginate. The inner gelled core of the microcapsule is then liquefied by chelation. However, chelation of the core affects the structural support of the capsules and may adversely affect durability. The success of microencapsulated islet cell transplantation in treating diabetes depends on the ability of the microcapsules to provide sufficient amounts of insulin in response to glucose stimulation, over an extended period of time, to achieve adequate glycemic control.
Methods of treating isolated pancreatic cells, or of treating microencapsulated pancreatic cells, to enhance glucose-stimulated insulin production by the microcapsules and to provide durable microcapsules capable of glucose-stimulated insulin production, are therefore desirable.
A first aspect of the present invention is a method of treating isolated living cells, by first culturing the cells in a medium containing at least one of (or a combination of ): an antioxidant, an anti-cytokine, an anti-endotoxin, or an antibiotic. The cells are then microencapsulated in a biocompatible microcapsule that contains a hydrogel core and a semipermeable outer membrane, to provide a microcapsule containing living cells therein.
A further aspect of the present invention is a method of treating isolated living cells, by first cryopreserving the cells in a cryopreservation medium containing at least one of (or a combination of): an antioxidant, an anti-cytokine, an anti-endotoxin, or an antibiotic; then thawing the cells and encapsulating the cells in a biocompatible microcapsule having a hydrogel core and a semipermeable outer membrane.
A further aspect of the present invention is a method of treating biocompatible microcapsules containing living cells, where the microcapsule contains a hydrogel core and a semipermeable outer membrane. The microcapsules are cultured in a medium containing at least one of (or a combination of): an antioxidant, an anti-cytokine, an anti-endotoxin, or an antibiotic.
A further aspect of the present invention is a method of preparing microencapsulated cells by first culturing the cells in a cell culture medium containing at least one of (or a combination of): antioxidants, anti-cytokines, anti-endotoxins, and antibiotics. The cells are then encapsulated in a biocompatible microcapsule having a hydrogel core and a semipermeable outer membrane, where the living cells are present in the core. The microcapsules are then cultured in a medium containing at least one of (or a combination of): an antioxidant, an anti-cytokine, an anti-endotoxin, and an antibiotic.
A further aspect of the present invention is a method of preparing microencapsulated cells that includes a step of incubating the microencapsulated cells with a physiologically acceptable salt such as sodium sulfate or the like in order to produce a more durable, and therefore useful, biocompatible microcapsule.
A further aspect of the present invention is a method of isolating pancreatic islet cells in which an antioxidant is included in the digestion medium that is used to free the islet cells from pancreatic tissue.
A further aspect of the present invention is microencapsulated cell products, which may be produced by a process as described above. | {
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1. Field of the Inventions
The field of the invention relates generally to wireless data communication and more particularly to registering a client device in a wireless data communication system that dynamically assigns network addresses.
2. Background Information
Modern communications systems can be classified into two categories, circuit switched and packet switched. In a circuit switched network, a central switching computer typically establishes connections when communications are established between two devices. Circuit switched network are best suited for delivering information that is continuous, such as voice, music or video. In a packet switched network, packets of data are potentially routed through a plurality of routing devices. Packet switched networks are best suited for delivering information that is burst-like, such as email, web pages, and telemetry. In contrast to the central switching computer each routing device need only know to which device it needs to send the packet to next. As a result, all devices on a circuit switched network have a fixed, essentially permanent (henceforth static) address. An example of such a network is a phone system where the addresses are phone numbers. Devices on a packet switched network may have static address, but with the over abundance of devices on packet switched networks such as the Internet, many service providers ration out address to active devices. These address are often dynamic and can change each time a device becomes active. A typical packet switched network can employ the Internet Protocol (IP) often in conjunction with the transmission control protocol (TCP), jointly referred to as TCP/IP.
A common method of assigning IP addresses to devices is through the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). A device sends a request to its service provider who issues it an IP address in response. In many applications, devices on a network have a client-server relationship. Many client devices are linked to a server, or a few servers. A server cannot initiate contact with a client device without the client device's IP address. Complicating the ability of a server to track a client device is the fact that the client device's IP address is often valid for only a fixed period of time referred to as a DHCP lease. In some implementations, upon expiration, this lease can be renewed, however, the renewal can result in a different IP address being assigned to the same client device.
An example application of a client-server system is that of a telemetry system. In a telemetry system, client devices are often scattered across several communication service providers and are configured to gather predetermined information such as power usage. On a network with static IP addresses, a central authority can query each device when required. In a network with dynamic IP addresses, however, it cannot initiate contact without the client device's IP address, which may have changed since the last time a particular client device was queried.
In certain implementations, the client devices can use wireless communication links to communicate with the server. In 3rd Generation (3G) wireless communications systems, for example, IP data communications are supported; however, due to the shortage of IP addresses, client devices on these networks are often issued addresses dynamically, e.g. using DHCP. As mentioned above, this can complication communications in certain systems, such as telemetry systems, because the server or servers cannot keep track of the dynamically assigned IP addresses of the client devices. Client devices configured to communicate over 3G communication system often include the capability of receiving data messages over a circuit switched mobile phone network, such as short message services (SMS) messages. Unfortunately, however, constant communications over a circuit switched network for short bursts of data, such as in a telemetry system, is not very efficient and can put a strain on the infrastructure. Therefore, certain systems, such as telemetry systems, may not be able to fully realize the advantage of 3G wireless communication systems.
In many applications, particularly those using wireless networks, security is an additional concern. The nature of IP communications can, in some cases, reduce the transmission security. A properly secure network should at a minimum preserve the integrity of the communications. In addition, a secure network can also protect the privacy of the messages from eavesdropping. | {
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As wind energy is clean, pollution-free and renewable, wind power plays an increasingly important role in the worldwide exploration of new energy. Output power of a wind turbine is constrained by many factors, so it is hard to forecast output power of each wind turbine in a wind farm. In addition, output power of wind turbines has such typical characteristics as being non-linear, fast changing, uncontrollable and the like, so output power of the wind farm to the power grid is prone to fluctuations.
Output power of wind turbines usually depends on meteorological elements of the location of a wind farm. Typically a wind farm is located in a remote area, while meteorological data provided by a meteorological bureau usually fail to cover the surrounding environment of the wind farm. Moreover, meteorological elements at the wind farm are constrained by other conditions (e.g., impacts on airflow of local topographic impact inside the wind farm or rotation of wind turbines themselves, etc.). Even if a meteorological bureau provides a weather forecast in the wind farm area, the weather forecast cannot completely accurately resolve meteorological conditions at the wind farm.
Currently, forecasting of output power of wind turbines mainly focuses on a level of the whole wind farm, and there lacks power forecasting of a single turbine. In addition, forecasting methods rely on analysis and statistics of historical power data and forecast future output power via historical output power or based on meteorological elements at a wind farm by buying general-purpose weather forecasts from a third party.
Solutions in the prior art still rest on commercially available (or free) general meteorological data to forecast output power of wind farms. As these technical solutions ignore special characteristics of in-situ meteorological elements at wind farms, they are prone to large errors during forecasting. On the one hand, errors in power forecasting result in that the overall output power of the power plant becomes unstable, seriously deviates from electricity producing plans and exerts impact on the power grid integration; on the other hand, since output power of the power plant falls behind or goes over far beyond the expected value, the power plant is subjected to punitive sanctions such as fines. Therefore, it becomes a research focus regarding how to accurately forecast output power of a specific wind turbine (e.g., any wind turbine) in a wind farm during a specific period of time.
Therefore, it is desired to develop a technical solution capable of accurately forecasting output power of a specific wind turbine based on meteorological elements at the location of the wind turbine. And it is desired the technical solution is capable of sufficiently leveraging sensors within the wind farm (e.g., meteorological sensors at the wind tower, sensors at hub-height of a wind turbine, etc.), and correcting a general-purpose weather forecasting model by using the meteorological data as measured in-situ, so as to reveal wind information at the specific wind turbine within the wind farm more accurately. To this end, embodiments of the present invention provide methods and apparatuses for forecasting output power of a wind turbine in a wind farm. | {
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Mobile handsets have an inherently impoverished graphical user interface (GUI) with respect to desktop computers. Small screens and tiny keyboards are typical of mobile handsets that fit in your pocket. Recent so called smart phones have introduced the use of a touch screen in an attempt to simplify the user experience with his mobile handset. For instance, the touch interface of the iPhone® has revolutionized the mobile handset industry and brought whole new mobile user experiences. Touch-based interfaces have now become common-place through the adoption of smartphone and tablet touch screens.
In existing smart phones, application programs (AP) may be controlled through interactions such as touch inputs. Different touch inputs may control the AP in different ways. For instance, a user touching an AP icon will cause a control of the desktop GUI that will launch the AP corresponding to the touched icon.
A common interaction on a smart phone is to use a continuous, directional gesture or touch input to draw on the touch screen a continuous sequence to unlock the device. Such a known interaction is described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,136,053B1. A lock screen is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) displayed to the user when trying to reuse his electronic device after he activates its lock (screen) mode against unwanted use. An illustration of a known lock screen is displayed in FIGS. 4A-4B.
One implementation uses a series of nine circles form an unlock pattern and are displayed to the user in the lock screen GUI of FIG. 4A. These circles are presented to the user as guides to draw a line with his finger. While configuring the lock screen mode, the user is invited as in FIG. 4B to draw at the touch screen of the electronic device a continuous sequence joining a plurality of the nine circles. The continuous sequence—referred here after as the unlock sequence is characterized by a predefined shape 430 (here illustrated as a W shape). It is saved by the electronic device and will be requested with each user attempt to unlock his device. To facilitate the entry of the unlock sequence, the processor of the device may render a visual feedback (like the thick line 430) to the user by showing a line joining the circles as the user's finger 410 moves across the circles.
When detecting at the touch screen a touch input, the processor of the electronic device, when in the lock mode, will compare the shape of the detected touch input to the predefined shape after the user has discontinued his touch input. Provided the shapes are identical, the processor will unlock the device screen and the user will be able to resume interactions with the electronic device.
A problem with such a solution is that the unlock sequence may be visible to other people. Existing lock modes do not prevent undesired witnesses from seeing the unlock sequence nor being able to repeat it after stealing the electronic device.
Today there is still a need to an improved lock mode for an electronic device such as a smartphone. There is a further need for a lock mode that do not bring additional complexity to the unlocking of the device. | {
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The plasma-enhanced vapor may be used for deposition onto plastic articles, particularly for depositing a glass-like coating onto plastic bottles. The coating provides an enhanced gas-barrier and better adhesion compared with prior art coatings, and is suitable for pressurized containers, whose surface flexes and stretches, and whose internal pressure acts against an external coating. The primary component of the vapor is produced by evaporating, in an evaporative source, one or more solids and the deposition of the coating may be applied in conjunction with a reactive gas, or gases, to provide desired coating clarity or colorization. Further, it may be produced by using more than one evaporation source and solids of different boiling points.
Commercial applications of plastic articles have experienced a growth, because of the properties of these articles such as low-cost, light weight, flexibility, resistance to breakage, and ease of manufacture and shaping. However, plastics also have the disadvantage of relatively low abrasion-resistance and poor barrier properties against the permeation of vapors such as water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. In food packaging applications, limitations in barrier properties have limited the use of plastics. For example, in the case of beverage bottles, inadequate barrier properties have restricted the use of smaller bottles required in some markets. Solutions to this problem, including the use of high-barrier plastics and coatings of various types, have been either uneconomical or have provided inadequate barrier-improvement or add expense to the known recycling processes.
A number of processes have been developed for the application of coatings on plastic, but these have been mainly for plastic films. Relatively few processes have been developed which allow the economic application of a glass-like coating onto preformed plastic containers such as PET bottles, where the demands on the coating's barrier performance are increased by the flexing of the walls of the bottle, the stretching of said walls under pressure, and the delaminating force due to the in-bottle pressure. Also, most processes are on the batch-production principle, and very few processes exist which can be applied to a continuously-running process.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/818,342 filed by Plester et al on Mar. 14, 1997 allowed, and PCT International Application PCT/US98/05293 filed on Mar. 13, 1998 describe the use of an anodic arc for externally-coating beverage bottles and their disclosures are incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. Anodic arc systems are also described by Ehrich et al in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,917,786; 5,096,558; and 5,662,741, the disclosures of which are also incorporated herein by reference.
The basic anodic system, as described by the prior art, has the following disadvantages:
a) The crucibles evaporative material content, such as silicon, cannot be replenished continuously when this evaporative material is in powder or pellet/chip form. PA1 b) The quantity of vapor evolved from the crucible depends partly on the degree of filling of the crucible with evaporative material. Since the degree of crucible-filling is a variable which constantly changes, this could present a control problem. PA1 c) The distribution, at various angular displacements, of the quantity of vapor evolved from the crucible, also depends partly on the degree of filling of the crucible with evaporative material. This makes it difficult to use the vapor from the crucible for the purpose of coating several articles simultaneously, without the risk that these will all receive different amounts of coating. PA1 d) The lips of the crucible are eroded by the anodic arc. This not only presents a maintenance problem, but it also means that the material of the crucible may thus be included in the coating composition and thereby reduce the performance of the coating. For example, crucibles for holding silicon are normally constructed of carbon, which is eroded and vaporized by the anodic arc and the carbon vapor is free to form a contaminant in the desired silicon or silicon dioxide coating. PA1 e) The said crucible lip erosion further affects the quantity of vapor evolved and the distribution of this vapor at various angular displacements around the crucible. PA1 f) Even where the crucible is independently heated (rather than intentionally heated by the anodic arc), the anodic arc represents a second and uncontrolled source of heating. This second source of heating partly affects the quantity of vapor evolved, irrespective of any control device for the crucible's independent heating system. This makes process control of evaporation rate difficult, whilst evaporation rate is an important parameter. PA1 g) The anodic arc energizes the plasma, but since an uncontrolled and unknown portion of this arc's energy is dissipated by evaporation of the material in the crucible, this makes the process control of the critical parameter of plasma-enhancement difficult. PA1 h) Since part of the energy of the anodic arc inadvertently causes evaporation, even in anodic arc systems with independent crucible heating, this limits the amount of energy available for plasma enhancement. PA1 i) Anodic arc systems employing independent crucible heating have complicated designs around the crucible in view of the conflicting needs, on the one hand to heat the crucible and on the other hand to provide a cooled anodic connection. This can result in additional cost and complication, oversized heating systems, and energy waste, as well as lead to crucible-damage on shut-down due to the cooling-effect of the anodic connection. PA1 j) Many applications, particularly those involving colored coatings, require the simultaneous evaporation of more than one solid substance. For barrier enhancement, it can also be desirable to add other substances to the base coating. Since such substances differ in boiling point, they cannot be combined in a single evaporating crucible, because evaporative fractionation within the crucible would lead to poor coating composition control. Therefore, multi-component coatings using the anodic arc system must be produced by a multi-series of anode-cathode couples, since one separate anodic arc source for each crucible is needed for process-control purposes. This not only makes a multi-component coating systems complicated and expensive, but also risks interference between the closely positioned array of anodic arcs. PA1 k) The cathode's evaporative material cannot be replenished continuously and it is therefore desirable in practice to use materials which erode slowly. This acts contrary to the desire to use the cathode for optimum plasma enhancement and ionization, since materials which achieve this often have a high erosion rate. The use of Zn, Cu, Al, noble metals, alkaline earths, and particularly Mg, has been found to be highly desirable, and in most cases continuous cathode replenishment is needed for economic operation. PA1 a) To enable replenishment, within the evaporator-crucible system, of the solid material to be evaporated and used for coating without interrupting the evaporator operation; PA1 b) To enable the said evaporator crucible to remain at substantially the same degree of filling during its operation; PA1 c) To provide a vapor particle distribution around the said crucible, which continuously remains constant and well directed; PA1 d) To provide an evaporation system where both the evaporator-energy supply to the crucible and the control of this energy are substantially independent of the energy supplied for plasma-enhancement; PA1 e) To provide an evaporation system with electric arc discharge plasma enhancement which has improved control of each system function, substantially avoids erosion or damage of the evaporator crucible, whose crucible can have a simpler design, which can operate with vapors whose deposited solids are non-conducting electrically, which enables several materials to be evaporated separately but enhanced by the same single arc; PA1 f) To enable continuous replenishment of the cathode's evaporative material; PA1 g) To enable high energy plasma through use of rapidly eroding materials at the cathode, particularly Mg, other alkali metals, and metals of relatively low boiling point; PA1 h) To enable materials produced by the erosion of the cathode (e.g. Mg, alkaline metals, low boiling point metals. etc.) to be incorporated as dopants in the coating; PA1 i) To enable substantially uninterrupted measurement and control in a continuously running coating process, of evaporation rate and degree of ionization; and PA1 j) To enable in-situ cleaning of vacuum enclosures without need to release vacuum, thereby enhancing the operation of continuously running coating processes.
Prior art exists (German Patent DE 4440521C1, Hinz et al) where the crucible is independently heated by electrical resistance or by thermal radiation, and where the anodic arc plasma-enhancement is provided separately by means of a cathode and a separate anode. However, the anode of such systems quickly becomes coated with the evaporated material from the crucible, or with plasma particles, or with the reaction product when a reactive gas is used. Such systems are therefore only usable where the coating is electrically conducting, since the anode would otherwise quickly become inoperative and the system would shut down. Since the barrier coating of plastic articles often requires the use of coatings with materials such as silicon, which are electrically non-conducting, such prior art cannot be used for many barrier coating systems.
It is important to control accurately the coating thickness on a plastic article and therefore highly desirable to be able to measure continuously, and in situ, the rate of deposition from an evaporative source, so that adjustments to the controls of the said evaporator source can be made as needed throughout the coating operation. Prior art provides means for measuring the rate of deposition by measuring the change of the oscillation frequency of a crystalline substance as the evaporated solids deposit on said crystalline substance. However, the crystalline substance quickly becomes coated and can no longer function, so the system is not usable for normal process control in continuous operating coating systems. A self-regenerating system for rate-of-deposition measurement is needed to enhance process control.
The quality of a coating on plastic articles, particularly the quality of the barrier property of coatings on plastic bottles, is dependent on he control of the degree of ionization and thus on the energy-level of the plasma. A suitably high-energy plasma enables the substrate surface to be cleared of dirt and inert molecules, promoting coating adhesion and coating purity, and further enables coating particles to become embedded in the substrate or to react with the substrate, additionally promoting adhesion. High-energy plasma also promotes the chemical reaction of coating particles with each other, thus forming a dense matrix on the substrate surface, which further enhances adhesion and barrier properties. Finally, high-energy plasma induces coating particles to be deposited in a flat, dense physical structure due to the impingement of high-energy collisions, enhancing coating continuity and denseness. On the other hand, over-energized plasma may overheat the substrate, or cause excessive decomposition or degassing from the substrate, or damage the coating. The evolution of gases from the substrate surface during its degassing mixes with the coating particles and reduces coating quality. It is thus important to measure and control plasma energy and degree of ionization. Prior art does not teach how this can be achieved.
An example of the need for controlled use of high-energy plasma is presented by barrier coating of plastic bottles for carbonated beverages. A barrier coating on a plastic bottle for carbonated beverages must desirably be able to flex, stretch, have adhesion capable of withstanding the pressure migration of the carbon dioxide from the inside of the bottle, and be robust and abrasion resistant in use. It is also desirably dense, preferably amorphous and continuous over the bottle surface. These properties rely on applying controlled. high-energy plasma.
All evaporator systems deposit particles within their enclosure, the latter being normally a high vacuum enclosure. Operation under vacuum is necessary so as to avoid heat damage of heat sensitive substrates such as plastic, and also to avoid gas phase reactions, which in turn would reduce the barrier and other qualities of the coating, since many of these desired properties rely on the on-surface interaction of the coating particles. Particles deposited within the vacuum enclosure tend to disturb the mechanical operation of the coating system and in particular tend to absorb volatiles and make vacuum pump-down more difficult. As a result, the walls of such vacuum enclosures must be cleaned regularly, and this involves production loss and shut-down. An in-situ cleaning system which enables regular and rapid cleaning of the enclosure internals without releasing vacuum and opening the enclosure is desirable for continuous operation and would improve economic operation by reducing downtime. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a torque converter including a converter housing, a turbine wheel rotatably arranged for rotation about a converter axis of rotation relative to the converter housing, and a bridge coupling for the substantially rotation-proof selective coupling of the turbine wheel to the converter housing. The bridge coupling comprises a coupling mechanism connected in substantially rotation-proof fashion to the turbine wheel and having at least one friction surface which can be selectively brought to rest on a counter friction surface provided on the converter housing or selectively connected thereto in rotation-proof fashion.
2. Description of the Related Art
A prior art torque converter of this type is known, for example, from DE 34 10 526 A1. In this prior art torque converter, a coupling disk may be brought to rest with its substantially flat and substantially radially-extending friction surfaces on a counter friction surface of the converter housing for establishing the bridging state. In this known torque converter, the following problem exists. During operation, due to the high working fluid pressure prevailing in the interior of the converter housing and also due to centrifugal forces, the converter housing becomes distended, especially in the radially outer area. As a result, the counter friction surface provided on the converter housing is positioned at a slant relative to the friction surface in this condition. The consequence of this is that the essential contact between the friction surface and the counter friction surface is moved radially outward, and what is known as edge carrying or edge friction is produced. This produces disproportionate wear on the friction surface or the counter friction surface in the radially outer area and thus considerably impairs the useful life of the torque converter. The disproportionate wear causes an overload or "burning" of the coupling in the radially outer area where the friction occurs.
In the torque converter known from the prior art, the problem also exists that a coupling piston, which generally carries the friction surface in its radially outer area, is, like the converter housing, deformed by the pressure prevailing in the converter interior. Specifically, the deformation is such that the coupling piston is pressed in its radially inner area toward an axial end side of the converter housing. This causes the coupling piston being pivoted or deformed around a circumferential line region. When the coupling piston undergoes a pivoting movement, the friction surface connected thereto pivots as well, so that a slanted position of the friction surface relative to the counter friction surface is again created. The aforementioned deformation of the coupling piston causes an especially disproportional load occurs in the radially inner area of the friction surface or the counter friction surface. | {
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This invention relates to a method and apparatus for dispensing hydrogen within an environment with heterogeneous hydrogen requirements. The invention further relates to a network of hydrogen supply modules and corresponding method for managing hydrogen deployment.
The developing use of hydrogen as an energy carrier will require broad-based and flexible hydrogen supply systems to provide hydrogen efficiently to a large number of diverse hydrogen consumers.
Numerous hydrogen applications are being developed, including hydrogen-powered fuel cell or internal combustion vehicles, stationary power applications, backup power units, power grid management, power for remote locations, and portable power applications in consumer electronics, business machinery, and recreational equipment. Hydrogen dispensing stations will be needed for vehicle refueling, and smaller refill centers will be needed for portable devices such as computers, power tools, mobile communication devices, and other electronic equipment.
With the numerous hydrogen applications, warehouse distribution centers, airports, seaport docks, truck loading docks, offices, factories, shopping malls, sustainable towns and cities, and industrial environments will require a heterogeneous hydrogen supply environment. A wide range of power production devices, hydrogen storage technologies with different performance characteristics will be in use. In this complex environment, hydrogen will need to be supplied at different pressures, purities, and usage rates within the local environment. Hydrogen supply to several of these sites is further complicated because each of them has a unique usage pattern.
For example hydrogen fuel cells require a much higher purity hydrogen than internal combustion engines (ICEs) that run on hydrogen. Certain impurities, such as carbon monoxide in the hydrogen may poison a typical proton exchange membrane fuel cell but would have no negative impact on an ICE.
Hydrogen storage systems also have different hydrogen requirements. For example, metal hydrogen tanks store hydrogen typically at about 250 psia and have restrictions on impurities, for example less than 2 ppm carbon monoxide. Compressed gas storage tanks can store hydrogen up to about 10,000 psia and can accept higher levels of impurities.
Because the hydrogen volume requirements in these hydrogen applications will vary significantly and because the diverse hydrogen utilizers will be geographically dispersed, the logistics of hydrogen supply under normal conditions will be complex but manageable. Under abnormal conditions, however, hydrogen supply logistics may be especially complex and unpredictable. Abnormal conditions would occur, for example, when onsite hydrogen generators malfunction or are shut down for maintenance, or alternatively when local hydrogen demand temporarily exceeds local supply capability or storage capacity. There is a need to solve the problem of hydrogen management within the diverse heterogeneous hydrogen environment.
More specifically, there is a need for flexible and adaptable hydrogen supply methods to address these problems and supply hydrogen within a heterogeneous hydrogen environment and to address the interconnectivity of the various hydrogen utilizers within a heterogeneous hydrogen environment. Embodiments of the present invention, which are described below and defined by the claims that follow, address this need and offer flexible hydrogen supply alternatives for varied user requirements under both normal and abnormal demand conditions | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention is directed to an improved hair dryer hood of the type that has a smooth outer shell and a spaced perforated inner liner with a space therebetween to distribute heated air from a source of supply. Different sized inner liners are provided to be quickly connected/disconnected from the outer shell to change the functional characteristics of the dryer without changing the basic design.
2. Description of the Prior Art
One of the popular home hair dryers is the stand or rigid hood type dryer with the motor and fan assembly in a base that may be placed on a table and an air conduit supports the hood at a convenient height for the user when sitting in a chair. Such dryers present storage and carrying problems and various means have been devised whereby the rigid hood is folded onto the base in a bell-like structure well known in the art and of the general type shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,563. Such dryers are generally known as salon dryers, as opposed to the soft bonnet type, and come in basically two hood liner sizes. There are salon dryers with small liners about eleven inches in diameter and eight inches deep and larger dryers with liners about twelve inches in diameter and eight and one-half inches deep to accommodate different sized heads and larger rollers. The larger have the advantage of accommodating larger rollers and heads but have the disadvantages of wasting air flow thus decreasing efficiency and increasing drying time when used with small rollers and heads. On the other hand, the smaller liners have the disadvantage of not accommodating larger rollers and heads but the distinct advantage of effectively and efficiently drying hair when used with smaller rollers and heads. The prior art has generally involved a compromise between these mutually exclusive conditions and structures. Also, it is known to provide salon dryers with a variable drying cavity. Typically, the hood may use an eyelid that can be lowered over the eyes to increase the air captive volume and thus change the volume of the inner liner and this may be used with hair rollers or merely for faster drying. The folding lid permits the hood to be reduced for storage and a typical example of this device is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,563 supra. Others provide a cut-out portion in the hood in the form of a visor that can be swung back for easier entry to the hood and is then closed, to provide more of the hood over the head as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,810,967. Generally, dryers that change the volume for the heated air have used hood extensions or lids or visors and have selected a fixed inner liner that would best handle different head sizes and roller sizes. Thus, the salon dryers with means for varying the volume drying cavity have resulted in complex structures that, at best, represent a compromise. The present invention provides a means to change the volume of the inner liner within the fixed confines of the outer shell by providing separate detachable different-sized inner liners that can be selectively connected to the outer shell by a quick connect/disconnect interlock. | {
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1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to finishing machines, being especially adapted for use in or with vibratory finishing machines and particularly those having a curvilinear finishing chamber and vertically oriented gyratory motion-producing assembly and power driving means.
2. Prior Art
Finishing machines and especially vibratory finishing machines are well known in the art. Such machines are used for various forms of finishing, such as burr removal, burnishing, and polishing. Such machines are disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. Re. Nos. 27,084, 3,400,495, 3,423,884, 3,435,564, 3,466,815, 3,606,702, and 3,633,321. Machines of the type described generally have a finishing chamber and a motor operatively mounted with respect to the chamber and arranged to cause eccentric weights to rotate or revolve, thereby producing vibratory motion of the finishing chamber. In one form disclosed in the prior art, a tub-type of finishing chamber, usually linear, has a motor with eccentric weights mounted on the shaft of the motor directly mounted to the tub, or a shaft with eccentric weights mounted to the tub and motor driven. In another type, the eccentric weights are mounted out of phase on a vertical shaft, causing the finishing chamber which is generally curvilinear to undergo gyratory motion. In either type, as a result of the vibratory movement, when materials such as parts and/or finishing materials are placed in the chamber, orbital motion is imparted to the contents so that they move upwardly at the peripheral portion of the chamber and downwardly at the inner portion of the chamber. This results in relative movement between the finishing material and parts, or at least interaction therebetween, causing the parts to be finished. Additionally, by employment of a proper phase relationship between the eccentric or unbalance weights, varying degrees of precession or linear progression of the material and parts are caused circumferentially around the annular finishing chamber, or linearly in the tub-type, as is well-known in the art. Various forms of guides or vanes, including helical guides, have also been fixed internally of a finishing chamber to assist with such precession. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,071,900.
Prior art finishing machines, e.g., tumbling machines and vibratory finishing machines, such as described above, generally function well. However, they all suffer from at least one disadvantage. During the finishing process, there is a tendency for closely adjacent parts to collide with each other as a result of the tumbling or vibrational movement imparted to them, often resulting in considerable damage to the parts by denting or fracture. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,423,884, a finishing apparatus is disclosed wherein the entire finishing machine may be mounted for rotation by an adjoining motor and belt assembly. The finishing chamber is divided into a plurality of compartments which are stationary with respect to the finishing chamber, the entire assembly if desired rotating during the finishing process. This apparatus succeeds in isolating high precision and easily damageable parts so that they are safely finished. However, no unloading means have been provided or suggested for such machine and it is necessary that each part be unloaded by hand. The cost of labor utilized in manually loading of parts, separating parts from finishing media, and hand removal of finished parts from the finishing machine is extremely high, if not prohibitive. Finishing machines have also been devised utilizing spindles, wherein the parts are fixtured to a spindle during the finishing process. The cost of manually mounting the parts and removing them in such devices is also prohibitively high. Floating compartment devices are also known, but these are no better than fixed compartment machines and suffer from the same disadvantages as previously noted, e.g., the necessity of manual loading and separation and the high cost of labor associated therewith in the absence of any suggestion of automatic separation and how it might be effected in such devices.
As known in the art, parts-finishing cycle control or adjustment has been effected by controlling the phase relationship of the eccentric weights on the shaft driven by the motor. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,435,564 and 3,466,815 show means for making such adjustment. This is a partially satisfactory way of operation, but it has the limitations that it does not permit precise or exact control of the parts-finishing cycle, and further, that it does not keep the parts evenly distributed in the finishing chamber. The method and apparatus of the present invention, on the other hand, does permit precise and exact control of the parts-finishing cycle, and does permit isolation of parts from other parts to prevent damage to the parts as a result of collision between them. | {
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Many industries are increasingly turning to the use of application servers to facilitate processing of transactions. With the increased use of web-based interaction, application servers are used to facilitate interaction with legacy information systems, to access databases, and to provide content for web pages. Application servers may also be used to provide cross-tier communications for accessing remote resources and for distributing computing resource usage.
As large production environments and enterprise environments use application servers having many applications and having access to external resources, there is an increasing need for software tools to trace transaction performance. Excessive use of computing resources can cause slow performance of computing systems. Broken links between applications or between applications and external resources can cause errors to propagate within systems. In addition, poorly written applications can consume excessive amounts of computing resources. Large organizations having complex enterprise environments with many different applications make tracing and system diagnosis difficult.
Some systems have been developed for tracing and evaluating applications during testing environments. However, typical systems used in testing environments execute slowly and utilize a large amount of computing resources. In addition, such testing systems tend to be less robust than systems designed for production use. As such, these systems often perform poorly in enterprise production environments.
Accordingly, improved tools for transaction tracing and application diagnosis in enterprise production environments would be desirable. | {
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1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to Brunswick-equipped bowling centers and in particular to the carpet covers that cover the shaker board which is located in the ball return system of Brunswick bowling centers.
2) Prior Art
With a mandate several years ago from the American Bowling Congress to increase the use of oil placed on lanes, there has been a problem with bowlers getting their hands and clothes dirty. Over the years, various companies have made carpet covers, which are cloth products that adhere to the shaker board carpets with hook fasteners (e.g., Velcro.RTM.). The bowling center mechanic typically peels the carpet covers off the shaker board once a week to launder, and then puts them back on. Carpet covers serve to wipe the oil off the balls and pins and to lengthen the life of the shaker board carpet. There have been two problems with carpet covers in the past:
1) The absorbing fibers on the carpet cover fabric, which are intended to clean the oil off the balls and pins, wear off the carpet cover in a few weeks. This is because the fibers are produced by napping, an industrial abrasive process where the fabric passes under a cylindrical wire brush that scratches open the surface of the fabric, leaving fuzzy fibers to make it more absorbent. These wear off easily. 2) Often the bowling pins will stick to the fabric of the carpet cover, slowing up the game and irritating customers and proprietors. | {
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Modern battery-operated devices are powerful and vital tools for both business and personal use. Hosts include wireless communication devices such as cell telephones and computing devices such as portable computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and hybrid computer/communication devices.
Early hosts used nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries. However, those batteries were subject to memory effects and toxicity of the cadmium components. Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries do not suffer from a memory effect, and are more environmentally benign, but also suffer from shortcomings, including high self-discharge rates and limited service life.
Several problems are common to both battery types. First, battery life is dependent on appropriate charge-discharge profiles. In the extreme, an excessive rate of charge or discharge can result in battery leakage or explosion, posing a risk to the battery-powered device and to the public. Second, without some form of authentication, the battery can be easily cloned, allowing substandard battery designs to be used, and risking the original equipment manufacturer's revenue stream from lost battery sales.
The development of “smart” battery technology provides a partial solution to these deficiencies. Batteries using this technology include circuitry to communicate state-of-charge or state-of-health information to the user, charger or host device. For example, the battery may illuminate a number of LEDs to indicate the state-of-charge, or provide this information via a digitized data stream to the host device.
Two protocols for the host-battery interface are known: the single wire bus and the “SMBus.” The single wire bus is comparatively rudimentary, and is used to communicate the battery code and basic operating parameters. The SMBus, by comparison, is more sophisticated, and is intended to move the charge control from the charger to the battery. In this way, a universal charger can be used to charge batteries with different chemistries. The SMBus system stores more detailed information about the battery, including battery ID number and type, serial number and date of manufacture.
Smart battery technology provides a means to authenticate the battery to the charger or battery-powered device. Identification of the battery to the charger allows for the use of a generic charger that uses different charging algorithms for different battery chemistries. For example, this feature allows for the use of a discharge cycle that would be appropriate for NiCd batteries but not for NiMH batteries, and vice versa. Authentication also provides a means for the battery-powered device to accept or reject a particular battery, addressing the concerns previously set forth.
A deficiency of the current authentication schemes, however, is the relative ease with which a clone manufacturer can copy smart battery circuitry. Access to cryptographic keys used for authentication is possible by readily available reverse engineering techniques, such as deprogramming of the memory module of the authentication module. What is needed in the art is a more secure way to provide authentication for battery modules, such that cloning by bulk theft is frustrated and preferably infeasible. | {
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Such a mechanism for attaching the rotating plate as described above is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Utility Model Registration Publication No. 57-13302.
The mechanism for attaching the rotating plate to the head protector in the helmet, disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Registration Publication No. 57-13302 (hereinafter described as "the conventional mechanism for attaching the shield plate") has a narrow base plate attached to the front side of the head protector of the helmet. Rotatably attached to this base plate are the right and left sides of a shield plate with a pair of right and left attaching shafts, respectively. Further, an intermediate plate lies between the base plate and the shield plate, and a protrusion projecting from the outer side surface of the intermediate plate and serving as a stopper is fitted into an opening of the shield plate, so that the intermediate plate is rotatable together with the shield plate.
Moreover, in the conventional mechanism for attaching the shield plate, a circular-arcuate guide groove whose center coincides with that of the attaching shaft is disposed in the base plate, and fitted into this guide groove is a resilient cylinder, projecting from and formed integral with the inner side of the intermediate plate. The circular-arcuate guide groove is shaped from a plurality of circular openings which are shifted a little in turn and partially overlapped, so that a narrow part is formed between the adjacent openings.
In the conventional mechanism for attaching the shield plate constituted as described above, when the shield plate is moved to open or close the head protector, the resilient cylinder is moved along the circular-arcuate guide groove and fitted into one of the plurality of circular openings, so that it is possible to set the shield plate in its predetermined position that shows a one-to-one correspondence with each of the plurality of circular openings (that is, fully closed position, one-sixth opened position, one-third opened position, half-opened position, two-thirds-opened position, five-sixths opened position, or fully opened position).
However, in the conventional mechanism for attaching the shield plate, the shield plate can be merely set in its predetermined position that corresponds with one of the plurality of circular openings of the circular-arcuated guide groove, so that the shield plate can not be set in an arbitrarily opened position with respect to the head protector of the helmet. Further, when the shield plate is largely moved to open or close with respect to the head protector of the helmet, it is required to move the resilient cylinder wobblingly along the plurality of circular openings and the plurality of narrow parts, so that well clicking responses are not brought when the shield plate is thus moved. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to decorative window treatments, such as valances, that can be supported from conventional curtain rods and which can be adjusted for use in different applications. This invention also relates to the use of fastening means, such as hook and loop fasteners, for mounting window treatments or valances.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Custom-made, decorative, board-mounted window treatments, commonly called valances, tend to be relatively high in cost and, therefore, are confined to a relatively small market. These decorative window treatments are typically fabricated by a skilled seamstress or a drapery workroom at the request of an interior decorator. The individual fabric decorative window treatment is sized to fit a specific order, and it is typically nailed to a board that is semi-permanently attached above a window. Unlike common draperies, these decorative window treatment items are not mounted to conventional or standard curtain rods. However, the aesthetic characteristics of these decorative window treatments would make them highly desirable if they could be mass marketed and if they could be adjusted and mounted on a conventional curtain rod by a homeowner, without the need for expertise or more than ordinary skill. Mass marketable or mass produced items of this type are not readily available and are not believed to have been previously sold or marketed. Although attempts to provide an acceptable product, having at least some of these features, have been made, it is believed that these earlier attempts have not been successful efforts to combine sufficient features to satisfactorily meet the requirements of a sufficiently large number of homeowners. A number of related efforts have been discussed in the following patents.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,074,348 discloses decorative swags that can be hung from a board that is in turn mounted on a wall in a permanent manner. A hook or loop attachment strip is mounted on the top of the board, and a mating loop or hook fastener on the swag is attached to the complementary board-mounted attachment strip. Hook and loop fasteners are mounted on opposite sides of the swags for attachment to the board-mounted attachment strip. Other elements, such as jabots, also including hook and loop fasteners, can be placed either on top of or underneath adjacent swags. An alternate embodiment of continuously joined-together swags arranged around a pole is also shown. Hook and loop fasteners can be attached at opposite ends of these swag segments to connect the segments end to end to form a continuous member that can be wrapped or draped around a pole. A fastening tape can also be mounted on the pole and the swags can be detachably fastened end to end to the pole. Significantly, different swag configurations are used for attachment to a board and for attachment to a pole. A conventional telescoping curtain rod appears not to be discussed with reference to either configuration.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,094,006 discloses a template for making a swag that purportedly can be hung by an ordinary householder who does not possess specialized skill or training. The swag can be hung from a touch and close fastener means, or alternative fasteners, located on the rear of a board. Each swag is cut from a template, and apparently the template must be adjusted in order to cut a separate swag having a different width. A single swag cannot therefore be adjusted to a different width. A curtain rod assembly for mounting one of these swags is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,673,741 to the top of the telescoping rod assembly where complementary hook and loop fasteners have been attached to both the swag and the curtain rod. U.S. Pat. No. 3,996,987 discloses a valance cover that can be attached to the inner side of an assembly comprising three flat, rigid, oblong members joined to one another or extending as a continuous piece at right angles to one another.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,067,542 discloses a supposedly ready-made swag and pleated jabot system. The swag comprises a curved, folded hanging piece secured to an elongated sleeve piece by a line of stitching. The sleeve piece extends beyond the ends of the hanging piece and an elongated open-ended pocket is formed between opposite ends of the swag. The swag and a similarly pocketed jabot can be hung in conventional fashion from conventional telescoping curtain rods. When the two are used together, the jabot is hung from a front rod and the swag is hung from a separate rear rod.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,192,962 discloses an adjustable telescoping support bar from which multiple window treatments can be hung from the same support bar. The support bar includes hook and loop type fastening means attached to all sides of the support bar for attaching the window treatments to the support bar.
Although these prior patents do show various means for attaching window treatments, such as valances including swags, cascades, jabots etc., from a support member, they do not disclose a system including an adjustable-width window treatment member that can be mounted on a conventional telescoping curtain rod using hook and loop fastening means. Furthermore they do not disclose the use of a separate rod sleeve that can be mounted on a conventional curtain rod. Therefore these prior patents do not show a system in which standard components, suitable for mass production, can be used to decorate windows or other structures. However, the Adjustable-Width Window Treatment System of U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,783 consisting of a Valance Support Device/Variant and accompanying valance components (such as swags, jabots, cascades, horns, pennants) which are constructed to be mounted on the Support Device/Variant does begin to address these issues. The Valance Support Device is a simple apparatus for displaying decorative overlaying valance sections, all of which allow the home shopper to form top window treatments, (i.e., valances) according to his tastes and the size of his particular window(s). The apparatus is either a telescoping rod (in various size ranges) with hook and loop type fastener on its back (i.e., the side which faces the wall or window) or a rod sleeve with hook and loop fastener on one or both sides which sleeve then slips over and entirely covers the common curtain rod or pole (which, again, are offered in many size ranges.) The Adjustable-Width Valance Support Device or Variant is used to display valance components which have the mating hook/loop fastener attached so they may be applied to the rod/rod sleeve or onto each other to form the valance.
One of the most popular of these valance components is known as a swag. Prior art swags are typically made to be of specific dimensions with little to no on-site adjustment possible. An adjustable-width swag of U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,783 is especially constructed in order to allow a variation of at least six inches in its own width. Then each swag so constructed can be adjusted on site to give a custom fit without having to be custom made. This is the only component in this system which has adjustable width features and there are many other popular types of valance components which could be standardized and mass produced for onsite fittings if there were more adjustable width features developed. | {
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With the rapid development of the mobile communication technology, the mobile terminal also exhibits diversified development, and the requirement on limiting the mobility of the mobile terminal also appears, i.e. limit the mobile terminal to only work in a specified cell. Currently, there are two common cell locking methods for the mobile terminal.
The first method is to lock the base station ID and system ID. In this method, the number of base stations which can be locked by the mobile terminal is firstly determined, each time the mobile terminal searches out a new base station, then the mobile terminal adds the base station to a base station list, and if the number of the base stations in the base station list reaches a specified number, then the mobile station stops updating the base station list; after having been registered into the base station, the terminal firstly compares to determine whether ID of this base station is already in the base station list, if it is contained in the base station list, then the terminal provides normal service, otherwise the terminal provides limited service.
The second method is to establish duplex channels between the system side and the mobile terminal, in which the system side issues a control command to the mobile terminal so as to configure the subscription list of the terminal, and the mobile terminal continuously monitors the system, reports information according to the requirements, and determines whether or not to provide normal service.
However, during implementation of the present invention, the inventors have found out that the above currently available cell locking methods for a mobile terminal has the following defects: first, the base station has respiratory effect, which means that, in the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system, when the interference signal in a cell is very strong, the actual effective coverage area of the base station will be reduced; and when the interference signal in a cell is very weak, the actual effective coverage area of the base station will be increased. In a word, the respiratory effect exhibits that the coverage radius constricts as the number of users increases. The main reason leading to the respiratory effect is that the CDMA system is a self-interference system, where the increasing of user leads to the increasing of interference and affects the coverage. Due to the existence of respiratory effect, after the signal coverage of the base station becomes larger, the terminal located at the coverage boundary of the base station will be in the subscribed cell, but when the signal coverage of the base station becomes smaller, the terminal will be out of the coverage of the subscribed cell, then the terminal will be in a lock status, thus the service provided by the terminal is limited, and such phenomenon is called ping-pong effect. Secondly, in the abovementioned methods in the related art, although a plurality of base stations can be locked, there is no association among the locked base stations, and it is only judged whether the base station currently providing the service is in the subscribed base station list, if the current base station is not in the subscribed base station list and the number (preset in the terminal in advance) of the subscribed base stations does not reach the specified upper limit, then the base station currently providing the service is added into the subscription list and provides normal service, or the base station currently providing the service is in the subscribed base station list, then normal service will be provided; and if the current base station is not in the subscription list and the subscription list is full, then the terminal only provides limited service. Because there is no restriction relationship among the locked base stations, it leads to that these base stations may form individual islands, which conflicts with the object of locking a cell. | {
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The present invention relates to a semiconductor device having capacitive elements and semiconductor devices having metal interconnection and ferroelectric capacitance or high dielectric capacitance.
In recent years, developments of ferroelectric memories utilizing ferroelectric capacitances and dynamic random access memories utilizing high dielectric capacitances have been active. Those ferroelectric memories and dynamic random access memories have switching transistors such as MOS field effect transistors. The ferroelectric capacitor or the high dielectric capacitor is electrically connected to one of diffusion regions, for example, source/drain diffusion regions so that the ferroelectric capacitor or the high dielectric capacitor can act as a memory cell in the ferroelectric memory or the dynamic random access memory.
The ferroelectric capacitor has a capacitive dielectric film made of a ferroelectric material, for example, Pb(Zr, Ti)O.sub.3, hereinafter referred to as "PZT". Upon application of an electric field to the ferroelectric capacitive film the ferroelectric capacitive film shows a polarization which enables the ferroelectric capacitor to act the non-volatile storage
The high dielectric capacitor has a capacitive dielectric film made of a high dielectric material, for example, (Ba, Sr)TiO.sub.3, hereinafter referred to as "BST". A high dielectric constant of the high dielectric film increases a capacitance of the high dielectric capacitor. This increase in capacitance of Ie high dielectric capacitor enables the capacitor to be scaled down.
For use of the ferroelectric capacitor or the high dielectric capacitor, it is necessary that one of electrodes of the ferroelectric capacitor or the high dielectric capacitor be connected to one of source/drain diffusion regions of switching transistor, for example, MOS field effect transistor.
In the dynamic random access memory, a bottom electrode of the capacitor may be made of a polysilicon, wherein the bottom electrode is connected to one of the source/drain diffusion regions of the switching transistors. The dielectric film is then formed on the polysilicon bottom electrode. The ferroelectric capacitive film and the high dielectric capacitive film are made of oxides, for example, Pb(Zr, Ti)0.sub.3, and (Ba, Sr)TiO.sub.3, respectively. For this reason, if the ferroelectric capacitive film or the high dielectric capacitive film is formed on the polysilicon bottom electrode, then a top surface of the polysilicon bottom electrode may be oxidized by the ferroelectric capacitive film or the high dielectric capacitive film. The oxidation of the bottom electrode is of course problem. In order to have attempt to solve the above problem with oxidation of the surface of the polysilicon bottom electrode with the ferroelectric capacitive film or the high dielectric capacitive film, the following conventional methods had been proposed.
The first conventional method is disclosed in 1995 Symposium On VLSI Technology Digest Of Technical Papers, pp. 123, which describes a cell structure wherein a top electrode of the capacitor is connected to the describes that an oxide dielectric film of SrTiO.sub.3 is formed on an RuO.sub.2 /TiN bottom electrode formed on a polysilicon plug.
In accordance with the conventional methods of forming the ferroelectric memory and the dynamic random access memory, the capacitor has been formed, before a metal interconnection is then formed.
The above memory cell structure using the local interconnection or polysilicon plug connecting the capacitor to the diffusion region of the switching transistor has the following five problems.
The fist problem is in the difficulty to form multilevel metal interconnections. It is necessary to form multilevel metal interconnections in order to realize a high density integration of the ferroelectric memories having the ferroelectric thin films or the dynamic random access memories having the high dielectric thin films, or to realize a composite semiconductor device having such memory device and logic circuits. For forming the multilevel interconnections, an inter-layer insulator between adjacent different level interconnections is planarized by a chemical mechanical polishing method. However, the existence of the capacitor makes a difference in level of the inter-layer insulator between a memory cell array area having the capacitors and a logic circuit area free of any capacitor. This difference in level of the inter-layer insulator makes it difficult to planarize the surface of the inter-layer insulator. Otherwise, the difference in level of the inter-layer insulator makes it difficult to connect the adjacent different level interconnections to each other through a via hole or connect the first level interconnection to the diffusion region of the transistor through a contact hole but after the planarization to the inter-layer insulator. In Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 9-92794, it is disclosed that a difference in level of the inter-layer insulator between a memory cell area and a peripheral circuit area is reduced to form multilevel interconnections with reduced resistances on the peripheral circuit area. In accordance with this conventional method, after the via hole or the, contact hole has beer formed in the inter-layer insulator, then an electrically conductive material is deposited to fill the via hole or the contact hole and also to overly the inter-layer insulator, before the deposited conductive material is selectively etched to leave the same only within the via hole or the contact hole whereby the surface of the inter-layer insulator is shown. It is, however, difficult to realize a highly accurate etching to the electrically conductive material so that the electrically conductive material remains only the contact hole or the via hole without any over-etching to the surface of the inter-layer insulator.
The second problem is in an increase in the design cost for realizing the hybrid semiconductor integrated circuits having the logic circuits and the a semiconductor memories In order to settle the above first problem, it is required to change the process and device of the logic circuits. This means that the design parameters already used are no longer usable to other process.
The third problem is in deterioration in electrical characteristics of the capacitor or due to the process for forming the multilevel metal interconnections. Normally, a tungsten plug is formed in a via hole for connecting the adjacent different level metal interconnections. The tungsten film may be formed by utilizing, the following chemical reaction. EQU 2WF.sub.6 +3SiH.sub.4.fwdarw.2W+3SiH.sub.4 +6F.sub.4.
The formation of the tungsten film is carried out in an extremely strong reduction atmosphere. Since the ferroelectric thin film and the high dielectric thin film are made, of oxides, exposure of the ferroelectric, thin film and the high dielectric thin film to the reduction atmosphere causes an oxygen deficiency of the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric thin film as the capacitive thin film whereby a resistance of the capacitive thin film is dropped whilst a leakage of current across the capacitive thin film increases. The oxygen deficiency further causes reductions in polarization of the ferroelectric film and in dielectric constant of the high dielectric film. The oxygen deficiency deteriorates the electrical characteristic of the capacitor.
In Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 9-199679, it was proposed to a, avoid the use of the reducing atmosphere for burying a metal into a deep contact hole. Plug contacts made of a thermally stable metal have been formed within openings which reach diffusion regions of CMOS circuits and memory circuits, before a ferroelectric capacitor is formed which is connected through some of the plug contacts to the diffusion regions, and further aluminum interconnections are formed in contact with the remaining ones of the plug contacts. The formation of this structure needs complicated processes. This conventional structural feature is applicable but only to the first level metal interconnection.
The fourth problem is in deterioration of characteristics of the switching transistors, for example, variation in threshold voltage of the switching transistors and deterioration in sub-threshold characteristic of the switching transistor. A gate oxide film of the MOS field effect transistor may receive substantive damage from plasma during plasma etching process, whereby interface states and fixed charges are formed in the gate oxide film of the MOS field effect transistor. Those interface states and fixed charges cause variations in threshold voltage of the switching transistors and deterioration in sub-threshold characteristic of the MOS field effect transistor.
In order to solve the above fourth problem, a hydrogen anneal in an atmosphere containing hydrogen has been carried out. If, however, this anneal as the heat treatment is carried out after the ferroelectric capacitor having the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric capacitor having the high dielectric thin film has formed, then a diffusion of hydrogen may be caused whereby the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric thin film may be exposed to hydrogen. This exposure of the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric thin film to hydrogen causes the oxygen deficiency of the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric thin film as described in the third problem, whereby the resistance of the capacitive thin film is dropped whilst the leak of current across the capacitive thin film increases. The oxygen deficiency further causes reductions in polarization of the ferroelectric a film and in dielectric constant of the high dielectric film. The oxygen deficiency deteriorates the electrical characteristic of the capacitor.
In Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 7-111318, it is disclosed that a hydrogen barrier layer such as an Si3N.sub.4 layer is provided over the capacitor to prevent diffusion of hydrogen toward the ferroelectric thin film or the high dielectric thin film, whereby deterioration of the capacitor is prevented.
This technique may, however, raise another problem with increase in manufacturing cost due to additional processes for forming the hydrogen barrier layer.
Further, responsive to the requirements for increase the density of integration of the capacitors and scaling down of the capacitor, it is required to reduce the thickness of the hydrogen barrier layer. However, the reduction in thickness of the hydrogen barrier layer results in reduction in barrier ability. This technique is irresponsible to the advanced and future semiconductor devices in consideration of the fact that the importance for reducing variations in characteristics of the devices has been on the increase, as the scale of the integrated circuits is further enlarged and high speed performance of the integrated circuits is further improved and also individual devices are scaled down.
The fifth problem is in deterioration in characteristic of the capacitor and an increase in resistance of the interconnection between the capacitor and other device. This fifth problem is raised when a contact between the different level metal interconnections or a contact between the first level metal interconnection and the semiconductor substrate is formed after the capacitor has been formed. After the contact plug is formed in an inter-layer insulator for connecting the substrate to the first level metal interconnection, an ion-implantation to the contact plug is carried out to reduce a resistance of the contact plug between the substrate and the first level metal interconnection. After the ion-implantation into the contact plug, a heat treatment is further carried out at a temperature of about 70.degree. C. or higher for activation of the implanted ions in the contact plug. The heat treatment is thus us carried out, after the ferroelectric capacitor or the high dielectric capacitor has been formed. Such the heat treatment, however, may cause an inter-reaction and an inter-diffusion between the ferroelectric oxide material of the ferroelectric capacitive thin film or the high dielectric capacitive thin film and the electrode or the metal interconnection. Such inter-reaction and inter-diffusion cause deterioration of the electric characteristics of the capacitor is and also cause increase in resistance of the metal interconnection.
In prior art, there was neither ferroelectric memory device nor high dielectric capacitance dynamic random access memory device, which has the multilevel metal interconnection structure but is free from any of the above five problems.
In the above circumstances, it had been required to develop a novel semiconductor memory device having a ferroelectric capacitor and a multilevel interconnection structure free from the above five problems, and also develop another novel semiconductor memory device having a high dielectric capacitor and a multilevel interconnection structure free from the above five problems. | {
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1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to securing data messages over a communication network.
2. Background of the Related Art
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (collectively referred to as AJAX) are well-known technologies that allow user interaction with Web pages to be decoupled from the Web browser's communications with a Web server. AJAX is built upon dynamic HTML (DHTML) technologies including: JavaScript, a scripting language commonly used in client-side Web applications; the Document Object Model (DOM), a standard object model for representing HTML or XML documents; and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of HTML documents. In AJAX, client-side JavaScript updates the presentation of a Web page by dynamically modifying a DOM tree and a style sheet. In addition, asynchronous communication, enabled by additional technologies, allows dynamic updates of data without the need to reload the entire Web page. These additional technologies include XMLHttpRequest, an application programming interface (API) that allows client-side JavaScript to make HTTP connections to a remote server and to exchange data, and JavaScript Serialized Object Notation (JSON), a lightweight, text-based, language-independent data-interchange format.
JSON is based on a subset of the JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262, 3rd Edition, dated December 1999. It is also described in Request for Comment (RFC) 4627. JSON syntax is a text format defined with a collection of name/value pairs and an ordered list of values. JSON is very useful for sending structured data over the wire (e.g., the Internet) that is lightweight and easy to parse. It is language-independent but uses conventions that are familiar to C-family programming conventions. Further information about JSON can be found as json.org.
Currently, JSON messages are secured over the wire using mere transport security (such as SSL), which only provides point-to-point message security. The data in the message, however, is provided in the clear and, as a result, such data can still be compromised through various means, such as by malicious altering by an attacker, or accidental altering through transmission errors.
There remains a need to add data confidentiality protection to JSON messages. | {
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The heart is the center of a person's circulatory system. It includes an electro-mechanical system performing two major pumping functions. The left portions of the heart draw oxygenated blood from the lungs and pump it to the organs of the body to provide the organs with their metabolic needs for oxygen. The right portions of the heart draw deoxygenated blood from the organs and pump it into the lungs where the blood gets oxygenated. The body's metabolic need for oxygen increases with the body's physical activity level. The pumping functions are accomplished by contractions of the myocardium (heart muscles). In a normal heart, the sinoatrial node, the heart's natural pacemaker, generates electrical impulses, known as action potentials, that propagate through an electrical conduction system to various regions of the heart to excite myocardial tissues in these regions. Coordinated delays in the propagations of the action potentials in a normal electrical conduction system cause the various regions of the heart to contract in synchrony such that the pumping functions are performed efficiently.
A blocked or otherwise damaged electrical conduction system causes the myocardium to contract at a rhythm that is too slow, too fast, and/or irregular. Such an abnormal rhythm is generally known as arrhythmia. Arrhythmia reduces the heart's pumping efficiency and hence, diminishes the blood flow to the body. One type of arrhythmia is fibrillation, where the heart quivers instead of beating normally. For instance, atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with an abnormal heart rhythm where the atria quivers. AF as a disease target represents a significant unmet need with a hospitalization growth rate of 16.7% over last 5 years. AF-related hospitalization charges contribute over $3 B annually to health care system expenditures. Treatments for arrhythmias include electrical therapy such as pacing and defibrillation therapies, ablation and drug therapies. Catheter based therapies for AF are destructive, dangerous, and highly variable. For example, the procedure takes on the average about 4 hours, and has at best 50-80% efficacy. Drug therapy has approximately 60% efficacy and sometimes is proarrhythmic. Moreover, preventive device therapy has been ineffective at suppressing atrial arrhythmias, and shocks are painful device-based therapy that has impacted patient acceptance of implantable cardiac devices (ICD's) both for atrial and ventricular defibrillation. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a waterproof structure of an electronic device.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, touch panels have been applied in many electronic devices, such as mobile phones, laptops, MP3, personal digital assistants (PDA), global positioning system (GPS), super mini computers (UMPC) and other portable electronic devices. The technology of touch panel on the market can be commonly divided into restive one, capacitive one, infrared one and ultrasound one. So far, the resistive and the capacitive touch panels play the main role on the market.
If the aforementioned electronic device is used in a more harsh environment, such as waterproof function, sand-proof function, corrosion-resistant function and anti-vibration function, etc., the electronic device requires some additional designs to meet the relevant usage needs, for example, to reach a required waterproof grade and anti-vibration.
In other words, to meet the usage needs, the aforementioned electronic device must meet the more strict design specifications. Taking the waterproof effect as an example, in general, an electronic device with a touch screen mostly employs waterproof tapes disposed between the housing and touch screen thereof, and the sealing effect between the touch screen and the housing is achieved by squeezing the waterproof tapes during assembling. However, the employing of the waterproof tape is necessary for an electronic device with a resistive touch screen, but the waterproof tape in the assembling process would cause some relevant troubles.
For example, FIGS. 1 and 2 are local cross-sectional diagrams of an electronic device in the current technology, and FIGS. 3 and 4 show the states of the touch screen of the electronic device after being assembled in current technology respectively corresponding to FIGS. 1 and 2. Referring to FIGS. 1-4, a display element 120 of an electronic device 300 is a resistive touch screen which performs induction operation through a voltage-detecting method, wherein indium tin oxide (ITO) conductive glass 121 and PET (polyethylene terephthalate, briefly referred to as polyester or PET) conductive film 123 are the main raw materials of the display element 120. In addition, a plurality of spacers 121a are disposed between the upper transparent electrode and the lower transparent electrode to maintain a gap between the PET conductive film 123 and the conductive glass 121, while an adherent element 125 (for example, adhesive) located at both sides of the spacers 121a is adhered between the conductive glass 121 and the PET conductive film 123. When a finger, a stylus or other objects exerts a force onto the PET conductive film 123, the value of the capacitance between the PET conductive film 123 and the conductive glass 121 gets changed. However, during the assembling, when a fastener 140 is assembled to the housing 310, the fastener 140 clamps the display element 120 and a sealing member 330 (i.e., the aforementioned waterproof tape) therein such that the sealing member 330 gets deformed due to the squeezing action (as shown in FIG. 2). Further, the PET conductive film 123 is squeezed under the deformation of the sealing member 330 (as shown in an arrow head in FIG. 2) to push the PET conductive film 123 into a state shown in FIG. 4, i.e., both ends of the PET conductive film 123 are bulged and the portion between the both ends is collapsed.
Thus, the conductive glass 121 and the PET conductive film 123 after the electronic device 300 being assembled are quite close to each other, and further the upper electrode may be conductive with the lower electrode.
FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a touch screen in bad state. It can be seen from FIG. 5 that while a user normally touch manipulates onto a display surface 122 (for example, writing a “” Chinese character on the display surface 122), due to short-circuit between the upper and lower electrodes, the touch coordinates are disordered, and further fly-line happened as shown in FIG. 5.
Therefore, an issue for the relevant developers to care about is that how the touch function is normally performed of the electronic device 300 under the aforementioned circumstance. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Knit hosiery is worn by women throughout the world. The desire for ultra sheerness results in a material which is easily damaged. The knitting method of producing the fabric in an inexpensive fashion means minor damage may cause a cascading affect which results in an unsightly “run” or “ladder” caused by the continued unraveling of the material's knit.
Hosiery wearers have developed a number of ways to repair minor damages before they become too unsightly. The goal is to save the material from further damage, at least for the day, until the hosiery may be replaced. The fibers are often too fine and too short to be tied or knotted. Pervious solutions have included using nail polish as a means of sticking or gluing the loose ends of the damaged fibers to the surrounding fabric. This solution results in hard inflexible fabric, at the point of the repair, which is unsightly and may be irritating to the skin of the wearer.
Another method of temporarily repairing hosiery has been the application of hair spray to the location of the damage and the surrounding area. The result is that the hair spray creates a bond between the loose fibers and surrounding fabric preventing further “run.” One of the problems is because hair spray causes unsightly discoloration of the fabric as the hair spray is formulated to sit on top of the fibers. Note that hair is not the same as the fibers of the fabric so the result is not ideal. The smooth/regular uniformity of the fibers in the fabric makes the undissolved particles of copolymers visible as a film or discoloration on the fabric which would not be evident on hair.
Further, hair spray results in a sticky feeling on the wearer's skin. Also, hair spray utilizes a urethane which results in an inflexible bond between adjacent fibers. As the hosiery continues to be worn, the movement results in the breaking of the bonds basically undoing the fix. Finally, the chemicals in hair spray are not meant for the direct application to the skin or for application in the quantities required for repair of hosiery, resulting in skin irritation and user discomfort or injury. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to pressure to electrical signal transmitters. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an overload protection mechanism for a differential pressure transmitter.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Differential pressure transmitters for producing an electrical signal of a value dependent upon the difference between two fluid pressures are well-known in the art. This type of transmitter usually employs a barrier diaphragm between an input process fluid and a fill fluid contained within the transmitter body. The barrier diaphragm transmits the pressure of the input fluid to the fill fluid which, in turn, transmits fluid pressure to a pressure sensor. An example of such a transmitter employing a pressure sensor which has only a relatively small displacement over its operating range is shown in the Whitehead, Jr. U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,058. In this transmitter, the pressure sensor is a semiconductor strain-sensitive wafer. Differential pressure transducers of the form shown in the aforesaid patent include a so-called head, or transmitter body, structure which contains two barrier diaphragms. A chamber on one side of one barrier diaphragm is pressurized with a first input fluid having a first pressure and a chamber on one side of the other barrier diaphragm is pressurized with a second input fluid having a second pressure. These two input fluids may be so-called process fluids which can be obtained from process flow lines, e.g., from respective sides of an orifice plate. A separate chamber on the other side of each of the barrier diaphragms contains a corresponding fill fluid. These fill fluids communicate through fluid passages with opposite sides of the pressure sensor, and the latter is displaced by an amount which is dependent upon the difference between the two pressures of the fill fluids, i.e., upon the differential pressure of the two applied input fluids. The sensor produces an electrical output signal which is dependent upon the displacement and, hence, upon the differential pressure.
Because of the minute full range displacement of the sensor in such transmitters, it has been necessary to provide such transmitters with overload protection arrangements to protect the sensor from being excessively displaced and, hence, either damaged or destroyed by excessive applied input fluid pressures. In the aforesaid U.S. patent, such an overload protection is provided for each barrier diaphragm by a corresponding circular spring which is arranged to preload a respective control diaphragm. The control diaphragms are each arranged to valve or divert a respective fill fluid into an expansion chamber to relieve the excess pressure on the sensor. An applied pressure which is in excess of the preload pressure is effective to move the control diaphragm whereby the excessive input pressure is diverted from the sensor. Ultimately, the diversion of the fill fluid allows the barrier diaphragm to bottom onto a back-up plate to prevent any further input pressure increase from being applied to the sensor. However, it has been found that in order to change the working range of the pressure transmitter, the springs used to preload the control diaphragms must be changed to produce a new working range for the overload protection. Such characterization of the preload springs involves a disassembly and reassembly of the transmitter structure which is an inefficient and expensive operation. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates generally to synchronization of dataxe2x80x94that is, the process of taking two or more separate collections of data (xe2x80x9cdatasetsxe2x80x9d), identifying differences among them, and applying changes to one or more of the datasets to make the datasets identical or equivalent.
With each passing day, there is ever increasing need for synchronization solutions for connected information devices. Here, information devices include for example general- or special-purpose computers of all types and sizes, Internet or intranet access devices, cellular phones, pagers, and other hand-held devices including, for example, REX PRO(trademark), PalmPilot and Microsoft xe2x80x9cWindows CExe2x80x9d devices, and the like.
(REX(trademark) and REX PRO(trademark) are trademarks of Franklin Electronic Publishers of Burlington, N.J. REX and REX PRO organizers include licensed technology from Starfish Software, Inc. (xe2x80x9cStarfishxe2x80x9d), the present assignee. PalmPilot organizers are produced by Palm Computing, Inc., a subsidiary of 3Com Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif. The Windows CE device operating system and other Microsoft software are produced by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.)
As the use of information devices is ever growing, users often have their data in more than one device, or in more than one software application. Consider, for instance, a user who has his or her appointments and contacts on a desktop personal computer (PC) at work and also has appointments or contacts on a notebook computer at home and on a battery-powered, hand-held device for use in the field. The user is free to alter the information on any one of these devices independently of one another. What the user really wants is the information in each device to remain synchronized with corresponding information in other devices in a convenient, transparent manner. Still further, some devices are connected at least occasionally to a server computer (for example, an Internet server) which stores information for the user. The user would of course like the information on the server computer to participate in synchronization, so that the server computer also remains synchronized.
An early approach to maintaining consistency between datasets was simply to import or copy one dataset on top of another. This simple approach, one which overwrites a target dataset without any attempt at reconciling any differences, is inadequate for all but the simplest of applications. Expectedly, more sophisticated synchronization techniques were developed. In particular, a synchronization technique was developed, in which exactly two datasets are synchronized by a PC-based synchronization system that is specific to a particular other device (e.g., PalmPilot organizer). The synchronization is conducted in a single, intensive session via a direct local connection (e.g., serial cable or short infrared link) that is maintained during the entire synchronization. Thus, the prior synchronization technique is a session-based, connection-based technique.
The prior, PC-based synchronization system functions as follows. First, it directly requests and receives (i.e., reads) one record at a time from the other device""s dataset via the local connection to obtain changes that have been made to that dataset since a previous synchronization. Then, the system similarly obtains changes that have been made to the PC""s dataset since the previous synchronization. The system next resolves any identified conflicts involving these changes, for example, by asking the user to choose a winner from two changes that conflict. Finally, the system directly propagates (e.g., writes) the conflict-resolved changes from each of the datasets into the other dataset, to leave the two datasets in identical or equivalent states. During the synchronization, which typically lasts several minutes or less, both datasets are xe2x80x9clockedxe2x80x9d to prevent the user from modifying the datasets.
The prior synchronization techniques have their uses. However, as more and more types of devices are introduced that include datasets to be synchronized, a need has arisen for improved synchronization schemes to take advantage of (or compensate for) the particular characteristics of these new devices and datasets. Consider, for example, the fact that many modern devices such as pagers and cellular phones are now capable of distant wireless communication or Internet-based communication. It would be desirable to efficiently synchronize user information in such devices using such distant communication mediums. Further, because many of the modern devices are capable of conducting message-based or connectionless communication (e.g., electronic mail (e-mail) or wireless paging) as opposed to connection-based communication (e.g., direct serial connection), it would be desirable to efficiently synchronize the user information in such devices using message-based communication techniques, especially automated techniques that require little to no user intervention besides initiating synchronization. Unfortunately, the prior synchronization technique, which is designed for use over a direct local serial connection, is not well-adapted to the characteristics commonly associated with distant and/or message-based communication, especially if errors occur during communication, as will be described.
Consider for instance the characteristic of high communication latency, which is unavoidable for certain popular communication technologies such as paging or e-mail. Paging or e-mail messages can take minutes, hours, or sometimes even longer (e.g., days) to be delivered, when the messages are not lost outright. Clearly, the prior synchronization scheme, which requires numerous sequential communication exchanges (e.g., one request-response cycle per data record), will be intolerably slow to finish if directly applied to synchronize datasets across such high-latency communication mediums.
Further, if a synchronization might take a long time to finish (e.g., more than thirty minutes), due for example to high latency, the user would want to use (e.g., modify) his or her data during the synchronization. The prior synchronization system cannot accommodate such a user because the system locks the datasets against modifications during every synchronization. The prior synchronization system cannot be rescued simply by modifying it to leave the datasets unlocked during synchronization because then the modified system would not guarantee data integrity. In particular, suppose the prior system, during a synchronization, reads a handheld device""s data record xe2x80x9cBill Smith, version Axe2x80x9d at time 1, and updates it with a PC""s updated corresponding data record xe2x80x9cBill Smith, version Bxe2x80x9d at time 3. If the prior system were modified to allow the user to hand-modify the record at time 2 into xe2x80x9cBill Smith, version Cxe2x80x9d in the middle of the synchronization, then the just-made modification (xe2x80x9cversion Cxe2x80x9d) would be overwritten at time 3 as a part of the synchronization without any attempt to determine whether the just-made modification (xe2x80x9cversion Cxe2x80x9d) is in fact the one that should be retainedxe2x80x94i.e, without any conflict resolution. In short, the user""s desired information (when xe2x80x9cversion Cxe2x80x9d is the desired information) may be erroneously overwritten if the prior synchronization system is simply modified not to lock the datasets during synchronization.
In addition to high latency, communication environments (e.g., wireless, message-based, or Internet-based environments) may also have other characteristics such as low or intermittent reliability and availability, low or expensive bandwidth, inability to guarantee FIFO (first-in-first-out) delivery order, and the like. Each of these other characteristics introduces additional problems to the synchronization task. Furthermore, combinations of such communication characteristics makes the problems especially difficult to solve. To take just one example, consider the task of synchronizing over a communication medium that cannot guarantee FIFO delivery order for transmissions and is susceptible to high latency (e.g., latency longer than an hour or longer than a day). Suppose that, in a first synchronization, some synchronization-related messages containing data are sent across this communication medium. Suppose that the user thereafter makes changes to one of the datasets involved, in the ordinary course of using the dataset. Then, perhaps hours or days later, the user attempts a second synchronization over the communication medium. The second synchronization finishes and leaves correctly-synchronized datasets. However, the now-obsolete synchronization-related messages sent during the earlier first synchronization may now arrive at one or more of the datasets (i.e., in non-FIFO order). If these messages are obeyed, the already-correctly-synchronized datasets may become corrupted with obsolete data from the now-obsolete messages. In short, the user""s desired information is endangered by a characteristic of the communication medium that affects synchronization.
Additional problems and difficulties caused by communication characteristics that are associated with wireless, Internet-based, or message-based communication mediums, and by the interplay of such characteristics, will be further discussed below. In summary, these problems and difficulties cause an irony that user data stored for example in cellular phones or pagers typically cannot be synchronized with data in other devices via cellular phone calls or pager messages in the field in an efficient, error-free, and cost-effective manner. Instead, users typically must wait until they return home or to the office to synchronize their cellular phone or pager with a PC via a serial cable or short infrared link. Thus, such devices created expressly for use in the field are in practice no more portable than desktop office machines, when synchronization is the desired task.
Clearly, there is a need for improved synchronization systems and techniques that are suitable for synchronization via wireless or message-based communication networks (such as cellular or pager networks) or other networks (such as the Internet) that have similar characteristics. The present invention fulfills this and other needs.
The present invention provides a system and methods for synchronizing information in datasets via a communication medium. The system and methods are suitable for synchronizing even across communication mediums that are susceptible to high latency, non-FIFO delivery order, or other adverse characteristics. According to an aspect of the invention, in an information processing system, a method for synchronizing a first dataset with at least a second dataset via a communication medium includes a step of storing information that is indicative of a first version of user data of the first dataset, wherein the first version was involved in prior use for synchronizing with the second dataset. The method further includes steps of identifying a change in the second dataset that is new relative to the first version of the user data of the first dataset; via the communication medium, communicating the change in the second dataset and indicating the first version based on the stored information; determining whether user data currently in the first dataset has changed relative to the first version that was indicated in the communicating and indicating step; deciding whether to commit the communicated change to the first dataset based at least in part on the determining step; and committing the communicated change to the first dataset if the communicated change is decided to be committed in the deciding step.
According to another aspect of the invention, a computer-implemented method is provided for handling dataset changes, in synchronizing user data in a first dataset with user data in at least a second dataset via a communication medium. Here, the user data in the first dataset and the user data in the second dataset are capable of having been independently modified prior to the synchronization. The method includes a step of sending at least a first dataset change from the first dataset, wherein the sending step includes sending an indicator of send order. The method further includes steps of receiving the first dataset change and the indicator of send order, via the communication medium; determining based on the indicator of send order whether the received first dataset change, referred to as the just-received change, was sent earlier than a previously-received dataset change from the first dataset; if the just-received change is determined in the determining step to have been sent earlier than the previously-received dataset change, refraining from propagating the just-received change into the second dataset; and, otherwise, propagating the just-received change into the second dataset, at least to an extent needed for reconciling the just-received change with the second dataset.
According to still another aspect of the invention, a computer-implemented method is provided for synchronizing user data in a first dataset with user data in at least a second dataset. The first dataset and the second dataset each is capable of including dataset changes that have been made independently of any synchronization with the other of the first and the second datasets. The method includes a step of sending at least some of the dataset changes of the first dataset. The method further includes steps of receiving and propagating the sent dataset changes of the first dataset into the second dataset, at least insofar as the sent dataset changes of the first dataset can be reconciled with the second dataset; sending at least some of the dataset changes of the second dataset, wherein the two sending steps are intentionally not undertaken within any single communication session, and, between the two sending steps, no sending of any dataset changes occurs between the first and the second datasets; and receiving and propagating the dataset changes from the second dataset into the first dataset, at least insofar as the dataset changes from the second dataset can be reconciled with the first dataset. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a structure for the rear part of a vehicle and particularly relates to a structure in which an upper back front skeleton is disposed along a front edge of an upper back panel.
2. Related Art
In the vehicle body rear structure for a vehicle disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) No. 2009-23367 (patent document 1), a rear package tray (an upper back panel) is disposed between height direction middle portions of right and left side panels that configure right and left sides of a vehicle body. A cross member that extends in the vehicle width direction is disposed on the front edge of the rear package tray. The cross member has an upper cross member and a lower cross member that are joined to one another to form a closed cross section that extends in the vehicle width direction. Furthermore, the right and left ends of the rear package tray and the upper cross member are coupled to the right and left side panels via sheet-like joining members, and the right and left ends of the lower cross member are coupled to the right and left side panels via L-shaped members. Rear wheel wells having shapes that protrude inward in the vehicle width direction are formed under the right and left L-shaped members, and the upper portions of the rear wheel wells and the L-shaped members are coupled to one another by tower members.
In the vehicle body rear structure for a vehicle having the configuration described above, a skeleton (hereinafter called an upper back front skeleton) that has a closed cross-sectional shape and extends in the vehicle width direction is formed by the cross member, the right and left joining members, and the right and left L-shaped members. The upper back front skeleton forms the upper edge of an opening of a trunk pass-through that communicates the cabin and the trunk. Furthermore, retractors (seat belt take-up devices) that take up seat belts for restraining occupants seated in rear seats are housed inside the vehicle width direction ends of the upper back front skeleton—that is, inside the closed cross-sectional space formed by the joining members and the L-shaped members. A similar structure is disclosed in JP-A No. 2003-312544 (patent document 2).
The upper back front skeleton described above greatly contributes to the rigidity (particularly the torsional rigidity) of the vehicle body, so in order to improve the steering stability of the vehicle, it is necessary that the rigidity of the upper back front skeleton be well ensured. However, due to the relationship between the upper back front skeleton and members disposed near the upper back front skeleton and the relationship between the upper back front skeleton and the breadth of the trunk, there are cases where it is difficult to ensure a sufficient area for the closed cross section of the upper back front skeleton. Even in such cases, there is room for improvement in order to ensure the rigidity of the vehicle body. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
} |
Often, verification of access rights to a resource occurs by optically scanning a code. For example, scanner devices can optically scan a code displayed on a user device. However, such codes are generally easily reproduced, thereby lacking security. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates to the application of drift compensation during the down conversion and decoding of high resolution encoded video for display by a lower resolution receiver.
The international standard ISO/IEC 13818-2 entitled xe2x80x9cGeneric Coding of Moving Pictures and Associated Audio Information: Videoxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cGuide to the Use of the ATSC Digital Television Standardxe2x80x9d describe a system, known as MPEG-2, for encoding and decoding digital video data. The standard allows for the encoding of video over a wide range of resolutions, including higher resolutions commonly known as HDTV. According to this standard, digital video data is encoded as a series of code words in a complicated manner that causes the average length of the code words to be much smaller than would be the case if, for example, each pixel were coded as an 8 bit value. This type of encoding is also known as data compression.
In the system described above, encoded pictures are made up of pixels. Each 8xc3x978 array of pixels is known as a block, and a 2xc3x972 array of these 8xc3x978 blocks is termed a macroblock. Compression is achieved using the well known techniques of prediction (motion estimation in the encoder, motion compensation in the decoder), two dimensional discrete cosine transformation (DCT) which is performed on 8xc3x978 blocks of pixels, quantization of DCT coefficients, and Huffman and run/level coding. However, prediction is not used for every picture. Thus, while P pictures are encoded with prediction from previous pictures, and while B pictures are encoded using prediction from either a previous or a subsequent picture, I pictures are encoded without prediction.
An MPEG-2 encoder is shown in simplified form in FIG. 1. Data representing macroblocks of pixels are fed to both a subtractor 12 and a motion estimator 14. In the case of P pictures and B pictures, the motion estimator 14 compares each new macroblock to be encoded with the macroblocks in a reference picture previously stored in a reference picture memory 16. The motion estimator 14 finds the macroblock in the stored reference picture that most closely matches the new macroblock.
The motion estimator 14 reads this matching macro-block (known as a predicted macroblock) out of the reference picture memory 16 and sends it to the subtractor 12 which subtracts it, on a pixel by pixel basis, from the new macro-block entering the MPEG-2 encoder 10. The output of the subtractor 12 is an error, or residual, that represents the difference between the predicted macroblock and the new macroblock being encoded. This residual is often very small. The residual is transformed from the spatial domain by a two dimensional DCT 18. The DCT coefficients resulting from the two dimensional DCT 18 are then quantized by a quantization block 20 in a process that reduces the number of bits needed to represent each coefficient. Usually, many coefficients are effectively quantized to zero. The quantized DCT coefficients are Huffman and run/level coded by a coder 22 which further reduces the average number of bits per coefficient.
The motion estimator 14 also calculates a motion vector (mv) which represents the horizontal and vertical displacements of the predicted macroblock in the reference picture from the position of the new macroblock in the current picture being encoded. It should be noted that motion vectors may have xc2xd pixel resolution which is achieved by linear interpolation between adjacent pixels. The data encoded by the coder 22 are combined with the motion vector data from the motion estimator 14 and with other information (such as an indication of whether the picture is an I, P or B picture), and the combined data are transmitted to a receiver that includes an MPEG-2 decoder 30 (shown in FIG. 2 and discussed below).
For the case of P pictures, the quantized DCT coefficients from the quantization block 20 are also supplied to an internal decoder loop that represents a portion of the operation of the MPEG-2 decoder 30. Within this internal loop, the residual from the quantization block 20 is inverse quantized by an inverse quantization block 24 and is inverse DCT transformed by an inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) block 26. The predicted macroblock, that is read out of the reference picture memory 16 and that is supplied to the subtractor 12, is also added back to the output of the IDCT block 26 on a pixel by pixel basis by an adder 28, and the result is stored back into the reference picture memory 16 in order to serve as a macroblock of a reference picture for predicting subsequent pictures. The object of this internal loop is to have the data in the reference picture memory 16 of the MPEG-2 encoder 10 match the data in the reference picture memory of the MPEG-2 decoder 30. B pictures are not stored as reference pictures.
In the case of I pictures, no motion estimation occurs and the negative input to the subtractor 12 is forced to zero. In this case, the quantized DCT coefficients provided by the two dimensional DCT 18 represent transformed pixel values rather than residual values, as is the case with P and B pictures. As in the case of P pictures, decoded I pictures are stored as reference pictures.
The MPEG-2 decoder 30 illustrated in FIG. 2 is a simplified showing of an MPEC-2 decoder. The decoding process implemented by the MPEG-2 decoder 30 can be thought of as the reverse of the encoding process implemented by the MPEG-2 encoder 10. Accordingly, the received encoded data is Huffman and run/level decoded by a Huffman and run/level decoder 32. Motion vectors and other information are parsed from the data stream flowing through the Huffman and run/level decoder 32. The motion vectors are fed to a motion compensator 34. Quantized DCT coefficients at the output of the Huffman and run/level decoder 32 are fed to an inverse quantization block 36 and then to an IDCT block 38 which transforms the inverse quantized DCT coefficients back into the spatial domain.
For P and B pictures, each motion vector is translated by the motion compensator 34 to a memory address in order to read a particular macroblock (predicted macroblock) out of a reference picture memory 42 which contains previously stored reference pictures. An adder 44 adds this predicted macroblock to the residual provided by the IDCT block 38 in order to form reconstructed pixel data. For I pictures, there is no prediction, so that the prediction provided to the adder 44 is forced to zero. For I and P pictures, the output of the adder 44 is fed back to the reference picture memory 42 to be stored as a reference picture for future predictions.
The MPEG encoder 10 can encode sequences of progressive or interlaced pictures. For sequences of interlaced pictures, pictures may be encoded as field pictures or as frame pictures. For field pictures, one picture contains the odd lines of the raster, and the next picture contains the even lines of the raster. All encoder and decoder processing is done on fields. Thus, the DCT transform is performed on 8xc3x978 blocks that contain all odd or all even numbered lines. These blocks are referred to as field DCT coded blocks.
On the other hand, for frame pictures, each picture contains both odd and even numbered lines of the raster. Macroblocks of frame pictures are encoded as frames in the sense that an encoded macroblock contains both odd and even lines. However, the DCT performed on the four blocks within each macroblock of a frame picture may be done in two different ways. Each of the four DCT transform blocks in a macroblock may contain both odd and even lines (frame DCT coded blocks), or alternatively two of the four DCT blocks in a macroblock may contain only the odd lines of the macroblock and the other two blocks may contain only the even lines of the macroblock (field DCT coded blocks). See ISO/IEC 13818-2, section 6.1.3, FIGS. 6-13 and 6-14. The coding decision as to which way to encode a picture may be made adaptively by the MPEG-2 encoder 10 based upon which method results in better data compression.
Residual macroblocks in field pictures are field DCT coded and are predicted from a reference field. Residual macroblocks in frame pictures that are frame DCT coded are predicted from a reference frame. Residual macroblocks in frame pictures that are field DCT coded have two blocks predicted from one reference field and two blocks predicted from either the same or the other reference field.
For sequences of progressive pictures, all pictures are frame pictures with frame DCT coding and frame prediction.
MPEG-2, as described above, includes the encoding and decoding of video at high resolution (HDTV). In order to permit people to use their existing NTSC televisions so as to view HDTV transmitted programs, it is desirable to provide a decoder that decodes high resolution MPEG-2 encoded data as reduced resolution video data for display on existing NTSC televisions. (Reducing the resolution of television signals is often called down conversion decoding.) Accordingly, such a down converting decoder would allow the viewing of HDTV signals without requiring viewers to buy expensive HDTV displays.
There are known techniques for making a down converting decoder such that it requires less circuitry and is, therefore, cheaper than a decoder that outputs full HDTV resolution. One of these methods is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,854. The down conversion technique disclosed there is explained herein in connection with a down convertor 50 shown in FIG. 3. The down convertor 50 includes a Huffman and run/level decoder 52 and an inverse quantization block 54 which operate as previously described in connection with the Huffman and run/level decoder 32 and the inverse quantization block 36 of FIG. 2. However, instead of utilizing the 8xc3x978 IDCT block 38 as shown in FIG. 2, the down convertor 50 employs a down sampler 56 which discards the forty-eight high order DCT coefficients of an 8xc3x978 block and performs a 4xc3x974 IDCT on the remaining 4xc3x974 array of DCT coefficients. This process is usually referred to as DCT domain down sampling. The result of this down sampling is effectively a filtered and down sampled 4xc3x974 block of residual samples (for P or B pictures) or pixels for I pictures.
For residual samples, a prediction is added by an adder 58 to the residual samples from the down sampler 56 in order to produce a decoded reduced resolution 4xc3x974 block of pixels. This block is saved in a reference picture memory 60 for subsequent predictions. Accordingly, predictions will be made from a reduced resolution reference, while predictions made in the decoder loop within the encoder are made from full resolution reference pictures. This difference means that the prediction derived from the reduced resolution reference will differ by some amount from the corresponding prediction made by the encoder, resulting in error in the residual-plus-prediction sum provided by the adder 58 (this error is referred to herein as prediction error). Prediction error may increase as predictions are made upon predictions until the reference is refreshed by the next I picture.
A motion compensator 62 attempts to reduce this prediction error by using the full resolution motion vectors, even though the reference picture is at lower resolution. First, a portion of the reference picture that includes the predicted macroblock is read from the reference picture memory 60. This portion is selected based on all bits of the motion vector except the least significant bit. This predicted macroblock is interpolated back to full resolution by a 2xc3x972 prediction up sample filter 64. Using the full resolution motion vector (which may include xc2xd pixel resolution), a predicted full resolution macroblock is extracted from the up sampled portion based upon all of the bits of the motion vector. Then, a down sampler 66 performs a 2xc3x972 down sampling on the extracted full resolution macro-block in order to match the resolution of the 4xc3x974 IDCT output of the down sampler 56. In this way, the prediction from the reference picture memory 60 is up sampled to match the full resolution residual pixel structure allowing the use of full resolution motion vectors. Then, the full resolution reference picture is down sampled prior to addition by the adder 58 in order to match the resolution of the down sampled residual from the down sampler 56.
There are several known good prediction up sampling/down sampling methods that tend to minimize the prediction error caused by up sampling reference pictures that have been down sampled with a 4xc3x974 IDCT. These methods typically involve use of a two dimensional filter having five to eight taps and tap values that vary both with the motion vector value for the predicted macroblock relative to the nearest macroblock boundaries in the reference picture, and with the position of the current pixel being interpolated within the predicted macroblock. Such a filter not only up samples the reduced resolution reference to full resolution and subsequently down samples in a single operation, but it can also include xc2xd pixel interpolation (when required due to an odd valued motion vector). (See, for example, xe2x80x9cMinimal Error Drift in Frequency Scalability for Motion Compensated DCT Coding,xe2x80x9d Mokry and Anastassiou, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, August 1994, and xe2x80x9cDrift Minimization in Frequency Scaleable Coders Using Block Based Filtering,xe2x80x9d Johnson and Princen, IEEE Workshop on Visual Signal Processing and Communication, Melbourne, Australia, September 1993.)
A more general derivation of minimum drift prediction filters by using the Moore-Penrose inverse of a block based down sampling filter is described in xe2x80x9cMinimum Drift Architectures for 3-Layer Scalable DTV Decoding,xe2x80x9d Vetro, Sun, DaGraca and Poon, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, August 1998.
The following example is representative of the prediction up sampling/down sampling filter described in the Mokry and Johnson papers. This example is a one dimensional example but is easily extended to two dimensions. Let it be assumed that pixels y1 and pixels y2 as shown in FIG. 4 represent two adjacent blocks in a down sampled reference picture, and that the desired predicted block straddles the boundary between the two blocks. The pixels y1 are up sampled to the pixels p1 by using a four tap filter with a different set of tap values for each of the eight calculated pixels p1. The pixels y2 are likewise up sampled to the pixels p2 by using the same four tap filter. (If the motion vector requires xc2xd pixel interpolation, this interpolation is done using linear interpolation to calculate in between pixel values based on the pixels p1 and p2.) From these sixteen pixels p1 and pixels p2, an up sampled prediction consisting of eight pixels q can be read using the full resolution motion vector. The pixels q are then filtered and down sampled to pixels qxe2x80x2 by an eight tap filter with a different set of tap values for each of the four pixels qxe2x80x2. The Johnson paper teaches how to determine the optimum tap values for these filters given that the reference picture was down sampled by a four point IDCT. The tap values are optimum in the sense that the prediction error is minimized. The Johnson and Mokry papers also show that the up sampling, linear interpolation, and down sampling filters can be combined into a single eight tap filter with tap values that depend on the motion vector value relative to the nearest macroblock boundaries in the reference picture, and that depend on the particular pixels qxe2x80x2 being calculated. Accordingly, this single eight tap filter allows four pixels qxe2x80x2 to be calculated directly from the eight pixels y1 and y2.
For methods of down sampling other than the four point IDCT, the Vetro paper describes how to determine the optimum tap values for the up sampling filter. This up sampling can also be combined with the linear interpolation and down sampling operations to form a single prediction filter.
The down convertor 50, while generally adequate for progressive pictures with frame DCT coded blocks, does not address problems that arise when attempting to down convert sequences of interlaced pictures with mixed frame and field DCT coded blocks. These problems arise with respect to vertical down sampling and vertical prediction filtering.
Let it be assumed that horizontal down sampling is performed in the DCT domain using a four point horizontal IDCT. Vertical down sampling may also utilize a four point IDCT or some other method. For field pictures, the vertical down sampling operation is then performed on incoming field coded blocks. For frame pictures, the vertical operation is performed on a mix of field and frame coded blocks. Thus, reference pictures may have been down sampled on a field basis, a frame basis, or a mix of both. As previously explained, low drift prediction filtering may be derived from the down sampling filter. If different reference pictures are down sampled differently, they will require different matching prediction filters.
Worse yet is the case of a reference picture containing a mix of field and frame down sampled blocks. A given required prediction may overlap both types of blocks. This complication may be resolved by converting all incoming blocks to either frames or fields before down sampling. This conversion will result in a consistent vertical structure for reference pictures so that the same prediction filter can always be used.
It has been suggested that all incoming pictures be converted to frames before performing vertical down sampling (see xe2x80x9cFrequency Domain Down Conversion of HDTV Using Adaptive Motion Compensation,xe2x80x9d by Vetro, Sun, Bao and Poon, ICIP ""97). Conversion to frames before performing vertical down sampling will result in better vertical resolution than would field based down sampling. However, frame based down sampling requires additional memory in the decoder because a first field must be stored when received in order to allow the second field to arrive so that frame blocks may be formed. Also, severe blocking artifacts in motion sequences may occur (see xe2x80x9cFrequency Domain Down Conversion of HDTV Using an Optimal Motion Compensation Scheme,xe2x80x9d by Vetro and Sun, Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, August 1998).
An alternative, that would avoid these problems and that is suggested in the latter paper, is to convert all incoming pictures to fields before performing vertical down sampling. Therefore, field based processing is used herein such that incoming blocks which are frame coded are first converted to fields before vertical down sampling.
Also, it is well known that four point IDCT down sampling may cause visible artifacts. For progressive pictures, the degree of visibility is usually acceptable for both horizontal and vertical processing. For interlaced pictures using field based vertical down sampling, however, these artifacts may be much more visible. Thus, a technique other than the four point IDCT may be implemented for its field based vertical down sampling (a four point IDCT is still employed for horizontal down sampling).
Moreover, when a vertical or horizontal motion vector is odd valued, xc2xd pixel interpolation is required when forming a prediction from a full resolution reference or an up sampled reduced resolution reference. A decoder that linearly combines xc2xd pixel interpolation with other filtering operations can exhibit a drift error towards a darker picture until refreshed by the next I frame. The present invention is arranged to compensate for this drift error.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a method is provided to reduce drift in connection with an application of xc2xd pixel resolution motion vectors during prediction filtering. The method comprises the following steps: a) down converting received P and B frame and field DCT coded blocks; b) selecting reference pixels based upon a received motion vector; c) performing prediction filtering on the selected reference pixels to produce a prediction output; d) if the motion vector is a xc2xd pixel resolution motion vector, adding a drift compensation value to the prediction output; and, e) adding the prediction output to the down converted P and B frame and field DCT coded blocks in order to form lower resolution reconstructed pixel blocks.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a method of reconstructing pixel blocks from P and B DCT coded blocks comprises the following steps: a) selecting reference pixels from a memory in response to a motion vector; b) filtering the selected reference pixels to produce a filtered output; c) if the motion vector has xc2xd pixel resolution, adding a drift compensation value to the filtered output; and, d) adding the filtered output to the P and B DCT coded blocks in order to form the reconstructed pixel blocks.
In accordance with still another aspect of the present invention, a method of reconstructing pixel blocks from P and B DCT coded blocks comprises the following steps: a) selecting reference pixels from a memory in response to a motion vector; b) if the motion vector has xc2xd pixel resolution, adding drift compensation to the selected reference pixels; and, c) adding the selected reference pixels to the P and B DCT coded blocks in order to form the reconstructed pixel blocks. | {
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As is well known, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is the most serious and stubborn infectious disease all over the world, which was first found in the United States in the 20th century. It has been classified as one of category B fulminating infectious diseases by the World Health Organization (WTO), and its mortality rate ranks seventh among the world's top ten diseases. As a result, AIDS is also known as “Super cancer” by the medical community due to high mortality rate and no cure in Western medicine.
In terms of the pathogenic and pathologic mechanisms of AIDS, Western medicine holds that AIDS is an immunodeficiency disease in which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the CD4 cells of T lymphocytes. At last, the body's immune functions fall into disorder due to immunodeficiency, and the resulting opportunistic infections cause the patient's disease and even death. While from the perspective of epidemic febrile disease of Chinese medicine, AIDS is caused by an exogenous pathogenic factor, namely, one of the six pathogenic factors, as a collective term for exogenous pathogenic wind, cold, summer-heat, dampness, dryness, and fire. So by which kind of pathogenic factors people with AIDS are infected and develop the disease? According to numerous clinical symptoms, physical signs, and Chinese medical syndromes of AIDS patients, AIDS is called “epidemic toxin wind”, and AIDS patients are exogenously infected with fatal “epidemic toxin wind” and develop the disease, by determination of etiologic factor based on differentiation, on the basis of Chinese medicine theory of treatment based on syndrome differentiation and determination of etiologic factor based on differentiation.
Chinese medicine holds that wind is YANG-pathogen, being characterized by opening-dispersing, easy mobility and changeability, which can coerce all other pathogenic factors into causing diseases. Wind pathogen is usually apt to consume essence and injure fluid, leading to depleted YIN fluid and then disease development, so Chinese medical syndromes of upper hyperactivity of deficient YANG due to depleted YIN fluid are more common; consuming essence and injuring fluid usually start with depleted kidney YIN and liver YIN, meanwhile, of which depleted kidney YIN and liver YIN is the most serious syndrome. In fact, kidney YIN is the genuine YIN, and liver and kidney are homogenous, so the syndromes of depleted kidney YIN and liver YIN induced by depleted YIN fluid account for a majority; moreover, clinical symptoms of AIDS are complex and changeable because of the feature that wind pathogen coerces all other pathogenic factors to cause diseases and is changeable.
In terms of treatment principles and mechanisms of AIDS, Western medicine holds that AIDS is an immunodeficiency disease in which human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the CD4-positive T lymphocytes. T lymphocyte is a significant component of human peripheral immune system, and human bone marrow is one of the important central immune organs, therefore invasion and injury of HIV in peripheral immune system are also bound to impair and injure the central immune system. Consequently in treatment, we shall not only inhibit, kill and clear viruses, but also adjust and enhance the body immunity to strengthen resistance against diseases, namely a good therapeutic effect can only be achieved after treatment through giving equal importance to the two aspects. This is what we often say that “doing two jobs at once and attaching equal importance to each”. On the basis of enhancing the body immunity to strengthen body resistance against diseases, treating with drugs to activate enzymes in human immune system, and under the influence of activated enzymes, bone marrow hematopoietic system, that is, central immune system, enables the genes in immune cells to mutate and recombine, producing cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) with the ability to inhibit, kill and clear CD4 lymphocytes infected with HIV, not only killing and clearing free HIV viruses in the blood, but also killing and clearing CD4 lymphocytes infected with HIV, which is the only way to cure AIDS. So from the perspective of Western medicine, the way of treating AIDS should be starting with bone marrow treatment, which is the way from the root and in the right direction. As it is the prime example of clinical practice that an American, Timothy Ray Brown, has been cured of AIDS using bone marrow transplant.
However, as is well known, there exist some problems in AIDS treatment with Western medicine and Western drugs, and Western drugs are not able to cure AIDS, whether domestic drugs or imported ones, whether first-line drugs or second-line drugs or third-line drugs, whether single medication or combination therapy or cocktail therapy. It can be seen, there inevitably exist some problems and defects in Western medicine and Western drugs. Above all, AIDS was first found in the United States with advanced science, and was proven to be caused by HIV infection in human body after experimental research. Using quite advanced scientific experiments, western countries found and interpreted the pathological mechanism that HIV infection causes AIDS, which is very correct. At the same time in treatment, it is a normal therapeutic approach to inhibit, kill and clear HIV viruses using antiviral drugs. HIV invades the human body's immune system in view of its own characteristics, which makes the antiviral drugs meet with many difficulties in treating the disease, and almost a formidable obstacle.
First of all, HIV virus exists in two forms after it invades the human body: one is the form of free virus, and the other is integrated into the genes of invaded CD4 lymphocytes. Western antiviral drugs in development only have effects on free viruses, whereas don't do much for the viruses that have already invaded into the genes of CD4 lymphocytes, which allows the HIV viruses in the genes of CD4 lymphocytes to still replicate, and not to be killed and cleared. HIV viruses inside replicate and multiply to large numbers, and cause the opportunistic infections resulting in the patient's death, especially in a state when the body immunity is gradually decreasing. Secondly, Western antiviral drugs work by the mechanism of inhibiting HIV reverse transcriptase activity (HIV virus is a type of retrovirus). Therefore when treating AIDS using Western antiviral drugs, they inhibits the enzyme activity in the body's normal cells while inhibiting HIV reverse transcriptase activity, in particular, the inhibition on the enzyme activity in the lymphatic system can inhibit and disturb the function of lymphatic system (namely the immune system). At the same time, enzymes of liver function and bone marrow hematopoietic system would be greatly inhibited and disturbed, which is one of the reasons why there are plenty of side effects in Western antiviral drugs. Thus, neither do the common Western drugs have the ability to inhibit, kill and clear HIV viruses and CD4 lymphocytes infected with HIV, nor simultaneously do they have the ability to enhance the body immunity to strengthen resistance against diseases. Even if combining usage of multiple antiviral drugs, also known as cocktail therapy, it can just properly control the virus variation, suppress the virus replication to the maximum extent, and prevent drug resistance of the virus. Obviously, it is the basic reason why Western antiviral drugs are not able to cure AIDS, which renders the worldwide problem AIDS still unable to be solved for a long time. | {
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Pneumatic actuators such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,209,537 which provides a rotational output in response to a limited input signal are well known in the art of control mechanisms. The actuator or the present invention is of the continuous rotational category and is to be distinguished from those actuators such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,518 which provides a rotational output in discrete steps and the continuous rotational actuator which uses a hydraulic servo mechanism to direct the position of the pneumatic supply control valve.
The prior art pneumatic motor actuators are not entirely satisfactory for use in certain operational environments wherein size, weight, reliability and resistance to heat or vibration are of prime concern. | {
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The present invention relates to the packaging of integrated circuits. Some specific embodiments of the invention pertain to an integrated circuit (IC) package that has a metal substrate and a flexible thin film interconnect structure upon which the IC is mounted and a method for manufacturing the same.
The semiconductor industry continues to produce integrated circuits of increasing complexity and increasing density. The increased complexity of some of these integrated circuits has in turn resulted in an increased number of input/output pads on the circuit chips. At the same time, the increased density of the chips has driven the input/output pad pitch downward. The combination of these two trends has been a significant increase in the connector pin wiring density needed to connect the chips to packages that interface with the outside world and/or interconnect the chips to other integrated circuit devices.
One technology that has been used to meet such high density packaging demands combines flip chip and ball grid array (BGA) technologies to produce relatively small chip scale packages that have a relatively high lead count. According to one conventional method for creating flip chip BGA packages (FCBGA), a thin film interconnect structure is formed over one side of a laminate substrate, such as a printed circuit board (PCB), that has through holes that provide electrical connections from one side of the substrate to the other. A plurality of high density flip chip bonding pads are formed in the thin film interconnect structure and solder bumps are affixed to an integrated circuit which is then flipped upside down such that the solder bumps are brought into contact with their corresponding high density bonding pads. The solder balls are then reflowed to connect the integrated circuit to the thin film side of the PCB substrate.
Underfill, such as a thermo-set epoxy, is then dispensed in the gap between the integrated circuit and the substrate. The underfill is then cured by heating the substrate and integrated circuit to an appropriate curing temperature. Next, the assembly is cooled down and solder balls are attached to BGA bonding pads formed on the other side of the substrate to complete the packaging structure. Circuits connecting the BGA pads on the one side of the substrate to the high density flip chip pads (and therefore to the attached die) on the other side of the substrate are made through the plated through holes.
In order to achieve the high density interconnections desirable for some integrated circuit die packaging solutions, accurate registration of the photolithography involved in the formation of the thin film interconnect structure is critical. One problem with this conventional approach is that the laminate substrate over which the thin film layers are formed is subject to slight mechanical changes when subjected to humidity, different temperatures and other environmental factors. These slight mechanical changes may interfere with the accuracy of the thin film photolithography process thereby resulting in defective packaging structures.
NEC has researched and developed FCBGA technology that uses a metal substrate base instead of the traditional PCB laminate base. Using a metal substrate provides better registration accuracy than a traditional PCB or other type of laminate substrate which in turn enables very high density patterning steps to be more accurately used in the thin film interconnect structure formed over the substrate. According to NEC, their technology also is more cost effective than previously employed FCBGA technologies as fewer layers are fabricated and a smaller number of the fabricated layers need to be fine-pitch patterned.
FIGS. 1A–1G are simplified cross-sectional views of a packaging structure formed according to a first metal-substrate FCBGA process developed by NEC. This first NEC process forms a thin film interconnect structure over a metal substrate 10 of which only a portion is shown in FIGS. 1A–1G. The NEC engineers noted that substrate 10, which may be a stainless steel and copper alloy, should be an easily obtainable material that is suitable for manufacturing to high-tolerance flatness while also being strong enough to resist the pressure toward curvature that is exerted by a resin-film structure formed over the substrate.
As shown in FIG. 1A, the NEC process starts by forming a plurality of BGA pads 12 over metal substrate 10. BGA pads 12 are a three layer stack of gold (12a), nickel (12b) and copper (12c) as shown in FIG. 1B. Next, a thin film interconnect structure 14 is formed over the BGA pads (FIG. 1C). Interconnect structure 14 may include several thin film dielectric layers 16a, 16b and 16c as well as several thin film conductive layers 18a, 18b. Vias 20 interconnect various portions of layers 18a and 18b to each other and to BGA pads 12. Also formed on the upper surface of the thin film interconnect structure 14 are a plurality of flip chip pads 22 that enable bonding of an integrated circuit die 30 as shown in FIG. 1D.
IC die 30, of which only a portion is shown in FIGS. 1D–1G is attached to pads 22 using solder bumps 36. An underfill layer 34 is applied between the bottom of IC 30 and the top of thin film interconnect structure 14 in order to reduce the stress and fatigue on the solder balls during thermal cycling.
Referring to FIG. 1E, next a stiffener 38 and a lid 40 are added. In order for stiffener 38 to be adequately secured to the thin film interconnect structure 14 formed over substrate 10, a conductive adhesive (not shown) is applied between the stiffener and thin film structure at interface 39. Also, a thermal grease 42 may be placed over integrated circuit 30 before lid 40 is attached. After stiffener 38 and lid 40 are attached, metal substrate 10 is removed using a wet etch process to expose the BGA pads 12 as shown in FIG. 1F. Finally, the structure may be completed by attaching a heat spreader (not shown) to lid 40 and forming BGA solder balls 44 (shown in FIG. 1G) on pads 12 as appropriate.
FIGS. 2A and 2B are top and bottom perspective views, respectively, of the completed structure. For ease of illustration, a portion of lid 40 has been removed (shown in dotted lines) exposing integrated circuit die 30 and portions of stiffener 38. As shown in FIG. 2A, the packaging structure includes a central opening 50 in which die 30 is positioned. Also, the bottom surface of the structure includes a plurality of equally spaced solder balls 44 spaced apart from each other at an appropriate BGA-pitch.
While the above described process seems to be an improvement as compared to the conventional FCBGA technology described above. It suffers from a number of drawbacks. First, integrated circuit 30 is attached to thin film interconnect structure 14 before the thin film structure can be adequately tested for shorts using conventional electrical testing techniques, e.g., contact testing. This is because IC die 30 is attached prior to removing metal substrate 10 by the wet etch process. Forming thin film interconnect structure 14 over a conductive substrate, such as metal substrate 10, shorts the various circuits formed in the interconnect structure until the conductive substrate is removed. Thus, if a short or similar defect exists in thin film structure 14, integrated circuit 30, which may be quite expensive, may be lost resulting in a lower yield process unless specialized optical or other testing techniques are employed.
Another drawback with the above-described NEC approach is that it would most likely require that the ground reference plane for the interconnect package be formed in the relatively expensive thin film structure. While it is possible to use a metal stiffener 38 as the ground reference plane, all conductive adhesives known to the present inventors that may be used to attach the stiffener to thin film structure 14 would act as a high ohmic reference plane that would have a resistivity at least one or two orders of magnitude higher than copper. This approach would thus greatly slow down signals passing through the interconnect structure making it impractical for high speed devices.
NEC solved some of the above-noted problems when it developed technology described in U.S. Patent Application 2002/0001937 A1, which was published on Jan. 3, 2002 (hereinafter the “'1937 application”). A number of different processes for forming a semiconductor package board are described in the '1937 application. Each of these different processes uses a metal substrate similar to substrate 10 as a base for an overlying thin film interconnect structure. The interconnect structure includes a plurality of metal interconnect pads that are formed directly on the metal substrate. A central opening in the substrate is subsequently formed that exposes these metal interconnect pads for attachment to an integrated circuit that can be positioned within the central opening.
FIGS. 3A–3D are simplified cross-sectional views of a packaging structure formed according to one of the techniques described in the NEC '1937 application. Referring to FIG. 3A, the process starts by providing a metal substrate 60, which unlike the previously described NEC process, will become part of the final packaging product. A first set of bonding pads 62 is formed directly on substrate 60 and, as shown in FIG. 3B, a thin film interconnect structure 65 is formed over the substrate and over bonding pads 62.
Thin film interconnect structure 65 may include plural metal signal lines 64 separated by respective dielectric layers 63. A second set of bonding pads 66 is then formed over the top dielectric layer of thin film interconnect structure 64. The first set of bonding pads are ultimately connected to an integrated circuit die while the second set allow the die to be connected to the outside world through, for example, a BGA structure. Thus, second set of bonding pads 66 has a pitch that is greater than the pitch of first set of bonding pads 62.
Referring to FIG. 3C, a protective layer of photoresist 68 is then applied over the upper and lower surfaces of the structure and patterned on the lower surface to expose a central opening 70 of metal substrate 60 that is to be etched away. After a portion of substrate 60 is etched away to expose bonding pads 62, an integrated circuit die 72 can be positioned within opening 70 and connected to the first set of bonding pads as shown in FIG. 3D. A filler material such as filler 74 fills the space between die 72 and the packaging structure. Finally, BGA solder balls 76 are mounted to pads 66 formed on the upper surface of the structure.
FIGS. 4A and 4B show top and bottom perspective views, respectively, of the final packaging structure. As can be seen from a comparison of FIGS. 4A and 4B to FIGS. 2A and 2B, the final structure formed using this technique is very similar to the final structure formed from the earlier-described NEC technique even though the processes used to produce these structure are in themselves very different.
While the above described technique provides some improvement over the earlier described NEC technique, including the capability to test for short circuits prior to attaching a die, it is not without its own limitations. For example, while there are many different embodiments or variations of the above described technique set forth in the '1937 application, one element that each embodiment has in common is that the first set of bonding pads 62 (e.g., the flip chip pads) are formed directly on the surface of the metal substrate 60. This prevents forming signal lines in areas of the packaging structure outside the region designated for central opening 70 concurrent with the formation of pads 62 because any such signal lines formed directly on metal substrate 60 would be shorted together. Also, the etch step that removes metal substrate 60 in opening 70 may tend to undesirably etch pads 62 under some conditions. Additionally, the vertical sidewalls of pads 62 create areas of stress at corner regions 78 (shown in FIG. 3A) that may result in reliability problems under certain conditions.
Thus, while each of the NEC metal-substrate FCBGA processes described above represent improvements in some respects over previously known laminate-substrate FCBGA techniques, new and improved integrated circuit packaging techniques and structures are desirable. | {
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Due to stricter regulations, there is a significant amount of research being conducted to identify and produce organofluorine compounds having a much lower global warming potential (GWP) and zero or near zero ozone depletion potential (ODP). For example, hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs) including HFO-1234yf (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoropropene), HFO-1234ze (1,1,1,3-tetrafluoropropene), and HFO-1243zf (1,1,1-trifluoropropene), and hydrochlorofluoroolefins (HCFOs) such as HCFO-1233zd (1,1,1-trifluoro-3-chloropropene) and HCFO-1233xf (1,1,1-trifluoro-2-chloropropene) have been identified as fluorocarbons having a lower GWP, and therefore are considered to be non-greenhouse gases. Additionally, the ODP of those compounds is zero or negligible. HFO-1234yf, HFO-1234ze, and HCFO-1233zd, which are environmentally acceptable, have also been found to have lower flammability, acceptable toxicity, and good performance. Therefore, these products are under consideration by the industry as refrigerants or refrigerant components of a blend, foam blowing agents, aerosol propellants, and solvents for metal degreasing.
However, the production of these and other organofluorine compounds often require substantial separation steps to isolate the compounds from other components present in the reaction product, including unreacted feedstock, undesirable byproducts, and coproducts.
Production of organofluorine compounds often results in the formation of other organofluorine compounds, organochlorines, and chlorofluorocarbons (collectively referred to herein as “coproducts of organofluorine production” or simply “coproducts”), as both intermediate products and coproducts that appear in the final reaction mixture. For example, production of HFO-1234yf often forms other coproducts, such as HCFC-244bb (2-chloro-1,1,1,2-tetrafluoropropane), HFC-245cb (1,1,1,2,2-pentafluoropropane), and HFO-1233xf. Production of HCFO-1233zd and HFO-1234ze often forms a reaction mixture comprising unsaturated coproducts, such as cis and trans HCFO-1232zd (c/t-2,3-dichloro-3,3-difluoropropene), cis and trans HCFO-1231zd (c/t-1,3,3-trichloro-2-fluoropropene), and HFO-1243zf, and saturated coproducts, such as HFC-245fa (1,1,1,3,3-pentafluoropropane), HCFC-244fa (3-chloro-1,1,1,3-tetrafluoropropane), HCFC-243fa (2,2-dichloro-1,1,1-trifluoropropane), HCFC-242fa (1,3,3-trichloro-1,1-difluoropropane), HCFC-241fa (1,1,3,3-tetrachloro-1-fluoropropane), and HCC-240fa (1,1,1,3,3-pentachloropropane). Many of these organofluorine compounds and coproducts of organofluorine production form azeotropes or azeotrope-like mixtures, which further complicates separation of the organofluorine compounds.
Undesirable components of the reaction product mixture may include unreacted hydrogen fluoride (HF), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO2), water, and hydrogen chloride (HCl), oxygen, nitrogen, NOx, chlorine and impurities. Many of these organofluorine compounds are known to form an azeotrope or azeotrope-like mixtures with hydrogen fluoride, HF.
In conventional methods, the organofluorine compounds are separated from unreacted HF using separation techniques such as scrubbing, distillation, and phase separation.
In one conventional method, HF is removed from the organofluorine by water scrubbing, which is followed by organic drying and then distillation of the impure organic. The HF is discharged as waste aqueous HF.
In another conventional method, sulfuric acid is used to absorb HF from the organofluorine mixture. The HF is then desorbed, which allows the HF to be recycled back to the fluorination reactor. The use of sulfuric acid is limited because it can lead to unwanted reactions, such as the isomerization of trans-HCFO-1233zd to the toxic cis-HCFO-1233zd.
Other conventional methods include low temperature phase separation, in which an HF-rich phase is removed from an organic-rich phase. The HF-rich phase is then fed to a first azeotropic distillation column to recover the azeotrope as an overhead and pure HF as the bottoms. The organic-rich phase, which includes the organofluorine compound, such as HCFO-1233zd, is fed to a second distillation column to further separate HF from the organofluorine. For example, trans-HCFO-1233zd is removed from the top and cis-HCFO-1233zd is removed from the bottom along with HF.
Another conventional separation method comprises organic extractive distillation, which requires the addition of another solvent which is preferentially extracted with either the organofluorine component or HF. A second distillation is then used to recover the extractant from the organofluorine component or the HF.
Current processes for separating organofluorine compounds from other organofluorine compounds or coproducts of organofluorine production rely on distillation, most often azeotropic distillation. Distillation between certain organofluorine compounds and coproducts becomes increasingly difficult when the boiling points differ by 10° C. or less.
The conventional methods for separating organofluorine compounds are time-consuming and expensive, and, in many cases, involve the use of additional components, which require further separation to form an isolated product.
Membrane separation technology is widely used on many industrial processes such as, for example, gas permeation (e.g. separation of oxygen, nitrogen, helium from air; separation of hydrogen from hydrocarbon such as methane). Liquid separation membranes are used, for example, in the recovery of zinc from wastewater or nickel from electroplating solution. Reverse osmosis is used in desalination plants and in the treatment of waste water to remove impurities.
However, separation membranes have not been used in the fluorochemical industry, such as breaking an azotrope or azeotrope-like or separation of a organofluorine compound from another organofluorine compound, or separation of a organofluorine compound from an HF/organofluorine. A major issue with using membrane separations in the organofluorine industry is the absence of commercial separation membranes compatible with HF and organofluorine products.
Thus, there is a need for separation techniques for the recovery of organofluorine compounds that can be performed more quickly, less expensively, with less energy, and/or without the need for additional chemicals. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to photographic apparatus, e.g., a camera having a spread roller assembly for spreading a photographic processing composition across a layer of an exposed film unit of the instant type so as to initiate the formation of a visible image.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The present invention relates to compact photographic apparatus for use with film units of the instant or self-developing type, and more particularly to such an apparatus having a spread roller assembly for assisting in the movement of an exposed film unit from an exposure position to a storage chamber. The spread roller assembly is adapted to move the film unit through a minimum path of travel while simultaneously spreading a photographic processing composition, preferably liquid, across a layer of the exposed film unit in order to initiate the formation of a visible image within the film unit.
Generally speaking, the concept of providing a compact photographic apparatus by minimizing the length of the path of travel of the exposed film unit between its exposure position and its storage position may be accomplished by locating the latter substantially adjacent to the former and moving the exposed film unit in a first direction away from the exposure position and then in a second generally opposite direction toward the storage position. During such movement a processing liquid is spread across a layer of the film unit to initiate the formation of a visible image within the film unit. Examples of cameras utilizing such concept may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,426,664, 3,537,370 and 3,722,383.
As regard the camera described in the '664 patent, a rather complicated and expensive belt system is required to move the film unit from its cassette into and through its exposure position and then into its storage position while simultaneously synchronizing the camera's exposure system with such movement. The compactness of the camera shown in the '370 patent is compromised, at least in its long dimension, due to the requirement of a flat compartment for receiving a portion of an exposed film unit prior to its movement back toward a storage position. Finally, the camera shown in the '383 patent requires movement of an image-receiving sheet into superposition with an exposed image-recording sheet, movement of the two between a pair of spread rollers, and then stripping of the image-recording sheet from the image-receiving sheet. | {
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A conventional condom comprises an elongate thin tubular sheath made of a resilient material. The sheath is closed on one end and open at the other end to provide for insertion of a penis. The condom is typically rolled into a relatively thin disc during manufacture thereof to provide for compact storage and to provide for ease of application of the condom. Conventional condoms are considered to be very effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies and transmission of venereal diseases. However, during coitus, a conventional condom is susceptible to slipping off. This slippage has the obvious disadvantage of potentially allowing leakage of semen or other bodily fluids. Further, a conventional condom, which tends to function best when the penis is fully erect, may slip with regards to a partially erect penis. This is particularly significant after ejaculation if the penis remains in the vagina. In that case, the penis may soften, and become smaller, thus allowing for possible slippage (i.e., the condom may slip off of the wearer).
A conventional condom is also susceptible to breaks or ruptures. Again, such occurrences have the obvious disadvantage of potentially allowing leakage of semen or other bodily fluids.
A search of the prior art shows that there a numerous patents relating to condoms. All of these patents disclose condoms constructed of conventional materials and thickness. Therefore, none provide the wearer protection against breaks or ruptures. Some of these patents disclose a condom equipped with retaining apparatus to secure the condom to the user. However, the retaining devices disclosed are straps that must be tied together or are otherwise discontinuous. These methods of keeping the condom attached to the wearer allow for the condom to become untied or otherwise unsecured and, thus, may allow for slippage. Consequently, there is a need for a condom that fits comfortably on the wearer and that will not break or accidentally slip off. A search of the prior art shows that no such condom is known. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus which processes report data, readably within a predetermined group, and a system thereof, a method thereof, a program thereof, and a recording medium which records the program.
2. Description of Related Art
There has been a conventional system having a widely known configuration in which a terminal computer is connected to each server, using an information network such as Internet, to attain data accumulated in servers. Examples of the configuration will be a site which provides map data, sites which provide traffic data, and weather data, and the like.
There has been also a known site which introduces a membership system so that only members can read data.
In conventional sites and even in the site introducing the membership system, however, data is disclosed widely and it is therefore impossible to share data among limited friends. Also in conventional sites, users merely use data provided from the managers of the sites, and differentiated handling of data is impossible. For example, friends cannot use a restaurant like a hiding place among them based on shared data. Hence, an operation of distributing data to be differentiated to each of friends must be carried out, so processing of data is complicated. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Certain refrigerator appliances include an ice maker. To produce ice, liquid water is directed to the ice maker and frozen. A variety of ice types can be produced depending upon the particular ice maker used. For example, certain ice makers include a mold body for receiving liquid water. An auger within the mold body can rotate, scrape ice off an inner surface of the mold body, and force it through an extruder to form ice nuggets. Such ice makers are generally referred to as nugget style ice makers. Certain consumers prefer nugget style ice makers and their associated ice nuggets.
In certain nugget ice makers, water is supplied to the mold body from a reservoir that is remote from the mold body. Water from the remote reservoir may enter the mold body through a water inlet positioned on the mold body, e.g., commonly at the bottom of the mold body. The remote reservoir may also have a float for controlling the water level in the reservoir and in the mold body. However, because the mold body is maintained at a temperature below the freezing point of water, water entering the mold body often freezes and clogs the water inlet. A heater may be positioned near the water inlet to ensure that water entering the mold body does not freeze, but this may result in imbalanced cooling of the mold body and reduced ice maker efficiency. In addition, such a construction requires additional parts, increases cost, and prolongs assembly time. The resulting ice maker therefore has a larger footprint, requires additional components, and exhibits decreased performance and efficiency.
Accordingly, a refrigerator appliance having an ice making assembly with an improved water supply system would be useful. More particularly, a water supply system that requires fewer parts, has a smaller footprint, and exhibits improved performance and efficiency would be particularly beneficial. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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In the oil and gas exploration and production industry there are many reasons for abandoning a well, including end-of-life decommissioning, isolating an exploration well and the like. Also, there may be occasions where long term suspension of a well is required, for example where reserves are located but production is not yet economically viable. Any wellbore decommissioning or abandoning (temporary or permanent) must follow legislation appropriate for the region in question. Such legislation typically calls for a robust barrier or plug to be set within the wellbore. In many cases a cement plug is often used, providing a barrier of low permeability, long term integrity and low levels of shrinking. Also, such legislation typically requires multiple barriers to be established, to provide contingency in the event of failure or compromise of one of these barriers.
There is a constant drive in the oil and gas industry to improve safety measures, including providing robust measures for setting and retaining in place wellbore barriers, for example for use in well abandonment or suspension. | {
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According to the state of art, the washing machines, also known as clothes washers, are basically characterized by the fact of speeding up the clothes washing process by means of the friction produced by the motion which arises inside the washing chamber (tank).
Many washing machines and washing systems are available. As a rule, there are two outstanding systems: the tilting system; and the churning system.
In their basic embodiment, conventional washing machines use water or water steam (which is considered a universal solvent), and a chemical agent, which will make the dirt removal easier, such as: powder soap among others.
As already informed, in the tilting system, the clothes are put inside the tank (or washing chamber) horizontally arranged, which receives the circular motion of the motor by means of a belt and pulley and rotates 360xc2x0 around a axis the mixture water, clothes and chemical agent, follows the circular motion of the tank until the upper part of the aforesaid tank is reached, afterwards, the mixture falls down, pushed downwards by the gravity force, furthering the collision and the friction of the mixture of water and clothes with the surface of the tank, thus enabling the dirt removal.
According to this concept, the clothes are not totally immersed and, thus, require less water as compared with the churning washing system, wherein the clothes are totally immersed, the access to the clothes is through the front part of the machine (cover), therefore the user must stoop, which constitutes an ergonomic problem.
In some washing machines which carry out the tilting washing system, the water is superseded by water steam and the powder soap is superseded by other chemical agents among them, percloretilene, Dry Par, Acqua Clean.
In the churning washing, the mixture water, clothes inside the tank, moves brought by the alternated horizontal motion of the axis with the blades, located at the center of the tank itself.
Thus, the alternated motion of the aforesaid axis with the blades inside the tank is the element responsible for the friction between the water and the clothes and, as a result, for the dirt removal; however, the direct contact between the axis and the blades reduces the useful life of cloth.
In this concept, the clothes are totally immersed, making the water consumption comparatively larger, in addition to the fact that the motor is constantly used so as to enable the alternated horizontal motion of the axis with the blades, thus increasing the amperage and the electricity consumption; in this system, the access to the clothes (cover) is through the upper part of the machine, which is much better from an ergonomic point of view.
In the so-called churning system machines, the building-up of clothes in the lower and upper part of the washing chamber is almost unchanged, which permits a first-rate washing.
This is the basic embodiment of the two most outstanding systems of washing machines.
The present patent is changing in-depth the concept of the conventional washing machines, because they prefer, in substitution to the usual cylindric tanks (or washing chamber), a spherical tank (or washing chamber), from which one or more hub caps can be extracted, which carries out the tilting washing of the clothes, but forth and back, in other words, the washing chamber is forced to rotate in 360xc2x0 both ways at the same time.
There are many operational technical advantages in relation to conventional washing machines.
Among the advantages, we can mention the speeding-up of the washing process and thus the saving of water and electricity, due to the fact that the washing and rinsing are carried out both ways, which originates a stronger friction between the clothes and the water, whereas the centrifugation is carried out around a unique axis.
Another advantage consists in a more effective and efficient washing, if compared to the washing of the machines which use the churning system and the one-way tilting system.
Another advantage, a constructive one, consists in the fact that the access to the clothes (cover) can be through the front part or through the upper part of the machine; besides, the spherical anatomy of the tank enables the self-arrangement of the clothes, making easier the toe-in of the machine as well as its suspension.
All these advantages arise from a totally new concept, according which the tilting of the spherical washing chamber is carried out both ways, in other words, around two axes at the same time.
It must be pointed out that only the tank rotates 360xc2x0, while the clothes upon reaching the upper part of the tank falls again.
So as to obtain the 360-degree turn of the tank around two axes at the same time, some mechanical solutions have been foreseen, among them a set of gears linked to the motor which reproduces the 360-degree turn around a first axis and another set of gears linked to the tank which changes and carries out a 360-degree turn around a second axis. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system, apparatus and method for testing elongate objects, such as pipe, and is directed toward the problem of detecting corrosion, defects or other anomalies to the pipe under conditions where access and/or visual inspection of the pipe is either not possible or impractical.
b) Background Art
In petroleum processing and petrochemical plants and other industrial environments, it is common to have numerous pipes extending between various locations in the plant, with these pipes carrying fluid or gas (e.g.petroleum products), often under high heat and pressure. These pipes are commonly made of steel, and can have an inside diameter ranging anywhere from two to sixty inches, or even outside of this range. The exterior of these pipes are often insulated, with the insulating layers being as great as approximately 1/8 to 5 inches in thickness, or outside of this range.
For a number of reason, (safety, environmental considerations, avoiding costly shut-downs, etc.), the integrity of these pipes must be maintained. Defects in the pipe can occur for a number of reasons. One is that moisture can collect between the insulating layer and the pipe, thus causing corrosion (i.e.rust). Visual inspection of the steel pipe that is encapsulated in insulation is not possible unless the layers of insulation are removed, and then replaced. However, this is expensive and time consuming, and as a practical matter it would be economically unfeasible to accomplish the inspections with reasonable frequency.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a means of inspecting pipes under the circumstances given above in a manner that corrosion, other defects and/or anomalies can be detected with a relatively high degree of reliability, and in a manner that the various difficulties of inspection, such as those mentioned above, can be diminished and/or alleviated. | {
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The microorganism P. haemolytica biotype A, serotype 1, is the principal causative agent of pneumonic pasteurellosis in cattle. If techniques could be developed for introducing exogenous DNA into P. haemolytica, it would be possible to produce site-specific mutations in this bacterium. Such mutants could provide "rationally" attenuated strains for use as live vaccines.
Attenuated auxotrophic mutants were first described by Bacon and Burrows in the early 1950's. They reported that attenuated auxotrophs of Salmonella typhi defective in the aromatic amino acid biosynthetic pathway were avirulent in mice. Subsequently, it has been demonstrated in widely diverse bacteria that disrupting the aromatic amino acid biosynthetic pathway produces attenuated organisms. For example, attenuated strains of the invasive bacteria Salmonella typhi, Salmonella typhimurium, Shigella flexneri, and Yersina enterocolitica, were generated by introducing mutations in their respective aroA genes. Also attenuation was produced in the non-invasive bacteria Bordetella pertussis and Pasteurella multocida through aroA inactivation. Strains which carry aroA mutations are unable to synthesize chorismic acid from which p-aminobenzoic acid, dihydrobenzoate, and aromatic amino acids are produced. It is likely that the absence of one or more of these compounds in vivo is responsible for the poor growth of aroA mutants in the hosts.
Live attenuated bacterial strains generally provide superior protection as compared to killed bacterial vaccines (bacterins). In general, live vaccines elicit a stronger cell mediated response in the host than do bacterins. The superior immunity provided by attenuated live organisms may be explained by their ability to induce expression of stress-proteins and, possibly, of certain toxins within the host. The immune response generated by live organisms would be directed against these abundant proteins and thereby provide better protection.
There is a long-felt and continuing need in the art for veterinary vaccines to protect cattle from P. haemolytica infection. There also is a need for techniques for introducing DNA into P. haemolytica. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a lost motion correction system and a lost motion correction method for a numerical control machine tool. This invention further relates to a lost motion correction value setting method for a machine tool of a hybrid control system, a computer readable recording medium for recording a program for executing this method on a computer, and a numerical control machine tool.
2. Description of Relevant Art
The numerical control machine tool includes a holding and processing portion for holding and processing a workpiece in a space defined by imaginary axes, and a numerical controller for providing electrical control commands for causing the holding and processing portion to make necessary actions. The numerical control machine tool has drives by axes that mechanically act in dependence on the control commands, and a group of mechanical elements that transmit mechanical actions of the drives to the holding and processing portion. A transmission system for mechanically transmitting the control commands to a position for the workpiece to be held and/or processed is constituted by the mechanical element group and mechanical elements of the drives and the holding and processing portion.
The numerical controller calculates reverse functions of transmission functions by axes of the transmission system, with respect to necessary actions of the holding and processing portion, to thereby obtain the control commands.
However, mechanical elements of the transmission system are respectively real rigid bodies and, when operated, have engagement slips at their meshing engagement parts or frictional engagement parts, deformations by elongation and deflection depending on acting forces, and thermal deformations depending on their temperatures. Amounts of such slips and deformations have their components by axes, of which integrations along the transmission system give values that represent errors between the control commands and real actions of the holding and processing portion.
Among the errors, such an error that occurs due to a directional difference in motion of the holding and processing portion, or more specifically, a positioning error occurring between a positioning to an identical target point in a positive sense (at an advance side) and that in a negative sense (at a return side) is called a lost motion error.
The lost motion error is caused by a backlash due to loose engagement in and a windup due to deflection of mechanical elements. It has delicate variations depending on acting conditions of respective elements, and is difficult to be estimated by calculations.
In the past, therefore, the numerical control machine tool was operated for a trial run, where lost motion errors were measured as detail as possible and lost motion correction values for canceling them were parametrically set, and control commands for actual processing were corrected by the set correction values to thereby effect a lost motion correction.
For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 8-263117, there has been proposed measuring lost motion errors at a plurality of processing positions for each of a plurality of feed speeds, and respectively setting corresponding lost motion correction values.
For this reason, in the past, in adjustment at the maker end factory of a numerical control machine tool or in installation at the user end factory, there was employed a high-precision measurement machine such as a laser measurement machine, so that machine positions were actually measured by a maker side engineer taking a long time, and then a careful trial run was repeated for measurement of lost motion errors.
It therefore was difficult to perform, at the user end alone, resetting lost motion correction values in accordance with a condition of use of the numerical control machine tool.
This invention was made with the above-noted point in view. It is an object of this invention to provide a lost motion correction method and a lost motion correction system for a numerical control machine tool that allows a necessary precision for processing to be kept by measuring lost motion errors with their dynamical properties in view, even with a moderated measuring precision.
It also is an object of this invention to provide a lost motion correction value setting method for a machine tool of a semi-close/full-close hybrid loop control system, in which lost motion errors can be measured without employing a measuring machine of a particularly high precision, and lost motion correction values can be set at the user end alone, as well as a computer readable recording medium for recording a program for executing this method on a computer, and a numerical control machine tool.
To achieve the object, according to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a lost motion correction method for a numerical control machine tool for correcting a lost motion error of a mechanical transmission system including a first mechanical element to be operated in accordance with a control command from a control program and a second mechanical element for positioning a control object to target positions. This lost motion correction method comprises detecting an operated amount of the first mechanical element, detecting an operated position of the second mechanical element, recognizing from the control program that the control object stops at a first target position, calculating a stationary lost motion error as a lost motion error along a motion stop of the mechanical transmission system upon a positioning of the control object to the first target position, based on the operated amount of the first mechanical element and the operated position of the second mechanical position, setting a first lost motion correction value for canceling the stationary lost motion error, and correcting, by the first lost motion correction value, a first control command for positioning the control object to the first target position.
According to a second aspect of the invention, a lost motion correction method according to the first aspect further comprises recognizing from the control program that the control object changes a moving direction at a second target position, calculating a dynamic lost motion error as a lost motion error along a continuous motion of the mechanical transmission system upon a positioning of the control object to the second target position, based on the operated amount of the first mechanical element and the operated position of the second mechanical position, setting a second lost motion correction value for canceling the dynamic lost motion error, and correcting, by the second lost motion correction value, a second control command for positioning the control object to the second target position.
Further, to achieve the object described, according to a third aspect of the invention, there is provided a lost motion correction system for a numerical control machine tool for correcting a lost motion error of a mechanical transmission system including a first mechanical element to be operated in accordance with a control command from a control program and a second mechanical element for positioning a control object to target positions. This lost motion correction system comprises a first detector configured to detect an operated amount of the first mechanical element, a second detector configured to detect an operated position of the second mechanical element, a recognizer configured to recognize from the control program that the control object stops at a first target position, a calculator configured to calculate a stationary lost motion error as a lost motion error along a motion stop of the mechanical transmission system upon a positioning of the control object to the first target position, based on the operated amount of the first mechanical element and the operated position of the second mechanical position, a setter configured to set a first lost motion correction value for canceling the stationary lost motion error, and a corrector configured to correct, by the first lost motion correction value, a first control command for positioning the control object to the first target position.
According to a fourth aspect of the invention, in a lost motion correction system according to the third aspect, the recognizer is configured to recognize from the control program that the control object changes a moving direction at a second target position, the calculator is configured to calculate a dynamic lost motion error as a lost motion error along a continuous motion of the mechanical transmission system upon a positioning of the control object to the second target position, based on the operated amount of the first mechanical element and the operated position of the second mechanical position, the setter is configured to set a second lost motion correction value for canceling the dynamic lost motion error, and the corrector is configured to correct, by the second lost motion correction value, a second control command for positioning the control object to the second target position.
Further, to achieve the object described, according to a fifth aspect of the invention, there is provided a lost motion correction value setting method for a numerical control machine tool of a hybrid control system for performing a positional loop control by using machine position signals output from a position detecting scale for detecting a machine position and motor position signals output from a rotary encoder for detecting a rotation angle of a driving servo motor. This lost motion correction value setting method comprises executing a test program to periodically input the machine position signals and the motor position signals, calculating differences between the machine position signals and the motor position signals to determine errors, calculating a difference between an average value on an advance side and an average value on a return side of the errors, and holding the difference as a dynamic lost motion correction value.
According to a sixth aspect of the invention, in a lost motion correction value setting method according to the fifth aspect, an arc interpolation or a linear reciprocal axis control is performed by the test program, and the lost motion correction value is calculated to be held for each feed axis.
According to a seventh aspect of the invention, in a lost motion correction value setting method according to the fifth or sixth aspect, Xi is defined as a coordinate of a target position to be designated at an i-th time with respect to an arbitrary coordinate axis X by the test program, and a decision of the advance side and the return side is automatically made in a manner in which a coordinate Xi-1 is deemed as a reverse position when three coordinates Xi, Xi-1, and Xi-2 to be contiguously designated meet a condition of (Xixe2x88x92Xi-1) (Xi-1xe2x88x92Xi-2) less than 0.
Further, to achieve the object described, according to an eighth aspect of the invention, there is provided a lost motion correction value setting method for a numerical control machine tool of a hybrid control system for performing a positional loop control by using machine position signals output from a position detecting scale for detecting a machine position and motor position signals output from a rotary encoder for detecting a rotation angle of a driving servo motor. This lost motion correction value setting method comprises executing a test program to perform a reciprocal pitch feed, inputting the machine position signals obtained at respective stop positions on an advance side and at respective stop positions on a return side of identical command positions, and storing an average value of differences therebetween as a stationary lost motion correction value.
According to a ninth aspect of the invention, there is provided a computer readable recording medium for recording a program for executing on a computer a lost motion correction value setting method according to any of the fifth to eighth aspect.
According to a tenth aspect of the invention, there is provided a numerical control machine tool of a hybrid control system having a computerized numerical controller for executing a lost motion correction value setting method according any of the fifth to eighth aspect. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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In fleet management, the use of a global positioning system (GPS) to plan travel routes is a common method to reduce fuel costs, optimize labor budget, and improve operational efficiencies. However, even the best-planned routes are not always followed. There are a number of reasons why a driver deviates from a planned optimal route. A driver may re-route to a customer with more urgent needs, to accommodate unexpected construction roadwork and traffic congestion, to avoid a weather condition, and/or to refuel the vehicle. A driver may also reroute to make an unauthorized stop for personal reasons. When a vehicle travels off the planned route, the GPS mounted on the vehicle detects an off-route deviation which prompts the GPS to calculate a restoration route from the vehicle's current position back to either the original optimal route or a new optimal route, and display new navigational information to guide the vehicle thereto. The route deviation detection here is basic, and may only be used as a trigger for the purposes of recalculating travel routes. Other benefits that route deviation data can provide are not yet realized.
Route deviation data obtained by comparing a vehicle's actual travel route to a planned one provides several benefits. First, it improves driver accountability. Although drivers can be honest and trustworthy, operation management may have to deal with occasional “bad apples.” When drivers know their actual routes are being analyzed, they may be more inclined to stick to the planned route, which means more savings on both labor and fuel, and allows for more efficient service for customers. Second, it may be able to identify better routes which can be used to generate optimal routes for future travels. Although GPS technology can quickly create optimized routes for all of the required stops, it may not come with local knowledge. For example, if a driver has routinely made a deviation from a planned route, the driver may likely know of an alternative route that the GPS does not. The driver is perhaps avoiding train tracks, a particularly congested intersection, or an unsafe part of town. Finally, it helps in fleet management. By being up-front about the GPS tracking with the drivers, management and drivers align their expectations of staying on the planned routes. If there is ever a dispute with a driver, management can solve it quickly by referring to the tracking data before the issue escalates. Collected route deviation data may also be used as training material for new drivers, or as a guide to conduct drivers' performance evaluations.
Further, current systems may contain flaws that may limit accurate analyzation of tracked route data. For example, a GPS can be interchangeable with different vehicles, and therefore if a driver shares their vehicle and/or GPS with another driver, it may be difficult for a system administrator to determine the true identity of a driver of a tracked route. In addition, roadways and geographies can sometime mirror in pattern and distance. It may be difficult for legacy systems to verify with satisfactory accuracy that a traveled route is directed to a system generated route.
Thus, there is a need for a navigation tracking system that is capable of detecting and validating tracked route data. The data can be further analyzed to retrieve important information that can be used to improve fleet management and to incorporate feedback into optimal route planning. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The method for producing olive oil consists in crushing (milling) whole olives until a fine paste or pulp is obtained. During this step, the milled olive material can be constantly washed with water. The paste is then mechanically pressed (pressing) in order to extract therefrom its liquid content. The liquid obtained is then decanted in order to separate the two phases of which it is composed: the oil and the aqueous phase. The waters from washing the milled material and the aqueous phase that are recovered at the end of the pressing are called wastewaters or alternatively vegetable waters. These waters represent approximately 60% of the weight of the olive.
These wastewaters are very rich in antioxidant phenolic compounds; an antioxidant phenolic compound that is particularly desired is hydroxytyrosol; it is present at a content of 0.1 to 2 g/l in the vegetable waters.
Hydroxytyrosol is a simple phenolic compound which has a side chain of alcohol type at position 1 of the aromatic ring, and also two hydroxyl substitutions at positions 3 and 4 of said ring. This compound belongs to the family of ortho-diphenols, which are compounds generally known to have advantageous antioxidant properties.
Its consumption appears to contribute to the beneficial effect of the Cretan diet on human health. Numerous research studies carried out on hydroxytyrosol have shown the advantage of this compound as an antioxidant. The antioxidant activity of hydroxytyrosol confers thereon fatty-substance-preserving agent properties; it is also known for its antibacterial, antiviral and antifungal properties.
This compound is therefore considered to be a very good food supplement or additive and to be an active agent that is of use for reinforcing cell protection with respect to oxidative stress and to the pathological conditions that it generates.
Owing to the advantage, in particular for the food and cosmetics industries, that hydroxytyrosol, and more generally olive polyphenols, represent, various attempts at recovering the by-products rich in phenolic compounds, such as wastewaters (Visioli et al. “Waste waters from olive oil production are rich in natural antioxidants” Experientia, 1995; 51: 32-34), have been carried out.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,803 thus describes a method for extracting antioxidant compositions from olive-derived products: pulp, oil or alternatively wastewaters from olives at various stages of maturity. When the starting product consists of wastewaters, the method consists in treating them on an adsorbent polymeric resin which traps the antioxidant compounds, and then in washing the resin with an organic polar solvent in order to recover the antioxidant compounds.
However, the implementation of this method appears to be less suitable for the wastewaters than for the other olive-derived products. Specifically, comparison of the phenolic-compound composition of extracts obtained from various starting materials shows that the extract obtained from wastewaters has a low phenolic-compound content: 16.8%; in addition, the antioxidant activity of this extract is the lowest of all the extracts obtained.
European patent application EP 1 623 960 describes a method for preparing tyrosol and/or hydroxytyrosol from olive wastewaters (vegetable waters) which comprises steps of: physical separation involving several membrane treatments (microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis) of the vegetable waters, preferably at a neutral or alkaline pH; chromatographic separation of the tyrosol, of the hydroxytyrosol and of other phenolic compounds from the concentrate obtained after the final membrane treatment; catalytic conversion of the tyrosol to hydroxytyrosol in the presence of a mixture of methylrhenium trioxide (MTO) and of hydrogen peroxide; recovery of the aqueous phase comprising the antioxidant phenolic compounds.
This method has the drawback of implementing a chemical hydroxylation of the tyrosol to give hydroxytyrosol; however, in view of the subsequent consumption of the hydroxytyrosol obtained, it is necessary to eliminate the catalysts, in particular the methylrhenium trioxide, which is a strong irritant. In addition, this method comprises a very large number of steps: example 1 of this document implements a method which comprises no less than 13 membrane treatments. It is therefore very long to implement and expensive in terms of technical and human means, and its proportioning to the industrial scale is not economically envisionable.
The same is true for the method described in international application WO 2005/123603, which is intended for the fractionation of olive wastewaters with the aim of recovering them. This method comprises a step of adjustment of the pH; of enzymatic hydrolysis of the cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin contained in the wastewaters; of centrifugation; of tangential microfiltration; of tangential ultrafiltration; of diafiltration; of tangential nanofiltration and of reverse osmosis.
International application WO 2007/013032 describes a method for obtaining hydroxytyrosol-rich concentrates in particular from wastewaters; this method combines at least two steps: an extraction of hydroxytyrosol and of other bioactive compounds by means of a supercritical fluid and/or by nanofiltration; and a reverse osmosis.
The extraction by means of a supercritical fluid requires the use of very high pressures (above 74 bar when CO2 is used as supercritical fluid), and it is therefore a method that is complex and also expensive to implement. In addition, reverse osmosis is a process which results in the concentrating of an extract through removal of water; in particular, reverse osmosis does not allow a selective enrichment with low-molecular-weight phenolic compounds.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,416,808 describes a method for obtaining a hydroxytyrosol-rich composition from olive wastewaters, comprising the following steps: (i) production of a wastewater from depitted olives; (ii) addition of a sufficient amount of acid, preferably of citric acid, to reach a pH of between 1 and 5; (iii) incubation of the acidified wastewaters for at least two months in order for the oleuropein to be hydrolyzed to hydroxytyrosol. The method can also comprise a step of extraction of the hydroxytyrosol with an organic solvent, a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or alternatively an extraction with supercritical fluid.
Although it produces hydroxytyrosol-enriched compositions, this method, when it implements an extraction by HPLC or with supercritical fluid, is too expensive to be used on the industrial scale. In addition, the liquid-liquid extraction uses toxic organic solvents which are not compatible with use of the extract obtained in the cosmetics or food industries.
Thus, the methods described in the prior art do not give complete satisfaction and there remains the need to develop a method for extracting low-molecular-weight phenolic compounds from olive wastewaters which is simple and suitable for industrial implementation. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
} |
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a thin film transistor and a method of fabricating an active layer thereof. More particularly, the invention relates to a method of fabricating an active layer which can be directly performed in atmospheric air, a thin film transistor having the active layer, and a liquid crystal display.
2. Description of Related Art
Amorphous silicon transistor and low temperature polycrystalline transistor are the two major thin film transistors in today's active flat panel displays. Vacuum coating and photolithography processes are required for manufacturing such transistors.
Accordingly, the research and development of new thin film transistor technique has been focused, wherein the method of fabricating thin film transistor using liquid process has become today's major subject. In recent years, methods of manufacturing II-VI compound, for example, ZnO, thin film transistor using liquid process is quick and simple, besides, no vacuum equipment is required for such processes. Moreover, the use of amorphous silicon transistor greatly improves the performance of the device. Accordingly, the advantage of applying thin film transistor to large-size products is greatly increased.
Regarding ZnO semiconductor, the existing methods for manufacturing thin film transistor with ZnO precursor solution is capable of evenly distributing ZnO nano particles in solvent, or the ZnO sol-gel solution is coated on a substrate by using a conventional method first, and then the residual solvent may be removed through conventional thermal process. Finally, recrystallization is performed. Good device characteristics can be obtained by using these methods. However, as the process temperatures are usually higher than 500° C., which may adversely affect the throughput. | {
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Peptides in which the —CONH— linkage has been replaced by the —COCH2— isosteric moiety are known as ketomethylene pseudopeptides1 having known utility. For example, such ketomethylene pseudopeptides may be useful as antibiotics, antibiotic enhancers or enzyme inhibitors. Further, this structural modification has been used to make peptide-like molecules with improved metabolic stability.2 This structural motif has been employed for the preparation of numerous enzyme inhibitors,3 and has even been found as a natural product.4 There have been a number of ingenious methods developed for the preparation of this important class of compounds. By far the most common approach to the synthesis of this class of peptide isosteres is to ignore the issue of absolute stereochemistry.5 There are reports of possible solutions to the question of the absolute configuration of the N-terminal optically active center.6 There is a singular report of a successful approach to the preparation of ketomethylene pseudopeptides with absolute stereocontrol at both asymmetric centers.7
Inhibitor molecules based on the ketomethylene isostere have been found to be potent inhibitors of ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme),2 Substance P,3b carboxypeptidase A,3c carboxypeptidase A,3c and HIV protease.8
The preparation of optically active alpha-amino ketones by dehydrogenation of racemic alpha-amino ketones and hydrogenation using an asymmetric hydrogenation catalyst is disclosed for dehydroketomethylene pseudopeptides having an aromatic substituent adjacent the keto group in U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,420; East German Application Nos. 280,527; 280,528; 280,529; 240,372 described in corresponding Derwent Abstract Numbers 90-362220/49, 90-362221/49, 90-362222/49, 87-057083/09, respectively.
Additional references directed to optically pure optically active intermediates include:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,912,221;
EP Application No. 90307750.1;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,906,773;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,916,252;
U.S. Pat. No. 4,316,847;
EP Application No. 89403599.7;
Japanese Number 3002152A described in WPI Acc No. 91-048825;
German Appl. No. 140-036 described in Derwent Abstract No. 34661C/20.
Disclosure for a rhodium di (1R, 2R)- or (1S, 2S)-bis(phenyl-4-methoxyphenylphosphino)ethane (Rh DiPAMP) catalyst and its use as an enantioselective hydrogenation catalyst is exemplified in each of the following:
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1977(Aug. 31), 99; 17 pp. 594652;
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1977(Sep. 6), 94:18 pp. 6429–33;
Synthesis 1979(May) pp. 350–2; and
Chem. Ber. 1981, 114, pp. 1137–49.
The present process takes advantage of the very practical method for the preparation of optically active succinates9 as a key component for a modified Dakin-West reaction. This protocol effectively introduces the C-terminal optically active center with the appropriate D- or L-amino acid absolute configuration at C-2. The Dakin-West reaction does not however offer a-method for the control of the N-terminal optically active center at C-5. In an effort to control both asymmetric centers of a ketomethylene pseudopeptide, the present invention provides a method for the dehydrogenation/asymmetric hydrogenation of certain ketomethylene pseudopeptides. The invention is a novel synthetic method for the preparation of this class of peptide isostere in which both asymmetric centers are fixed with known absolute configuration. The present method permits the introduction of the C-5 optically active center with very high optical purity. In addition, since the absolute configuration of the C-5 center is induced by the absolute configuration of the asymmetric catalyst ligand, it is possible to make either optical antipode independently by the appropriate choice of ligand absolute configuration.
The flexibility of our synthesis permits the synthesis of very unique analogues of α-amino ketones that have improved biological properties relative to molecules available by more demanding syntheses. The literature is replete with examples of novel amino acid side chains designed to impart improved biological properties to these molecules. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The art of injection molding includes devices that deliver differing silicone components to a mixer block where the components are mixed. The mixed components are then delivered to a molding machine.
Many of the known machines are pneumatically controlled; these machines often produce non-uniform parts because they suffer a loss of pressure when the pistons in the mixing and metering systems undergo a change in stroke direction. Even a momentary loss of pressure at the moment of stroke reversal can result in an inferior product.
Perhaps even more importantly, the machines known heretofore lack sophisticated metering means that insure that the components will always be mixed in their proper ratios. In an application where a component A is to be mixed with equal parts of a component B, the known machines work fine when all parts thereof are in perfect working order. However, if a leak develops anywhere in the system, the 1:1 ratio will be affected and the resulting product will not meet its design specifications. Even if no leaks appear in the system, other problems may crop up that result in an improper mixing of components. Moreover, the shot size may vary as well if the machine experiences any malfunction.
It has long been the conventional wisdom in the injection molding industry that the way to produce uniform, high quality product is to keep the machines in perfect working order. Thus, injection molding machines are frequently down for repairs, since even minor leaks or minor maladjustments result in unacceptable product.
Accordingly, inventors have turned their attention to the problem in predictable ways. Better, longer wearing seals have been developed to lengthen the time between maintenance procedures, for example. Monitoring devices that trigger alarms or machine shutdown when a leak has been detected have also been developed, and so on.
The art appears to be fully developed to those of ordinary skill, because about all that lies ahead appears to be still longer-wearing machine parts, better system monitors and detectors, and the like. It is indisputable that the art, taken as a whole in accordance with the requirements of law, neither teaches nor suggests how the art could be freed from the need for machines that operate substantially perfectly. If a machine could be developed that could produce uniform shot sizes and ideal component ratios even in the presence of leaking seals, imperfectly machined parts, and the like, such a machine would be truly revolutionary, completely unanticipated or suggested by the art, and entitled to the broadest protection afforded by the law. | {
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Prior work has shown selective laser damage to subcutaneous fat without causing severe dermal damage or scarring. Using a 1210 nm near-infrared (NIR) diode laser, prior study has found an optimum fat selective dose of 80 J/cm2 based on a 10 mm spot size, 3 s exposure and contact cooling. Even though the laser treatments are safe, they are also painful. In continuing to optimize 1210 nm NIR laser for the treatment of cellulite and fat reduction, the treatment beam diameter was increased to 40 mm and the pulse duration was increased to 40 s. Tissue viability studies of freshly excised porcine and human skin using these treatment parameters found laser doses between 140-180 J/cm2 were needed to obtained sufficient thermal damage to subcutaneous fat while avoiding damage to the epidermis and dermis. These parameters can be too painful and not easily tolerated by subjects.
Other treatments of subcutaneous fat are ineffective and can cause adverse effects. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,351,252 to Altshuler et al. (“Altshuler”) describes treating a desired region of tissue by applying optical radiation to reach the depth of the region. Treatment regions disclosed by Altshuler include the reticular dermis region, the dermis-subcutaneous fat junction, and the subcutaneous fat region. For each of the three regions, Altshuler discloses a set of treatment parameters, including radiation exposure time and power density, that are used when pre-cooling is applied to the surface of the skin and a different set of parameters when treatment is performed without surface pre-cooling. FIG. 1 shows a diagram of treatment parameters disclosed by Altshuler when pre-cooling is not applied, the skin surface is cooled to 5° C. during radiation treatment and the laser wavelength is about 1.15-1.23 nm. The area 102 represents the range of radiation exposure time (2-65 s) versus the range of power density (2.5-50 W/cm2) disclosed by Altshuler for treating the reticular dermis region (1-3 mm depth) and the dermis-subcutaneous fat junction (2-5 mm depth). The area 106 represents the range of radiation exposure time (65-270 s) versus the range of power density (0.5-20 W/cm2) disclosed by Altshuler for treating the subcutaneous fat region (5-10 mm depth).
Studies have shown that more than 75% of the areas 102 and 106 taught by Altshuler are ineffective and/or can cause adverse skin effects. In FIG. 1, the solid curve 110 represents the lower bound of the therapeutic range for which treatment is effective. The solid curve 114 represents the upper bound of the therapeutic range for which treatment is effective. The solid curves 110 and 114 were calculated based on a thermal model of the skin and clinical results.
As shown by FIG. 1, a large portion of each of the areas 102 and 106 is outside of the effective treatment zone bound by the curves 110 and 114. In particular, portion 102a of the area 102 below the curve 110 indicates ineffective parameters for treating the reticular dermis region and the dermis-subcutaneous fat junction according to Altshuler. Portion 102b of the area 102 above the curve 114 indicates harmful parameters for treating the reticular dermis region and the dermis-subcutaneous fat junction according to Altshuler. Similarly, in the area 106, portion 106a below the curve 110 indicates ineffective parameters for treating the subcutaneous fat region according to Altshuler. Portion 106b above the curve 114 indicates harmful parameters for treating subcutaneous fat region according to Altshuler. Therefore, based on the teachings of Altshuler, a practitioner cannot discern the effective therapeutic range for treating different regions of tissue and is likely to provide ineffective or adverse treatment as a result. Adverse effects can include minor epidermal blistering to more severe full-thickness skin burns and ulcerations. | {
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a backlight unit, a method for driving the same, and a liquid crystal display device using the same; and more particularly, to a backlight unit, in which a feedback voltage received in a controller to adjust a driving voltage to be supplied to a light-emitting diode string is smaller than a difference between the driving voltage and a string voltage, a method for driving the same, and a liquid crystal display device using the same.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A backlight unit is used as an illuminating device for a display panel. The backlight unit according to the related art uses a light source of cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL). However, the CCFL using mercury therein may cause the environmental contamination. In addition, the CCFL has problems such as low response speed of 15 ms, and low color-realization. In detail, a color-realization ratio of CCFL is lowered by 75% as compared to the color-realization ratio of NTSC. Due to the aforementioned problems of the CCFL, a light-emitting diode (LED) has attracted great attentions as the light source for the backlight unit.
In comparison to the CCFL, the LED is environmentally-friendly, and enables a rapid response by realizing a response speed of several nano-seconds. Also, the LED can be driven by an impulse, and the LED can obtain the color-realization ratio of 80˜100%. Also, if using the LED as the light source for the backlight unit, luminance and color temperature of the backlight unit can be controlled by adjusting light-radiation intensity of the LED.
In the backlight unit using the LED, there are plural LED strings, wherein each LED string includes the plural LEDs electrically connected in series.
FIG. 1 is a circuit diagram illustrating a backlight unit according to the related art.
Referring to FIG. 1, the backlight unit according to the related art includes a driving-voltage supplier 10, an LED string 20, a controller 30, a switching device (Q), and a resistor (Rs).
The driving-voltage supplier 10 generates a driving voltage (Vd) for driving the LED string 20 through the use of input voltage (Vin) supplied from the external under the control of the controller 30; and supplies the generated driving voltage (Vd) to the LED string 20.
For convenience of explanation, FIG. 1 shows only one LED string 20. However, the virtual backlight unit is provided with the plural LED strings which are driven in the same method. The plural LED strings are electrically connected in parallel to an output terminal of the driving-voltage supplier 10.
The LED string 20 includes plural LEDs electrically connected in series between the output terminal of the driving-voltage supplier 10 and the switching device (Q). Each of the plural LEDs is driven by the driving voltage (Vd) supplied from the output terminal of the driving-voltage supplier 10, to thereby emit the light. In this case, as a driving current (Ist) flows in the LED string 20, a voltage drop corresponding to a string voltage (Vst) occurs.
The controller 30 receives a first feedback voltage (Vfb1) from a first node (N1), wherein the feedback voltage (Vfb1) corresponds to a difference between the driving voltage (Vd) and the string voltage (Vst); and adjusts the driving voltage (Vd) by controlling the driving-voltage supplier 10 based on the first feedback voltage (Vfb1).
For example, if the first feedback voltage (Vfb1) is higher than a reference voltage, the controller 30 lowers a voltage value of the driving voltage (Vd) outputted from the driving-voltage supplier 10. Meanwhile, if the first feedback voltage (Vfb1) is lower than the reference voltage, the controller 30 raises the voltage value of the driving voltage (Vd) outputted from the driving-voltage supplier 10. Accordingly, the controller 30 can supply the constant driving voltage (Vd) to the LED string 20.
The controller 30 receives a second feedback voltage (Vfb2) from a second node (N2), wherein the second feedback voltage (Vfb2) corresponds to a voltage drop occurring when the driving current (Ist) flows in the resistor (Rs); and adjusts an amount of the driving current (Ist) flowing in the LED string 20 by controlling the switching device (Q) based on the second feedback voltage (Vfb2).
In the aforementioned backlight unit according to the related art, the first feedback voltage (Vfb1) received in the controller 30 to adjust the driving voltage (Vd) to be supplied to the LED string 20 is the same as the difference between the driving voltage (Vd) and the string voltage (Vst). That is, the first feedback voltage (Vfb1) can be measured by the following equation 1.Vfb1=Vd−Vst, [Equation 1]wherein ‘Vfb1’ indicates the first feedback voltage; ‘Vd’ indicates the driving voltage; and ‘Vst’ indicates the string voltage.
A manufacturing cost and unit cost of the controller 30 is increased in proportion to a permissible voltage range, that is, the voltage value of the first feedback voltage. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a method for controlling wireless appliances, a home network system and a mobile terminal capable of carrying out the method, and more particularly to a method for controlling home appliances using a short message service, a home network system and a mobile terminal for carrying out the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, home automation (HA) systems automatically control various electric or electronic home appliances utilizing electronic technologies. The home automation systems enhance comfort and convenience for subscribers. For example, the systems make life easier and more enjoyable by automatically adjusting the lighting in a room and providing wireless remote control of various home appliances. Using a home automation system, subscribers can control various functions and appliances in their home even when they are away from home. Subscribers can also monitor and prevent any gas leakage, fire or home invasion while away from home.
In such a home automation or home network system, subscribers generally remotely control wireless devices in their homes via a wireless Internet (WAP, Wireless Application Protocol) or a short message service (SMS). The WAP based control is a technique for controlling home appliances using a preset menu in a mobile terminal. The SMS based control is a technique that allows a user to control each home appliance by directly inputting a corresponding control signal in text.
To control home appliances using WAP, a user has to access WAP services for authentication and operate a mobile terminal to select an appliance to be controlled. Such WAP access and authentication procedures are required even for a simple control of a home appliance, which is time-consuming and incurs wireless data communication fees. In addition, since a WAP server is needed to store a control menu, the WAP based control can be implemented only in a large housing complex.
To overcome the drawbacks of the WAP based control, a method for controlling home appliances using an SMS has been proposed. In this method, a user has to directly input control values corresponding to the respective appliances in a short message.
More specifically, the user has to select one of the home appliances and directly input a control value corresponding to the feature of the selected appliance in order to transfer a control signal to the appliance. In this connection, the user should memorize control values representing the respective home appliances and values for controlling the status of each appliance or write down such values on paper to input them in a short message. It is difficult to memorize all the control values unique to a number of home appliances and input each value correctly. Even after controlling a specific appliance using a short message, the user is not informed of the changed status of the controlled appliance. Thus, the user cannot immediately confirm whether the appliance was properly controlled. | {
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Obtaining useful chemicals, fuels, and energy from renewable biomass represents an important challenge as conventional fossil sources of these materials are slowly depleted. Lignocellulosic biomass is being studied widely as a viable feedstock for renewable liquid biofuels and chemicals because of its low cost and global availability. Biomass-derived fuels and chemicals are projected to substantially reduce net CO2 emissions as well, if produced with minimal use of fossil fuels.
To meet this challenge, there have been extensive efforts to convert biomass to fuels and other useful chemicals. Producing fuels and chemicals from biomass requires specialized conversion processes different from conventional petroleum-based conversion processes due to the nature of the feedstock and products. High temperatures, solid feed, high concentrations of water, unusual separations, contaminants, and oxygenated by-products are some of the features of biomass conversion that are distinct from those encountered in petroleum upgrading. Thus, there are many challenges that must be overcome to efficiently produce chemicals from biomass.
Lignocellulosic biomass (wood, grasses, agricultural residues, etc.) is an alternative, renewable, and sustainable source of feed with significant potential to address the increasing demands for alternative liquid fuels and ‘green’ chemicals. These feedstocks do not directly compete with the food supply, but have limited utility due to their inherent characteristics and storage limitations. Feedstock supply and the logistics of lignocellulosic biomass upgrading are challenging due to the low bulk density, low energy density, and high ash content of the feed. The chemical and physical inconsistencies of feedstocks are substantial barriers that limit the ability of designing a single, widely applicable process for the upgrading of biomass to fuels and chemicals.
Biomass materials generally comprise cellulose (35%-60%), hemicellulose (15%-40%) and lignin (10%-40%) as major components, a variety of lesser organic materials, water, and some mineral or metallic elements. A range of biomass derived materials can be pyrolyzed to produce mixtures of hydrocarbons, oxygenates, CO, CO2, water, char, coke, and other products. A particularly desirable form of pyrolysis is known as catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP) that involves the conversion of biomass in a fluid bed reactor in the presence of a catalyst. The catalyst is usually an acidic, microporous crystalline material, usually a zeolite. The zeolite is active for the upgrading of the primary pyrolysis products of biomass decomposition, and converts them to aromatics, olefins, CO, CO2, char, coke, water, and other useful materials. The aromatics include benzene, toluene, xylenes, (collectively BTX), and naphthalene, among other aromatics. The olefins include ethylene, propylene, and lesser amounts of higher molecular weight olefins. BTX aromatics are desirable products due to their high value and ease of transport.
The minerals or metallic elements present as contaminants in biomass, sometimes collectively referred to as alkali and alkaline earth elements (AAEMs) although they may contain many other elements, present a challenge to catalytic processes. These elements can deactivate the catalyst or interfere with the smooth operation of a CFP process by a number of mechanisms. It is thus desirable to limit the amount of the AAEMs that are introduced into the CFP process, or remove the AAEMs, or both, in order to provide a commercially viable process for upgrading biomass to fuels and chemicals. Other impurity elements, primarily sulfur and nitrogen, present in biomass are also detrimental to the conversion of biomass to useful chemicals and fuels. Sulfur and nitrogen can inhibit catalyst activity, complicate product purification, and contaminate effluent streams. Processes for removing sulfur and nitrogen are also needed. The present invention addresses methods to reduce impurities including the AAEMs and sulfur and nitrogen in biomass feed to a CFP process.
In U.S. Pat. No. 8,022,260, a process is described that utilizes an activating step of introducing an additive to make a biomass more susceptible to conversion, and then converting the activated biomass to a product comprising bio-oil. Magnesium and aluminum salts are introduced into the biomass in a wet milling step in one example.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0340746 describes a process for converting AAEMs present in biomass into thermally stable, catalytically inert salts using hydrochloric, sulfuric, or phosphoric acids in preparation for a biomass pyrolysis process.
In U.S. Pat. No. 8,168,840, a process is described comprising: (i) swelling biomass with a solvent, optionally aided by pH control, application of mechanical action, the incorporation of additive(s), and temperature control; (ii) removing solvent from the swollen solid biomass material by applying mechanical action to the solid biomass material to form a solid modified lignocellulosic biomass material having an increased bulk porosity; and (iii) subjecting the solid modified lignocellulosic biomass material to enzymatic hydrolysis, thermoconversion, or combinations thereof. Optionally the material can be modified by incorporation of a soluble catalyst before it is upgraded. Catalytically upgrading of the swollen, modified, and dried biomass in a fixed or fluid bed of solid catalyst is not discussed.
In U. S. Patent Application Publication 2012/0301928, a method is described for pretreating lignocellulosic biomass prior to hydrolysis, comprising: immersing lignocellulosic biomass in water to swell the biomass; wet-milling the swelled biomass; and popping the wet-milled biomass. Neither minerals removal nor catalytic pyrolysis is mentioned. In U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0161689, a process is described for digesting biomass to remove sulfur or nitrogen compounds, reforming the resulting solution with a soluble catalyst to form oxygenate compounds, and then catalytically producing a liquid fuel from the reformed solution. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,940,060, a method is described for forming a pyrolysis oil wherein the feed biomass is washed with a portion of the pyrolysis condensate to produce a washed biomass having a reduced level of metals, and thermally pyrolyzing the washed biomass. Catalytic reaction is not discussed.
Experimental results have been presented (see V. Paasikallio, C. Lindfors, E. Kuoppala, Y. Solantausta, A. Oasmaa, “Experiences from an extended catalytic fast pyrolysis production run”, Green Chem., 2014, 16, 3549-3559) in which the amount of ‘Alkalis’ deposition as a function of time on stream in a CFP process showed a linear increase with time. ‘Alkalis’ are defined to include K, Ca, Mg, and P. After a four day test of pine sawdust catalytic fast pyrolysis with H-ZSM-5 catalyst, the catalyst had accumulated 1.1 weight % of the ‘alkali metals’ including K, Ca, Mg, and P. The acidity of the catalyst decreased and the O/C ratio of the produced bio-oil increased, which were interpreted to indicate a reduction of catalytic activity. No attempts to remove alkali metals from the feed or from the process were discussed.
Oudenhoven et al in “Demineralization Of Wood Using Wood-Derived Acid: Towards a Selective Pyrolysis Process for Fuel and Chemicals Production” J Anal Appl Pyrolysis 103 (2013) 112-118, describe the use of a raw pyrolysis water product phase to wash biomass prior to a thermal pyrolysis. Increased yields of bio-oil rich in oxygenated products, i.e. levoglucosan, are reported for the washed wood experiments. Catalytic pyrolysis or the production of aromatics was not discussed. By contrast, Kasparbauer in his PhD thesis entitled “The effects of biomass pretreatments on the products of fast pyrolysis” (2009), Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Paper 10064 at Iowa State University, concludes on page 127 that: “The water wash pretreatment showed no significant difference when compared to unwashed biomass in terms of product yields.”
It has been often reported that improved yields of useful products are obtained when AAEMs are introduced into, or not removed from, biomass. U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,898 describes a process for “pretreating a lignocellulose-containing biomass comprising the steps of adding calcium oxide or hydroxide and water and an oxidizing agent to the biomass” to obtain better yields of sugars, ketones, fatty acids, and alcohols.
Wang et al have reported that AAEMs reduce the yields of aromatics and olefins in ex situ catalyzed pyrolysis reactions in “The deleterious effect of inorganic salts on hydrocarbon yields from catalytic pyrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass and its mitigation”, Applied Energy 148 (2015) 115-120. Their studies used separate pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading reactors to show that pretreatment of the AAEM-infused cellulose can improve aromatics and olefins yields. No attempts were made to react biomass in the presence of a catalyst in a single reactor.
Among other methods of pretreating biomass, wet milling of corn is routinely used in the industry to separate the various components. Typically the hemicellulose and cellulose are hydrolyzed for further upgrading to ethanol or other products. Wet milling is not used for minerals removal. As it is applied in extracting sugars from corn, wet-milling is a process in which feed material is steeped in water, with or without sulfur dioxide, to soften the seed kernel in order to help separate the kernel's various components. The hydrolysis of the hemicellulose and cellulose is detrimental for a feed that will be upgraded by the CFP process of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,503,981 teaches the removal of minerals from biomass as part of a biomass saccharification process that produces dimeric and monomeric saccharides (sugars) from cellulose and hemicellulose using sulfuric acid.
Pretreatment of biomass has been developed broadly for the production of monomeric sugars as precursors in fermentation processes to produce ethanol. These pretreatment processes are optimized for the hydrolytic deconstruction of cellulose and hemicellulose, separation of lignin, and the removal of contaminant materials to provide a sugar rich solution for fermentation. For a catalytic fast pyrolysis process in which all of the cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin contribute to the yield of valuable materials such as BTX, the processes adapted for ethanol are not applicable since in the production and separation of the sugars a very significant amount of organic material is lost in the lignin and other minor components. The yields of BTX obtainable from these deconstructed feeds in a CFP process are fundamentally limited by the loss of carbon.
Conversion of wood or other cellulosic feedstocks into paper has been commercial for more than a hundred years. The Kraft process is the dominant process used to convert wood into wood pulp, which consists of almost pure cellulose fibers. Wood pretreatment processes have been developed to improve the quality of the wood pulp obtained in the subsequent Kraft process. For example, Lundquist et al in “Removal of Nonprocess Elements From Hardwood Chips Prior to Kraft Cooking,” presented at the 59th Appita Conference, 16-19 May 2005, in Auckland, New Zealand, reported that a 24-hour acid leaching of birch or eucalyptus chips in sulfuric acid solution of pH 2.5 at room temperature (22° C.) resulted in thorough removal of K ions and partial removal of Ca ions. However, the extremely long leaching times required make the process unacceptable for large scale, continuous or semi-continuous manufacture of chemicals such as BTX.
In light of current commercial practices and the disclosures of art, a simple, economical, rapid process for enhancing production of aromatic compounds, such as, for example, benzene, toluene and xylenes, from a catalytic pyrolysis process utilizing biomass containing impurities such as alkali and alkaline earth metal components, sulfur compounds and/or nitrogen compounds is needed. The present invention provides such a process. | {
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It is now accepted that the adult vertebrate brain fosters the birth and functional incorporation of newly formed neurons (Goldman and Nottebohm, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1983, 80: 2390-2394; Paton and Nottebohm, Science 1984, 225, 1046-1048; Burd and Nottebohm, J Comp Neurol 1985, 240:143-152). However, it was long thought that no new neurons could be added to the adult mammalian brain. This dogma was challenged in the 1960's when autoradiographic evidence of new neuron formation in the hippocampal dentate gyrus, olfactory bulb, and cerebral cortex of the adult rat was presented (Altman, J. Science 1962, 135, 1127-1128; Altman, J. J Comp Neurol 1966, 128:431-474; Altman, Anat Rec 1963, 145:573-591; Altman and Das, J. Comp. Neurol. 1965, 124, 319-335; Altman and Das, J Comp Neurol 1966, 126:337-390). It is now accepted that within all mammalian species, including humans (Eriksson et al., Nat. Med. 1998, 4(11), 1313-1317), there are two major reservoirs of neuronal stem cells, one located in the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the hippocampal dentate gyrus and another in the subventricular zone (SVZ) (Gross, Natl. Rev. 2000, 1, 67-72). Neural stem cells in the SVZ facilitate formation of new neurons that migrate rostrally to populate the olfactory bulb, while neural stem cells in the SGZ produce neurons that integrate locally in the granular layer of the dentate gyrus, a region of the hippocampus that exhibits lifelong structural and functional plasticity.
The process of new neuron formation in the adult mouse brain can be influenced by environmental, chemical and genetic variables. As demonstrated by Gage and colleagues, neurogenesis in the adult mouse brain is enhanced when animals are exposed to an enriched environment (Kempermann et al., Nature 1997, 386, 493-495) or able to exercise voluntarily (van Praag et al., Nat. Neuro-sci. 1999, 2, 266-270). More recently, antidepressant drugs have been shown to enhance levels of adult neurogenesis in animals, including humans (Schmidt et al., Behav Pharmacol. 2007 September; 18(5-6):391-418; Boldrini et al., Neuropsychopharmacology 2009, 34, 2376-2389). Among many genes reported to impact adult neurogenesis is the gene encoding neuronal PAS domain protein 3 (NPAS3), a central nervous system (CNS)-specific transcription factor that has been associated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Kamnasaran et al., J. Med. Genet. 2003, 40, 325-332; Pickard et al., Am. J. Med. Genet. B. Neuropsychiatr. Genet. 2005, 136B, 26-32; Pickard et al., Ann. Med. 2006, 38, 439-448; Pickard et al., Mol. Psychiatry. 2009, 14, 874-884; Lavedan et al., Pharmacogenomics 2008, 9: 289-301). Animals missing both copies of the NPAS3 gene suffer a profound loss of adult hippocampal neurogenesis coupled with significant behavioral deficits (Pieper et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2005, 102, 14052-14057). Knowing that impaired post-natal neurogenesis elicits unfavorable phenotypic deficits, it is predicted that pro-neurogenic chemical compounds should exhibit favorable therapeutic benefits. | {
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For the purposes of wireless telecommunication, national and international bodies assign frequency bands (or channels) within the radio spectrum for specific uses, and in most cases, license the rights to these channels. Some specific parts of the spectrum may not be used by licensed services in a specific location at a specific time. Local regulatory authorities typically control and authorise the use of white-space in their own respective regions, and the available “white-space” bandwidth will therefore vary from country to country.
On the 4 Nov. 2008, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the use of vacant/unused portions of the broadcast spectrum in the 54 MHz-698 MHz range by unlicensed devices for fixed and personal/portable use. These vacant/unused portions of the spectrum are known as “white spaces”. These became available for “unlicensed secondary use” after the switchover to digital TV broadcast. The FCC has also defined numerous safeguards in order to protect services and service providers against harmful interference of white spaces devices.
Firstly, all unlicensed white-space devices must include geographical location technology that allows the device to determine its location and to match the current location of the device against a pre-existing database of available channels corresponding to that geographical area.
FIG. 1 illustrates a channel availability database as presently known in the art. In essence, such databases cross reference geographical areas with white-space channels available for use within specific sub-regions of that geographical area. For example, a geographical area (such as a country, country state, etc) may be dissected or subdivided into a plurality of sub-regions within the database. Each of these sub-regions may have a specific set of white-space channels that may be usable within that sub-region. This is illustrated in FIG. 1, whereby each sub-region (denoted by the boxed areas in the database grid) contains an indication whether channel/band ‘A’ and/or ‘B’ is available for use within each particular sub-region. Geographical areas and channels recorded by these databases are, at least in some current channel availability databases (such as those in the US), divided up so as to be denoted by rectangular (e.g. 50 m-by-50 m or 100 m-by-100 m) geographical sub-regions or grid points (as in this example the channel availability database is in the form of a grid, with each geographical sub-region being a regular shaped grid point or box). In the US at least, this is to be in conformity with current FCC rulings, but other regions may have different standards and implement their availability database(s) differently.
These databases operate on the principle that, if the geographic location of a particular white-space device is known, then the channels available for use by that white-space device can be identified by comparing the geographical location of the white-space device to the geographical area represented by the database. Where the geographic location of the white-space device matches up/overlaps with one or more geographical sub-regions, the channels available for use by that white-space device being in the particular determined geographical location are thereby determined.
Secondly, according to the FCC ruling, all unlicensed white-space devices must access such a channel availability database to determine channels that they are allowed to operate on before they begin white-space transmission or operation. WSDs must therefore transmit and inform their determined geographic location when querying with such databases.
For example, some white-space devices may determine their location via an onboard GPS system, or they may utilise local Wi-Fi networks to establish their position. Others may actually be geographically fixed and therefore they know their exact location anyway. Typically, the geographic location of the white-space device is encoded using Geography Markup Language (GML) which is a standard used to universally encode and transmit geographical location of such devices. There are many methods known in the art for determining the geographical location of such devices and, as such, will not be discussed at length here.
When a white-space device sends its location to the database via query signalling, the database can verify which channels are available for use within the area the white-space device has identified it is located in. The database should only inform the white-space device of channels that can be used without interference with other devices, primary users of such devices and protected entities (for example, entities/devices operating on frequencies/bandwidths that are already allocated to a particular use). This may sometimes entail informing a white-space device that no channels are available where necessary.
The FCC also requires new unlicensed white-space devices to include spectrum-sensing technology allowing them to detect the presence of other signals in their vicinity. For example, to detect if there are other localised wireless transmission/reception sources in their vicinity that the white-space devices could interfere with if they operated on these frequencies. Such information is constantly in flux and unpredictable, and therefore is not typically logged in a channel availability database. Therefore the white-space devices must conduct their own localised survey of their location/area to verify white-space channels suitable for them to operate over.
On start-up, white-space devices will query the database with their current location (likely gleaned from GPS or mobile telephone triangulation) and will receive in response a list of frequencies that can (and/or cannot) be used within their local area. The available channel availability data provided from the database may then be stored on the memory of the device.
It is well known that there is frequently an element of inaccuracy when measuring geographic location. To compensate for this in the prior art, when the database receives a geographic location of a white-space device, it automatically assumes a default inaccuracy/uncertainty to this geographic location. At present, to be in conformity with present FCC standards/rulings, a default uncertainty of ±50 m is to be assumed for each reported geographic location. This uncertainty in the location of the white-space device is shown in FIG. 1. This effectively translates as meaning that the white-space device may actually be located anywhere within the default uncertainty area (denoted by the annotated circle). This means that, when the database is identifying which channels are available for use, the database must consider all of the geographic sub-regions that the white-space device could be located in. As such, the only channels that can be identified as available are those that are common to all these possible geographic sub-regions that the white-space device could be located in.
This is a problem in many situations. For example, if the device is actually physically located in a geographic sub-region that has channels A & B available to the device, but the default uncertainty overlaps with another sub-region that only has A available, then the database can only identify channel A as available and suitable for use by the white-space device. This can result in an inefficient use of the available channels and can place unnecessary restrictions on such white-space devices (for example, on bandwidth).
This problem is further compounded in situations such as in FIG. 1, where it can be seen that there is no common channel across all sub-regions that the white-space device could be located in (based on the default uncertainty assumption). In such a scenario, the white-space device would be incapable of operating, despite being actually physically located in a region that allows for operation in bands A & B, resulting in an inefficient use of the available channels/spectrum.
The listing or discussion of a prior-published document or any background in this specification should not necessarily be taken as an acknowledgement that the document or background is part of the state of the art or is common general knowledge. One or more aspects/embodiments of the present disclosure may or may not address one or more of the background issues. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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This invention relates to method and system for servicing generally complex equipment, and, more particularly, to computer-based method and system for graphically identifying replacement parts for servicing any selected equipment.
The diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of generally complex equipment, such as mobile assets including on-road or off-road vehicles, ships, airplanes, railroad locomotives, trucks, and other forms of complex equipment including industrial equipment, consumer appliance equipment, medical imaging equipment, equipment used in industrial processes, telecommunications, aerospace applications, power generation, etc., involves extremely complex and time consuming processes. In the case of transportation equipment, efficient and cost-effective operation of a fleet of vehicles necessitates a reduction in the number of vehicle road failures and minimization of vehicle down-time. This can be accomplished by predicting impending failures, by performing preventative maintenance, and by performing repairs quickly and accurately. For example, it will be appreciated that the ability to predict failures before they occur allows for performing condition-based maintenance. Such maintenance can be conveniently scheduled based on statistically and probabilistically meaningful vehicle status information, instead of performing the maintenance regardless of the actual condition of a respective system, subsystem, assembly, subassembly, part, etc., such as would be the case if the maintenance is routinely performed independent of whether any of the foregoing structures actually requires the maintenance.
The conventional diagnosis and repair process for most vehicles and other generally complex equipment is based on the experience of the service technician, using paper-based information describing the structure and operation of the equipment, and performance records maintained in a log. Examining the log entries, experienced service technicians can use their accumulated experience and training in mapping incidents occurring in locomotive systems, subsystems, assemblies, subassemblies, etc., to problems that may be causing these incidents. For simple problems, this process works well. However, if the problem is complex and the root cause difficult to discern, the experienced technician may be unable to identify the problem and certainly much less likely to prognosticate problems before they occur.
Various equipment often incorporates diagnostic controls and sensors that report faults when anomalous operating conditions of the equipment arise. Typically, to diagnose the problem, a technician will study the fault log to identify the nature of the problem and determine whether a repair is necessary. While the fault log can provide some diagnosis and repair information, the technician also relies substantially on his prior experiences with the equipment, or others like it, to make a full diagnosis.
To conduct the repair, the technician uses block diagrams, exploded diagrams, parts lists, assembly drawings, schematics, etc. The repair information may be applicable only to a specific equipment by model number; the repair information will generally not be unique to the specific equipment undergoing repair. It will be apparent that as the complexity of the equipment increases, the amount of paper needed to describe the equipment to assist with the repair process likewise increases. Again, the technician will rely on his experiences with the equipment, and others like it, to perform the repair.
Yet another problem with a paper-based system is the variety of field-deployed equipment configurations, each having its own unique technical support documentation. In the case of locomotives, even for a specific model (identified by a model number), there may be several locomotive configurations as locomotive subsystems were redesigned or changed during the model production run. Thus, in a sense, no two locomotives are the same. Adding this configuration complexity to a paper-based system presents an inordinately complex and unmanageable problem of locating the correct technical repair documentation for a specific locomotive.
Another repair issue involving complex equipment, such as railroad locomotives or other mobile or stationary assets, is the unavailability of a repair history from which one could predict component failures and undertake preventative maintenance beforehand. Technicians with wide ranging and lengthy experiences may be able to predict a component failure and repair it to avoid a breakdown during operation, in some limited situations.
One tool available for locomotive repair manually downloads fault logs from a locomotive while it is parked at a maintenance facility. These fault logs are then uploaded to the railroad maintenance service center. The tool also includes standardized helpful hints for repair tasks and fault analysis descriptors based on single failure faults. Although such a device represents an improvement over a paper-based system, it falls short of the informational needs for a complex equipment, such as a locomotive, and fails to advantageously utilize the various technologies available for more efficiently predicting and performing the repair.
The techniques of the present invention in one aspect thereof may be useful in identifying and ordering replacement parts for complex equipment having multiple configurations. For example, while locomotives are routinely sold under particular model numbers, each locomotive is typically customized for a particular application or customer. Consequently, when a user needs to identify replacement or repair parts or check on upgrades for a particular locomotive, it is often difficult for that user to particularly identify the needed part or upgrade without knowing more about the particular locomotive. In many instances, the user may not know the particular parts or level of upgrade of a locomotive that is in use. However, manufacturers of locomotives generally keep detailed records of the status of each part or assembly or sub-assembly of a locomotive during manufacture and also track upgrades to that locomotive since such upgrades are normally done by purchase of upgrade kits from the original manufacturer. Accordingly, it is common for a locomotive user to contact the locomotive manufacturer in order to identify replacement parts or upgrades for a locomotive. Thus, it would be advantageous for service personnel to have access via a communications network to detailed information concerning the parts content or upgrade status of any selected equipment that may be ready to undergo a servicing activity. | {
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A wireless communication device transmits and receives information wirelessly via a wireless access node to communicate over a communication network. Typically, the wireless access node is part of a radio access network (RAN) which provides the wireless communication device with access to further communication networks, systems, and devices. Many different initialization and exchange protocols may be employed to facilitate the transmission of voice and data to and from a wireless communication device. For example, a wireless communication device communicating with a media server may use a session description protocol (SDP) format to describe streaming media initialization parameters, which is often used in conjunction with a real-time transport protocol (RTP), real-time streaming protocol (RTSP), session initiation protocol (SIP), and other application layer protocols. Various other protocols may be utilized at the physical layer, data link layer, network layer, transport layer, and other layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model for communication systems.
Occasionally, complications may arise when a wireless communication device transmits information in a given protocol that contains a syntax error. Syntax errors during communications may occur for many reasons, including device misconfigurations, typographical errors, incompatible shorthand abbreviations, noncompliance with protocol standards, outdated information, such as labels used in signaling prior to standardization, and other textual anomalies. Unfortunately, such syntax errors can place additional demand on network resources and may require cumbersome workarounds in the network. | {
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The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for cleaning methane fermentation digestion liquids, domestic wastewater, sewage, service water, culture pond water, wastewater produced by an activated sludge method, wastewater from food industries and the like.
Contamination of water environments is being made more and more serious by developments of industries and economy as well as rising of living levels of human lives. Eutrophication of water areas is made serious by nitrogen, phosphorus and the like which are contained in wastewater produced by agriculture and human lives. Furthermore, health of mankind is threatened by increase of organic matters, organic chlorine compounds, aromatic compounds, environmental hormones and the like contained in industrial wastewater. It is deemed difficult to completely treat such contaminants by a traditional water treating method such as a biological method. Under the present circumstances where legal regulations on environments are being strengthened, on the other hand, it is desired to construct an efficient wastewater treating system in order to maintain a stable ecosystem for a long time and preserve water resources having high safeties. It is therefore attempted to develop a new water treating technique which is to take the place of the biological method and an organic wastewater treatment by an electrochemical technique has been developed in recent years in particular.
A characteristic of the electrochemical treating technique lies in integration of technologies in different domains (for example, electronic engineering, catalytic technology, physical chemistry, microbiology and the like) and fusing techniques in different fields, thereby treating organic wastewater containing contaminants which are deemed hardly decomposable by the biological method.
The electrochemical treating technique is not only capable of removing solid matters and green powder contained in wastewater with a high efficiency without using a flocculant agent and suppressing a running cost at a low level but also produces sludge in an amount smaller than that of sludge produced by the biological treating method and allows the sludge to be reutilized as a fertilizer since the electrochemical technique does not use chemicals.
The electrochemical treatment has a floating function, an agglomerating precipitating function and an oxidizing function. The solid matters and the organic dissolved matters contained in soil water are removed by these three functions. Out of these functions, the oxidizing function is the most important and can be divided into direct oxidation and indirect oxidation. The direct oxidation oxidizes an organic matter directly on a surface of an oxidized metal by a catalytic function of the oxidized metal such as titanium oxide, tin oxide or the like. The indirect oxidation oxidizes with an xe2x88x92OH radial generated from water by anode discharge.
A reaction formula is:
H2O+M[ ]xe2x86x92M [xe2x88x92OH]+H++exe2x88x92xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(1)
A reaction formula of the organic matter by hydroxyl radicals is:
R+[xe2x88x92OH]xe2x86x92M [ ]+RO+H++exe2x88x92xe2x80x83xe2x80x83(2)
wherein a reference symbol M [ ] represents an active site on the surface of the oxidized metal and a reference symbol R designates the organic matter.
Ozone sending and irradiation with ultrasonic waves or electromagnetic ultrasonic waves are available as methods to generate oxygen radicals and hydroxyl radicals. Furthermore, though there has been developed a method which uses an optical catalytic reaction by titanium oxide, this method generates radicals in an amount small for a high input electric power, decomposes injurious materials with a low efficiency and requires a high cost of an apparatus. Furthermore, ozone is not effective for fresh water though ozone is deemed effective for sea water containing large amounts of bromine and manganese.
Furthermore, attention is paid to use of a transition metal such as cobalt, manganese or the like in combination with hydrogen peroxide. Though it is known the combination of the transient metal and oxygen peroxide generates radicals at an efficiency higher than that of ozone, this method require a delicate technique and final treatment of hydrogen peroxide in an outlet port since hydrogen neroxide has a variability for organisms high enough to be inhibited from being added to food.
It is known that the electrochemical treating method allows oxygen radicals and hydroxyl radicals to be generated with a lifetime of 10 xcexcs to 100 ms from existing water molecules when electrons enter pores existing in a surface of a material which is composed of fine particles of titanium oxide, tin oxide, ruthenium oxide, platinum or the like (see specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 11-68862). It is known that this radical oxidatively destructs organic substances including carbon sources and nitrogen sources as well as hardly decomposable aromatic substances contained in water.
It is indicated that a specific condition of an electric field to be applied between electrodes exists and it is necessary to prolong a time of contact between wastewater and a surface of a metal oxide for generation of the oxygen radicals and hydroxyl radicals with a high efficiency on the surface of the metal oxide, that it is necessary to clean surfaces of electrodes by transmitting ultrasonic waves when a large amount of floating suspended matters are contained in wastewater, and that a voltage, a current and an electric field frequency are governed by movements of electrons on the surface of the oxidized metal or the surface of the metal.
Since an invention described in the specification of the above mentioned application poses a problem that generation of superoxide radicals is insufficient in a high frequency region and excessive in a low frequency region, a problem that a current is unstable during treatment of wastewater containing a large amount of ions and the like, it is necessary to establish a treating method by combining a low frequency low current with a high frequency slight current and contrive to stabilize voltage pulse application when electric resistance of raw water changes during a treatment.
In order to solve the problems posed by the invention described in the specification of the above mentioned application, the applicant applied xe2x80x9cMethod and Apparatus for Cleaning Dissolved Organic Matters and Trace Amount of Injurious Materialsxe2x80x9d (Application 2000-29570 hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cspecification of preceding applicationxe2x80x9d) on February 2, Heisei 12.
An invention described in the specification of the preceding application disclosed a water purifying method characterized by coating a surface of a ceramic having a main body of feldspar or silicon with fine particles of titanium oxide, cobalt oxide, tin oxide, ruthenium oxide, iridium oxide, nickel oxide, iron oxide and vanadium oxide, fine metal particles of titanium, cobalt, nickel, silver and gold or a liquid consisting of a mixture these metals and a solution of the same kinds of metal salts, using as an electrode having a positive polarity the above described metal oxides or metals or the mixture thereof sintered in a temperature region of 800xc2x0 C. to 1500xc2x0 C. after a drying treatment and disposing an electrode which has a cathode made of platinum or titanium or stainless steel so as to be opposed to an anode for use of these electrode as a radical generating zone, continuously flowing wastewater between both the electrodes of these electrodes opposed to each other, causing pulse discharge between the electrodes under conditions of a voltage of 0.2 kV/cm to 20 kV/cm, an average current of 1 xcexcA/cm2 to 10 mA/cm2 and a frequency of 5 Hz to 50 MHz, thereby generating radicals by partial decomposition of water and oxidatively-reductively decomposing organic matters and intermediate products thereof dissolved in water.
Furthermore, the invention described in the specification of the preceding application disclosed a water cleaning apparatus for carrying out the above described water purifying method.
FIG. 9 shows an electrode section in which a anode and a cathode are disposed in opposition to each other. A reference numeral 51 in FIG. 9 represents a anode which has a groove extending in a direction of running water denoted by a reference numeral 52. The anode portion 51 is formed by coating a surface of a ceramic (non-metallic inorganic material including glass) having a main body of feldspar or silicon or a metal such as titanium with fine particles of titanium oxide, cobalt oxide, tin oxide, iridium oxide, nickel oxide, iron oxide and vanadium oxide, metal fine particles of titanium, cobalt, nickel, silver, gold and platinum or a liquid consisting of a mixture of the metals and a solution of the same kinds of metal salts, and sintering or welding the metals in a temperature region of 500xc2x0 C. to 1500xc2x0 C. A cathode 53 is made of platinum or titanium or stainless steel.
The anode 51 and a cathode 53 are disposed in opposition to each other and have a configuration in which the electrodes are enclosed by an outside cell 54. For a water treatment, water to be treated is sent from a lower portion (indicated by an arrow) to an upper portion of the outside cell 54 which is made of a high polymer resin such as acrylic resin, polyethylene resin or the like, and an angle xcex8 between bottom surfaces of both the electrodes opposed to each other and a foot of the cell is set at 30xc2x0 to 90xc2x0, thereby bringing most portion of contaminants in the water to be treated is brought into secure contact with the anode. The contaminants in the water to be treated are decomposed with a high efficiency by radicals which are generated from the anode 51.
FIG. 10 shown sectional configurations of water treating apparatuses: (a) showing a cylindrical circular truncated cone electrode type and (b) showing a truncated pyramid electrode type.
In FIGS. 10(a) and 10(b) showing the cylindrical circular truncated cone electrode type and the truncated pyramidal water treating apparatuses, a reference numeral 73 represents a raw water inlet port, a reference numeral 74 designates an anode electrode, a reference numeral 75 denotes a cathode electrode, a reference numeral 76 represents an overcoat (serving also as a cathode), a reference numeral 77 designates a treated water outlet port, a reference numeral 78 denotes a generated gas discharge port, a reference numeral 79 represents an electric insulating material and a reference numeral 79a designates a through hole formed in the insulating material 79 for passing raw water.
The truncated pyramid electrode type water treating apparatus shown in FIG. 10(b) uses electrodes which are formed by inserting the anode 74 made of metals and metal oxides into the overcoat 76 of the metallic cathode 75, placing a titanium plate, a platinum plate and a platinum bar at a center portion, and connecting these plates and bar to the overcoat portion.
The cylindrical circular truncated cone electrode type water treating apparatus shown in FIG. 10(a) has a configuration in which the water treating apparatus has a cylindrical or circular truncated conical structure having an angle xcex8 set at 30xc2x0 to 90xc2x0 between bottom surfaces of two anodes opposed to each other and a foot of a cell, an inside surface and an outside surface of this cylinder are composed of metal surfaces which are coated with powders of the above described oxidized metals, powders of the same metals or a mixture liquid consisting of a mixture thereof and salts of the same metals and sintered, a cathode having a form of a round bar or a square bar made of platinum, titanium or stainless steel is disposed at a center location of the cylindrical truncated cone, an outside of the cylindrical truncated cone is sealed with an overcoat container consisting of a metal container made of titanium, stainless steel or the like, a cathode is composed by disposing the above described overcoat container in a wastewater inlet port, a wastewater outlet port and a generated gas outlet port, and an inside surface and an outside surface of the cylindrical truncated cone are used as a radical generating zone so that organic wastewater is sent from a portion of having a large diameter inside the cylindrical truncated cone, comes out to a portion having a small diameter, flows again outside the cylindrical truncated cone in a direction reverse to that inside, and is oxidatively and reductively treated by generated radicals.
The truncated pyramidal electrode type water treating apparatus shown in FIG. 10(b) has a configuration in which a anode is configured as a flat plate having an angle xcex8 set at 30xc2x0 to 90xc2x0 between both bottom surfaces and roots of both electrodes opposed to each other, two flat plates positioned perpendicular to a thickness direction of the flat plate are composed of metal surfaces which are coated with the powders of the above described oxidized metals, the powders of the metals or the mixture liquid consisting of the mixture thereof and salts of the same metals and sintered, the two flat plates are disposed so as to be symmetrical with regard to a plane, further two side surfaces of the two flat plates which are not the oxidized metal surfaces are joined using a flat plate having a surface of titanium, stainless steel or the same metal on one side and composed as a truncated pyramid so as to uniformalize an anode voltage, an overcoat container is composed at a location symmetrical with a metal surface at a center of the truncated pyramid with regard to a plane by scaling outsides of a cathode electrode composed of a titanium plate, a stainless steel plate, a platinum net or platinum round bar and the truncated pyramid with a titanium or stainless steel container and a cathode is composed by disposing the above described overcoat container in a wastewater inlet port, a wastewater outlet port and a generated gas outlet port so that inside surfaces and outside surfaces of the two flat plates coated with the metal oxides serve as a radical generating zone, organic wastewater is sent from a portion having a large diameter or length inside the truncated pyramid, and organic matters and injurious materials contained in the wastewater coming out to a portion having a small diameter or length are oxidatively and reductively decomposed and treated by generated radicals while the wastewater flows again outside the truncated pyramid in a direction reverse to that inside.
Though the water treating apparatus and method described in the specification of the preceding application are epoch making water treatment apparatus and method, it has been found that these apparatus and method hardly allow a continuous operation since the continuous operation results in events such as accumulation of bubbles in a top section of the apparatus.
The present invention has an object to provide a water treating apparatus which is capable of operation continuously.
The present invention provides an apparatus for cleaning dissolved organic matters and a trace amount of injurious materials consisting of a anode which is formed by mixing clay and/or glass with 2 to 15% by weight of transition metals and 1 to 10% of oxidized transition metals, sintering the mixture within a range from 800 to 1500xc2x0 C. or coating a surface of a metal such as titanium with a mixture of fine particles of anatase type titanium oxide, tin oxide, ruthenium oxide and platinum as a glaze and sintering the mixture once again at a temperature from 580 to 980xc2x0 C.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that the above described anode is configured in a cylindrical form and an electrically conductive metal is fitted in an end of the anode.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that at least an electrically conductive metal is inserted in parallel with an axis of the above described cylindrical anode.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that a pulse voltage and a current are applied to the above described electrically conductive metal.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that a cathode is disposed at a center of the above described cylindrical anode. Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that the above described anode and the above described cathode are set in a condition where the anode and cathode are submerged in water and connected to an oscillator which oscillates an average current density of 0.1 xcexcA/cm2 to 10 mA/cm2 at a frequency of 5 Hz to 50 MHz and a voltage of 0.2 kV/cm to 20 kV.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that raw water is flowed downward from an upper portion to a lower portion of the side wall of the above described anode and oxidized and cleaned by various kinds of active species (radials) generated between the above described cathode and anode.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized by being composed of a anode configured in a form which has a rectangular or truncated pyramidal concave portion.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that a transition oxidized metals is sintered at 580xc2x0 C. to 980xc2x0 C. in the concave portion of the above described anode and electrically conductive metal plates are formed on both sides of the electrode as a cathode by way of an insulating material.
Furthermore, the apparatus according to the present invention is characterized in that the above described anode measures 5 to 10 mm thick by 5 to 100 cm wide by 10 to 70 cm high. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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This invention relates in general to integrated circuit ("IC") test systems and in particular, to an adaptable wafer probe assembly for testing a variety of ICs having different power and/or ground bond pad configurations.
Integrated circuits, especially those of the so-called application specific type, may have any one of a number of different power and/or ground bond pad configurations. FIG. 1A illustrates, as a simplified example, a top plan view of one such IC die 100, wherein bond pads 1-16 provide external device electrical connection means to the active circuitry 50 of the IC die 100. Depending upon the functionality and layout of the active circuitry 50, some of the bond pads will be assigned by the layout designer to communicate input and/or output signals "S" to and/or from the active circuitry 50, at least one bond pad will be assigned to provide power "P" to the active circuitry 50, and at least one bond pad will be assigned to provide an external ground connection "G" for the active circuitry 50.
FIGS. 1B-1D illustrate examples of such possible bond pad assignments (also referred to herein as "configurations") for the IC die example of FIG. 1A. FIG. 1B illustrates one example where opposing corner bond pads 1 and 9 are assigned to be power "P" bond pads, opposing corner bond pads 5 and 13 are assigned to be ground "G" bond pads, and the remaining bond pads are assigned to be input and/or output signal "S" bond pads; FIG. 1C illustrates a second example where the power "P" and ground "G" bond pad assignments have been reversed; and FIG. 1D illustrates a third example where the power "P" and ground "G" bond pad assignments are not in the corner bond pads.
When testing the integrated circuit die 100, it is desirable to minimize the noise level (also referred to as "bounce") on the power and ground lines to the IC die 100. FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrate, as examples, circuits for reducing such noise on the power and ground lines, PL and GL, respectively, wherein in FIG. 2A, a voltage source Vdd is shown providing power over power line PL to the IC die 100 at bond pad P, and in FIG. 2b, a ground reference GND' is shown being provided over ground line GL to the IC die 100 at bond pad G. To prevent noise generated on the power and ground lines, PL and GL, respectively, from entering and affecting the proper operation of IC die 100, decoupling capacitors 20 and 22 are respectively connected at nodes 24 and 26 to the power and ground lines PL and GL, thereby shunting noise generated on these lines to ground GND.
As a practical matter, however, some of the noise generated on the power and ground lines, PL and GL, respectively, will still enter the IC die 100. For example, noise generated between node 24 and bond pad P on the power line PL will not be filtered out by decoupling capacitor 20, and noise generated between node 26 and bond pad G on the ground line GL will not be filtered out by decoupling capacitor 22. Accordingly, to minimize such noise, it is preferable to connect decoupling capacitors 20 and 22 as close as possible to bond pads P and G, respectively. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the protection of computer systems. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method of monitoring and controlling access to objects.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the Windows® operating system, virtually everything is represented as an object in kernel mode. For example, files, devices, synchronization mechanisms, registry keys, threads, drivers, processes, modules, sections of memory, name pipes, mailslot, access tokens, and LPC ports are all represented as objects in kernel mode.
Access of a particular object to a particular user mode process is determined using a Windows® access control list (ACL). Specifically, when a user mode process opens or creates a resource, the object manager uses the Windows® access control list to determine if the user mode process has permission to get a handle.
If the user mode process has permission, the user mode processes receives a handle. Conversely, if the user mode process does not have permission, the user mode process is denied a handle. Without a handle, the user mode process is denied access to the object.
The user mode process is either granted complete access to the object or completely denied access. Accordingly, if granted access, the user mode process, for example, malicious code, is unrestricted as to the modifications or manipulations of the object. | {
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Optical fibers have been recently utilized for reliable transmission of band-width controlled lightwaves for transmitting telecommunication signals over long distances without significant loss or decay of the original signal. Other uses for optical fibers, primarily as an off-shoot of the basic telecommunications usages, were for the purposes of aesthetic displays of colored light. However, organized displays of colored light produced through the transmission of such light through optical fibers in a patterned array are extremely rare and not commonly accepted or used for display purposes to promote the sale of goods or services, or for entertaining illustrations.
Virtually non-existent are such displays which are capable of imparting organized motion to the display so that the illuminated optical fiber illustration creates the illusion of continuing, sequential motion across one or more display panels. Each display panel supplies a semi-rigid base or planar surface for supporting the fiber optic display in the desired patterned array so that the ends of each optical fiber, arranged individually or in organized bundles, create the pre-determined and desired illuminated effect of the fiber optic display.
However, the single or bundled optical fibers must be implanted by hand into the displays and as yet there is no machine available to do the required operation effectively. The reliable implanting of single or bundled optical fibers in a panel of material, either through manual or automatic manipulation of an inserting apparatus, to accomplish the manufacture of sequential motion illustrations is now required.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for the implanting of a plurality of optical fibers in a pre-determined pattern in a fabric panel or panel of similar material having a substantially uniform planar surface for creating and illuminating a sequential motion pattern. It is also an object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for the implanting of a plurality of optical fibers in the fabric panel either manually or automatically and to combine individual optical fibers in ordered bundles as desired.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a manual sighting device for positioning the insertion tool to implant the optical fibers at a pre-determined position in the fabric panel. It is another object of the present invention to provide an automated control for positioning the insertion tool to implant the optical fibers at one or more pre-determined positions in the panel.
It is yet still another object of the present invention to secure the optical fiber, once inserted through the panel, to the surface of the panel by means of applying an adhesive to the outer surfaces of the optical fiber, drawing the fiber against the surface of the panel, and curing the adhesive by exposure to ultraviolet light to affix the optical fiber in the pre-determined position at the surface of the fabric panel.
It is also an additional object of the present invention to secure individual optical fibers as each is inserted through the panel, to the opposing surfaces of the panel by means of applying an adhesive to surfaces and curing the adhesive, by exposure to ultraviolet light or otherwise, to affix the individual optical fiber in the pre-determined posi5ion at the surface of the panel.
Other objects will appear hereinafter. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Lipoxygenase enzymes catalyze the conversion of arachidonic acid into a number of biologically active products, including the leukotrienes and 5-hydroeicosatetraenoic acid (5-HETE). A variety of biological effects are associated with these products of lipoxygenase metabolism of arachidonic acid, and several have been implicated as important mediators in various pathophysiological states. For example, the leukotrienes LTC.sub.4 and LTD.sub.4 are potent constrictors of human airways in vitro, and aerosol administration of these substances to non-asthmatic volunteers induces broncho-constriction.
On the other hand, 5-HETE and the leukotriene LTB.sub.4 are potent chemotactic factors for inflammatory cells such as polymorphonuclear leukocytes, and have been found in the synovial fluid of rheumatoid arthritic patients. Leukotrienes have also been implicated as important mediators in asthma, atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, psoriasis, acne, allergic rhinitis, adult respiratory distress syndrome, Crohn's disease, endotoxin shock, inflammatory bowel disease, ischemia-induced mYocardial injury and central nervous system pathophysiology, among others. The biological activity of the leukotrienes has been reviewed by Lewis and Austen, J. Clinical Invest. 73:889 (1984), and by J. Sirois, Adv. Lipid Res. 21:78 (1985).
Lipoxygenase enzymes are thus believed to play an important role in the mediation of asthma, allergy, arthritis, psoriasis, inflammation and other pathologies. Because inhibition of the lipoxygenase enzymes blocks the biosynthesis of these mediators, lipoxygenase inhibitors are expected to provide an effective means for the systemic and/or symptomatic treatment of these diseases. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a light intensity measurement system and more particularly, to a light intensity measurement system of a projection illumination system for microlithography.
2. Description of Relevant Art
Such systems are in use in wafer steppers or scanners of the ASM-L Company, with optics of the Carl Zeiss Company, Oberkochen, Germany. International patent publication WO 97/31298 is a related publication. Such systems are also known from European Patent 0 500 393 B1 (FIG. 134 ).
The measurement of light intensity--and thereby the energy, after integration over time--serves for the precise exposure of photoresists, and also as an input magnitude for control circuits by means of which the effects of the light flux on the optical elements (lens heating, thermal lenses) are stabilized.
Problems of measurement accuracy arise with increasing requirements for the accuracy of the whole exposure system and process, and with increasing variability of the whole system, particularly at the exit of the glass rod used in the system, with the variable adjustment of a reticle masking diaphragm whose diaphragm lamellae give rise to considerable reflections back into the glass rod. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to zener diodes and more specifically to zener diodes made by a temperature gradient zone melting process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore, zener diodes have been made by diffusion processes or epitaxial growth techniques. The diffusion process employed inherently results in P-N junctions which may not be sharply defined and the diffused regions of conductivity do not have a uniform level of resistivity throughout the region. An epitaxial growth process inherently produces solid contaminants which degrade the electrical characteristics of the P-N junction although the region as grown will be substantially of a constant uniform level of resistivity throughout.
Zener diodes rated under eight volts have a temperature coefficient which is dependent on the operating current. One or more forwarded operating diodes are surface series connected to such a zener diode in order to provide temperature compensation. This type circuit arrangement is employed as aa precision voltage reference in control system, digital voltmeters, frequency standards, precision power supplies and other high accuracy applications. However, the necessary physical connections of such a series circuit arrangement, if not substantially perfect are potential sources of high resistance contacts, inherent thermal problems, faulty connections and possibly a failure of the circuit.
An object of this inventionn is to provide a new and improved zener diode which overcomes the deficiencies of prior art zeners.
Another object of this invention is to provide new and improved circuit arrangements embodying one or more zener diodes.
A further object of this invention is to provide a new and improved process for making a zener diode.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a new and improved process for making electrical circuit arrangements embodying one or more zener diodes.
Other objects of this invention will, in part, be obvious and will, in part, appear hereinafter. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Such chamber filter presses consist of a press frame with two stands and an overhead beam as well as of a multitude of filter plates which are movably suspended within the frame. A hydraulically activated follower closes the filter plate pack during operation.
There are cases where the chamber filter press is operated first with a smaller number of filter plates and re-equipped with more filter plates later. It would be possible, however, to purchase also the filter plates which at first are not required and to remove them before the start of operation. There is no sense in constructing a hydraulic cylinder which is so long as to be able to close any number of filter plates during operation. Clearly, the buckling strength of such a piston rod would not be sufficient.
The task here is to offer here a useful solution according to the invention by providing an extended reception device for the hydraulic cylinder which is attached removably to the stand and moves the hydraulic cylinder to the follower by the required extent. Then, in most cases an extension of the piston rod is no longer necessary or it can be essentially smaller, allowing for a sufficient buckling strength. Preferably the reception device is built as a tube which receives the cylinder almost completely. The tubular reception device is preferably equipped with identical flanges at both ends or with flanges matching the mounting flange of the hydraulic cylinder. By this means the hydraulic cylinder can be attached at the stand without needing additional fitting parts. To increase the resistance against tilting of the reception device, the tube can be extended so it reaches into the stand where a guide bush will be mounted. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates generally to high density multilayer interconnect (HDMI) structures, and more particularly, to an attachment method for assembling flexible HDMI decals comprising flexible fine line interconnect structures.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,699,245, entitled "Methods of Forming Two-Sided HDMI Interconnect Structures", assigned to the assignee of the present invention, discloses methods of forming double-sided high density multilayer interconnect structures. These inventions produce single- and double-sided HDMI structures that are useful in producing interconnection substrates for electronic components, three-dimensional flexible cables, membrane IC test boards and power devices, and the like that require fine line metallized conductors. The present invention improves upon these particular inventions.
No prior art is known that specifically relates to the present invention. An alternative to the present invention is to not use a protective film on the top surface of the HDMI decal. This structure would be subject to problems that the present invention avoids. More specifically, the top surface of the HDMI decal would not be flat after mounting to a carrier substrate which causes problems when mounting integrated circuit chips to the top surface of the HDMI decal, and adhesive bleedout could encroach onto the top surface of the decal preventing electrical connection of the decal to its mounting substrate. The protective film also serves to prevent mechanical damage to the top of the HDMI decal during delamination of the HDMI decal from the substrate and through the decal mounting process.
Consequently, it is an objective of the present invention to provide for an improved attachment method for assembling flexible HDMI structures that provides a flat surface for mounting integrated circuit chips. It is also an objective of the present invention to provide for an improved attachment method for assembling flexible HDMI structures that eliminates problems of adhesive bleedout encroaching onto the top surface of the decal which would prevent electrical connection of the decal to its mounting substrate. It is an additional objective of the present invention to protect the top of the HDMI decal from mechanical damage. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Various electro-optical systems have been developed for reading optical indicia, such as barcodes. A barcode is a coded pattern of graphical indicia comprised of a matrix or series of bars and spaces of varying widths, the bars and spaces having differing light reflecting characteristics.
Systems that read barcodes called barcode readers electro-optically transform the graphic indicia into electrical signals and then decode the electric signals into alphanumerical characters that are intended to be descriptive of the article or some characteristic thereof. There are different types of barcode readers or scanners each including different set of components and employing different methods, to read a barcode. The types include such as, but not limited to, pen type readers, laser scanners, CCD readers, and 2D imaging scanners.
Pen type readers consist of a light source and a photodiode that are placed next to each other in the tip of a pen or wand. In order to read a barcode present on a label on a target object, the tip of the pen is moved or swiped across the label in a steady motion. The photodiode measures the intensity of the light reflected back from the light source and generates a waveform that is used to measure the widths of the bars and spaces in the barcode.
Laser scanners work the same way as pen type readers except that they use a laser beam as the light source and typically employ either a reciprocating mirror or a rotating prism to scan the laser beam back and forth across the target object.
CCD readers (also referred to as LED scanner) use an array of hundreds of tiny light sensors lined up in a row in the head of the reader. Each sensor measures the intensity of the light immediately in front of it. The important difference between a CCD reader and a pen or laser scanner is that the CCD reader is measuring emitted ambient light from the barcode whereas pen or laser scanners are measuring reflected light of a specific frequency originating from the scanner itself.
2D imaging scanners use a small video camera to capture an image of the barcode. The reader then uses sophisticated digital image processing techniques to decode the barcode.
In all the above cases, the ability of a scanner to successfully read and decode a target object is directly dependent upon the ability to move the scanner to a suitable position whereby a satisfactorily clear image of the target object is obtained. In order to obtain a clear image of the target object, the scanner has to be properly directed or aimed towards the target object. In general all the present day scanners have an aiming pattern generator for generating a visible aiming pattern. The visible aiming pattern can include such as, but not limited to, a laser dot or a laser line that enables an operator to aim the scanner at the target object and thereby read the target object.
However, at long distances or in high ambient light the aiming pattern generator might fail to accurately aim the particular target object. In cases of high ambient light such as sunlight, the laser aiming dot is not visible. On the other hand, in low light conditions such as scanning in a warehouse, the laser aiming dot may not be easily visible at large distances. Also, aiming at large distances could also be difficult in cases where there is no reflective background to see the current position of the laser dot to help guide the operator towards the barcode. In such conditions, one way of improving the visibility of the laser aiming dot can be achieved by increasing the laser power. However, this method is limited due to laser safety regulations. Another way to improve visibility is by making the operator wear colored glasses such as red glasses for a red laser to filter out ambient light, but this has the inconvenience of having to manage a supply of glasses.
Accordingly, there is a need for an alternate method to aim the barcode scanner at the desired target object.
Skilled artisans 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 to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates generally to the use of electrodes in semiconductor devices, and more particularly relates to the formation of small electrodes having reduced contact areas which may be utilized, for example, in semiconductor memory devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to the manufacture of a small-sized electrode such as is useful to control the size of the active area of a chalcogenide resistive element in a memory cell of a chalcogenide memory device.
Electrodes are used in a variety of integrated circuit devices. In certain devices, such as memory devices, the ability to efficiently manufacture small electrodes is crucial in maximizing the performance and cost-efficiency of the device. A memory device can have a plurality of memory arrays, and each memory array can include hundreds of thousands of memory cells. Each memory cell generally includes a memory element and an access device (such as, for example, a diode) coupled to the memory element. Memory-storage materials, that is, materials that can be made to store information, such as by storing a charge or by changing resistivity, are used to fabricate the memory elements. Electrodes couple each memory element to a corresponding access device. The electrodes can be part of the access device and can also define the memory element.
In certain memory devices, such as memory devices having chalcogenide memory elements, the size of the electrode has a direct relationship to the speed, power requirements, and capacity of the memory device. Chalcogenides are materials which may be electrically stimulated to change states, from an amorphous state to a crystalline state, for example, or to exhibit different resistivities while in the crystalline state. Thus, chalcogenide memory elements can be utilized in memory devices for the storage of binary data, or of data represented in higher-based systems. Such memory cells will typically include a cell accessible, for example, by a potential applied to access lines, in a manner conventionally utilized in memory devices. Typically, the cell will include the chalcogenide element as a resistive element, and will include an access or isolation device coupled to the chalcogenide element. In one exemplary implementation suitable for use in a RAM, the access device may be a diode.
Many chalcogenide alloys may be contemplated for use with the present invention. For example, alloys of tellurium, antimony and germanium may be particularly desirable, and alloys having from approximately to 55-85 percent tellurium and on the order of 15-25 percent germanium are contemplated for use in accordance with the present invention. Preferably, the chalcogenide element will be generally homogeneous (although gradiented alloys may be utilized), and will be alloys formed from tellurium, selenium, germanium, antimony, bismuth, lead, strontium, arsenic, sulfur, silicon, phosphorus, oxygen and mixtures or alloys of such elements. The alloys will be selected so as to establish a material capable of assuming multiple, generally stable, states in response to a stimulus. It is contemplated that in most cases, the stimulus will represent an electrical signal, and that the multiple states will be states of differing electrical resistance. U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,219 is believed to be generally illustrative of the existing state of the art relative to chalcogenide materials, and is believed to provide explanations regarding the current theory of function and operation of chalcogenide elements and their use in memory cells. The specification of U.S. Pat. No. 5,335,219 to Ovshinski et al., issued Aug. 2, 1994, is incorporated herein by reference, for all purposes. An exemplary specific chalcogenide alloy suitable for use in the present invention is one consisting of Te56 Ge22 Sb22.
An observed property of a chalcogenide element in a memory cell is that the chalcogenide element will have an xe2x80x9cactive areaxe2x80x9d which may be less than the area of the entire chalcogenide element. The size of this active area can be controlled by controlling the size of the electrode contact with the chalcogenide element. A primary reason for limiting the active area of the chalcogenide element is that the size of the active area is directly related to the programming current and/or time required to achieve the desired state change. Thus, in the interest of optimally fast programming rates of a memory device, it is desirable to minimize the dimension of electrode contacting the chalcogenide element, to minimize the active area and to thereby facilitate optimally fast programming time and optimally low programming current.
Techniques for forming the electrode of a chalcogenide memory cell include forming a hole in a dielectric layer, and then depositing a conductive material in the hole. Conventional techniques of forming the hole and the insulative layer have included the application of a high current pulse to open a hole having a diameter of on the order of 0.1-0.2 microns. Additional attempts have been made to rely upon photolithography or etching to establish an opening through the insulative layer. All of these methods suffer from technological constraints upon the hole size, and offer less than optimal repeatability.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a new method and apparatus for creating small electrodes, so as, for example, to establish minimally-sized active areas in a chalcogenide layer disposed adjacent to such insulative layer. In a preferred implementation of the invention, the active area of the chalcogenide element can be generally controlled through selection of the electrode size in the insulative layer.
The present invention comprises an electrode suitable for use in a multi-state memory cell for use in a memory array of a memory device. The electrode includes a base portion and an upper portion. The base portion includes a recessed plug of conductive material configured for electrically coupling to an access device or to an access line. The upper portion includes a cylindrically shaped spacer of an insulative material, the spacer having a center hole, and a contact plug of conductive material, the contact plug placed inside the center hole. The contact plug electrically couples to the base portion and is configured for coupling to a multi-state element.
The electrode can be manufactured by first providing a dielectric volume and then etching an opening within the dielectric volume. The recessed plug of conductive material is then formed within a lower portion of the opening, preferably by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The spacer is formed, generally by deposition and anisotropic etching, along the sidewalls of an upper portion of the opening. Finally the contact plug is formed within the central hole, preferably by CVD. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
} |
1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to portable surgical instruments and, more particularly, to portable surgical instruments that utilize a handpiece configured to house a battery and/or battery assembly and releasably couple to the portable surgical instrument.
2. Background of Related Art
Portable surgical instruments are known in the medical arts. Portable surgical instruments overcome some of the drawbacks that are typically associated with surgical instruments that draw power from electrical outlets. That is, outlet driven surgical instruments utilize power cords that may create tripping and/or entanglement hazards in an operating room environment.
Typically, the portable surgical instrument includes a battery or battery assembly that is configured to removably couple or “latch” to the portable surgical instrument. In an ideal scenario, the battery or battery assembly remains coupled or “latched” to the portable surgical instrument during the entirety of the surgical procedure. Unfortunately, and in certain instances, the battery or battery assembly sometimes has to be uncoupled or “unlatched” from the portable surgical instrument during the surgical procedure. For example, the battery or battery assembly may have to be unlatched from the surgical instrument for sterilization (or re-sterilization), charging (or recharging), etc. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
} |
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mini-USB connector assembly, and in particular to a mini connector assembly with a universal series bus interface that is suitable for portable electronic appliance and is plug-and-play.
2. Description of Related Art
Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces are introduced to computer-related appliances. The USB interface is configured to support plug-and-play device and is hot-swappable. That is, the USB interface has a capability to be plugged or unplugged without removing the power or rebooting the computer. One USB connector is allowed for up to 127 peripherals to be attached including speakers, telephone sets, CD-ROM drives, joysticks, magnetic tap devices, keyboards, scanners and digital cameras. The USB connection ports are usually positioned near parallel ports or serial ports.
Especially, mini-USB ports are implemented in portable electronic appliances so that the portable electronic appliances are plug-and-play. To be compatible with current specification, the mini-USB ports are only configured with four terminals so that the mini-USB ports do not deal with demand for more data and higher transfer speed.
Thus, there is a need for a new mini-USB connector assembly. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates to door locks and in particular to the cartridge mechanism of a panic proof lock.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,129,019 issued to Urdal entitled "Cartridge For A Lockset" has disclosed a simple cartridge construction joining two individual, standard devices which are collectively referred to as a lockset. The cartridge which interengages with the spindles of the individual locks contains a mechanism for actuating both of the standard locks from one of the lock operators and is thin enough to be applied to installations already in existence and to new installations. The usual environment for the lockset cartridge is in connection with a door panel mounted on hinges in a door frame in a surrounding wall. The frame is provided with one or more strike boxes arranged to receive two bolts, a latch bolt and a dead bolt. In many installations, the latch bolt is provided with a keyed operator on the exterior and a knob or a lever on the interior. The dead bolt is provided with a key actuator on the exterior and a thumb turn on the interior. The latch bolt mechanism governed by the controllers is a standard, independent lockset readily available and of a kind already installed on many door panels. Comparably, the mechanism of the dead bolt structure controlled by the key and the operator is itself a separate, standard mechanism as already installed in many door panels.
Urdal's lock, however, has a drawback. The movement of the moving parts in Urdal's cartridge mechanism is restricted by mounting screws so that the latch bolt has to be shortened. It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a cartridge mechanism such that the latch bolt need not be cut down to a shorter length. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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The present invention relates to integrated circuits for data communication systems such as network devices and telecommunications circuits. More particularly, the present invention relates to a multiple channel data buffer for use in an integrated circuit having multiple I/O ports.
Network devices and telecommunication circuits typically have several communication channels for connecting to multiple devices such as computer work stations, telephone and television systems, video teleconferencing systems and other facilities over common data link support carriers.
Personal computers and computer work stations are typically interconnected by local area networks (LANs) such as Ethernet, Token Ring, DECNet and RS-232, whereas remote systems are interconnected by wide area networks (WANs) such as V.34, ISDN Basic Rate Interface (BRI), Frame Relay (T1/E1 or fractional T1/E1), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) links, ADSL and High Level Data Link Control (HDLC) networks.
In these applications, it is common to use a first-in-first-out (FIFO) buffer for buffering transmit and receive data through each channel. Typically, each communication channel has its own transmit FIFO and receive FIFO. Each FIFO uses a dual port random access memory (RAM) for storing the data. One port is used by the I/O port of the communication channel and the other port is used by a data routing circuit which routes the data between the FIFO and a memory or other device. This structure is not very scalable on an integrated circuit since RAMs have specific layout restrictions on the integrated circuit. For example, RAMs are often required to be placed on an edge of the integrated circuit die. This makes it difficult to place a large number of RAMs on a single integrated circuit and thus limits the number of communication channels that can be supported on the integrated circuit. Improved data communication buffer circuits are desired. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Coolers for beverages and storing ice are known in the art. Typically, the coolers are formed from four solid, plastic walls, a bottom wall, and a hinged lid. Collectively, the walls and lid define a storage chamber for storing ice, beverages, foodstuffs, etc. It may be desirable, however, to separate goods within the cooler such as utensils, food, ice, and beverages to more adequately control the temperature of each item. Furthermore, in locations where security is an issue, e.g., concert or sports venue, there is a need to search the contents of the cooler. This is problematic in that cold air can escape while the cooler lid is opened for inspection. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a compartmentalized cooler that allows the contents therein to be viewed without opening the lid. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
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Conventionally, the Boundary-Scan method has been used for testing a semiconductor device, which is shown in Japanese Patent Publication, Kokai 2001-183420. According to the boundary-scan technique, the specification of the test is determined by, for example, IEEE1149.1. Therefore, the same test pattern signal can be used for a variety of semiconductor device made by different manufactures.
According to a conventional method of test for a semiconductor device, including a memory circuit it is required to carry out tests for the memory circuit and for another logic circuit independently or separately from each other. As a result, it spends a longer period of time to test a semiconductor device, including a memory circuit. | {
"pile_set_name": "USPTO Backgrounds"
} |
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